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This thread has been linked to the game 'The Darkness II'.
The Darkness II is a story driven psychological first person shooter developed by Digital Extremes and is a sequel to the Darkness which was released back in 2007.
I never played the original Darkness but at the start of this game you will be given the option to watch “Previously on the Darkness” video, which will fill you in on what you need to know before starting. This video is presented to you by Johnny Powell who helps Jackie with his demons in the first game.
The game starts with Jackie Estacado, now Don of the Franchetti gang, being attacked at a restaurant. Jackie hired an occultist Johnny Powell to help Jackie contain his dark power, so it wouldn’t consume him, but as Jackie is near death due to the attack, he summons the darkness and heals his leg and other wounds back instantly like Wolverine. He chases down his attackers into a subway and meets up with the Darkling from the previous game, which is an imp that wears a union jack t-shirt and speaks in a British accent. The darkling provides some comic relief, singing rule Britannia whilst tearing enemies to shreds, urinating and breaking wind on bodies but is deadly as when you get the chance to play him, he breaks necks and tears peoples’ hearts out.
The story moves toward hallucinations of Jenny, Jackie’s ex-girlfriend who got murdered in the first game, and wondering whether his visions are real. The game makes you wonder whether the Darkness is real or whether it is all just a figment of Jackie’s crazy imagination. Each time you catch up to her, you share a close tender moment before she ends up vanishing before your eyes.
With the Darkness, Jackie has two serpentine like creatures to aid him as long as he stays out of the light. This means that you can use firearms and use the darkness to attack at the same time, which allows you to create combinations of attacks such as holding an enemy in the air whilst filling them with lead or shooting an enemies armour and grabbing their shield away.
When you are in the light, the Darkling and the Darkness both vanish and your health won’t regenerate and you lose the ability to use your Darkness abilities. When I heard of shooting lights as a game play mechanic, I thought it would be gimmicky, but you do have to pace yourself and shoot out the light sources that appear. The enemies’ may decide to arrive in a car, forcing you to smash out the headlights or carry a big flashlight with them to stop you from using your powers. This can create moments of frustration if you are out of ammo and cannot use your darkness powers either.
When you kill enemies, they will drop purple hearts which give Jackie Darkness points to spend at “Talent Shrines” to upgrade Jackie’s Darkness powers. The powers are split into multiple skill trees: one tree powers your firearms, which gives abilities like allowing you to charge your weapon up for bonus damage; one tree increases the power of your Darkness attacks, such as stunning enemies with your tentacles and giving bonus health or damage when collecting purple hearts. Near the end of the trees are the more powerful abilities like summoning portals which suck enemies in, increased Darkness armour and explosive firearms.
If you don’t want to use Darkness swings or executions, you can pick up objects with the Darkness creatures and lob them at your enemies. You can impale enemies with metal poles and slice people in half with fan blades and throw explosives to take out groups of enemies. You can also throw your Darkling at enemies to make him attack them to death. Some of the execution animations are pretty gruesome as you can pick up an enemy by each leg and tear them in half. The game then gives you points and calls the execution move a “wishbone” and you get to listen to your enemy scream. Did I mention this game was 18 rated?. It is a good job that you are invulnerable whilst doing an execution as it would make for a frustrating game otherwise. The naming and point scoring gives the game a more Arcade feel like playing Bulletstorm.
Between each mission Jackie will deliver thoughtful monologues which tell you how Jackie thought and felt at certain moments and It allows you to become more sympathetic to Jackie throughout the story. I felt it was quite difficult to sympathise with a wealthy criminal that had demon-like arms that eats peoples’ hearts for breakfast, even though Jackie hasn’t got control over them.
The voice acting throughout the story is excellent. Johnny Powell, who the other characters believe to be insane, sounds like a nervous hyper wreak and you can hear the fear in his voice and the voice of the Darkness does sound how you would expect a Demon of the underworld to sound.
The AI is a bit poor in this game though as you can hide and watch as you pick them off one by one and sometimes they can be slow to react or have odd decision making. On many occasions the AI would just stand still as I picked off their allies.
The game makes you wonder what is real throughout the game and after I have finished it, I still have no definitive answer on this. Both endings that you can pick from in the game end badly and one of the endings end on a cliff-hanger, so there is a chance that the Darkness 3 is to be in the works.
The game is very short as the main campaign lasts around 6 hours long but there are a few multiplayer modes and a new game+ mode to expand the life of the title. New Game+ allows you to replay the game with the points that you have accumulated from your previous run through. This mode was done so that you could complete the game more quickly to see the ending that you didn’t pick.
The multiplayer modes are known as “Vendetta” and you get to pick from one of six characters which are part of Jackie’s Franchetti gang. You can play through the Vendetta Campaign by yourself or with other players online, but you will have to turn up the difficulty when playing with others as balance becomes an issue. The Vendetta Campaign lasts around 2 hours long and ties in with the main story, but I didn’t think it was anywhere near as engaging as the main campaign, so this should be treated as messing around with friends online. Another Vendetta mode is known as the “Hit-List” where you chase “targets” against other players online, which is also brief.
In summary, the game is pretty short and the multiplayer won’t extend its life by much more, but it is a good story driven title which will have you wanting to know answers till the end. Definitely worth a rental but its duration prevents a full price recommendation.
Good
Excellent Voice Acting
Engaging Psychological story
Bad
Too Short
Poor AI
7/10
I never played the original Darkness but at the start of this game you will be given the option to watch “Previously on the Darkness” video, which will fill you in on what you need to know before starting. This video is presented to you by Johnny Powell who helps Jackie with his demons in the first game.
The game starts with Jackie Estacado, now Don of the Franchetti gang, being attacked at a restaurant. Jackie hired an occultist Johnny Powell to help Jackie contain his dark power, so it wouldn’t consume him, but as Jackie is near death due to the attack, he summons the darkness and heals his leg and other wounds back instantly like Wolverine. He chases down his attackers into a subway and meets up with the Darkling from the previous game, which is an imp that wears a union jack t-shirt and speaks in a British accent. The darkling provides some comic relief, singing rule Britannia whilst tearing enemies to shreds, urinating and breaking wind on bodies but is deadly as when you get the chance to play him, he breaks necks and tears peoples’ hearts out.
The story moves toward hallucinations of Jenny, Jackie’s ex-girlfriend who got murdered in the first game, and wondering whether his visions are real. The game makes you wonder whether the Darkness is real or whether it is all just a figment of Jackie’s crazy imagination. Each time you catch up to her, you share a close tender moment before she ends up vanishing before your eyes.
With the Darkness, Jackie has two serpentine like creatures to aid him as long as he stays out of the light. This means that you can use firearms and use the darkness to attack at the same time, which allows you to create combinations of attacks such as holding an enemy in the air whilst filling them with lead or shooting an enemies armour and grabbing their shield away.
When you are in the light, the Darkling and the Darkness both vanish and your health won’t regenerate and you lose the ability to use your Darkness abilities. When I heard of shooting lights as a game play mechanic, I thought it would be gimmicky, but you do have to pace yourself and shoot out the light sources that appear. The enemies’ may decide to arrive in a car, forcing you to smash out the headlights or carry a big flashlight with them to stop you from using your powers. This can create moments of frustration if you are out of ammo and cannot use your darkness powers either.
When you kill enemies, they will drop purple hearts which give Jackie Darkness points to spend at “Talent Shrines” to upgrade Jackie’s Darkness powers. The powers are split into multiple skill trees: one tree powers your firearms, which gives abilities like allowing you to charge your weapon up for bonus damage; one tree increases the power of your Darkness attacks, such as stunning enemies with your tentacles and giving bonus health or damage when collecting purple hearts. Near the end of the trees are the more powerful abilities like summoning portals which suck enemies in, increased Darkness armour and explosive firearms.
If you don’t want to use Darkness swings or executions, you can pick up objects with the Darkness creatures and lob them at your enemies. You can impale enemies with metal poles and slice people in half with fan blades and throw explosives to take out groups of enemies. You can also throw your Darkling at enemies to make him attack them to death. Some of the execution animations are pretty gruesome as you can pick up an enemy by each leg and tear them in half. The game then gives you points and calls the execution move a “wishbone” and you get to listen to your enemy scream. Did I mention this game was 18 rated?. It is a good job that you are invulnerable whilst doing an execution as it would make for a frustrating game otherwise. The naming and point scoring gives the game a more Arcade feel like playing Bulletstorm.
Between each mission Jackie will deliver thoughtful monologues which tell you how Jackie thought and felt at certain moments and It allows you to become more sympathetic to Jackie throughout the story. I felt it was quite difficult to sympathise with a wealthy criminal that had demon-like arms that eats peoples’ hearts for breakfast, even though Jackie hasn’t got control over them.
The voice acting throughout the story is excellent. Johnny Powell, who the other characters believe to be insane, sounds like a nervous hyper wreak and you can hear the fear in his voice and the voice of the Darkness does sound how you would expect a Demon of the underworld to sound.
The AI is a bit poor in this game though as you can hide and watch as you pick them off one by one and sometimes they can be slow to react or have odd decision making. On many occasions the AI would just stand still as I picked off their allies.
The game makes you wonder what is real throughout the game and after I have finished it, I still have no definitive answer on this. Both endings that you can pick from in the game end badly and one of the endings end on a cliff-hanger, so there is a chance that the Darkness 3 is to be in the works.
The game is very short as the main campaign lasts around 6 hours long but there are a few multiplayer modes and a new game+ mode to expand the life of the title. New Game+ allows you to replay the game with the points that you have accumulated from your previous run through. This mode was done so that you could complete the game more quickly to see the ending that you didn’t pick.
The multiplayer modes are known as “Vendetta” and you get to pick from one of six characters which are part of Jackie’s Franchetti gang. You can play through the Vendetta Campaign by yourself or with other players online, but you will have to turn up the difficulty when playing with others as balance becomes an issue. The Vendetta Campaign lasts around 2 hours long and ties in with the main story, but I didn’t think it was anywhere near as engaging as the main campaign, so this should be treated as messing around with friends online. Another Vendetta mode is known as the “Hit-List” where you chase “targets” against other players online, which is also brief.
In summary, the game is pretty short and the multiplayer won’t extend its life by much more, but it is a good story driven title which will have you wanting to know answers till the end. Definitely worth a rental but its duration prevents a full price recommendation.
Good
Excellent Voice Acting
Engaging Psychological story
Bad
Too Short
Poor AI
7/10
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The Darkness II is a story driven psychological first person shooter developed by Digital Extremes and is a sequel to the Darkness which was released back in 2007.
I never played the original Darkness but at the start of this game you will be given the option to watch “Previously on the Darkness” video, which will fill you in on what you need to know before starting. This video is presented to you by Johnny Powell who helps Jackie with his demons in the first game.
The game starts with Jackie Estacado, now Don of the Franchetti gang, being attacked at a restaurant. Jackie hired an occultist Johnny Powell to help Jackie contain his dark power, so it wouldn’t consume him, but as Jackie is near death due to the attack, he summons the darkness and heals his leg and other wounds back instantly like Wolverine. He chases down his attackers into a subway and meets up with the Darkling from the previous game, which is an imp that wears a union jack t-shirt and speaks in a British accent. The darkling provides some comic relief, singing rule Britannia whilst tearing enemies to shreds, urinating and breaking wind on bodies but is deadly as when you get the chance to play him, he breaks necks and tears peoples’ hearts out.
The story moves toward hallucinations of Jenny, Jackie’s ex-girlfriend who got murdered in the first game, and wondering whether his visions are real. The game makes you wonder whether the Darkness is real or whether it is all just a figment of Jackie’s crazy imagination. Each time you catch up to her, you share a close tender moment before she ends up vanishing before your eyes.
With the Darkness, Jackie has two serpentine like creatures to aid him as long as he stays out of the light. This means that you can use firearms and use the darkness to attack at the same time, which allows you to create combinations of attacks such as holding an enemy in the air whilst filling them with lead or shooting an enemies armour and grabbing their shield away.
When you are in the light, the Darkling and the Darkness both vanish and your health won’t regenerate and you lose the ability to use your Darkness abilities. When I heard of shooting lights as a game play mechanic, I thought it would be gimmicky, but you do have to pace yourself and shoot out the light sources that appear. The enemies’ may decide to arrive in a car, forcing you to smash out the headlights or carry a big flashlight with them to stop you from using your powers. This can create moments of frustration if you are out of ammo and cannot use your darkness powers either.
When you kill enemies, they will drop purple hearts which give Jackie Darkness points to spend at “Talent Shrines” to upgrade Jackie’s Darkness powers. The powers are split into multiple skill trees: one tree powers your firearms, which gives abilities like allowing you to charge your weapon up for bonus damage; one tree increases the power of your Darkness attacks, such as stunning enemies with your tentacles and giving bonus health or damage when collecting purple hearts. Near the end of the trees are the more powerful abilities like summoning portals which suck enemies in, increased Darkness armour and explosive firearms.
If you don’t want to use Darkness swings or executions, you can pick up objects with the Darkness creatures and lob them at your enemies. You can impale enemies with metal poles and slice people in half with fan blades and throw explosives to take out groups of enemies. You can also throw your Darkling at enemies to make him attack them to death. Some of the execution animations are pretty gruesome as you can pick up an enemy by each leg and tear them in half. The game then gives you points and calls the execution move a “wishbone” and you get to listen to your enemy scream. Did I mention this game was 18 rated?. It is a good job that you are invulnerable whilst doing an execution as it would make for a frustrating game otherwise. The naming and point scoring gives the game a more Arcade feel like playing Bulletstorm.
Between each mission Jackie will deliver thoughtful monologues which tell you how Jackie thought and felt at certain moments and It allows you to become more sympathetic to Jackie throughout the story. I felt it was quite difficult to sympathise with a wealthy criminal that had demon-like arms that eats peoples’ hearts for breakfast, even though Jackie hasn’t got control over them.
The voice acting throughout the story is excellent. Johnny Powell, who the other characters believe to be insane, sounds like a nervous hyper wreak and you can hear the fear in his voice and the voice of the Darkness does sound how you would expect a Demon of the underworld to sound.
The AI is a bit poor in this game though as you can hide and watch as you pick them off one by one and sometimes they can be slow to react or have odd decision making. On many occasions the AI would just stand still as I picked off their allies.
The game makes you wonder what is real throughout the game and after I have finished it, I still have no definitive answer on this. Both endings that you can pick from in the game end badly and one of the endings end on a cliff-hanger, so there is a chance that the Darkness 3 is to be in the works.
The game is very short as the main campaign lasts around 6 hours long but there are a few multiplayer modes and a new game+ mode to expand the life of the title. New Game+ allows you to replay the game with the points that you have accumulated from your previous run through. This mode was done so that you could complete the game more quickly to see the ending that you didn’t pick.
The multiplayer modes are known as “Vendetta” and you get to pick from one of six characters which are part of Jackie’s Franchetti gang. You can play through the Vendetta Campaign by yourself or with other players online, but you will have to turn up the difficulty when playing with others as balance becomes an issue. The Vendetta Campaign lasts around 2 hours long and ties in with the main story, but I didn’t think it was anywhere near as engaging as the main campaign, so this should be treated as messing around with friends online. Another Vendetta mode is known as the “Hit-List” where you chase “targets” against other players online, which is also brief.
In summary, the game is pretty short and the multiplayer won’t extend its life by much more, but it is a good story driven title which will have you wanting to know answers till the end. Definitely worth a rental but its duration prevents a full price recommendation.
Good
Excellent Voice Acting
Engaging Psychological story
Bad
Too Short
Poor AI
7/10
I never played the original Darkness but at the start of this game you will be given the option to watch “Previously on the Darkness” video, which will fill you in on what you need to know before starting. This video is presented to you by Johnny Powell who helps Jackie with his demons in the first game.
The game starts with Jackie Estacado, now Don of the Franchetti gang, being attacked at a restaurant. Jackie hired an occultist Johnny Powell to help Jackie contain his dark power, so it wouldn’t consume him, but as Jackie is near death due to the attack, he summons the darkness and heals his leg and other wounds back instantly like Wolverine. He chases down his attackers into a subway and meets up with the Darkling from the previous game, which is an imp that wears a union jack t-shirt and speaks in a British accent. The darkling provides some comic relief, singing rule Britannia whilst tearing enemies to shreds, urinating and breaking wind on bodies but is deadly as when you get the chance to play him, he breaks necks and tears peoples’ hearts out.
The story moves toward hallucinations of Jenny, Jackie’s ex-girlfriend who got murdered in the first game, and wondering whether his visions are real. The game makes you wonder whether the Darkness is real or whether it is all just a figment of Jackie’s crazy imagination. Each time you catch up to her, you share a close tender moment before she ends up vanishing before your eyes.
With the Darkness, Jackie has two serpentine like creatures to aid him as long as he stays out of the light. This means that you can use firearms and use the darkness to attack at the same time, which allows you to create combinations of attacks such as holding an enemy in the air whilst filling them with lead or shooting an enemies armour and grabbing their shield away.
When you are in the light, the Darkling and the Darkness both vanish and your health won’t regenerate and you lose the ability to use your Darkness abilities. When I heard of shooting lights as a game play mechanic, I thought it would be gimmicky, but you do have to pace yourself and shoot out the light sources that appear. The enemies’ may decide to arrive in a car, forcing you to smash out the headlights or carry a big flashlight with them to stop you from using your powers. This can create moments of frustration if you are out of ammo and cannot use your darkness powers either.
When you kill enemies, they will drop purple hearts which give Jackie Darkness points to spend at “Talent Shrines” to upgrade Jackie’s Darkness powers. The powers are split into multiple skill trees: one tree powers your firearms, which gives abilities like allowing you to charge your weapon up for bonus damage; one tree increases the power of your Darkness attacks, such as stunning enemies with your tentacles and giving bonus health or damage when collecting purple hearts. Near the end of the trees are the more powerful abilities like summoning portals which suck enemies in, increased Darkness armour and explosive firearms.
If you don’t want to use Darkness swings or executions, you can pick up objects with the Darkness creatures and lob them at your enemies. You can impale enemies with metal poles and slice people in half with fan blades and throw explosives to take out groups of enemies. You can also throw your Darkling at enemies to make him attack them to death. Some of the execution animations are pretty gruesome as you can pick up an enemy by each leg and tear them in half. The game then gives you points and calls the execution move a “wishbone” and you get to listen to your enemy scream. Did I mention this game was 18 rated?. It is a good job that you are invulnerable whilst doing an execution as it would make for a frustrating game otherwise. The naming and point scoring gives the game a more Arcade feel like playing Bulletstorm.
Between each mission Jackie will deliver thoughtful monologues which tell you how Jackie thought and felt at certain moments and It allows you to become more sympathetic to Jackie throughout the story. I felt it was quite difficult to sympathise with a wealthy criminal that had demon-like arms that eats peoples’ hearts for breakfast, even though Jackie hasn’t got control over them.
The voice acting throughout the story is excellent. Johnny Powell, who the other characters believe to be insane, sounds like a nervous hyper wreak and you can hear the fear in his voice and the voice of the Darkness does sound how you would expect a Demon of the underworld to sound.
The AI is a bit poor in this game though as you can hide and watch as you pick them off one by one and sometimes they can be slow to react or have odd decision making. On many occasions the AI would just stand still as I picked off their allies.
The game makes you wonder what is real throughout the game and after I have finished it, I still have no definitive answer on this. Both endings that you can pick from in the game end badly and one of the endings end on a cliff-hanger, so there is a chance that the Darkness 3 is to be in the works.
The game is very short as the main campaign lasts around 6 hours long but there are a few multiplayer modes and a new game+ mode to expand the life of the title. New Game+ allows you to replay the game with the points that you have accumulated from your previous run through. This mode was done so that you could complete the game more quickly to see the ending that you didn’t pick.
The multiplayer modes are known as “Vendetta” and you get to pick from one of six characters which are part of Jackie’s Franchetti gang. You can play through the Vendetta Campaign by yourself or with other players online, but you will have to turn up the difficulty when playing with others as balance becomes an issue. The Vendetta Campaign lasts around 2 hours long and ties in with the main story, but I didn’t think it was anywhere near as engaging as the main campaign, so this should be treated as messing around with friends online. Another Vendetta mode is known as the “Hit-List” where you chase “targets” against other players online, which is also brief.
In summary, the game is pretty short and the multiplayer won’t extend its life by much more, but it is a good story driven title which will have you wanting to know answers till the end. Definitely worth a rental but its duration prevents a full price recommendation.
Good
Excellent Voice Acting
Engaging Psychological story
Bad
Too Short
Poor AI
7/10