10.0
The Darkness II
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9.0 User Score
6.0 (1 votes)
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In an industry that’s practically choking on mindless, multiplayer-focused military shooters, having one that focuses on story and characters is rare. A game that does this exceptionally well is even rarer, but Starbreeze’s The Darkness, based on the comic book of the same name, was just that game. It not only delivered impressive and visceral shooting gameplay and a strong presentation, but it also found time to tell a compelling and genuinely exciting story. Years later, the devoted fanbase of the series is finally getting their wish in a sequel. The property may have changed developers, but Digital Extremes knows exactly what we want, and has more than given it to us.
At the beginning of The Darkness II, mob hitman Jackie Estacado is introduced as the Don of his family, respected by his men even though they are aware and deeply fearful of his powers. Jackie still mourns the murder of his girlfriend, Jenny, though his Aunt Sarah begs him to let it go. One night, the restaurant Jackie is dining at is suddenly attacked by another mob, though Jackie sees a crippled and disfigured man walking away. Deeper investigation reveals this man to be the head of the Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to reclaiming the darkness for evil, comic-book reasons. Unleashing the power of the Darkness for the first time in a while, Jackie finds himself weakened by the evil force as it fights to gain control of its host. At the same time, Jackie both combats and bargains with the Darkness to save Jenny’s soul.
Technically speaking, the game is outstanding, boasting a wonderful hand-drawn art style that comes closer to a comic book than anything I’ve seen since XIII last generation. It looks fantastic, and in a small touch that delighted me more than it probably should have, you can actually walk straight up to some surfaces and see some pencil scuff marks as though it had just been drawn by an artist. The frame rate never hiccupped once during the gameplay, although the animation did skip a few frames during a couple of cutscenes, causing the audio to be out of sync. There was also one situation in which the game froze and I had to quit to the PS3’s main menu. These problems were trivial at worst.
Some images seem to be ripped straight from the page.
I was delighted to hear that Mike Patton, one of the most vocally diverse and talented rock singers of our time, would be reprising his role as the voice of the Darkness itself. Patton himself seems to be just as thrilled to revisit the role, as his snarly, menacing, and utterly epic performance as the evil force is completely fantastic and passionate. He has fun with his role, playing with ridiculous variation in his vocal rage and once again giving the Darkness a great deal of personality.
The original game had an interesting idea in giving Jackie two additional weapons—his two Darkness tendrils, capable of their own attacks. The sequel takes that idea and runs with it. Now each Darkness arm has its own specific function, with the left responsible for grabbing and throwing people and things, and the right taking care of slashing and attacking. Dubbed “quad-wielding” by the developer (and they actually trademarked the term), each of Jackie’s human hands and each Darkness tendril is controlled by a trigger on the controller. In this way, it’s possible to be attacking in four different ways at once, which is as awesome as it sounds. With practice, Jackie can lay waste to a room full of enemies literally in a matter of seconds.
Jackie also has a bit of help in the form of the Darkling, a small Darkness-borne creature that assists Jackie in combat. He adds a small touch of comic relief to the proceedings, but luckily did not make the tone too uneven, which was my original fear when his first appearance featured physical comedy and flatulence humor within a couple of moments of each other. Thankfully, the game dials back that humor after its first instance but still features the Darkling urinating acid, which wasn’t exactly hilarious but not bothersome either. Overall, the Darkling is a welcome addition and a handy ally in combat.
Say hello to your best friend. He pisses acid.
Empowering the player may be what The Darkness II does best. Jackie’s powers lie on a large “skill wheel” made up of four different trees specializing in different areas; for example, one tree focuses on Jackie’s straight Darkness abilities, such as the Black Hole or the ability to give thrown objects a sheath of Darkness, while another is all about Jackie’s weapons. The wheel opens whenever Jackie comes across portals scattered around the world so that he can spend any accrued Dark Essence, which is essentially a currency rewarded for creative combat, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Bulletstorm. Anytime Jackie visits a portal, any tree can be accessed, so if players find themselves needing a bit more of a boost in the heat of combat they can look into the execution-centered tree to see what is offered there.
That’s not to say that he doesn’t have a reason. The Darkness II is another revenge tale at heart, and the strength of the characters and writing play a big part in making the story effective. As in the original, there are occasionally quiet moments where Jackie converses with friends or sees his deceased, beloved girlfriend Jenny. At one point, Jackie hallucinates that he is in a diner, dancing with Jenny. It was a small little sequence that nevertheless worked extremely well in driving Jackie’s pain straight home. These moments with Jenny enriched Jackie as a character, elevating beyond a simple, heartless mobster to a more complex human being. As a large part of the game revolves around Jackie’s journey to rescue Jenny’s soul from the Darkness, it adds a vein of emotion to the story, giving Jackie more than the standard FPS objective of “kill everything”, particularly in the game’s deeply touching finale. One of the most powerfully emotional moments in the story comes a bit more than halfway through, when someone close to Jackie is slaughtered, causing him to chase the assailant through a graveyard. Chasing after the man, I felt spurned on by the man’s jeering ringing in my ears, and after a boss battle, Jackie’s anger and hurt over losing another loved one is exemplified in an astonishingly brutal dispatching of his enemy.
Did I mention the game is violent? Even though the graphics may look cartoony, there are no punches pulled when it comes to the violence. Along with being able to hack enemies apart with one arm of the Darkness, Jackie can also use it to pick up and throw objects to crush or impale his foes, or even pick up the bad guys themselves and execute them in absolutely vicious fashion. One of the executions is called “wishbone”. I’ll just leave it at that.
Yummy.
While The Darkness II may feel just ever so slightly on the short side, it hardly detracts from the game as a whole, because while it may only be about 6 hours long, the single-player campaign is a straight thrill ride free of any fluff or unnecessary filler. It’s mostly about story here, and the game rushes from one set piece to the next as quickly as it needs to, never feeling too rushed and never wasting time. It is, essentially, all killer and no filler: it never overstays its welcome and I felt satisfied by its conclusion. Even so, I really want to see more of this world.
Slightly less satisfying are some of the enemies, which are kind of a double-edge sword here. It’s perfectly understandable that the Brotherhood would do everything they could to combat Jackie’s astounding power, but it’s not always fun to be facing off against one guy with a weapon-stealing whip, another with Darkness-resistant armor, and another holding a spotlight all at the same time. It did, on occasion, get rather frustrating, especially since when the light makes the Darkness go away, Jackie can get killed very quickly (especially on the higher difficulties). That said, fighting against the enemies and trying to outsmart their tactics can be fun, and as easy as it is to try to rush through and kill them as quickly as possible, they can offer a diversion from the mindless killing in the form of strategizing over which one should be taken out first.
If anything in the single player mode gets frustrating, you can switch over to a four-player cooperative mode featuring four new characters with their own unique attributes and smaller unique skill trees. This extra mode is little more than a brief diversion, but it’s still solid enough and fun enough to not feel like an afterthought. There’s also a New Game Plus mode that carries over all of Jackie’s upgrades for those (like me) that want to max out the entire skill wheel and find the rest of the hidden relics scattered around the world.
For each of the few times that I would find something in The Darkness II that I was not crazy about, I would find myself thinking about the game later, completely forgetting whatever the negative element was and only being able to think about how freaking cool everything else was. It’s a very well-done game and a cut far above the majority of action games out there narrative-wise. It never lets up for a second and is completely engaging from start to finish. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn great.
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