THE DARKNESS II JACKIE SKIN
THE DARKNESS II JACKIE FULL
THE DARKNESS II JACKIE PORTABLE

Your main antagonist has a hunchback, a limp, and a burned-up face, for God's sake: if he's not comic book evil, I don't know what is. The Darkness II's enemies are so unquestionably nefarious that I rarely had time to stop and question the linearity of the levels. Jenny's death serves as a girlfriendshaped carrot on a stick, driving Jackie forward. Without her physical presence, Jackie's moral checks are loosened, but even so the game is careful to steer him so the people in his way are unquestionably more disgusting and evil than he is. One small problem: she was killed by a rival mob boss in the previous game. He's obviously a violent man, having killed his first victim, according to cinematics, at 16, but he's given salvation through his relationship with girlfriend Jenny. The game is based on the comic books of the same name, and its characters are, as befitting the title, black and white in morality.Īfter his escapades in the previous game – neatly summed up by an optional 'previously on The Darkness' cutscene – Jackie starts The Darkness II as the head of a mafia family, under attack from sources that want his power. The hyper-violence of The Darkness II is comic in the extreme – in both senses of the word. I'd grab him before a fight, letting him hang off to the side of the screen in swimming pool 'cannonball' pose, before launching him forward, his tiny claws raking and scraping at enemy eyes. My favourite gave me the chance to hurl my darkling at chosen foes. Some of these powers are functional, providing additional ammunition or shortening reload times others are ridiculous.

THE DARKNESS II JACKIE PORTABLE

Later again, enemies start to carry portable arclamps, cutting off parts of the battlefield with sweeping beams of horrible brightness and making a chap consider his surroundings carefully before launching assaults.Ī successful series of kills rewards Jackie with essence – a wooshy purple substance that can be traded for extra powers. Some later lights are invulnerable to gunfire, forcing you to find their power supply.

THE DARKNESS II JACKIE FULL

With the room submerged in gloom, I am free to rampage effectively, Jackie's full range of abilities at your finger and tentacle tips. The lighting problem necessitates a systematic elimination of illumination: lightbulbs are the first thing to go after I enter a room. So too does Jackie's 'darkling' disappear, a three-foot goblin-like sidekick that somehow manages to stay endearing despite cracking wise for the length of the game and urinating on enemy corpses. Lights banish the snakes from his shoulders with a shudder and a hiss. Jackie can only employ the Darkness, fittingly, when he's in the dark. The Darkness makes Jackie superhuman, but it's not a 'win-all' button. I used this skill least, however: it's useful to clear a glut of foes crowded in front of you, but the default control method makes it a touch fiddly. Jackie's demon-arms can also be employed as impromptu whips: holding the middle-mouse button and slashing sends a high-speed swipe across the screen. At the other end of the taste spectrum is the sickening move that has the Darkness upend an enemy and delve into their rectum, before pulling their entire spine – skull attached – out of the expanded hole. To get a flavour of just how depraved some of these executions are, the most dignified is called 'torso smash' and has your inkyblack snake pal slam your chosen target so hard into the ground that his ribcage ruptures. Tap E and your tentacle friend will grab them, dangling them just in Jackie's eyeshot, from where they can be eviscerated in a number of fascinatingly gruesome ways.

THE DARKNESS II JACKIE SKIN

Throw a target off balance with a withering enough attack and they'll stumble forward, their hearts and circulatory system picked out through their skin in shining white. Jackie also has a variety of execution moves he's able to perform on staggered enemies. Heart-eating might be the Darkness's simplest move, but impressively, it's not the ickiest. At first, I'd eat my foe's heart the second he slumped to the ground later, as fights got tougher, I saved them, only launching my monstrosity chestwards when I was close to death. Scarfing down such man-offal gives Jackie a health boost, making the decision to chow down on a mid-fight snack tactical. The leftmost snake-tentacle – the busier of the two throughout the game – whips forward and buries its improbably huge teeth in the chests of mutilated enemies. Simplest of these is the Darkness's ability to eat the hearts of fallen opponents, available with a tap of the R key. But a few murders in, and I was surprised at just how quickly I'd managed to process the additional moves the limb graft gave me.

The darkness ii jackie