The Darkness II is a ten year old reminder of games that no longer exist
Contemporary video games could utilise more schlock. In the age of Sony prestige, grimy exploitation revenge (encounter Last of United states: Part II) too as gory sword and sorcery (see God of War) get advertised as loftier art. Even when schlock does show up, it tends to be arch or overly self-aware, cheapening the effect. In some sense, there are more than small video games than always, simply "B" games take practically ceased to exist.
10 years ago, these kinds of games were on the decline. The next console generation loomed. Time devouring titles like Destiny were just on the horizon. In hindsight, it's very piece of cake to see the shape of games to come. Increased hardware capabilities ways increased manpower and time spent on game production, which ways fewer games get made, which means every title has to be a huge render on investment. At the time though, the future probably felt more open.
The Darkness II concludes with a sequel tease, a big bet that never paid off. But even before its ill-advised end, it feels like a game caught between past and futurity. It'due south a linear, level-based kickoff-person shooter, based on an infrequently remembered comic volume, with only tertiary amounts of lore. These games but don't exist anymore. Despite The Darkness Ii'south multitude of flaws, it makes me miss them.
This sequel picks up before long later on the last game. Jackie Estacado is the head mafioso of a cartoonish Italian crime family unit. With the help of The Darkness, an ancient demonic force inherited from his father, he killed all who stood in his way, but only afterwards his beloved goth gf Jenny died. For two years, Jackie has kept the Darkness suppressed in the chambers of his heart. After a mysterious Brotherhood attempts to take his powers from him, it awakens again. Jackie's quest for answers will drive him into the shadows of conspiracy and into the heart of The Darkness itself.
The result is an extraordinarily goofy and cartoonishly gory FPS. In addition to Jackie's dual-wielding mafia ways, The Darkness calls up 2 demon heads. The left one can grab far abroad items, swallow hearts to recover health, and scoop up vulnerable enemies. The right can slash obstacles, and slice upwards foes. This is arguably where the game is the most forwards-looking. Information technology shares a surprising amount of DNA with Doom (2016), for case, relying on weakening enemies to perform executions that will grant ammo or health. Information technology besides has tech trees and collectibles for upgrading abilities.
At first glance, information technology is overstuffed, but information technology ends upward feeling surprisingly elegant. Every unmarried ability has clear use and I ended upwardly using all of them. It helps a bang-up deal equally well that none of the upgrades are vague percentage points on stats, but rather defined abilities that alter how one plays. It besides helps that the principal method of getting upgrade points is killing enemies. Executions and eating the hearts of tough enemies will grant higher scores, allowing you to spend more on a darkness ability later on. It adds a layer of meta conclusion-making that gives fifty-fifty small encounters some fun weight. The game is as well appropriately grimy, taking a sadistic glee in the dismemberment of human beings that I honestly find kind of refreshing. Gore can be fun.
Frame for frame, The Darkness II looks better than its predecessor, forsaking desperately aged Xbox 360 realism for a cell-shaded mimic of its comic book origins. The blitheness is sometimes stilted, simply information technology rarely ventures into the uncanny. The backdrops are legitimately gorgeous. They are a painted bluish, New York starry night, melancholy and moody. In merchandise, though, the sequel loses the hazy surrealism of its predecessor. The previous game'due south WWI sequences, in which Jackie attempts to go the darkness under control by diving into the trauma nightmares of his veteran grandfather, are stark and haunting. It pulls on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari equally much as the hazy horrorscapes of the first two Playstations. For a minor Xbox 360 shooter, the game conjures some legitimately frightening and unsettling images. This game's replacement is an asylum, where the game pulls some forgettable and ablest "what is existent" pastiche. It's a far less striking setting, and the game feels that loss at every plow.
The Darkness II besides lacks a down-to-world quality that its predecessor had. The commencement title may have been a game about being a cool gangster with an evil demon, but information technology was too a game about getting cookies with your aunt or watching the entirety of To Kill a Mockingbird on a tiny CRT with your girlfriend. The game had a tiny subway network and a loose affiliation of New York clichés who get fiddling side quests. Sometimes the game is about reading a map to find the right address to visit. There'south a pleasing commitment to mundanity in-betwixt bouts of carnage that is by and large absent from the sequel. However, there'southward a surprisingly resonant dimension hither too. Jackie is rich now; Of course he doesn't accept the subway. Of class all the people he hangs out with are lackeys.
In keeping with this schlocky tone and inspirations, The Darkness 2 does have some wanton cruelty. A sex worker helps Jackie enter a brothel run by the villainous Brotherhood. The game leers at her, and then kills her offscreen, and hangs her corpse in the groundwork of a lengthy cutscene. The villain is disfigured and disabled. Fortunately, the game doesn't draw much attention to it, simply the subtext is notwithstanding unpleasant, normal human being traits made into inhuman attributes of the obviously villainous. Information technology's too worth noting the multiplayer co-op "vendettas" mode, which is unsurprisingly populated by a set of racist stereotypes.
Women dice around Jackie constantly, implying that Jackie'south proximity to this fundamental evil leads him on ever-escalating subversive quests of revenge. Which then further necessitates the use of The Darkness. The very mechanism the game advertises itself on is also explicitly diabolical; the high scores and executions of the game farther the Darkness' ability. The game constantly emphasizes that Jackie is never really in total control. The thrill of power only draws him deeper into a trigger-happy addiction. Furthermore, every bit long as Jackie'south bloodline continues, the Darkness will take a host. This places Jackie into a cycle of patriarchal violence, passed from father to son, throughout all of human history.
The alternative is an idealized femininity. Jenny is at once a tired trope of a expressionless adult female, motivating the crude man on his revenge spree. She also represents the life Jackie might take had, if the darkness had not taken it. Jackie, in a certain sense, wants to be Jenny. He wishes he was expressionless and she was alive. It'southward the kind of cloth that is rife for simultaneously sarcastic and earnest queer readings. Is the conflation of femininity with virtue misogynistic? Absolutely, but the game nevertheless falls into some interesting subtext. None of information technology is especially deep, and it is occasionally draconian, only information technology does have some existent seize with teeth.
In some sense, The Darkness Two is a mediocre game. It's a bargain bin shooter released in an age of them. It's corny, securely airheaded, and foundationally crude. Fifty-fifty in listing its flaws, I experience almost zero but admiration for information technology. It'due south probably easier to love now than it was then. Perchance that is a good sign. Of all the games of its kind, The Darkness II has some staying power. If you want a reminder of what games were, and could exist, not so long agone, you could do far worse than this jolt of silly schlock.
Source: https://www.gamepur.com/features/the-darkness-ii-is-a-ten-year-old-reminder-of-games-that-no-longer-exist
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