Other porting faux pas include the lack of real save games, meaning if you want to start again, you have to wipe all your progress, and the completely unnecessary disappearing of dead bodies and broken items from the screen. It was better than flailing around with the imprecise controller, but too often trying to aim slashes with the same device that aims my view led to the game spinning me on the spot, doing neither. It means you've got left mouse firing, right mouse aiming, and then the middle mouse slashing the snakes, held down while you move the mouse in a direction to aim them, along with Q and E performing other snake tasks. That works great with all the various buttons on a controller, but isn't quite so suited to a typing instrument. So you have all the regular controls you'd expect from an FPS, and then some more on top. Knobs in the shape of long, shoulder-rooted tentacles with snakes' heads on the end. Because The Darkness II is a first-person shooter with knobs on. With a controller you're stuck with the horribly jerky movement of an analogue stick that has never suited the FPS, and without it, you're left with a muddle of keyboard controls. And then abandoned just before they were finished. In its transition to PC, real efforts have been made to make it work without a controller. So it's battling darkness, to save the girl.Īnd back and forth you go, between the recognition of such over-familiar themes, and original twists and some superb presentation. The Darkness appears to have her trapped in hell, and is using this as a means to control you, force you to cooperate with his nefarious goals. The closest you get to a metaphysical motivation is to save the soul of your former girlfriend, Jenny, killed during the first game. Yum.īut then this is very familiar territory, of a man battling evil and saving the world, without the game ever really explaining why any of it's happening. This gives Jackie an extra pair of arms - well, snakes - that can be used to throw around heavy objects, slash men in half, and rip hearts from chests. The Darkness, under central character Jackie Estacado's control since the end of the last game, finds a way to convince Jackie to release it once more - to save his life. They love their families, and they'll fockin' kill anyone who harms them, and so on.īut then the story is really about a Mafia leader who's possessed by an ancient evil that existed before God let there be light. Seeing the lights in a room reflecting in someone's eyeballs is quite the thing, especially when their cheekbones are defined with hand-drawn shading.īut then it's set in a Mafia family, lots of Noo Yoikers jammering at each other about how they "fockin' did this" and fockin' did that", like a mobster waterfall of cliché. Black outlines surround people and objects, and they're shaded with crude pencil lines, almost underplaying what is a superbly detailed world. There's an absolutely gorgeous art style - a rotoscoped look, with deliberate nods to cartoon within what are remarkably realistic graphics. Wait, did I say "smartest"? That doesn't sound right. And it certainly didn't stop me enjoying a couple of days with one of the noisiest, goriest and smartest shooters I've played in a while. But since I refuse to write comparison reviews on principle, it makes little difference, beyond my confusion over who the strange monkey-creature in the Union Flag shirt is. The console-only title missed me, making the PC sequel my first experience of the series. How does all that grue hold up? Well, wipe away the lung and take a seat, and I'll tell you Wot I Think. Past the gruesome beginning, via the gruesome middle. First-person shooter The Darkness II is out in the US, and tomorrow in the UK, and I've played it through to the gruesome end.
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