The Darkness II starts two years after the end of the first game. Jackie has managed to keep The Darkness bottled up for those two years, without the need to use it. But one day at a restaurant, Jackie is attacked by strange men who know of Jackie’s powers and want to take The Darkness for themselves, so he was forced to use it in order to survive.
Throughout the game, Jackie finds out more about the Brotherhood, a group lead by Victor Valente, and follows his trail to a carnival. What makes the Brotherhood dangerous is their knowledge of The Darkness, they know they can use light to defeat it, and also the different types of dynamic enemies.
The Darkness was all about dark and light gameplay, and once again we will have this feature. When you’re in the light, you can’t use The Darkness’ powers and you become extremely vulnerable, so you will always be looking to get away from the light and back into the dark spots as soon as possible.
Jackie and The Darkness have a very antagonistic relationship, and being bottled up for two years, he’s definitely not happy. Mike Patton once again reprises his role as the demonic entity, giving it just the right personality without using synthesizers or voice modifiers.
Combat is still the same first person shooter with unique and brutal melee elements called Executions. During the demo we saw quite a few of them: the Spinal Tap, a spinal cord extraction; the Anaconda, where you wrap the tentacles around your enemies and squeeze them to death; the Daisy Pop, where you literally pop a head off; the Wishbone, where you split someone in half by tearing limbs apart.
Little messages appear every time Jackie makes a kill. Essence is accumulated by killing enemies, and the more gory and violent the kill, the more essence you receive. Essence is used as currency to upgrade and buy new powers. The talent tree is divided into four branches with plenty of options to customize the game to the way you want to play.
On the left, the Weapons branch; on the right, the Demonic branch; on the bottom, the Mystical branch; and the top one is the Gun Channelling branch. Gun Channelling was showcased in this demo, and this particular branch lets you channel the Darkness into your weapons and for a few seconds you will have infinite ammo and higher damage. We also saw how using Gun Channelling with Heart of Darkness allows you to see enemies and shoot them through walls. But of course, you can only use your powers in the dark.
At the end of the demo, we see Jackie being overwhelmed and completely engulfed by a bright light. The scene then fades to a small hospital room, where a doctor reassures Jackie: “It’s ok Jackie. You had an episode. We’re going to help you.”
We will find out more about Jackie when The Darkness 2 ships for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on October 4 2011.