Thursday, 13 September 2012

The Darkness II

Gamespot Score:7.0 (Good)

My score:7.2

(+)Pros: - Its gory, - Fun and gory executions, - Superb graphical style, - Shooting feels powerful and satisfactory, especially when dual wielding weapons, - Good story that is easy to follow even if you didn't play the first game, - Diversity in Darkness abilities, - Great voice acting, - Asylum sequences are a WONDERFUL change of pace, - Its gory.

(-)Cons: - Super short, - Vendetta mode feels redundant, - Wtf ending.

Gameplay time:Under 5 hours

After all these years, I still detest the very genre of shooting games. I have always been an RPG person, and that hasn't changed. The Darkness II puts me back into the groove of shooting games, and while my feelings towards the shooting game genre hasn't really changed much, I enjoyed my time playing "The Darkness II". Its a good change of pace from the run of the mill military FPS games that I detest so much, and its definitely a shooting game that I didn't regret playing. Its sheer amount of fun gore, superb graphical style and solid shooting mechanics make it a good experience, even if its one of the shortest ones out there. If you're looking to shoot up some lackeys with the aid of demonic arms, this game might be worth a look.

"The Darkness II" has a pretty interesting story that takes off after the events of the first game, but the great thing about it is how it brings you up to speed even though you've never played the first game. Take me for an example, I never played the original Darkness, and after the starting introduction by Johnny, I feel as though I know all about the game, and following the story was simple enough. You play as the same Jackie Estacado, the boss of a mafia group. After the events of the first game, he has sealed the Darkness in him away, and he has been living without it ever since. However, one day on a trip to the local restaurant to chill out, he and his group are attacked by an organization known as the brotherhood, who want to take the Darkness away from Jackie. Forced to resummon the Darkness from within his body to fend off his attackers, Jackie now leads a new campaign to fight against the brotherhood.

Prepare for a painful, PAINFUL death....

The game is gory. Yes it is, and it is wonderful. Its not often you get to see such gory deaths and kills in a shooter, and "The Darkness II" does just that wonderfully. People die in gruesome ways, and that is awesome. My favorite parts about this game, are the executions. YOU NEVER GET TO DO THIS IN OTHER SHOOTERS. Using the Darkness tentacles, you can grab an enemy and execute them for a one hit kill, and these executions are gory as hell. Ripping off heads, grabbing spines out of their assholes or just simply grabbing their two legs and ripping their body in half till you can see their insides, this game is AWESOME for that. Whenever you do executions you feel like a badass, and you're invulnerable during these animations.

Of course, having great executions isn't enough for it to be a shooter, you still have your core shooting elements. Luckily, the shooting in this game feels powerful, as it should be. And the game isn't a complete breeze like COD mind you, in this game you die, and you die often. You have different variety of weapons, mostly present in all shooters (Machine guns, pistols, shotguns, blah blah). Spamming shots at enemies will not get you anywhere most of the time, because ammo is scarce, and you can only pick them off dead enemies, most of which carry different weapons from what you are holding. You can use weapons normally, or dual wield 2 one handed weapons. When dual wielding, your aiming changes a little bit as you hold your two weapons and fire them together.

There will be NO survivors!

Other than just shooting enemies and executing them, you have some darkness abilities to help you out. Since you ARE the bearer of the darkness, some things are unique to you. For starters, eating the hearts of dead enemies regenerates some of your health, and you are weak to the light. If light is shone on you, your screen starts to blind out, and you cannot use your darkness abilities. Most of these abilities are purchased from a store, using dark essence, which you get from defeating enemies. These abilities are quite diverse, some include throwing dark holes at enemies, summoning a swarm of dark bees, or powering up your weapon for a more powerful shot.

Aside from the main combat and shooting segments, "The Darkness II" is also a game that is very particular with its story, and because of that, the great asylum segments really help you dig deep into the game's story. For me, I think the asylum dream segments are a great part of the game, and while these are mostly just wandering around and talking to others for little bits and pieces of story, they really help make the game feel more....story driven. Taking a break from shooting and throwing you something entirely different is something more shooters need to do. Oh, and lets not forget the voice acting, it is brilliant! The characters are full of life and personality, my favorites are Jackie himself, the Darkness and Johnny, whom is always nervous as f**k.


As you can see, this is a great shooting game, but why isn't the score "up there"? Okay, for one, it is SUPER SHORT. For a full priced game, a game that takes less than 5 hours to complete a little bit of a ripoff. You can get an additional hour or two if you go for the collectables, but that's it. Same for the co-op mode vendetta, you can easily grab a couple of hours out of that mode, but its really just a revisit of some places in the game, fighting the same enemies, but using different characters and you get to work with up to 3 other friends (and might I add, it has a DISAPPOINTING last boss). The ending too....well, let's not go there, lets just leave it at that.

"The Darkness II" is a shooting game that gets most things right. Its a fun shooter with gory executions and innovative darkness powers. You'll getting a lot of fun out of this game, but when you realize its over, you'll also realize that its short as hell. Your fun is short lived, and you probably won't be going through it again, since to me, the game is very story based, and there is little re-playability. Still, for that great amount of fun you'll be squeezing out of this game, its hard not to like Darkness II. It may be short, but at least it was really fun while it lasted.

Happy gaming.