Shedding some light on this dark sequel

It’s been two years since Jackie Estacado, now Don of the Estacado crime family, used The Darkness to kill the men responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. He’s been unable to shake the memory of Jenny’s (His late squeeze) death since bottling up his supernatural power and now The Darkness wants out. A sudden, unprovoked attack on Jackie’s life heralds the start of a full-scale mob war which has clearly been orchestrated by some outside force known as The Brotherhood. The botched attempt opens the door for The Darkness to re-emerge, and sets Jackie on a journey to hell and worse, as he unravels the mystery behind the attack and the motivations of The Darkness itself, throwing him between dual realities.

The gamplay in The Darkness 2 is flat-out beautiful and smooth. The shell shaded graphics gives the game an authentic comic book feel. It’s a shooter, so nothing out of the ordinary, theres two weapon loadouts with the option to dual-wield one handed guns. But weapon choice is second to none; it’s hard picking which weapons you want because they are all awesome. With a world that allows you to use the environment like a playground, using: fan blades, pipes, signs, pool cues and much more to slice and impale enemies gives a rewarding gaming experience. There are a number of executions that can be performed by the serpents at your side. Even though there’s an option to upgrade executions that rewards you with health or ammo every time you slay an enemy, the animations of these executions soon become stale and only end up performing them to gain essence.

Essence acts as XP in The Darkness 2, to which you can use to upgrade Jackie’s abilities via talent trees and make him into a sort of Demigod. It does a good job with the character progression and keeps the player involved. There are also collectibles in the form of relics that each has its own narrated history in Jackie’s mansion. Jackie’s mansion acts as a mission hub. Here you can interact with all your mafia chums, giving you some back story and play mini games like shooting bottles and pigeon shooting. All of this and a soundtrack including: Deftones, Jane’s Addiction, Ram Jam, Type O Negative, Stereo MCs, The Offspring and In Flames makes the single player great, that and a certain carnival ride level that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Vendettas mode can be played solo or with three other co-op partners and gives the control of four new characters, each with their own Darkness abilities. After a while the animations become tedious and the enemy character models are straight up clones of each other. Given that there are a variety of enemies such as: Guards who carry spotlights to catch Jackie, normal goons, heavy thugs, shield wielding enemies, enemies who have strange whips that take away Jackie’s weapons straight from his hands and making you use initiative, also including some boss battles in between.

The Darkness 2 is a real step up from the original game back in 2006. And is a great game to kick off 2012 with. With a good story, strong voice acting mixed in with a co-op mode and room for a Darkness 3? The Darkness 2 is defiantly worth your time.

The Darkness 2 – 9/10

Games: The Darkness 2, Platforms: Xbox 360, Genres: Action, Publishers: 2K, Top Cow, Developers: 2K