Hey it's Cardinal - WRATH and today I'm busting a review for a game dear to my heart, not my total love but good enough to earn a special place in my heart. It is "The Darkness 2" aw yes the sequel to the first "The Darkness" where we follow the life of Jackie Estacado who if you didn't know was a contracted hitman for the Franchetti crime family. After he turned 21 he inherited a great and evil power, he became the host of the darkness an entity the long existed since the dawn of light meaning before god opened up the shades a let some light in. The darkness pretty much was pissed and just said " I'm gonna fuck it all up!" So now Jackie is slowly losing control of his mind, body, and soul but Jackie pretty much kept it in check till the Don of the Franchetti family "uncle" Paulie Franchetti did the most stupidest fucking thing ever. He order the death of Jackie's love since childhood, Jenny Romano, he blew her head out with a shotgun and Jackie well, now that Jackie lost pretty much everything he had nothing left to lose and killed Paulie with the darkness.
Couple years later Jackie became the Don of the Franchetti and now lives it big, but of fear that the darkness might take control of him again he was able to keep it down and pretty much locked away inside of him. But it constantly talks to him and trying to trick him with memories and sightings of Jenny everywhere he goes which Jackie is haunted by but it's still wasn't enough to make him release the darkness. Until one night Jackie was out wining and dining with two hot twins and then one gets their brains blown out by a shot from the back of her head and a huge van crashes through the windows leaving Jackie on the ground unable to walk. He is carried out back to kitchen where it explodes because of a gas leak, Jackie was at death's door and there is nothing that can save him except one thing, as he crawls out the huge hole in the wall he is met with the people that hit the restaurant. At the last minute Jackie releases the darkness and killed all mobsters in the alley and pretty much everyone that got in his way. Jackie soon learns that the people that hit him at the restaurant was payed to do it by a secret underground society called the brotherhood and their ultimate goal is to take the darkness and use it to take shroud the world into darkness.
As Jackie do battle with the brotherhood the darkness tries to take control once again and this time he offers Jackie a deal, the darkness wants a powerful relic and in return they will release Jenny's soul which it has bound in hell. Jackie as madly in love as he is goes ahead and does it. Now that's as far I'm gonna go with the story I think I already said to much and now it's time to talk about the game itself. Well the game has really changed since the first one, the creepy and dark alleyway feel is gone now it has more of a comic book feel to it, which is good but it's that creepiness that really accentuates the darkness. An not also the feel has change but the look of the darkness changed as well what was once to symmetrical heads now look completely different with different purposes. The left head is for grabbing the other is for attacking pretty simple but man missed the other stuff you could have done but oh well.
Gameplay is first person like before yay! Dual wield to guns and your pretty much unstoppable and game changes from playing as Jackie to playing as the darkling (my favorite character) where you crawl around air vents, cut wires, and kill people as you go to help Jackie advance farther in the story. My favorite thing about the game is execution kills which you can do by grabbing someone and depending one what button you hit (I have a ps3 so I'm gonna use PS3 controls) like X you can bust on of the heads straight threw the chest of whoever you're holding. And each execution kill has different effects like X will give you health back, Square for more ammo, Circle for shield, and triangle for a faster cool down for certain attacks. Now let go into evolution, what I mean by that is the level ups, perks, abilities and stuff like that to make your character more powerful. In this case your buying talents, talents can be bought at shrines which look like a floating pool of black purple mercury, from here you spend dark essence for different abilities from four different skill trees but there is one secret skill treat that can only accessible to those who pre-ordered or got the limited edition. Their are only two abilities and the only one that I think is the most important is the relic hunter which detects dark relics and each dark relic gives you about 300 dark essence and as you play you will see that these things are the most important thing to your character growth.
But, once you get a relic you can never get it again I'm not saying be careful if you see a relic get it, it's just that it takes a while to complete a tree and even longer to do them all but with a good double play through you can definitely get them all (lol my favorite is air darkling, you can throw the darkling and it starts to attack the enemy kind of distracting him so can pick them up and kill them you can just let the darkling do it). Lastly I like to bring up the multiplayer/co-op where you play as one of four different characters each with there own different weapon and ability:
Inugami- A swordsman looking for revenge after the brotherhood killed his parent and younger brother, he carries a cursed sword infused with darkness fragments and dark essence called Kusanagi and his ability is that he can summon a swarm of insects to distract and disorient enemies.
Shoshanna- Shes a former Moosad agent now turn mercenary investigating the brotherhood, her weapon is a gun called "The Arm of Night" which just like Kusanagi is infused with darkness fragments. Her ability is gun channeling which is shooting dark essence from the any gun and arm of night for a short while that can also go through walls.
Jimmy Wilson- He's just a drunken scot that hates the english and that is his only reason why he fights against the brotherhood is because of their ancient ties to king Edward (SMH) anyway his weapon is an axe called the dark axe that is also infused with dark fragments, the funny thing is that there is no real back story to how he got it, just that he was piss drunk one day and just found it in the woods. He can throw the axe like a tomahawk and it comes back at will, and his ability is that he can summon multiple darkling to attack enemies.
Jp Dumond- Once a respectable doctor that provided medical care for those who were poor and less fortunate in New Orleans he turned to voodoo to treat his patients. However the magic was too great dangerous so he created a box called "The Box of Tricks" in order to keep the dark power in. His weapon is a stick called the Midnight stick this is probably the only weapon not infused with darkness fragments but just natural darkness or dark essence. His weapon allows him to momentarily levitate and enemy an hold them there for a brief second but this is not his ability. His ability is that he can summon black hole that enemies get sucked into and die, probably the best character in vendettas an likely the most played as out of convenience.
Well That's just about all that i can say about Darkness 2 and I hope that this review has been informative this is Cardinal - WRATH saying keep gaming
