We take a closer look at some new enemies, and the powers you’ll use to crush them, in The Darkness II.
Things aren’t getting any better for Jackie Estacado, star of the upcoming first-person shooter The Darkness II. In our previous coverage we saw Jackie get reacquainted with his malevolent darkness powers. We were also introduced to Victor, the head of an organization obsessed with possessing the darkness for itself. At this year’s E3 convention, 2K Games and Digital Extremes were ready to give us another peek into Jackie’s ongoing struggle against forces both external and internal.
Their hands-off demonstration opened with a weathered billboard welcoming us to Hellgate Field amusement park. The hour was late, and in the distance we spotted a fleeting image of Jenny–Jackie’s deceased girlfriend. Following the siren’s song of her voice, our character ventured deeper into the park. What he found inside wasn’t his lost love, but a pack of goons from the brotherhood. In the previous game, most of Jackie’s enemies were simple street roughs and mobsters. They knew their way around a machine gun, but a pair of tentacles with pointy teeth on the end was way above their pay grade.
This was not the case in The Darkness II, at least when it came to the brotherhood. These guys knew a thing or two about Jackie’s power–specificity its susceptibility to light. Armed with this knowledge, brotherhood enemies would employ numerous tricks to lead Jackie into the light. Some carried large spotlights. Others employed blinding flash grenades. In these instances our anti-hero had to think fast and neutralize these high-priority targets first before tangoing with the rest of the troops.
Quad-wielding is still a big part of this game. From what we saw, it seemed that Jackie was always doing two things at once during a fight. Most often this involved picked one enemy up and impaling him with the tentacles while shooting another. For every kill a little +10 or +25 would pop out and be added to a running tally. These were experience points which are used for leveling up Jackie through a skill tree. The tree was broken down into four branches: weapons,mystic, demonic, and gun channeling. Our demonstration focused primarily on the latter.
Gun channeling basically means focusing the raw power of the darkness into whatever firearm(s) Jackie has on hand. Two points were placed into this branch of the skill tree, which first unlocked the ability and then increased its duration. The end result granted a simple sub-machine gun the stopping power of a tank. Half a dozen guards, an encounter that could have lasted minutes, was ended in seconds. However, gun channeling only worked so long as Jackie stayed in the shadows. Further along in the demo another point was put into this skill tree, allowing Jackie to see through walls while channeling. Using this new trick our character spied a cluster of goons barricade within a wooden shack. The building’s thin walls didn’t offer much protection once our character starting firing, turning every red enemy outline into a dead enemy outline.
The loveable, foul-mouthed Darkling also accompanied Jackie throughout the demonstration. Serving as the game’s twisted version of comic relief, this fiend popped in and out of battle to aid our character (who he referred to as “monkey”) as best it could. Sometimes it would hop onto an enemy’s head and ride him like a cowboy. Other times it would snag their pant leg and pull them out into the open while yelling “shoot him in the bum!”
Our demonstration ended with a bang when Jackie’s darkness tentacles got a hold of a corrupt heart. This unlocked the black hole ability which spawn a violent black and red vortex into the world that basically either consumed or annihilated everything in the area. However, right when it finished, Jackie was suddenly bathed from all sides in high-beam lights. When he came to he picking himself up off the floor of what appeared to be a hospital of sorts. A concerned-looking doctor stood across from us and stated, “You’ve had an episode, we’re going to help you.” With that, the demo ended. Now we’re eager to see what happens next when The Darkness II is released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on October 4th.
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