If you read my Facebook advertisement for this post you'll know that my views are in no way favorable towards this game. It is essentially more of what the first game provided us and strikes me as a bit of a half-hearted effort at a sequel. The actual plot of the game revolves around a guy who is clearly a zombie pirate (see picture) and his attempts to steal your powers from you. Now, that plot is derived from my experience with the demo and chances are it isn't the "real" plot but hey, you aren't playing this game for the plot I wager, it's for the sadistic combat and gratuitous swearing! Well they carried over said gore and swearing in full force so no worries if that's why you'd like to play this installment of The Darkness series.
Sadly, I am no longer 12 years old and I remain unimpressed by the number of times they can scream obscenities as it has no bearing on the actual game or plot development, it is however characteristic of a kind of immature game that seeks to generate creative swearing in place of actual dialogue. Yeah, I'm annoyed at the lack of depth a bit which makes me somewhat biased towards the game as a whole but I'll try to remain objective about the rest of the aspects of The Darkness II.
Next we've got the combat mechanics. Well they're visceral and the finishers look pretty cool since you can essentially just have one of your evil snake things vivisection people or just slap their heads clean off, yay for gore? The environment lends itself well to this game and provides you with a multitude of things to shield yourself with (car doors) that can also be re-purposed as projectiles should you need them. The combat is fast paced with a lot of variety, for example: You can use one of your tendrils to perform melee attacks while the other is used to grab stunned enemies (this can be combo'd) all the while you can still be shooting a firearm or two. The joys of having four arms. One thing I have to point out that still proves to be a constant annoyance is the light. SCREW THE LIGHTS. Stopping every two steps to break the light fixtures dangling judgmentally above my head is terribly annoying and breaks the flow of combat occasionally. If I spun that to look positive I'd say it forces me to pay extra attention to my surroundings, but screw that, it's annoying. Overall the combat receives a passing mark from me, I enjoyed the variety it provided and I expect the full game to do even more due to the implementation of what I'll touch on next.
Skill trees! Alright I couldn't remember if the original Darkness game had skill trees, not for the life of me, it has been far too long since I played through it. Either way, is this a good mechanic for this type of game? Or will it serve only to bog down gameplay with ultimately meaningless "perks"? Time will tell. It could prove to be interesting if each tree drastically alters how the combat works for you. I'll need to take a more in-depth look at all the potential skills you can learn to get a better impression of how they'll pan out in actual combat. The only perks I got were: the ability to rip the hearts out of fallen enemies and eat them, and imbuing my revolvers with dark energy to temporarily buff up their damage.
One last gripe and then I'm done. The graphics. At least the blood graphics. I mean it looks all cool when I'm being crucified and stuff but then I fall on the floor and look down through the hole in my hand as the blood "pools" under it. By pools I mean there is a generic blood splatter image that just pops out roughly under where the hole should be. I hope it gets tweaked a little but my expectations are rising in terms of quality in all areas of the game. Plus, I know they have some talented artists on staff, my desktop background is easily one of the coolest pieces I have seen done to advertise a game. Either way, the graphics are a minor gripe and my problem still lies in the overload of crappy dialogue and questionable amounts of blood that make me feel like they're trying to sell me gore rather than an actual game. I'll probably be passing this game off to a less biased member of TI for a full review when it launches tomorrow.
Thanks for reading! Expect a full review of the game sometime in the next week or so.
-Fest
 |
| Arrrrr! Brains! |
Sadly, I am no longer 12 years old and I remain unimpressed by the number of times they can scream obscenities as it has no bearing on the actual game or plot development, it is however characteristic of a kind of immature game that seeks to generate creative swearing in place of actual dialogue. Yeah, I'm annoyed at the lack of depth a bit which makes me somewhat biased towards the game as a whole but I'll try to remain objective about the rest of the aspects of The Darkness II.
Next we've got the combat mechanics. Well they're visceral and the finishers look pretty cool since you can essentially just have one of your evil snake things vivisection people or just slap their heads clean off, yay for gore? The environment lends itself well to this game and provides you with a multitude of things to shield yourself with (car doors) that can also be re-purposed as projectiles should you need them. The combat is fast paced with a lot of variety, for example: You can use one of your tendrils to perform melee attacks while the other is used to grab stunned enemies (this can be combo'd) all the while you can still be shooting a firearm or two. The joys of having four arms. One thing I have to point out that still proves to be a constant annoyance is the light. SCREW THE LIGHTS. Stopping every two steps to break the light fixtures dangling judgmentally above my head is terribly annoying and breaks the flow of combat occasionally. If I spun that to look positive I'd say it forces me to pay extra attention to my surroundings, but screw that, it's annoying. Overall the combat receives a passing mark from me, I enjoyed the variety it provided and I expect the full game to do even more due to the implementation of what I'll touch on next.
Skill trees! Alright I couldn't remember if the original Darkness game had skill trees, not for the life of me, it has been far too long since I played through it. Either way, is this a good mechanic for this type of game? Or will it serve only to bog down gameplay with ultimately meaningless "perks"? Time will tell. It could prove to be interesting if each tree drastically alters how the combat works for you. I'll need to take a more in-depth look at all the potential skills you can learn to get a better impression of how they'll pan out in actual combat. The only perks I got were: the ability to rip the hearts out of fallen enemies and eat them, and imbuing my revolvers with dark energy to temporarily buff up their damage.
One last gripe and then I'm done. The graphics. At least the blood graphics. I mean it looks all cool when I'm being crucified and stuff but then I fall on the floor and look down through the hole in my hand as the blood "pools" under it. By pools I mean there is a generic blood splatter image that just pops out roughly under where the hole should be. I hope it gets tweaked a little but my expectations are rising in terms of quality in all areas of the game. Plus, I know they have some talented artists on staff, my desktop background is easily one of the coolest pieces I have seen done to advertise a game. Either way, the graphics are a minor gripe and my problem still lies in the overload of crappy dialogue and questionable amounts of blood that make me feel like they're trying to sell me gore rather than an actual game. I'll probably be passing this game off to a less biased member of TI for a full review when it launches tomorrow.
Thanks for reading! Expect a full review of the game sometime in the next week or so.
-Fest
 |
| Aforementioned awesome artwork. |
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