The Darkness 2
PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3
PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3
Story
The Darkness 2 starts of with a nice option to review the story of The Darkness for those of you who hadn't played the original, a nice little addition to help acquaint players with the universe and background of Jackie. After a rather interesting and schizophrenic summary of the events of the first game by Johnny Powell, a crazy little bastard who likes to stutter and shout throughout the whole thing, you get a nice loading screen that goes back to the first games cutscene/loadscreens with Jackie providing a narration of his life.
As the screen finishes you learn that Jackie has been able to keep the Darkness held back in him for two years and has successfully built up his own mob in time. As Jackie walks into a restaurant and sits down with his hookers they are promptly murdered with a hail of bullets and Jackie is flat on his ass with a mangled leg. A hectic fight ensues, concluding with Jackie getting a molotov thrown at him and being forced to unleash The Darkness once more.
The story continues at this break-neck pace for a long time, always twisting and evolving but never becoming too lost or confusing for the player (at least for me), using some nice 'or is it' moments, which I won't tell you
. While playing you can use Jackie's mansion as a hub to talk to certain characters, or learn about his past from his talkative and funny Aunt Sarah.The voice-acting is definitely worth mentioning, providing depth and humor in good ol' Brooklyn style accents that are very mobsterey and fit well. Jackie's new voice actor is especially good, though it is sad that he doesn't sound as gruff and pissed as he did in The Darkness. Mike Patton returns as The Darkness, being as throaty and hoarse as ever, and the Darkling has a silly British accent, spouting one-liners and calling you 'Monkey' all the time.
Gameplay
The Darkness 2 brings back quad wielding and does it with gusto. Lefty and Righty (the two arm tentacles that grow from Jackie's back) now have separate roles, Lefty eating hearts and wielding objects, Righty murdering everything in sight. The gunplay is as you would imagine, point, shoot, kill, reload, repeat. Dual wielding does offer some diversity, allowing you to simultaneously carry two pistols, or SMGs, while being able to wield a single two-handed weapon, like an assault rifle or shotgun.
But who cares about guns? No one. Lefty and Righty are the most fun you could ever have without being a Slaaneshy-tentacled Space Marine. The executions are especially delightful, disemboweling, beheading, eviscerating, de-hearting, and absolutely butchering anything that can walk and talk. That being said, the executions can get tiresome after a while, and do earn you the most experience in the early game - I'll get to that in a bit. Aside from the execution you can just shoot an enemy and eat his heart, which - along with executions - will heal Jackie. You could also impale an enemy with on of the numerous pipes lying around, or pick him up and throw him at his buddies, or rip a black hole out of his chest and turn everyone in the vicinity into a big squishy mess.
This brings me to XP. Instead of leveling up, Jackie can find esscence stones which allow him to gain new abilities in a variety of skill trees. Each tree has a different benefit to different stats. From the previously mentioned black hole, to gaining more health from hearts, performing executions to net different bonuses (more ammo, etc.), allowing you to hurl the Darkling like a killer Basketball, to exploding shells for weapons, and much more.
Speaking of the Darkling, there are couple stages where you get to play as the lovable little bastard. When playing as the Darkling you get to rip out people's throats and gouge out their eyes in glorious detail, causing them to scream pain while you watch. These sections are a nice change of pace to the run and gun and slash gameplay as Jackie, but there's barely even a handful of them, two actually. While being short segments, though the second is considerably longer, it's very fun to experience the game from a much, much shorter perspective.
Lights are also a big problem for Jackie since, oddly enough, The Darkness can't survive in light, weird right? To remedy this Jackie has to shoot out lights and generators in order to regenerate health and use his abilities, but the enemies know about this and will devise clever means of bringing light to you.
Graphics
The Darkness 2 is a very pretty game and uses its new-found comicy, cell shaded style to its fullest. Dumping the old, moody greyish greens of the first game, all the colors pop and use a nice shading technique which seems to make everything shiny and glossy, though it make some of the characters look like their foreheads were dipped in a McDonald's fry vat. There was a single shadow issue bu that remedied itself rather quickly, so no worries about that.
The animations are very nice too, everything moves nice and fluidly, though some characters have bobble-heads at times since their necks are a little odd. The lip-syncing is very well done for the most part, though it can be kind of poor at times, usually when out of cut-scenes or dialogues. The executions are nice and smooth, some do seem to drag on when you're in the middle of combat however.
For PC gamers there should be no problems running this on maximum with a modest computer and getting a stable framerate, though this is only speculation since I have a very powerful rig.
Sound
The game's voice acting is amazing as I mentioned before. Guns sound powerful and each has a unique sound. The gore sounds perfectly wet and juicy, as it should when you decapitate someone. The music can range from slow and sad to fast and brutal, there's even a few licensed tracks to-boot, adding some spice to the score.
Conclusion
The Darkness 2 is a solid extension to the comic and game lore, trading out some things for good and bad. Its gameplay is amazing, the story is engrossing and well written, and the characters are like-able. Its Noir style graphics add punch to the atmosphere and help the game stand out from the average shooter. While it is very, very short - clocking in at around 4-5 hours on Normal - and there are a few graphical kinks, you should definitely pick this up if you like a good story. There's also co-op, which I can't honestly review since I haven;t tried it.
Final Score: 8.7. Super-Highly Recommended
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