The Darkness II XBOX 360 demo Review

Review of The Darkness II Xbox 360 Demo

The Darkness I was one of the most gruesome games to come out for the Xbox 360 was launched with limbs being torn off, bodies being sliced in half and corpses being thrown flat into walls, and with the launch of The Darkness II, this gore continues with a few minor upgrades.

Now, as I only played the demo, I can only review the things that I saw in the demo. PLUS, I did not play The Darkness I, however, I think I recollect playing the demo, but it’s almost like I didn’t play it at all as I have no physical memory of any of the action.

Anyway, this demo starts you off straight in the thick of the action! Before the action begins however, there is a short cut scene in which you appear to be tied and up and are looking at a zombie-like looking man. You are then sent to a flash back and this is where the action starts, you begin with just a pistol and you are being dragged backwards through a restaurant whilst firing pistol ammo at apparent bad-guys; it’s a little hard to work out why, but I assume it has something to do with the ugly zombie-dude at the start. Anyway, after this sequence you get your Darkness arms which is where the fun really begins!

At first, it gives you a short tutorial using live-play in which you dismember some corpses, grab some enemies and knock out some electricity; it’s basically showing you how to use your arms and what situations you can use them in. Throughout the demo you are basically faced with a bunch of weak human enemies whom you rip apart and dismember as you please.

However, what spices it up is the ability to upgrade your character throughout the game which you get to do twice during this game. I believe the concept is that the more stylish your kill, the more points you get and then you can spend these points on upgrades and it works in the same way as many games in that the more points you pay, the cooler the upgrade that you get. In the demo unfortunately, you only have the money to buy two upgrades, one which lets you eat dead people’s hearts to gain health and the other is to throw people in the air momentarily (which I never got the chance to do because I didn’t know how, but I’d assume you can slice them or shoot them or something whilst they’re mid-air.)

The game does run really well and considering all the action that is going on with blood firing everywhere, cars being on fire, bullets rifling through the air and the like, it does genuinely feel like you’re deep in a battle or something when running through the streets with blood all over the walls and the ground.

The controls are easy enough to pick up and I could find myself easily pulling off skilful moves with a few more upgrades and a little more mastering of the buttons. Quickly, you shoot in the same way as every FPS these days with LT to aim and RT to fire and you use your Darkness arms with RB and LB. Your left Darkness arm is used to grab things such as guns, power couplings, doors and obviously people (alive or dead.) Your right Darkness arm is used to basically cause havoc; what I quite liked was that you could direct this arm by aiming with the right stick, for example if you wanted to swipe left you’d push the stick left, if you wanted to slam your arm on the ground, you’d aim down etc. All-in-all, the gameplay is extremely fun and strangely satisfying to have your arms flailing all over the place with bodies, car doors and corpses flying everywhere with blood pouring out of every crevice! Sounds kind of sick when I say it, but when you play it, you’ll enjoy it trust me!

Now onto the presentation and graphics of this game. Well to be fair, the physical models looked a little cartoony with dark lines around their figures, this may have been the effect that the designers were going for, but I would personally have preferred if they’d used nicer, more realistic graphics. However, the sheer amount of action and frames that are going on this game will definitely make you forget about this tiny point. It is quite stunning to stand back after a massive killing spree at all the corpses and blood and fire and broken doors that you’ve caused after a hectic action sequence! Apart from the cartoonish-looking character models, this game is beautiful in everything else that it does.

Presentation – 8.7

Graphics - 9.1

Gameplay - 9.7

Sound – 8.2

Lasting Appeal – 8.5

OVERALL – 8.8