this game shits on the original so hard i would tell you to just skip the original and watch the recap this game provides

every issue i had with the first game has been resolved its amazing

The Darkness no longer has a power meter so you don't have to stand around in darkness and waste bullets on lights

The Darkness has actual offensive abilities that don't require me to stand completely still in order to use them

The Darkness is always active and only goes away if you step in light and since the game doesn't drip feed you ammo you can actually use bullets instead of the janky tendril move from the first game

and finally the game does away with the big confusing levels of the first game in exchange for more linear levels that keep the flow going

easy recommend its on Steam for 20 bucks if you're interested

It lacks some of the unique dark goth texture that the first one had but tottaly brings its own style. It really is a dualogy of games that you cant compare. Luckily this is such a short and fun shooter, that any comparison really doesnt matter. If there was ever a game that made you feel like your an eldrich abomination tearing through your Enemies, its the Darkness 2. And I like the story too, even though it treads some unnecessairly familiar ground. Never say never, but I dont think we will ever get a resolution to this cliffhanger sadly.

Yeah, I know, The Darkness II isn't the most high brow first person shooter. It is just an angst ridden mess with janky gameplay. The story is shit and it shouldn't be rated higher than a 3/5... but you see, I don't care.

This year has been awful for me so far. I'm not going to get into details, but I have just wanted to give up at so many different points. There hasn't been much bringing me from one objective in life to another. The Darkness II is easily the most pleasure and joy I've had so far this year. Just a game I could turn my brain off to and play before and after work. Something that made me forget about bills and my Grandma's death. It just distracted me from life and to give it anything below a 5/5 doesn't seem right to me.

I can't necessarily say I recommend this game, but I will say that if you ever are in a rough spot, remember to pick up a game and enjoy it despite what critical reception might say of it.

Rating: S
Genre(s): First person shooter

This is what you would expect of a game adaptation of a 90s edgy comicbook written by Garth Ennis.

Gunplay is fun in general, it has a Bioshock vibe to it, with the first person shooting and the powers. It can be pretty fun at times. The story is very cliche as you can imagine, but it's engagin enough and the voice actor for the Darkness went all out with the screams and all, really funny.

Framerate is all over the place though, jesus christ, the game feels like a slideshow sometimes and the graphics are not particularly good either. They went for a comicbook look, which I appreciate, but the textures are VERY low and there's a lot of pop in and low-res object that are right in front of you.

With everything said, I'd say this is a fun enough game, it's good to spend a few hours shooting some guys and slicing them to pieces with Jackie's powers. It's a short game, so you can play it if you have the chance, but I wouldn't go out of my way to play it over other games.

A día de hoy no se si me gusta o no este juego. Es un shooter con mecánicas interesantes pues te insta a dejar a los enemigos medio muertos para robarles la vida o conseguir munición mediante sangrientas ejecuciones (algo que años más tarde haría DOOM simplificando mucho el concepto y mejorándolo). No tiene coberturas, si te quieres resguardar de las balas te conviene agacharte detrás de una nevera y ver como alguna bala suelta te quita vida. Puede ser una forma de empujarte a volverte loco, pero al menos en altas dificultades eso significa una muerte segura, es mejor ir eliminándolos de dos en dos o así. Los niveles están bien construidos, y la mecánica de que la luz te impide usar tus poderes demoníacos te hace centrarte en el tío de la lámpara, aunque suelan ponerlos al fondo y ya os adelanto que no hay armas de muy lejos alcance o precisión.

La historia es la típica de venganza y búsqueda de la chica, con unos tintes realmente machistas y personajes bastante planos. ¿Pero quien viene a un juego de tiros por la historia? Pues yo en realidad. Vengo por ambas, historia y jugabilidad, y ninguna destaca realmente. ¿Me lo he pasado bien en las menos de 10 h de juego? Si, si dejas la mente en blanco y te lo pones en una alta dificultad, es un juego disfrutable. Como otro aspecto negativo a destacar es la PÉSIMA sincronización labial que te sacaría de una buena historia sin problema. Eso y que quizás si eres sensible, la alta cantidad de gore o palabrotas te pueda echar atrás, pero si te gustan los protas edgys, es tu juego.

Very, very interesting game. I personally didn't feel too strongly in any way about anything in this game, the story is alright, maybe the Italian mob voice-acting is a bit forced but understandable given, y'know, your character is literally named Frankie.

The gameplay is the best part, as you basically walk around like a demon wielding numerous guns, avoiding light sources like a vampire, and summoning various plagues and ills to help you throughout the campaign.

It's a bit short, and ends on another dumbass cliffhanger, but does what needs to be done. I just don't feel as if this game does much special, or really wants to take the game to a new level. It just feels like a formulaic shooter 2K made, and overlaid a couple of skill trees that result in Doom glory-kills or Dishonored levels of spell-casting plague rats.

It's just...okay. Not bad, just okay.

the darkness was surprisingly grounded and mature in spite of its premise. it really was just a mobster plot with some lovecraft in the background. hell - if you were to remove mike patton the story could remain nearly identical

...so it's understandable why a lot of fans aren't too keen on the sequel being an incredibly abrasive corridor shooter where enemies are constantly screaming things in the vein of, "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING", "IT'S A FUCKIN' MONSTER", and "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH"

but you know what? while it's not as clever or unique as the original, digital extremes does nail the gameplay down pat. guns feel fucking incredible, tendril attacks are meaty as all hell and darkness powers in general are actually fleshed out this time around. can you use the subway, watch tv and explore the city? nah, but you can rip the door off a car, slice someone's head off with it and then use that same decapitated corpse as a weapon. that certainly has merit in its own right

if you're seeking a power fantasy - look no further. shame that there's less mike patton than in the original and the ending is obviously rushed, but hey, that'll all be resolved in the darkness 3!

...right?

Every time I come back to these old games that I last played when I was much younger, I can't help but to temper my expectations, at least a little bit. Old memories has a habit of feeling stronger, or closer, than they actually are. TD2 is one of many games that I had fun with, but I was sure that, in the present, there's a lot of new flaws to be discovered, strong enough to overtake my memories. With a good amount of surprise and delight, I'm have to say that TD2 is still a good-ass game. In fact it's better than I remembered, in the most important ways.

First thing you'll notice is the dark, but vibrant cell shaded art style. Even on the PS3, the graphics are pretty nice to look at, despite the relatively low resolution textures and short draw distance for high LOD textures. I especially adore many of the skyboxes in the levels, it all feels like a well drawn comic book. The characters have slightly cartoonish animations that also fits the look, and thus, the game's overall presentation is quite strong.

There's obviously a lot of violence, dark supernatural elements, and other edgy comic tropes here, but for me, the story of TD2 is all about love. Jackie still grieves over the death of a loved one, despite years distancing the tragedy and his present. He is hopelessly haunted by her, and there are forces that will take advantage of this. It's hard to not be invested in his plight when the game has one of the most effective romantic scene I've seen in games in its first 2 hours, and the first person perspective only makes the intimacy of the story far more potent. The writing is quite solid, backed up with pretty good VO performances, and I like how well the game fleshed out Jackie's inner psyche. I don't exactly care for the Asylum sections that try to blur fact and fiction with embarrassing results, but that's pretty much the only thing that I didn't like.

Okay, that's all for the lovey dovey stuff. TD2 also features a hefty amount of bloody, gratifying first person combat, and it rules. You can carry 2 small arms (pistol & SMG) and 1 assault weapon (rifle and shotgun) with you at all times. You can even dual wield your small arms. But that's not all, since being the host of the Darkness gives you some pretty gnarly quirks. You can slash enemies up with your two snake-like tendrils, and they're quite strong. If you stun enemies you can grab and start an execution move on them, which grants you various effects like extra health or ammo. If you're the kind of guy who looks forward to every fatality you can get in Mortal Kombat, then the execution animations should turn you on as well. There's a bunch of unlockable powers, like being able to throw a black hole that sucks enemies in savagely, or unleashing a swarm of magical dust thingy that temporarily stuns a group of enemies. Killing enemies and eating their hearts will get you "essence" points that you need to unlock these powers.

The core combat mechanics are very solid, as it allows multiple ways of fighting, and rewards you for properly utilizing all your abilities to rip and tear everyone who stands against you. The type of enemies you encounter are varied enough to keep you at your toes, and the game constantly tries to test you by having properly placed light sources all over, which will weaken your powers. Not to mention the feedback for killing the enemies are just fundamentally gratifying, the gore effects are on point. The level design can be too cramped, linear and straightforward at times, but at the very least it helps the game keep a decently fast pace.

Lastly, I appreciate the collectible relics featuring extra lore that interwoves historical/mythological events with its own world of Darkness vs Light. Most of them are pretty fun reads, and there's one that foreshadows an important story event. I can tell that, as somebody who never read the comics or other Darkness media, there's a lot of world building here that the game at least tried to showcase a little.

It's sad that we probably won't see this getting a sequel, because the world of The Darkness is just quite perfect for video games, and this game is the proof of that. Lots of potential to build on that ending too. I guess I have another wish to make.

I’m a really big fan of the first game but for some reason I never got around to playing this sequel until just now and it was solid but flawed.
I knew when the first action I did in the game was turn to check out a waistress’ tits to learn how to control the camera I was in for a good time. This game ditches the dark and serious broodiness of the first in exchange for a more over the top and comedic tone. The cell shaded art style and color pallete enhances this decision with the bright red blood really popping everytime you disemember an enemy. It’s clear a ton of effort went into the script for this game with tons of dialogue with various characters that are all fleshed out pretty well and given their own personalities. The story comes pretty natural from where the first game left off. There’s a lot of comedy and one liners here but still maintains an emotional hook through the game and the relationship between Jenny and Jackie is believable.
The gameplay is similar to the first but more streamlined with the open areas and side missions removed now in favor of more linear levels which I don’t hate but it always felt like I was spending more time in dialogue, dream sequences and cutscenes than plowing through enemies.
The shooting feels great and feedback is very responsive. Your darkness powers are what separate this from an average shooter and they really shine here with your abilities to slash enemies vertically or horizontally. You can also pick up many objects in the levels and use them as shields or hurl them at enemies to impale them or slice them in half. You’ll also be able to grab stunned enemies and perform executions and depending what execution you do you’ll get back ammo, health, shields, etc which is a mechanic I really enjoy. The more violently you play the higher your score gets and then in turn these score points can be used to buy upgrades and new moves at checkpoints. Including a new game plus to unlock all the abilities is a nice touch too.
The other main gimmick in this game like the predecessor is staying out of the light as you can’t use your powers in light. You’ll neee to shoot them out or avoid them. This game has some annoying ass enemies that shine flashlights at you and throw blinding flash grenades. It makes sense in the story but these enemies are never much fun to fight since the only real tool you have to stop them is shooting their flashlight out which can be a pain while you’re swarmed with other enemies and can’t use any of your powers.
The game is too short too clocking in at around 5 hours including all the optional dialogue and cutscenes. I really felt like I was only in the action for 2-3 hours and kept getting frustrated as it would end so briefly and go back to story moments.

All in all the gameplay is extremely satisfying outside some annoying enemies and some frustration with the pacing. There’s a couple sections you play as your darkling sidekick which are pseudo stealth sections that are awful but very brief and there’s an on rails section that’s also brief but equally as pointless.

I wish this game played more to its strength and gave me more time eviscerating enemies because that’s really what you’re there for. This game is really fun when you actually get to play but there’s just too much holding it back from being great.
6/10

I beat the campaign on the 2nd difficulty in 2016—4.5 hours and I put it down. I replayed it in 2021 to get the 100% as I had 40% of the achievements and am glad I did. I think the main campaign speaks for itself; the 4 arm shooter is very fun.

I had never played the Vendettas campaign before, which was a mistake. I only wish the game actually identified Vendettas for what they are--an entire campaign about the length of the main campaign. I enjoyed the Vendettas characters--I recommend using Jimmy for the campaign as he is the most fun IMO. I also recommend the Hit List, which are kind of like Call of Duty Special Ops missions. Revisiting the same areas is worth it for little extra bits of story and Left 4 Dead style action with surprisingly unique characters--and it's multiplayer too, if you have a friend with a copy. I squeezed 17 hours out of this game and honestly had way more fun than I expected to.

This game and series deserve so much more than it got. The Darkness 2 is still my personal favorite FPS combat system. They were truly on to something with the combat.

The story is pretty good, but it doesn't particularly leave a lasting impression.

I would die to see The Darkness 3. A game that expands upon this game's combat with better enemy and level design could go down as one of the best first person shooters of all time.

Vamos la pra uma true review:
Arte visual: muito boa e combinou muito com o game.

Trilha sonora: totalmente esquecível.

Enredo: totalmente frio e sem sal eu não consegui me
importar com nenhum personagem do jogo.

inimigos: bando de clones ligados no modo kill.

Gameplay: Depois das primeiras missoes ja fica repetitivo com nada inovador para melhorar as mecanicas da escuridao.

Bugs; Muitos que podem atrapalhar muito como paredes invisiveis, tudo por vc estar jogando com mais de 60Hz

No fim um jogo bem mediocre

I don’t play many FPSes. Not because of any particular dislike of the genre, or anything like that, more that… I think I’m just generally not predisposed to really go and check them out? I think mostly because my formative memories of gaming were with games often decried by the Call of Duty bros in my cohort as kiddie shit which I needed to grow up so I could play Real Games, and mostly due to most FPSes I heard of at the time being war shooters where the #1 selling point was usually ‘better graphics! it looks so good! by the way your computer won’t be able to run it and also even if you got a better one you won’t be able to run the next one we churn out in a year or so!’ that I was kinda turned off and kept playing the things I preferred to play.

Even today, I don’t really tend to stray into the genre much, even if I don’t exactly feel how I felt about the genre back then. Maybe I’m still subconsciously biased. Maybe it’s because most shooters today are still focused on multiplayer and I’m mostly a single-player kind of guy. Maybe it’s because I’m honestly kinda bad with shooter games — I’m too slow on the draw/too focused on getting a perfect shot in a genre that mostly encourages more fast-paced play, and I’m too tunnel-vision-y/head-empty to try and go for cover/do anything other than stand there and attempt to rush down people. There are FPSes I’ve tried, and liked, over the past few years, but as a whole, the genre is kind of a blind spot for me. I haven’t really played many of the must-play shooters, and as a whole… none of those that I’ve played have really been formative experiences or anything I’d place among my favourites.

Except for this one! This was something I picked up in one of the early Humble Bundles that I bought, and started playing… on my birthday, apparently, in 2014, and… kind of immediately I was captivated. Through the frenetic and at times absolutely brutal gunplay, the simultaneous power trip and achilles heel of your darkness power, a penchant for violence that actually sickened me at the time (which, from the perspective of nine years later: lol), and… enough little touches and moments that got me genuinely into the story. I never played the first game, or read the comics, nor did I particularly care to, but this game, in particular, was one that held into my memory long after I beat it, and was always in my mind as ‘hey I should replay this someday’ for a lonnnnngggggg time coming. I finally got the chance, in early 2023, and having replayed it again… and honestly? I think it still holds up.

You play as Jackie Esticato, the newly appointed don of the Esticato crime family, who has the dubious honour of being the current bearer to The Darkness — a primordial being that jumps from host to host, granting them great power at the cost of eventually driving them insane. Jackie has been able to suppress it for many years, but a hit both forces him to tap into The Darkness again and places him face to face against The Brotherhood, a mysterious cult who intend on taking The Darkness from Jackie and using it from their own ends. In the midst of it all, Jackie keeps getting visions of his past, and of his late flame Jenny, and it soon becomes a battle on multiple fronts: one against The Brotherhood for control of The Darkness, and one against The Darkness for control over himself.

The shooter gameplay, at its core, isn’t too different from what I’ve otherwise seen, though I appreciate the arcadey edge added to it — instead of holding the same guns all game and collecting ammo for them, you can only hold two guns at a time, and you’re encouraged to frequently switch with guns on the floor, often meaning that you never quite know what you’re going to have during the next encounter. What really diversifies gameplay, however, is the presence of The Darkness. Manifesting as two tentacles bursting out of your body, The Darkness immediately makes you a force to be reckoned with, and against the legions of gangsters and cultists fully justifies the ‘one man army’ approach most shooters tend to take with their protagonists. Slashes from your tentacles stun enemies and demolish whatever armour they might have, and if you grab an enemy while they're stunned, you get to pick and choose just how, exactly, you get to tear their body apart. You eat hearts to regain your health. You can grab parts of the environment, like pipes, or car doors, or fans, fling them right at enemies, and if your aim is right you just cut them in half — with bonus upgrade points given for killing people in special ways. These upgrade points (even if the tree itself looks fuckin’ ugly), amongst other things like different executions, then feed into and make your guns stronger: whether it just being straight upgrades, or powers like Swarm — which makes you barf locusts on your enemies from long range and making them unable to fire back — or gun channelling, which lets you temporarily boost your guns, increasing their power and allowing you to hit enemies through walls and armour. With the power of The Darkness, you can walk into a room full of gunmen and make mincemeat of them in a way that doesn’t even feel close, and this feeling of sheer power is an adrenaline rush, each enemy encounter a hit that asks the player how exactly they are going to fuck shit up — in the way that reinforces the idea the story presents of The Darkness as a well of power easy to become addicted to.

But it’s not always a stomp in your favour: specific encounters instead make your Darkness powers a liability instead of a godsend, and relying on them exclusively is a surefire way to get Jackie gunned down. Beyond the lack of range your tentacles have outside of objects you can pick up — functioning more as melee/the coup de grace while your guns pepper enemies from afar — the Darkness possesses one incredibly crippling weakness: light. In addition to just absolutely blinding you whenever you’re in it, you lose access to your darkness powers and your passive health regeneration, leaving you blind, vulnerable to whatever comes your way, and absolutely helpless against it. This makes positioning vitally important in each encounter — finding a place outside of the light where you can jump in and out of the action, looking out for lights and generators to take out so you can run in for the kill. The lights are also used in a way that forms a difficulty curve: early on, when you’re fighting other gangsters, most light is incidental, and oftentimes is easily shot out, but once the game progresses, and you start going up against the brotherhood, light is actively weaponized against you — enemies with giant spotlights, generator setups which bathe the room in light, and oftentimes your first step in these encounters is to figure out how to take out the lights so you can properly fight. There’s one late game area set in a carnival which is just chokepoint after chokepoint of you walking to a spot, hitting a wall, and you needing to use all the tools at your disposal to eventually wear it down — and another one where it’s flat out daylight and you’re in an open room with barely any cover and you just have to keep moving, dodging bullets and taking out enemies while having to avoid the bad spots on the floor. I like the light both as a way to ramp up the difficulty and as a way to reinforce story beats, and sell The Brotherhood as people who know The Darkness and know how to take it down, as opposed to the random gangsters who don’t know what they’re up against and only particularly have numbers on their side. In general I just… really love how The Darkness manages to shake up the gameplay — it would’ve been easy to just give you powers and let you just style on your enemies, but the drawbacks and considerations you increasingly have to grapple with just really manages to bring it to another level.

And even if I think it’s the story that maybe knocks the game down a little, I do appreciate a good deal of what it does. The dialogue draws from the best of its 90s comics influence, having a little bit of edge without drowning every line with it/making all the characters feel homogenous, and the voice acting does a lot to elevate the material (HE WAS THE FIRST MAN TO EVER NOT EXIST is a line that’ll stick in my head forever). There’s also… something I won’t spoil, that occurs throughout the game, and even if the impact was lost on me this second go around knowing where it all goes I respect what it’s trying to do and I respect it for at least making me question what’s going on. What really was a misfire are the hub sections, set in Jackie’s penthouse apartment. I like the important conversations there, but… the game really kind of grinds to a halt as you walk around and are encouraged to like 10 other unimportant background gangsters and there really isn’t much to do. I’ve seen other shooters do this sort of thing before, and better — mainly through lowering the size and adding things to do, like sidequests and optional challenges — but here… it’s too large and too long for what’s mostly people expositing things at you, and having to drudge through it between nearly every story beat got old kinda quickly.

And… that’s enough of a mark to maybe weigh it down and prevent it from being one of my absolute favourites, the game still left as much of an impact on me now as it did back then. From fast, frenetic, and at times brutal shooter gameplay, a core mechanic that cripples you as much as it makes you a force to be reckoned with, a story that does a good job taking risks even if it doesn’t work as well a second time to an artstyle tha- oh man I didn’t even mention how cool this game looks, I love the way the cel-shading makes the game look legitimately out of a comic book — this is still… probably my favourite shooter. Maybe one day I’ll play more of them. 9/10.