The Darkness 2 – Executions > Love

Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. This guy just doesn’t have the best luck or any luck for that matter. Rough life growing up, had to turn to being a hitman in order to make a living, then the one thing he cares about in his life, the one person who he loves, gets executed in front of him. The Darkness, it forces him to watch. Oops, spoilers from the first game! Oh well, your bad for reading the review of Darkness 2 before playing the first game.

Yep, he watches his girlfriend die in the first game and after all of that, he’s able to push the Darkness away. He finally gains a bit of control over it. This is where The Darkness 2 begins. You meet Jackie after the events of the first game. All seems ok. Everyone calls him “boss”, there are beautiful women waiting for him at a restaurant, then bam! Explosions, gunfire, blood. An attempt on his life has been made. It pisses him and the Darkness off something terrible. Caught in a blazing inferno with a badly burned leg, missing a toe and assuming he’s been shot multiple times, he has no choice, he unleashes the Darkness.

I don’t want to ruin the story for you, so that’s as far as I will go. The story is intriguing at points and sometimes confusing, but only briefly. It may take sometime to build up steam but once it does, you’re rewarded for your time. You’ll transition from intense fire fights into unexpectedly quite moments. Once you think “I get what’s going on” a scene happens that makes you say “WTF?” I would love to be able to tell you all about the ending, but I won’t. What I will say is that the ending was very satisfying for me.

As you travel through these wrecked moments in Jackie’s life, take in the view, it’s great. You’re playing in a top notch comic book. It looks phenomenal. For many reasons, one being that you rarely see a FPS that doesn’t go for the best/realistic graphics ever. Don’t think for a moment that since it doesn’t have realistic graphics that you won’t be amazed by what you see. From some of the set pieces to the characters and my favorite the Darkness executions, you’ll be impressed by what you’re given.

I mentioned executions, so let’s get into the fun stuff, the combat. Quad wielding, fantastic. It feels freaking fantastic. Your front two shoulder buttons are for left and right hand guns, back two shoulder buttons are for your Darkness arms, it’s that simple. Your left Darkness arm is used to grab and your right to swipe and smash. The grabbing is where things get good. Grab a downed or stunned enemy and you have the option to execute them. Doing so will award you health, ammo or a shield depending on your upgrades, as well as a terrifyingly awesome scene. Also it awards you with more experience. Depending on how you dispatch your enemies, you’ll be awarded different amounts of experience which you’ll use to upgrade your Darkness powers, gun play ability and more.

Vendettas. Vendettas is a co-op multiplayer campaign which takes place after the main solo campaign. You’ll choose between four different characters each with their own unique Darkness abilities and weapons. You’ll travel the city wreaking havoc and cleaning up some loose ends for Jackie. A very well done MP co-op mode. More of the addicting action of the solo campaign, what’s not to love?

Alright, so as you can tell I enjoyed this game, a lot. Now for the not so great areas. For one, the AI breaks sometimes. Like  an enemy would run right by me or just be gazing off into the distance in a daydream while a four armed freak bared down on him. Moments like that would kind of break the action and immersion in the moment. Two, the controls. Yes the gun play and melee felt fine, but something as simple as traversing the world seemed more difficult. Getting stuck moving in and out of certain environments during the chaos of a firefight lent a feeling of unpolishment, +1 for creating new words. Three,  my beloved solo campaign was short. How short? Short enough to where the MP co-op mode was as long, if not even longer than the main campaign. You’re buying this game to play as Jackie, Darkness host with four arms, not to play as side characters.

Now for the stacked amounts of good to the small pile of bad, I highly recommend The Darkness 2. The main campaign may be short, but needs to be experienced and the co-op is just so much fun. Do you like FPS? Go buy The Darkness 2.

(Reviewed on the Playstation 3.)