Putting the power of darkness in players’ hands

The only truly bad thing about The Darkness II is how quickly the end comes. In every other category, it stomps all over its predecessor like Godzilla in a tiny town made of Lego. The gameplay is satisfying and fluid, the story and voice acting are solid and engaging and the visuals make you feel like you’re in a vivid and colourful graphic novel. In short, nearly everything about this sequel is an improvement on its predecessor.

A couple years have passed since the last game left off, and protagonist Jackie Estacado is now the head of a crime family in New York. He’s still mourning the death of his girlfriend Jenny, and while he’s managed to keep The Darkness — an ancient being living within his body — in check, it’s not long before he’s forced to use it to fight off a cult-like order that wants to take his power.

In the previous game, the powers of The Darkness were awesome, but a little clumsy to use. Now, Jackie can to take full control of what the game calls “quad-wielding.” You can use one two-handed rifle or shotgun, or handguns in one or both hands, and at the same time control two demon arms living on each side of the screen. One is used for slashing in eight different directions, and the other for grabbing, throwing and gruesomely executing your enemies. While it sounds a little complicated, everything works together seamlessly. Grab a car door and use it as a shield while gunning down enemies, then fling it across the room to slice them up. Get in close to the survivors and slap them around before picking one up and replenishing your health by eating his heart.

On top of all that, Jackie has even more abilities, including stunning enemies by unleashing a swarm of darkness and shooting through walls. Darklings, impish creatures that follow the player around, also make a return. While there’s only one this time, he’s fleshed out and developed as his own character, helping you by leaping on enemies, exploring places you can’t go and even pissing on the corpses of enemies.

Then in the Vendetta mode, a parallel online-cooperative-optional campaign, the player has the option of controlling one of four distinct characters. While none of them are as developed as Jackie, they each have one of his darkness abilities and a unique weapon of their own. Jimmy wields a boomerang-like axe and Inugami tears through enemies with a katana. The sheer number of ways to dispatch enemies in this game is beyond impressive and serves to showcase the full extent of the powers of The Darkness — and you feel like an absolute badass.

But the game would get old fast if you didn’t have some sort of weakness. When you step into well-lit areas of the map, you get blinded fast, limiting your powers to your guns. Shooting out the lights then becomes just as important as killing your foes, and while the game does shake things up a bit by throwing a few lights that you have to turn off by destroying a generator, the number of bulletproof lights hampering your progress stretches believability a little too far.

Nevertheless, the use of lighting is a big part of the visual theme, and it’s refreshing to see a developer daring enough to use the entire colour wheel in today’s environment of realistically dreary grey-brown first-person shooters. The Darkness games are based off the graphic novels, and the artistic direction of this instalment reflects that origin with exquisite style. Whether hanging around Jackie’s mansion talking to his associates, trying to escape the dream-world mental hospital or exploring a closed-down amusement park, the world is rich and beautiful — before you bloody it up with dismembered body parts.

The short length is disappointing, but the presence of the Vendetta campaign makes up for it a little, with each character bringing their own delightful personality to the missions. The storytelling also doesn’t live up to its predecessor, lacking scenes with some of the nice subtle touches the first game had, like watching TV with Jenny on the sofa, but it does end on the right notes.

While there are a few flaws with the game, they’re more than outweighed by the pure fun of tearing through Jackie’s enemies. And accompanied by the unmistakable guttural screams and twisted growling of musician Mike Patton, The Darkness taunts your reliance on him every step of the way — and that just makes it cooler. Not every sequel manages to break free of the shadow of the original, but The Darkness II is one fantastic reinvention, begging for a full trilogy.

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