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Straying out of the shadows strips you of your Darkness powers and leaves you disorientated and dazzled. Their AI isn't up to much either, which fits in well with the game's relentless pace and gonzo energy - but it does mean that even when the screen is dripping with viscera, there's not much muscle pushing back against you. Certain enemy types require a modicum of strategy, but it rarely goes any deeper than snatching away a shield to expose them to attack. Whether facing normal mob enforcers or demon-infused agents of The Brotherhood, an ancient organisation that wants The Darkness for its own ends, you're always more than able to bring the slaughter. Even at their most basic you're capable of doing serious damage, but with four prongs of evolution to play around with, you only get tougher. This is the currency with which you evolve your powers, and the escalation is well paced.

The more outrageous your kills, and the more varied, the more Dark Essence you earn.

There's a deeper reason for mucking around with the gory stuff though. There are no bullet sponges here, and you're able to pull off distant headshots with an Uzi, so clearly those who demand fealty to real-life ballistics should not apply. In keeping with this, even the toughest foe can be taken down with a few well-placed shots.

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This isn't a game that wants to pin you down for too long, so encounters are fast and fierce, full of circle strafing rather than duck-and-cover antics.

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While the weaponry packs a punch, Jackie glides smoothly through the game like an ice skater, free from the leaden jogging that the more realistic shooters are forced to offer. Imagine an even more ghoulish and sadistic spin on Bulletstorm's body-mangling metagame, and you're halfway there. There's a pleasing fluidity to the way new developer Digital Extremes has taken the template set in place by Starbreeze and enhanced, upgraded and embellished it. Many of these powers were present in the first game, albeit in clumsier forms, but here they've been streamlined and slotted into a control scheme that puts myriad possibilities within easy reach at all times. The right shoulder button, in conjunction with the right stick, enables you to slash across the screen horizontally or vertically, smashing through scenery or carving up enemies like a joint of boiled ham.Īnd, of course, at all times you've still got two hands free to keep blasting away at the cannon fodder blocking your path. The tentacle on the right, he's Mister Slashy. Decapitation, dismemberment, bisection, disembowelment: all the family favourites are here, and each provides some auxiliary benefit such as more health, extra ammo, a shield or faster recharge on your other Darkness powers. Once in your clutches, the face buttons allow you to perform a variety of gruesome executions. That's not the only way to use your powers to bend the stakes in your favour.

Grabby can also lash out and feast on the hearts of fallen foes, topping up your health in the process. Car doors can be ripped off and used as a shield, then thrown as a lethal frisbee. So you can quickly lob scaffold poles and pool cues as deadly spears. Hitting the button again throws the object in question. The context-sensitive left shoulder button sends him snapping out to sink his teeth into any of the objects marked with a glowing core. The one on the left, let's call him Grabby. As demon-infested mobster Jackie Estacado, you not only have two human appendages with which to wield a standard variety of pistols, shotguns and assault rifles, but two piranha-faced tentacles - manifestations of the ancient Darkness that has set up home in Jackie's body. Instead, we've had to wait five years for this sequel to The Darkness - an unusually long delay in an industry as fond of annual sequels as it is of taking good ideas and running them into the ground.Īnd having four limbs really does make a difference, opening up combat possibilities that other shooters can't hope to compete with. An extra pair of limbs is so useful in an FPS, and so much fun, that it's a wonder we haven't seen more games transform you into a multi-tentacled engine of destruction.

The darkness ii go back for relic