At an El33tonline attended gamescom presentation for Digital Extremes’ The Darkness II, 2K Games producer Seth Olshfski stepped us through the dark, twisted and hostile world that protagonist Jackie Estacado will need to fight through in order to get to the bottom of an attempt on his life by a rival mob gang.

Luckily for Jackie (and unluckily for those mobsters), players of The Darkness II will be able to wield the bloodthirsty powers of The Darkness itself, a legendary and terrible mystical force that lies at the centre of the conflict, and the game’s story.

The demonstration shown at gamescom takes place a little later in the story of The Darkness II, where Jackie and The Darkness are barrelling through the Hellgate Field amusement park in New York City, an abandoned and very creepy carnival, on the hunt for an ethereal character (and enemy) called Viktor Valentay, head of a mysterious group known as ‘The Brotherhood.’

During the demo we were introduced to The Darkness, which manifests itself as two ‘demon arms’ attached to Jackie, as well as a cackling, croaking voice in Jackie’s head (voiced by Mike Patton) that takes any opportunity it can to weird you out with its rasping, hissing comments, which comes across as very sinister indeed. Jackie’s relationship with The Darkness is definitely antagonistic, as it mocks and whispers at him, while the demon arms bite at his weapons on occasion.

When used correctly, The Darkness can be very powerful indeed, a fact known very well by Viktor and The Brotherhood, which means that this group is doing whatever it can to extract this power out of Jackie and use it for their own nefarious purposes. The Brotherhood’s attempts at taking down Jackie and The Darkness prove useless, however, as together the pair is a seemingly unstoppable force.

If Jackie’s ability to dual-wield weapons wasn’t enough of a challenge for his enemies (able to fire off rounds from any combination of pistols, rifles, uzis and more), then the addition of the two ‘demons arms’ makes it possible to rain down a relentless and brutal assault on anyone foolish enough to get in his way. The developers are touting the ‘Quad-wielding’ combat options available to players as a major feature of The Darkness II, and with good reason – it looks incredible!

As bullets explode from Jackie’s available armaments, the demon arms do their part by slashing, grabbing, rending, tearing, crushing, dismembering and otherwise destroying enemies, and if you happen to snatch an enemy up into the air with one of these arms, you can perform an execution move that puts an instant end to your foe. ‘The Wishbone’ and ‘Anaconda’ moves shown during the demo are particularly cruel and vicious, splitting and squeezing helpless victims in equal measure (but not into equal parts…).

The Darkness II is violent to the extreme - even if an enemy finds himself without legs, he’ll simply continue to shoot at you from the floor. Copious blood splats and hectic language feature in the game, too, and although it all seems (and is) very severe, the game’s violence is presented in a traditional comic book style reminiscent of the original Top Cow publications.

Following the release of the more realistic-looking original game, The Darkness, 2K Games and Digital Extremes went back to these comic books for inspiration for the look of the sequel and rediscovered the stylised graphic novel look, and imbued The Darkness II with what they call a ‘dark and saturated’ aesthetic. The visuals are almost gaudy and overwhelming in appearance, with lots of contrasting hues and colours, but they all blend perfectly together to make for an intensely appealing style. It may be an overused term, but The Darkness II truly does look like a comic book come to life… a virtual life, in any event.

While it may seem as though Jackie and The Darkness are unstoppable at first, The Brotherhood knows the pair’s weakness – light. If Jackie steps into a light source in the game, the demon arms will retreat (and become unusable), his regenerating health will stop, your vision will blur, and The Darkness will scream and hiss at you for being so foolish as to expose yourself to illumination of any kind. In the world of The Darkness II, light is very bad.

The Brotherhood uses this knowledge against you, and to their advantage, by throwing flashbang grenades and positioning themselves in well lit areas. The only way to operate properly in these areas is to destroy any and all light sources (light bulbs and lighting strips, for the most part), and to help you out in these areas even further, that cute little imp critter, the Darkling, is back in The Darkness II to lend a helping hand by grabbing onto an enemy’s leg and dragging him back, causing distractions, immobilising enemies and generally making a nuisance of himself during combat, giving you better opportunities to swiftly dispatch your victims.

The Darkling plays a part in the plot of the game, too, and can handily die as many times as is required in order to get the job done – he’ll simply respawn again to continue to help Jackie! This (and a bit of the game’s humour) was demonstrated as the Darkling piloted a truck into a gate blocking your progress, before crashing into a building and destroying it with a massive explosion. What a helpful critter!

The Darkness II also includes a series of talent trees that you’ll be able to upgrade, with options to improve your guns, powers and demon arm abilities using something called ‘Dark Essence.’ Dark Essence is earned with regular enemy kills, as well as special actions (like eating enemy hearts with the demon arms for health) and unique kills (like headshots and kills while the Darkling is ‘at work’). At specified ‘Talent Shrines’ you’ll also be able to put points towards ‘Gun Channeling,’ a talent tree that gives you access to skills such as ‘Heart of Darkness’ (the ability to see and shoot through walls), and the chance to improve your gun’s power and speed without the need to reload for a time.

The gamescom demonstration for The Darkness II ended as Jackie woke up in a hospital bed, almost as though he had simply been dreaming all of the explosive, brutal and vicious combat that we had just witnessed for the last twenty minutes… or perhaps he was reliving the action while asleep… or maybe something else is going on? Very intriguing!

From what was on show, The Darkness II is going to be an absorbing journey into a dark, mysterious and mystical criminal underworld, and thanks to a delay into 2012 (the game is set to release on February 7th 2012 in North America and February 10th ‘internationally’), the developers at Digital Extremes now have enough time to hone what they have and put the finishing touches on what’s shaping up to be one of the most intriguing first-person shooters of next year, with what seems to be a complex, interesting and very antagonistic relationship between Jackie and The Darkness.

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