The Darkness II

The original Darkness was one of the finer comic book adaptations to hit the medium of gaming.

The subject material, mafia hitman bonds with and struggles to control a demonic entity whilst taking on assassins and family politics, was ripe for a mature, story-driven FPS. In 2007 Starbreeze Studios delivered the goods, with a bloody revenge tale that was equal parts Godfather and Hellraiser.

A sequel has been rumoured for some time, and for whatever reason Starbreeze has passed up on the opportunity to carry on Jackie Estacado's story, leaving the sequel in the capable hands of Digital Extremes. The Canadian studio's decision? Refinement over refurbishment.

Demoed at GRUK's offices in the form of a specially cut gameplay sequence which flashes between two time periods, The Darkness II continues the trend of F-bomb dropping mafia, bloody revenge and an invisible friend who'd be every physiologist's worst nightmare.

It's two years after the events of the first game. Jackie's now head of the family business. In the world of the mafia that means, fine dining, finer women - and dodging repeated assassination attempts. A restaurant meange-a-trois goes horribly wrong as Jackie and his two dinner guests, who are big on chest if not on brains, are on the wrong end of a car ramming through the restaurant window and into their table.

That's the beginning of the story, but that's not how the game starts.

Instead, the title screen transitions into a rather disturbing cruxifcation scene with Jackie held off the ground by his impaled hands in some darkened, dingy back room. Figures unknown (lead by a dishevelled man hobbling on a cane) try to leech the demonic power off him and into a mystical container place front and centre. There's talk of curses and power, of legacies and responsibilities - chatter that'll obviously become clearer as the game progresses. For now though, getting the nails driven deeper into our hands is of more immediate concern. As punches land upon Jackie's face, he blacks out, and we segue into previous sequence as we walk through a lavish italian restaurant.

It's here we see the first deviation from the original title - Digital is running the game on its own Evolution engine and the visuals are an art style that is not, as stressed by 2K, not cel-shading, but Digital's own graphic noir to tie it closer to the source material.

You can see in part the technique from the screens on this preview. NPCs are highlighted with thick black lines around them - but the detailing on clothes and face is realistic. Likewise, while the colours are extremely rich, they're not cartoon garish. The reason for the increased vividness in lighted conditions is explained away shortly.

Fast forward past some fawning that calls to mind a sequence from Goodfellas, and we're watching one of our lovely escorts having her own brain blasted out of her head and over us and the table as a shooter takes aim outside the window. Seconds later a car accelerates through the window and into our table, crushing the girls and ripping our right leg to shreds.

A half-second of quiet in the bedlam and cue a swarm of gun-totting workmen and pasta sauce of the human insides variety spraying about the place.

The sequel offers its own twist on the night-time drive that opened the original, as Jackie's bloodied form is dragged from the wreckage by his man Vinnie, towards the relative safety of the kitchen. You're handed a gun and told to cover your exit. Gunplay is much the same as before, and soon Jackie's dual-wielding a pair of pistols. Later in the subway station massacre that ends the demo, he sprays a wide area with an Uzi in on hand and claiming lives with well-aimed shots from a handgun as enemies run from the gunfire and snipe from concealed spots.

But for this portion of the demo, the gunmen line up like circus seals as they pop out from behind cover and charge into your line of fire - damage is limb-specific, as we see 2K shoot out the legs from one guy only to headshot him as he falls to the ground. The audio is nice and loud, the SFX on all the guns - including the body-crunching shotgun come the demo's end, pack a meaty punch.

But the real meat and potatoes and obvious highlight to Jackie's arsenal is the Darkness powers. Digital Extremes has nicely tampered with the set up so as to improve it rather than remove anything, thereby expanding your options during prolonged firefights. You're always outnumbered - two flesh-munching, muscle-tearing demons swing the odds back in your favour.

The Darkness, the demonic being which speaks its mind as much as it shreds, reveals itself as you're blasted out of the restaurant's kitchen by a firebomb.

As the first game, its appearance and abilities are demoed in a short sequence that's big and gore and guilty laughs as it tears through a group of enemies, ripping limbs and disembowelling guts onto the alleyway, before reforming the bloody meat that was your right leg. Once done, we're back to hearing the terrifying tones of a being eager for death whisper in your head (once again played to fantastic effect by Mike Patton).

You've still the demonic serpents floating in the top left and right of the screen, though they're not twins anymore, Digital deciding to alter their design and naming them to distinguish their abilities. They're named 'Grabby' and 'Slashy'. Its like naming a rottweiler 'Ball Cruncher'. But it does get the point across.

Tap the left shoulder button and the left head can make a grab for foes, objects or even car doors, the latter of which can be used as portable shields during gun fights.

At this early stage there's little strength in the serpent's body - there's no car tossing - but there's still plenty to enjoy in ripping up a street light and tossing it at enemies, impaling them in the nearest wall. Grabby even has a nod to Aliens (although 2K are calling the move 'the Anaconda") as he wraps round his victim, constricting him, before finally bursting through his back and out of his chest.

Grabby's also the heart hunter of the two. When under the Darkness influence, the HUD will alter and highlight the beating organ in every foe with a purple luminance. A quick button press when gripping an enemy will have your left demon eat out the heart and increase your health. It hasn't been confirmed whether eaten hearts will once work towards unlocking new powers, but we assume there'll be another levelling system as before.

Slashy, bearing sharpened tusks and fins, can swing forward for vertical or horizontal attacks, lopping off limbs with abandon. Combining the two serpents attacks together, you can pull off some rather sick moves - like grabbing one leg apiece to hang an enemy upside down, before splitting him in half with a titanic tug of war match.

As before, The Darkness only works in shadow or in the pitch black. Digital has pushed the lighting effects in the sequel to better distinguish between those areas, as well as emphasis to players where they should be heading for in every area. Stepping in an area bathed in a light source will not only force the Darkness to retract, but there'll be excessive bloom in the visuals, a blur that's joined by a constant low-level ringing and burning noises which assail Jackie's ears. Its not unplayable, more discomforting.

We're shown a small puzzle - shooting out the lights of a station hallway to allow the Darkness to smash open a locked door - which is the extent to which 2K linger on the demonic abilities. No mention yet of being able to send your demons out to attack people or slither through air vents. It was a cool gameplay mechanic in the first, and from what we've seen so far, it's likely Digital will improve upon the mechanic for the second.

One other facet of the Darkness makes a welcome return, in the form of the Darklings. Or to be correct, Darkling, as Digital drops the multiple versions of the little goblins and replaces them for a single jack of all trades.

There's no name for your helper yet. He looks like a Geri, on account of him wearing a British Flag dress. Though he's less of a cross-dressing Spice Girl wannabe and more a vicious little bastard; a pint-sized Ray Winstone, if you will, ripping into enemies with the sort of commentary and accent that won't be amiss from a British mobster movie.

He'll pick up weapons and bring them to you, though at this point 2K won't say what other jobs he'll be doing, instead distracting from questions by pointing out the stretched cat that forms his hat. If anything, his presence will simplify matters for the better, as the micromanagement of the various Darklings was one of the weaker points of the original despite it being a great idea on paper.

While the firefight through the train station that is the demo's concluding section was brief, with the majority of the level played out in the destroyed train tracks further into the tunnels, we did notice something interesting.

It's immediately apparent that this is the one of the stations from the first game - Canal Street Station to be exact. It looks exactly the same as the first game - exactly why is unknown.

Obviously this opens up the possibility that we'll be travelling to different parts of the city by train, but that the layout looks neatly exactly the same (with station signs, white walls and pillars - the works) is odd. It's doubtful that Digital is re-using assets, as the sequel is built on an entirely different engine, and besides, the studio has had some time to work on the title, so it can't be the case of tight development schedules.

Those questions can't be answered until we see more of the game and compare its locations to the first. but two other points raise their heads.

Firstly, we notice several posters billboarded through the station, including a brief glimpse of the movie poster for Wes Craven's Scream 2. We think there'd be little point using the movie to ground the game in a specific time period (was 1997 a good year for mafia and monsters?), so it may elude to the return of full movies and programmes watchable on television sets through the game.

Starbreeze had bought up the rights to shows and films - notably To Kill A Mockingbird - for the first game, which could be watched and streamed in full from any TV set. Has Digital brought more contemporary films to the sequel? No one's saying, just yet. But at least they picked the best Scream movie if they have.

The second point: Jackie's joining Isaac Clarke in the funny farm for being haunted by his dead girlfriend. Jenny, who was murdered in such brutal fashion in the first game, appears at several intervals, the last of which closes the demo. As Jackie walks towards her silent figure on a train track deep in the underground tunnels, a train hurtles out of the darkness behind her and into you. Cue fade-out, and we're back at the title screen.

From what we see, Darkness II looks like it'll continue the story-driven horror of the first, which was the game's strongest point. With the improvements Digital are making with the controls and gameplay mechanics, the fighting system could be a lot more enjoyable this time round. But we're going to have to wait until nearer the game's release in autumn to find out what other secrets lurk in the dark.