Friday, 28 March 2014

GAME REVIEW: THE DARKNESS 2 (X-Box 360)

The Darkness 2 is a game that left me wanting more. It followed on from The Darkness, one of my favourite games on the X-Box 360, and so it had some high expectations to live up to. The Darkness 2 mostly lives up to these expectations, even if it stumbles at times. For me, this was a game that oozed style. From the comic-like art style to the strong narrative, The Darkness 2 captured my attention. It also helped that it was pretty fun just to use my super-powers to rampage around and tear apart my enemies.

The Darkness 2 has you reprise your role as Jacqui, a current mob leader, who has acquired the titular evil supernatural entity, The Darkness. The Darkness is meant to be a primordial force of the universe and it does give Jacqui some pretty awesome powers. He can use them to rip his enemies apart, summon an imp familiar or pick up objects. Unfortunately, this is where the game first stumbles. The game has a pretty clear distinction between what you can pick-up/hit/tear-apart, and what you can’t. This sometimes leads to some very confusing situations where you can’t pick-up certain things, but for the most part the game handles this pretty well. It just still feels odd that you can’t shoot a light through a grill or tear the grill apart, but instead must find the power generator.

The games narrative kicks off with an evil cult trying to steal The Darkness power to give them power or maybe just to control it to stop it doing any more harm. In order to achieve this the cult attacks you. After fighting them off, you and your henchmen go out to get revenge. The violence slowly escalates as Jacqui loses someone close to him and fights off attempts to take the Darkness away, which does feel like rehashing the first game a little bit.

The story doesn’t really have any big twists (at least, until the ending), but it keeps the pace up as you move through levels bringing death and destruction to your enemies. Between missions, you are given Jacqui sitting in a pool of light talking about his past with a semi-washed out look. The graphics are a gritty, realistic take on a dark comic-style look. This helps give The Darkness 2 it’s own unique style.
No amount of style can save The Darkness 2 from starting to feel repetitive, however. The enemies feel like they repeat in a fairly linear fashion. It is only towards the end of the game where you get some enemy variety, with some enemies able to teleport, disarm you or holding portable lights. However, allot of these new enemies end up feeling like busy-work due to how your supernatural powers work.

The Darkness retreats with any light. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that it also makes your vision go blurry and it starts damaging you, even for things like street lights or headlights. The primordial force of the universe is scared of any light, so you just end up finding cover, shooting out the lights and then picking off enemies. I wonder what happens when Jacqui has to go out in the sun, or why he isn’t damaged walking around his mansion. A better alternative would be The Darkness just going away, which is what they did in the original if memory serves me correctly.

No review of the Darkness 2 would be complete without talking about the ending. Near the end of the game, they start bringing up an anti-Darkness being and it’s importance in keeping the universe in balance (between order and chaos, good and bad, etc.). When the (fairly obvious) twist is revealed of Jacqui’s former (and now dead) lover being this being of light, the game abruptly ends. The climax of the game undermined the cult being the major villain by introducing this being, so the abrupt ending didn’t sit well with the overall narrative.


Even if it stumbled, The Darkness 2 is still a good game. It still oozes style, has cool powers for you to use and a pretty strong narrative driving it forward. I had great fun rampaging around using my super-powers. In my mind, however, the original still provides a much more complete gaming experience (without a dodgy ending).

3.5 out of 5 Dark Waffles.

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