The Darkness II (2012)

I enjoyed The Darkness II as a standalone game.

Its story follows the first game quite good, and many references are made throughout in the beginning of the game. I thought I was going to be in for a treat and at first, it looked that way.

But when continuing this new story, our new villain and his buddies (The Dark Brotherhood) appeared and they felt very disappointing. It is just so cliché, unnecessary and lame that it broke some of the fun I had with the game. A Dark Brotherhood, hunting you to claim the Darkness powers, I mean come on. I really missed the personal feeling from the first game in which you hunt a person who did you wrong or taking revenge on mobsters, that kind of stuff. Not some old boomer which you have never met in your life who controls magical powers and tries to steal it from you and who can only blag about taking over the world and other arcane cryptic bull crap. I hated it.

The combat mechanics have at least improved over the first game. The new kill moves, and the better use of your Darkness skills is a big plus from the stiffer combat in the first game. Hitting your enemies with the demon arm can now be done with the melee button, instead of selecting this skill from your darkness powers, like in the first game. Overall, the combat is more fluent and faster paced. The increased gore, in which you can slice your enemies in half is a nice bonus.

But a big downside is that the fight system feels like Modern Warfare: The Darkness II Edition. You cannot pass an area without murdering everyone.

Secondly, it has the "weak enemies", "stronger enemies", "strongest enemies", "mix of strongest enemies", "boss", mechanics. Gone is the open world from the first game in which you could go everywhere. Everything is blocked by invisible walls, until you killed all the bullet sponges and their mothers in the area.

It is a shame that they changed the graphics from the dark, realistic, and grim style to cell shading, which makes everything much lighter and less atmospheric. You can still shoot the lights but no matter how low your brightness is, the graphics will always make it feel brighter. You do not feel "dark" when you step in the shadows. Also, all the levels and environments are very bright and the sky alone lights everything in your path. Compare this to the first game, where it was always night, and you see what I mean.

The music is also a little disappointing. Gone are the brutal metal orchestra soundtracks from the first one and replaced with generic “spooky Scooby-Doo” tracks.

Although one cannot expect this game to be a continued clone of the first game, it has things I found less entertaining and I enjoyed it as a standalone game, like I mentioned, instead of a sequel.

It sure as hell is no worthy successor for The Darkness and hopefully, they learned from their mistakes if there is ever a The Darkness 3.