Review by: Brandon "Dark Essence" Cackowski-Schnell

When it comes to my favorite story based first person shooters, 2007’s The Darkness is easily at the top of that list. The shooting and Darkness wielding was well implemented but it was the story of young mobster turned Darkness vessel Jackie Estacado and his doomed girlfriend Jenny that struck a chord in me. At its core, the game was about love and loss and how a man deals with that loss. Watching Jackie pull the trigger at the end of that game, avenging Jenny’s death and allowing the Darkness to fully envelop his soul in the process was heartbreaking. It’s clear that the developers behind The Darkness II understand what made the first game so good, and they use the same mixture of excellent shooting and narrative pull to stay true to the original game while at the same time expand the property. The story isn’t as strong as in the original, but the excellent Vendetta’s campaign makes up for it resulting in a game that is every bit as enjoyable as the first.

It’s been two years since Jackie ascended to the head of the Franchetti crime family and in that time he has managed to keep the Darkness in check, clamping it down and resisting its pull. It’s also been two years since the death of Jenny, an event that still haunts Jackie. I was initially concerned that not having Jenny around would reduce Jackie to a one-dimensional killing machine, or worse, the game would have Jackie in a relationship with some new love that we’d have to see sacrificed all over again. The writers managed to sidestep both issues by having Jenny still in the game in the form of visions and flashbacks that torment Jackie as he moves through the story. It’s an effective way of keeping the story firmly on the couple as well as cementing the fact that Jenny was the love of Jackie’s life and that he’d do anything for her, a sentiment that becomes increasingly important as Jackie’s fight with The Brotherhood, an ancient sect bent on taking The Darkness for themselves, comes to a head.

The story is bolstered by an excellent voice cast as well as an effort to make Jackie’s crew more than cardboard cut-outs of Goodfellas characters. In this respect the game is less successful but not for lack of trying. Being able to walk around Jackie’s mansion in between missions and chat up the crew makes for some entertaining conversations, but it’s still hard to take the “ay-oh, oh-ay” characterizations as seriously as the writers want you to, which is a shame given that it lessens a particularly hard choice you have to make later on down the line. Still, it’s nice to see a game that lets its story breathe, and gives you an opportunity to take a break from the killing and develop relationships with the NPCs. Also, if there were no crew, there would be no Johnny Powell, Jackie’s half-insane advisor on all things Darkness related. Powell’s frantic conversations are extremely well voiced and provide an often hilarious vibe to the usual mundane descriptions of the various Darkness related relics found over the course of the game.