The Darkness 2 Review

I played The Darkness II alone in a dark room. I wasn't ever actually scared, or even startled, but I sure was entertained by the action. Presented in a slick-looking graphic-novel art style (which serves as a reminder of The Darkness' comic book origins) this shooter is the bloody, yet surprisingly well-told monster-horror story of demonically empowered mob boss Jackie Estacado battling thugs, cultists, and a biblical force of evil for the soul of his dead girlfriend.



Armed and Dangerous

The moment Jackie's two demon serpent-appendages sprouted and peeked over my shoulders in the very first level I felt overwhelmingly powerful, even with cumbersome controls for using them to slash vertically and horizontally. Literally tearing enemies apart limb-from-limb with an elaborately grotesque animation (including one I've dubbed the Rectal Spinectomy) has a way of making one feel like a badass -- and doing it while also riddling another dude with bullets from dual sub-machine guns makes it even more hilariously awesome. Pausing afterward to rip out and consume their hearts to restore health is just a bonus. Dual wielding, I should note, also suffers from some tolerable but silly control funkiness, in that right-clicking fires the left weapon and vice versa.

Before the existing set of powers can get old, a simple upgrade system unlocks new ones using points awarded based on how elaborately victims are murdered. There's a good range of options, from a ho-hum ammo capacity upgrade to the amusing flinging Jackie's Cockney-accented goblin sidekick Darkling at an enemy to the awesome Black Hole that sucks enemies into a spontaneously generated rift -- and there are enough different powers that you can't unlock them all without at least one extra playthrough on the tougher New Game+ mode, so there are interesting decisions to be made.



Even so, I frequently demonstrated Jackie's lack of invulnerability by running into fights with too many enemies, so it's not without challenge. And even though it totally makes logical sense, it took me quite a while to get used to the idea that light is a weakness -- partly because Jackie has no night-vision superpower, I found myself instinctively heading for light sources for better visibility, only to find myself blinded and stripped of my powers until I shot out the light.

Walking a Dark Path

Though its locations are almost uniformly dark and gloomy by necessity, levels do manage interesting variety. Jackie's rampage starts out in back alleys and warehouses, then moves to a particularly skeezy brothel, an abandoned amusement park, a couple of different mansions, and of course a graveyard. I love how the snake arms make use of the environment, grabbing everything that's not bolted down to hurl at enemies, impaling them against a wall, smashing them so hard their legs fall off, or holding a car door as a riot shield while I blast away with dual pistols.

About a third of the way in, foes shift from regular human fodder to supernaturally equipped assailants, and the enemy variety and challenge levels go up considerably. Things get much more interesting against guys with portable lights, riot shields, teleporters, and energy whips that rip the guns straight out of Jackie's hands. The boss fights aren't particularly novel, but aren't tedious chores either -- except one time when the Darkling failed to carry out his scripted responsibilities, causing me to run in circles for a few minutes until I gave up and restarted from the last checkpoint. That's one good thing about the checkpoint save system, I suppose -- but probably the only one.



There was one other major bug I hit: I nearly had to throw up my hands and call The Darkness II a broken, unfinishable game when a geometry glitch created an invisible wall in a vent. I only got past it by humping the jump button for several minutes until I found the magic opening. I'm glad I did, because otherwise I'd have missed out on the rest of the story.

Characters with Character

Considering the fundamentally preposterous nature of a six-limbed demonic mobster-turned-superhero and his fart-joke comic sidekick, I'm pleasantly surprised at the depth of the plot and characters. Through strong writing and acting, Jackie's right-hand man Vinnie, the nervous Steve Buscemi-like Darkness expert Johnny, sassy old Aunt Sarah, the simian Darkling, and the main villain all have memorable personalities. In occasional vignette confessionals, Jackie himself recounts his troubled upbringing and heartfelt romance with Jenny, the murdered love of his life -- they slow down the pace, but add a great deal of context to his motivations if you're willing to stop and listen. Jackie suffers some real loss and trauma, and with multiple forces at work to manipulate him, it was enough to make me actually sympathize with him, despite his past as a remorseless killer.



It's overdone in places. Sections where Jackie flashes over to an alternate reality are a tad cliche, and never really made me question which world was real. At least they're well enough executed that they didn't make me roll my eyes, and brief enough that they didn't get boring. I do wish the late-game references to Jackie's father's history with The Darkness weren't so tacked on, though.

Go Team Darkness

Speaking of tacked on, the way the brief (roughly an hour) four-player co-op campaign mode is wedged into the story cheapens the entire thing a bit, even if it is pretty entertaining to play. The four Darkness-imbued characters -- a Louisiana voodoo priest, a Scottish brute, an Israeli Mossad agent, and an Asian... walking stereotype -- each has his or her own backstory conveyed through thickly accented, often amusing banter as they go, and each has a unique melee weapon and a subset or variation of Jackie's powers that makes them play differently. I'm a fan of the Scotsman's magic throwing axe, which lodges itself in enemies and then rips itself free, killing them, when called back, and his ability to summon explosive Darklings.


I expect the multiplayer mode is where we'll see most, if not all of the DLC in the coming months. Most of the multiplayer content can be played in single-player as well -- though it's considerably tougher, since there's no one to revive you if you get killed, but not worthless to the internet-phobic.

Somewhat ironically, The Darkness II is bright spot amongst first-person shooters, supernatural or otherwise. If this good gory fun is any indication, it's a shame the first game never made it to PC, but given that this one ends on a post-credits cliffhanger, number three will be something to look forward to.


Spy Guy says: The Darkness feels like a cross between Spawn, Venom, and The Punisher. But mostly Spawn. Do you have a favorite, relatively obscure comic character who'd make a great game hero?