The story of The Darkness II has you controlling Jackie Estacado who is currently the host for two demonic tentacles with heads known as The Darkness. After learning to control them in the first game he is then forced by a shady cult and rival mobsters to release the evil force inside him. The story isn’t brilliant or bad. It does enough to keep you engaged, but it isn’t a scratch on the original. There are times where the game’s story is spiced up a bit. These are not varied enough and usually you have little to do in the game when it gets surreal. Voice acting is good too and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of dialogue available during sections in the mental hospital.  A special mention goes to Mike Patton, who retains his pants-wetting rendition of The Darkness.

The Darkness II has changed significantly since the original game’s release back in 2007. The game has a new development team, artistic style and tone. From the start of the game you quickly see how The Darkness II has evolved. After a short scene walking through a restaurant with some of your mafia pals you sit down with two blonde twins. There’s a tiny bit of dialogue and then all of a sudden a car ploughs through the building sending your table and the twins flying. You survive, but your leg is badly damaged. Your friend Vinnie then comes in and begins to drag you to safety. As he does this you have to shoot the flood of goons that are hunting you down. The whole things feels like something out of Call of Duty and you can already see a shift in the series towards action.

That isn’t to say that the game has become an all out action game. Instead it has shifted from the story-based and surreal open world that Jackie Estacado was once in, to a more accessible one with the emphasis on gun-play/tentacle impalement. There are several occasions where gameplay is not controllable for cinematic reasons. While at first I feared The Darkness II had completely changed it still retains much of what made the first game so fun.

The Darkness was always what made this game and a lot of work has been made to make controlling it. Players can now quad-wield when playing the game. This means that you can shoot while your two little friends unleash hell upon your enemies, ripping them into little pieces. You can also do a few neat things like using the Darkness to pick up shields while you put holes in enemies. This may sound complicated but everything has been mapped to the controller perfectly. Not once with the different powers and guns did I feel confused. Slashing with The Darkness is controlled using the right analogue stick and the right bumper. Picking up items or people is as easy as pressing left bumper, press it again to throw items. Some items can even impale enemies which is great for when you are out of ammo.

Some sections of the game have you controlling the small darkling that follows Jackie around. This is a nice touch and helped to mix-up the game now and then. Thankfully this is left to select sections so you don’t get bored of the change.

There are even skill trees for you to improve your powers and weapons by spending essence earned during the game. While there are some cool powers like the black hole or tentacle slam most of the powers are passive. This is a big let down as the game had massive potential on this front.

There is a co-op multiplayer mode in The Darkness II called Vendettas. In this mode four other characters that have been touched by The Darkness can be selected. Shoshana is an ex-Israeli Special Forces Agent who wields a sawn off shotgun, Inugami slices through opponents with a samurai sword, Jimmy Wilson is a stereotypical Irish man who can throw a magical axe like a boomerang and finally you have JP Dumond, a voodoo specialist that can crush enemies with his powers. The whole thing has had a surprising amount of thought put into it with Vendettas even creating its own story within the world of The Darkness. Each player is distinctively unique too and they even have their own skill trees to upgrade, although these suffer from the same problems as the single player’s.

The Darkness II is by no means perfect. You could probably count the different looking enemies on one hand. The game does introduce new adversaries with lights, teleportation powers and a whip that can steal weapons but it is still lacking. There are too few animations for executions as well and you’ll see the standard four looped over and over. For a game that asks you to stick to the shadows (The Darkness cannot survive in light) the lighting decisions are odd. Sometimes, especially in areas outside, it is hard to tell where you can and cannot go. Worst of all I completed the campaign in around 6-8 hours and that was on Hard.

That said, I did have fun while playing the game, especially in the later levels which mix-up the art style and have the best set pieces. The quad-wielding works extremely well, it just would have been great if there were some more powers and upgrades thrown in too.

Personally, I preferred the first game in the series. For me The Darkness was always about a dark, surreal and twisted world. The game does hit on this, especially later in the game, but then it finishes far too early. If you played The Darkness for the story you’ll be left slightly disappointed. Otherwise this a solid FPS that does something different. Maybe not worth a full price release but wait a few months or rent this one out.
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