The Darkness 2 (and 1)

[Fiach]

I rented TD2 for the weekend, but may not get to finish it completely before I give it back on monday, so i'm just posting a few random musings on the game(s), before it's returned.

As the game is quite short and costs €55, I cant justify buying the game until its bargain binned, but when it drops in price, i will buy it and play it again.

Prior to playing TD2, I fired up the original game, which I never completed the first time around, because...frankly I thought it was crap. But as the best thing about it was the actual story, I figured a refresher course was in order, to bring me up to speed for the sequel.

The first game...well, its kinda like it was designed by a committee, its a decent enough storyline, draped over some very diverse ideas that dont necessarily sit very well together. You start off being chased by your uncle, who wants to kill you (buggered if I know why, the reason is he thinks you stole some money, but it doesnt explain the vehemence with which he wants to kill you), then he kills your girlfriend, then for some reason you wind up in World War 1 trying to find the source of The Darkness by running around no mans land doing stupid errands. Then you arrive back in the current timeframe, do some more clunky powered up killing, then go back to feckin' WW1 to find a shell for a cannon to shoot at a castle to fight yourself, then back to the current time....christ it makes my eyes bleed just writing this crap down....

Suffice to say it was a cool looking but very misguided attempt at a game, held together by a pretty cool story. One of the main things I liked about it apart from the story, was finding "collectibles", which unlocked and allowed you to read The Darkness comics and view videos and concept art in an Extras Menu

On to 2012....

You are now the head of the mafia, you get attacked by a cult who want to possess your Darkness powers, so basically what happens is you have a big fight set piece, a (rather good) piece of story exposition, then another large fight setpiece. So, you have a big sewer fight, exposition,warehouse fight, exposition, graveyard fight, exposition, carnival fight....OK you get the picture. Speaking of pictures, gfx in the new game arent realistic/dark/gothic like the first game, now its more cel shaded and in keeping with the games comic book origins vibe, either way, it looks quite nice.

The fighting is mainly FPS, augumented by your darkness powers and well.... it gets VERY samey after awhile, you enter an area, wade through hundreds of bad guys, eating their hearts, sucking up essence to buy powers, go to the game hub (your house or a lunatic asylum), get some story, then warp to the next battle.

You upgrade your powers by spending essence points, so you can do things like grab an enemy, slam them up and down, or use your darkness powers to fire bullets from guns instead of ammo, get health upgrades etc.... This is all well and good, but there are alot of powers and in the end, you will just rely on a few good ones and forget about the others, making some of the animations a bit of a chore after awhile.

Each section has a boss and although not difficult, they are quite cheap and wind up prolonging fights well past their sell-by date in what is a quite short game, padding it out a little annoyingly.

You get "darklings" to help you and while they are cute, they have an annoying british accent and wear a union jack vest for some baffling reason, they kinda look like a ninety year old Ginger Spice, cavorting around the gun fights, jumping on enemies or teabagging them, or peeing on their corpses.

So, to end on a positive note, its a very good story, quite well told, great voice acting all hung on a pretty good FPS. Games it reminded me of were Bulletstorm (for the environmental and skill kills) and Painkiller for its maps and myriad of enemies.

The game has a Co-Op campaign that can also be played as a SP campaign, where you choose a character (not the main one), each with different skills, kinda like Borderlands, and play parts of the story that run parallell to the main storyline, fleshing it out a bit more. This adds about 5 hours more to the game length, you also have a New Game plus, where you can tackle the SP campaign with all your Darkness powers intact.

I dont know what you would make of the storyline, without playing the first game, its pretty straight forward, but it has added depth, if you play the first game. If you played the first one, I have no hesitation in recommending this iteration, but the price versus content is very subjective.

Disregarding the price, I would say 8/10 if you played the first game, 7/10 if you havent.

Fiach : Playing two games, so you only have to play one.

[PZ]

Fiach : Playing two games, so you only have to play one.

:-X

Nice read, Fiach  :-X  OWG member opinions are valued in my book - lets me decide on purchases in many instances.

[Art Blade]

 :-() :-X

[Fiach]

I managed to get this finished, so just a final wrap up.

The story is really the best part of this game, the combat is really mindless FPS, so if FPS is your bag, well, welcome to a FPS with a great story. It was seldom I used any skills, except when maybe enemies with shields were in my face and I needed to melee them away with the demon arms. I managed to buy most of the skills in one playthrough, so maybe I'll use them more (if I get the game later on) in the New Game Plus.

As regards the story, well it wraps itself up VERY well, I have seen people call it a cliff hanger, I dont agree with that, it (to me) had a very definate conclusion, but as the comics have lots of story arcs, I guess it will have a sequel.

I dont know how accurate this story is to the comics origins, but it was a bloody good romp for me.

One nice thing is the collectible relics, I didn't get them all, but I got a significant amount without much effort, I didnt realise how important they were until the end, where you can access them in the Options Menu and you can hear a short (but deep enough) history related to each one, which I think emphasises the depth of story inherant in this game, when you look at the context of the relics and the story, alot of effort was made to create a coherant universe and atmosphere.

Another thing I liked was the re-appearence of characters from the first game, it not only added a strong connection and sense of continuity, but made you feel more aware of their contribution to the atmosphere, rather than just think of them as mere NPC's. The sterling voice acting and animation also added a depth of quality to the proceeding's.

A bloody (yes indeedy) good game! :)

Fiach : Adding post scripts, because bumping is undignified!

[Fiach]

Just bought this very cheaply (€20.53) :

http://www.cdkeysdirect.com/products/The-Darkness-2-Steam-Cd-Key-EU%7B47%7DUS%7B47%7DUK%7B47%7DAU-limited-edition.html

Needs to be activated on Steam though.

[fragger]

Cool reads mate, thanks :-X Somehow, I missed this topic earlier. The story sounds - interesting... re: mindless FPSes, I'm in one right now (Duke Nukem Forever, which is about as mindless as it gets), so maybe I'd fit right in :-()

Needs to be activated on Steam though.

Urrr (makes warding-off sign)

[Fiach]

Urrr (makes warding-off sign)

Jesus tell me about it, I had a problem running Darkness and a mate said to uninstall Steam and Reinstall it, doing it uninstalled all my feckin games, so I reinstalled Darkness and yep, it worked perfectly, now, fucking Dead Island wont start (a known issue with Steam)!

So what I'm going to do is just buy console versions of my Steam games (not many thank God) and just uninstall Steam and all the shite that comes with it.
On a brighter note, I got Mass Effect 3 Collectors edition today (apparently more scarece to find than hens teeth....I dunno what that means either...) as one of the staff in Gamestop couldnt afford his pre-order and knew I was looking for one, so....currently my glass is half full :)