In the grip of The Darkness II

Posted by on February 28, 2012 in Reviews

“Corridor” used to be a dirty word in shooters. Time was I thought a linear corridor-based shooter was a lost cause. Thanks Calls of Duty! But then along came the Bioshocks, and games that did such nifty things with the shooting that I didn’t mind the corridors: The Club, Resident Evil 5, Lost Planet 2, Kane & Lynch 2, Fear 3. And now The Darkness II, a sequel to a game I didn’t even like, drives home the point that corridor doesn’t have to be a dirty word.

After the jump, a shooter Bill Gaines would love!

The gimmick in The Darkness is that you have sentient tentacle/snake things, one on each shoulder. It comes from a comic book, wouldn’t you know? If you’re wondering why you have these, I can explain: backstory, backstory, cutscene, exposition, cutscene, backstory, yadda yadda yadda. All you really need to know is that you’re a one-man four-armed supernatural rampaging machine. The Darkness II isn’t as soggy with exposition as the first game, so you can just go with it.

But if you like the story — and I’ll bet you dollars to demon droppings you will — you’ll find a clever combination of dark, creepy, sly, and sometimes even funny. Here are elements of Alan Wake, Fear, Shutter Island, Chronicles of Riddick, Legacy of Kain, The Crow, Hellboy, and Dark (“Take the fucking elephant!”) Man. For good measure, throw in a memorable goblin/demon/soccer hooligan sidekick who now belongs on every list of best ever videogame sidekicks for reasons that I can’t go into because it would mean spoilers. Just stick him right under Wheatley, please. Before you know it, you’re actually reading the backstory you unlocked with each collectible artifact. If you want good writing and a memorable story in your corridor shooter, The Darkness II will oblige you.

It even looks fantastic, with an emphasis on cel-shaded splatter horror. The Darkness II plays as if it were an homage to the EC Comics of the 40s and 50s. It has that same grimly colorful and colorfully grim vibe in its approach to crucifixion, torture, madness, hell, and a demon who pees on bodies and farts in their dead faces. The slightly exaggerated characters help a lot during the plasticky puppet theater cutscenes and you might not even notice the badda-bing cut-rate Goodfellas mafioso silliness, which sits in the background where it belongs.

The good writing and evocative visuals are surprising given that the first game was so leaden and awkward. The original Darkness was made by Starbreeze, and it fared poorly in the shadow of their Riddick games. But for this sequel, Digital Extremes has taken over as the developer. If you know their work from the Bioshock 2 multiplayer, which you probably don’t considering how 2K thoroughly and frequently botched it, you’ll appreciate that these guys know how to mix guns with crazy superpowers. That’s exactly what they do with your tentacles and RPG upgrades in The Darkness II. Your tentacles get lots of useful ways to interact with the environment and the bad guys. As you upgrade your powers — it’s a pretty darn good RPG system for how it encourages creative and dramatic kills, and for how useful each upgrade is — you can farm bad guys for health and ammo, earn new magical powers, improve your weapons, and so forth.

As you master the tentacles, you’ll get a really gratifying feeling of scuttling through the levels, Doc Ock style. While you’re reloading your gun, use one tentacle to whip a guy up into the air, then another to grab him and throw him at your enemies. Reach out and snatch ammo from across the room while hiding behind cover. Pick up and fling a convenient saw blade at one bad guy while shotgunning another. It’s intuitive, to boot. Meanwhile, the bad guys keep pace by learning new ways to counter you. The Darkness II is one of those smart sandbox games where your set of toys gets bigger and more powerful while the bad guys’ sets of toys also get bigger and more powerful. When The Darkness II finally reaches that point where the bad guys take away all your powers and leave you with a knife, the game has earned it. Don’t worry, it’s not as annoying as it sounds.

You may have heard that this is a short game. You heard wrong. Like Fear 3, which The Darkness II resembles for how it creatively adds supernatural powers to an already solid shooter, here you’ll find a completely different approach to multiplayer. Hardly a surprise given how well Digital Extremes did with the multiplayer for Bioshock 2. But the multiplayer here is an extension of the story, and it’s actually not really multiplayer. Vendetta mode, as it’s called, is a collection of new episodes, played from the perspective of four different characters with different powers. Each has his or her own RPG upgrades, which you can buy as you play through standalone missions and challenges set in entirely new levels, either solo or co-operatively with up to three other players. Furthermore, each character has personality along the lines of Left 4 Dead for how they talk to each other and comment variously on the action. The Darkness II is only a short game if you assume it stops with the story of the main character.

5 stars
Xbox 360, PC

  • Joe

    One of the few times we can agree on a game, Tom! (well, besides driving games)

    While I haven’t played nearly as much of The Darkness 2 as you, I’m very happy with what I’ve seen so far. The aesthetic is just great, the controls work well and, frankly, any singleplayer that is more than just some tacked-on excuse to make a multiplayer shooter is very welcome indeed.

  • Barac Wiley

    I liked how the powers were handled better in the first Darkness. I felt like The Darkness rewarded creative approaches to combat and gave the player full control with things like the crawling tentacle move (apparently replaced by predetermined stealth sequences as the darkling) and player summoned darklings (instead of a single, admittedly amusing, darkling that just kind of tags along and occasionally plays assist). 

  • tomchick

    Barac, have you played Darkness II? He doesn’t tag along at all. In fact, he often leads the way. Also, you can fling the darkling to incapacitate an enemy. It’s a pretty important stun power, although I think you have to purchase it. Also, that single darkling figures prominently in the story, but I wouldn’t dream of spoiling how.

  • Barac Wiley

    I have, which is why I highlight the specific things I thought were better in the original game. (I so far like the first game better in general, but would certainly agree that Darkness II is a good game in its own right.) I have not, however, finished it as yet.

  • Brad Grenz

    I’ve never been able to get over the main character’s hair. How does a clearly Native American guy end up running an Italian mafia, anyway?

  • tomchick

    I imagine there’s some exposition I skipped in the first game that explains that. Also, I love what happens to his hair in the sequel.

  • Peter Michelsen

    Wow, 5 stars? I really liked it as well, but I felt like it was more ambitious than accomplished. At the best of times it gave me that Bioshock buzz (looking at little details like bulletholes being caulked over when I return to a location for the second time) but ultimately it was also very contained. It does things so well, but only to a point. The writing probably surprised me the most. 
    If they had had the time and resources to really flesh things out – like the singleplayer story and especially the quiet “talky” sections – it could’ve been an absolute classic. I’d probably go with 3 stars, with an invisible 4 for how much they obviously cared for this game. Made with love, for sure.

  • tomchick

    Good comments, Peter. But I feel being “contained” was actually an asset. This is a corridor shooter, and unlike the really clunky Darkness I, it doesn’t try to hide that fact. I liked how simple the penthouse hub was, without trying to pretend towards any open worldness. You just step into the elevator and the next mission loads. Easy peasy. I feel The Darkness II knew what it was, and it wasn’t ashamed of it. :)

    BTW, be sure to try the vendetta missions if you want some stuff fleshed out more. Or read the text for the relics. Well, listen to the text, considering how much, erm, enthusiasm the voice actor brings to Johnny. :)

  • Gofuckyourself

    Wow.  False information much?  First of all, this game is far from a 10/10.  And yes, it is a short game, 5 hours is a short game.  Once again, grow up child.  

  • Slug

    How can you give this 100/100, but Far Cry 3 60/100? Stupid man.