The Darkness 2: Demon Boogaloo

Despite going for only four hours, The Darkness 2 certainly starts with a boom. It's a shame that they couldn't keep up that feeling. Maybe it would have been better as a demo.

After finishing Dark Souls III, I figured that I needed something a bit more fast paced and energetic, so I decided to play The Darkness 2, a game I've had for a long time but never played.  After playing it through its entire campaign though (all four hours of it), my feelings on it are definitely mixed somewhere in between mediocre but enjoyable and mediocre and a waste of an evening.  It's definitely more frantic than Dark Souls III (even on normal), offering all sorts of carnage and horror movie fun, but the paper-thin and short story, awkward controls, and general feeling of lifelessness really killed any enjoyment (ironic or otherwise) that I got from playing The Darkness 2.  Normally I'd do the first game before covering the second, but since the first is a console exclusive I'll have to make do with the second entry.

So the story of The Darkness 2 is basically one exemplifying the edgy phase that games of the early 2010's seemed to be in, because oh boy is it edgy.  In a nutshell you play as the head of the/a mafia who is possessed by a force known as the Darkness, some sort of primal spirit of consumption and malice.  This manifests itself in darklings (a stereotypical cockney goblin thing) and two snakelike appendages over his shoulders.  Basically, you're a boss in some other video game, with the ability to grab and throw all sorts of deadly things, butcher people with your madly cackling "dark arms", and channel all sorts of fun abilities.  The only catch is that the Darkness can only manifest itself in the dark, otherwise it's powerless.  The story itself is that you and your mafia crew come under attack by a clandestine cult that has plans to take your Darkness in order to do...something.  They actually sound like the good guys for much of the game, and it has to stoop to have a guy with a mutilated face and scratchy voice be their leader because deformities are marks of evil apparently.  It would have been pretty interesting to see your character be a real bad guy as opposed to some sort of edgy loner like the norm at this time, but alas, you are just that.  Along the way your character continues to mourn for their dead girlfriend, which is the only emotional beat that actually has something of an impact in this story (and this game really tries to make you feel something for cardboard cutouts).  However, with a runtime of only four hours, there's only so much unremarkable story that can be fit into this game.  The story itself could be enjoyed ironically, and I'd argue that would be really the only narrative strength the game has, besides your clear anti-hero-bordering-antagonist role in the world.  The game also ends on this massive cliff-hanger that I was actually curious to see, but since it's been almost eight years since The Darkness 2 came out, I'd say our chances of seeing what happens to your guy is close to none.

I love that every time we see our big bad, he's always in extreme close-up with horror movie lighting, I mean come on, it's honestly comical.

Around this time in gaming there was a big push to have games be on both consoles and PC, but since the controls and capabilities for the two are so different this often lead to mediocre results whether in control scheme or visually.  The Darkness 2 was undeniably built with consoles in mind, and I'd say that a controller is probably the best way to play this game due to the atrocious keyboard controls (the 1/! key is how you interact with NPC's...why?).  The game is combat all the way through, with I think only one or two puzzles throughout the game that were just destroying a generator.  In terms of combat there's really only one way to play, and that's by using darkness powers in a desperate attempt to stay alive.  You can get several bonuses/boosts through executing people, and these are pretty damn graphic.  I'd feel bad but these guys are bad dudes (I think...I hope) so I guess they deserve it.  Your guns pack a ton of punch even without using a bonus damage ability whereas enemies seemingly lack this.  Abilities and combat in general could be described as fun, but it would be more so if combat didn't feel like I had to mash every available key in order to survive.  Enemies are the traditional FPS lineup, though The Darkness 2 has the excellent idea of throwing annoying as hell enemies at you as a way of increasing difficulty throughout (since their equipment/general abilities stays the same).  Some, like the guys with big flashlights offer a great challenge, and others like whip-carrying goons that disarm you are the opposite of enjoyable.  Environments only really pick up in the climax, otherwise they're shooting galleries with not one, not two, but three actual shooting gallery sections.

As if the feeling of consoles being favored wasn't enough, you pretty much dual-wield through the game, with  each gun on a trigger. Amazing, I love just clicking both mouse buttons at once.

In terms of aesthetic appeal The Darkness 2 seems less engaging than it is, and it could be called something of a saving grace of the game as a whole.  Its graphics are in this semi-cell-shaded style that make it look like a comic book.  This was something that happened quite a bit around that period, with (the former) Telltale Games and the Borderlands franchise being examples, but similar to Wolf Among Us Season 1, The Darkness 2 was originally a comic book series.  I'd say that it works, it makes the brutal kills feel somehow less so and more stylistic than needlessly brutal (and they were pretty elaborate to be honest).  Some of the locations are pretty pleasing to the eye, but on the whole they just live to be shooting galleries.  As soon as the fighting is over there's no reason to stay than to track down one of the collectibles that you can find for more money to buy character upgrades.  Dialogue is pretty uninteresting, just various screams of terror/taunts from enemies with a bunch of stereotypical mob talk.  The two real exceptions to this are the voice of your dead girlfriend and that of your Darkness appendages.  If chaos had a voice it would probably be not dissimilar to your two tentacles as they gleefully call for the blood and hearts of your foes.  They also have a good deal of personality in their animations too, with the two of them roaring, vomiting, bickering, and even fighting over a heart.  Metal.

They definitely go on a bit long for my taste, but the sheer amount of ways your two friends are capable of murdering a guy is pretty impressive. Not for the squeamish though.

In summary, The Darkness 2 is really more style than substance (as if a four hour campaign was any indication), some of my friends really like it, but I really didn't at the end of the day.  There's some high-intensity and gory enjoyment to be had, but at the end of the day it's a very fleeting experience.  It very much feels like a product of its time, so I guess if you want to take a trip back to the edgy early-2010's then I'd say it's a good short visit.  Otherwise, you can definitely skip it, you'd remember only slightly less of the game than I did the morning after I finished it.

Next up, because I seem to be bad at choosing a film that wasn't a fever dream to follow up Babe: Pig in the City, it's Legally Blonde.  Is it better than the musical that was perhaps my favorite to tech for in high school?  We shall see.