The Darkness II Message Board

Eric “e” Neustadter is the Xbox LIVE Operations Gaming Ninja. Yes, that’s actually his title. I’ve seen his business cards. He’s spent the last 11-and-a-half years working on Xbox LIVE, and his Gamertag--e--was the first one created. You can find him on Twitter as @thevowel, and you can hear him weekly on the Major Nelson Radio podcast.

The following are his Top 10 titles of 2012. These are not his 10 “best”, but the 10 titles that he had the most fun with during the year. To be eligible, the game had to come out in 2012 on the platform he played it on. They’re listed in chronological order by release date.

The Darkness II

Was The Darkness II really this year? It seems like it’s been longer--but Wikipedia says it was this year, so we’ll go with it. I enjoyed--and finished--the original and was excited to dive back into Jackie’s story. Do you enjoy comic books? If so, the ripped-from-the-comics story here is right up your alley. It had the magic quality that kept me from putting it down because I wanted to know what happened next.

The powers that you gain as you progress through the game are interesting and a blast to use. Objects in the environment can be utilized for some really entertaining kills (fan blades!).

Trials Evolution

I love games that inspire competition and smack talk between friends. Trials Evolution did that in SPADES. There was back-and-forth with my boss that just might wind up impacting my review someday. My Twitter feed was full of leaderboard screenshots going to and from @jack_p and others. The original Trials HD was an outstanding game, and with Evolution the developers addressed my only serious complaint--the difficulty spike. Evolution has a much smoother learning curve.

The fact that Trials Evolution was able to get me to play a single level OVER AND OVER AGAIN to improve my time by .01 seconds is a testament to the magic that they’ve captured.

The Walking Dead

I’ve read all the comics, and I’m an on-and-off watcher of the TV show. I’m a fan of zombie stories in general, yet I didn’t get around to playing the game until very recently. I’m not normally a big fan of this style of games, but TWD is so good that I didn’t care. You’ll be really upset by some of the choices that you’ll have to make, and that’s something special.

Spelunky

Spelunky was probably responsible for more rage and obscenities pouring from my mouth than any other game in 2012. I LOVE IT FOR THAT. I’m not normally one for intensely difficult games, but for some reason I’ve always had a soft spot for roguelikes.

Every time I die in Spelunky, I feel like it’s my fault and not the game being unfair. That’s a tremendous accomplishment in game design. All the information I needed to survive was on-screen, I just wasn’t paying attention or interpreting it properly. That’s vastly different than knowing what I need to do, but being unable to execute it (whether it’s because I have bad reflexes or because the controls are questionable). Except for the dark levels--SCREW THOSE.

Mark of the Ninja

I missed Mark of the Ninja entirely when it came out. I didn’t first play it until my Extra Life marathon, when it was a game I was sponsored to play. It turns out that I love it!

Mark of the Ninja has a spectacular style. The graphics and audio are both top-notch, and fit each other beautifully. I really love the mechanic of guards hearing you being more important than them seeing you. That’s what a ninja game should be all about. The controls are also really tight and intuitive.

FTL: Faster Than Light

I’m proud to say that I backed FTL back when it was on Kickstarter. A roguelike in space? Sign me up!

(It’s the second roguelike on my list--I thought 2012 was the Year of the Bow, but perhaps it’s Year of the Roguelike?)

FTL is the ultimate “just one more playthrough” game. You might not want to play it when you’re alone, as you can easily find yourself losing entire evenings.

Borderlands 2

What’s not to love? Borderlands introduced us to the amazing, colorful world of Pandora. It was a co-op romp unlike anything I’d played before. Borderlands 2 brings more of what I loved in the original to the table, but ramps everything up to 11.

Better graphics. Better controls. Even more insane weapons. Possibly the best co-op experience of this generation (although that’s a lofty claim and really needs a list of its own).

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Many times developers have revisited favorite games from my childhood. Rarely is it successful. Any developer considering doing such a thing needs to play XCOM:EU over and over again. Not only is it a brilliant game, but it’s faithful to the 1994 original at the same time.

I think the highest praise that I can give XCOM:EU is to say that I expect I’ll still be playing it years from now, much like I do with Civilization to this day.

Dishonored

Dishonored was my favorite new IP of 2012. It snuck up on me, too. Until seeing it demo’ed at E3 2012 I really didn’t know anything about it. I walked away from that demo excited and curious, and they delivered.

In Dishonored the developers really delivered on the promise of giving the player choice in how to play the game. Want to finish the level without being seen? You can do that. Want to go in weapons and powers blazing? You can do that too. The powers you build during the game are interesting, and the story grabbed my attention.

Halo 4

I admit it--I’m a Halo fanboy. I’ve been playing the franchise since before the first game launched in 2001, and I practically had a second job playing Halo 2 multiplayer when I wasn’t doing my real job. I’ve played all the games, I’ve read all the novels. I was really excited to get back to the story of Master Chief and Halo 4 didn’t disappoint me.

The single-player campaign sets up some great themes for the new trilogy. While the Covenant are still around, there’s a new enemy who you’ll be very familiar with if you’ve read the Greg Bear Halo novels. If you haven’t read them and love good sci-fi--do it!

The multiplayer is--in my opinion--the finest Halo multiplayer yet. It’s an evolution of what’s come before, and is the most fun I’ve had playing Halo online in years.

First-person shooter The Darkness II is out in the US, and tomorrow in the UK, and I’ve played it through to the gruesome end. Past the gruesome beginning, via the gruesome middle. How does all that grue hold up? Well, wipe away the lung and take a seat, and I’ll tell you Wot I Think.

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The Darkness II is violent. How violent? It has executions, but it has different categories of them. CataGOREies, if you will. This pair of trailers is part of series showing what you can pull off. Mostly limbs, it seems.(more…)

Our Adam was supposed to be taking a look at the Darkness II right about now for a last preview before release, but he’s caught the bubonic plague or something and is currently desperately trying to stop his remaining organs from falling out of his body. So, in lieu of that, I’ve had a go at the demo that appeared on Xbox BOO Live HISS earlier today. It is due on PC, but Xbox FOR SHAME Live THE HORROR has an exclusive for a week, so we have to wait. What, exactly, are we waiting for? Well, when my 360 stopped red-ringing and managed to stay functional for a half-hour, I endeavoured to find out, by way of a prelude to the PC’s own demo.

Immediate thought: it’s so noisy! It’s so sweary! It’s so violent! Does old man Doom know that his kids have turned out like this? After all that sound and fury, I want to curl up in a corner and read Jane Austen books until I feel civilised again.(more…)

What are you doing on Jan the 24th? Apart from celebrating the ten day anniversary of my 33rd birthday, I mean? I will be playing The Darkness II demo on Steam, weeping at how it’s only 11 and a bit months until I’m 34.(more…)

It’s all sleigh bells ring-a-ding-jingling and jolly little scamps scurrying about the place in search of the true meaning of Christmas in these latest trailers for The Darkness II. Except for all the evisceration, shooting-in-the-face and limb-lopping, which is what you’ll see for every single second that isn’t a series of logos angrier than Mr Angrylad Furyface from Hateville, Nebraskinforabeating. That actually leaves precisely no room for festive fun of the seasonal variety, but plenty for those who celebrate the cathartic kiss of axe and intestine. These are the murderous folk available in the recently revealed co-op mode.

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Not only will it be four-player co-op, but The Darkness II‘s co-op will be “interwoven” with the main story (although that story itself is NOT playable co-op). The co-operative missions apparently branch off from the single player plot and allow the players to explore other environments that are connected to the story of the core game. And there was me think it’d be a mode where we got to control one Darkness tentacle each! Tsk. You can check out the full co-op reveal trailer below.(more…)

The best thing that could have happened to The Darkness II was its delay to next February. Despite the generally good feelings most people had toward the original, Starbreeze-developed game, that title came out all the way back in 2007, and despite selling a million units, didn't exactly set the world on fire past its release. When publisher 2K Games announced a sequel, now under development by Canadian studio Digital Extremes, the general reaction most had toward the news seemed to be that of, "Huh, really?"

Had The Darkness II maintained its originally planned Holiday 2011 release window, it would have been decimated at retail. The word on this game was barely out there, coverage hadn't really spread beyond the most basic notions of its existence, and with so many high profile games on the docket for release this month and next, The Darkness II seemed poised to be one of those games that would be tossed to the retail wolves, and torn accordingly asunder.

Thankfully, that didn't happen, and with a February release now confirmed, The Darkness II might actually benefit from a bit of attention. It deserves it, too. While there are certainly a few quirky things here and there that fans of the original game might gripe about, for the most part my few experiences playing The Darkness II have reminded me of Starbreeze's game in all the most fundamentally important ways. It's dark, it's brutal, and it's got Mike Patton. What more do you need?

For those looking for a bit more of a breakdown than that, here are a few important tidbits regarding The Darkness II, its story, and its various mechanics.

This is Most Definitely a Darkness Sequel

I say this both in regards to the story, and the overall feel of the game. Despite the shift in developers and requisite change to Digital Extreme's own internal, proprietary game engine, The Darkness II feels very much like its predecessor. You may notice a few mechanical differences here in there, especially with respect to the way the guns feel, but that's not necessarily a criticism. The atmosphere of the game is definitively Darkness, evoking the vibe of the comic book and the original game quite well. Some have made note of the new art style, which uses something closer to a cel-shaded look, but it's not quite that. Rather, it's more of a line emphasis that is decidedly less cartoony than a typical cel-shaded game. It's understandable why some might be critical of the look in still form, but in motion, it actually looks pretty great.

You are again taking on the role of Jackie Estacado, still consumed by the overwhelmingly murderous force known as The Darkness, itself once again voiced by top-flight weird-voice-guy Mike Patton. The plot itself is a bit hacky, dealing with an appropriately mysterious "brotherhood" of "evil" that wants the darkness that lives inside you, and is more than willing to kill you and anyone else around you to get it. That said, when you're dealing with comic book demons and giant, sentient tentacles that feed on human hearts, hacky can be a good thing. Here, it mostly seems to be, with an appropriately bleak, curse-filled, and altogether hyperviolent tale that plays well off of the first one, at least in the couple of hours I've seen. Lots of games are dark and violent purely for the sake of being dark and violent, but The Darkness II seems to mostly find purpose for its aesthetic choices.

Get Ready to Climb the Skill Tree

The original Darkness made interesting use of its various combat mechanics by sheer virtue of combining typical gunplay with a pair of vile, gnashing, dragon-faced darkness tentacles that could perform a wide variety of attacks. It didn't necessarily need a ton more depth, because holy shit you have tentacles that can kill dudes.

Nevertheless, The Darkness II adds some depth to the combat mechanics via a skill tree system. Upgrades apply to everything from guns (more ammo, quick reloads, and such) to Darkness powers (special attacks, recharges, etc.) and the like. It's a fairly extensive list of abilities, which makes you wonder if you'll even get a chance to try all of this stuff out in one run through the game. Hopefully, the answer is yes.

You Have a Cockney-Accented Darkling Buddy Who Kills Guys and Sometimes Lets You Control Him

Well, not much else I need to say there, right? Indeed, Jackie's best buddy in his war against the brotherhood is a darkling who sounds like he just wandered out of a production of "My Fair Lady." This darkling buddy will show up at the most opportune times to help Jackie out, specifically by stunning and/or killing bad guys.

Elsewhere, you'll actually get to control this guy. Most of the game's puzzles, such as they are, revolve around light sources--anyone who played the first game recalls that Jackie's Darkness powers simply don't work when he's well-lit, sort of like Robert Smith. In one instance of the demo I played, a light source simply couldn't be destroyed via bullets, due to a sort of bulletproof cage surrounding it. In this situation, I mentally took over the darkling--because darkness powers, so shut up, okay?--and crawled up into the ventilation ducts to try and find the power source to shut down the light. While scurrying around the ventilation system, I could periodically drop down to execute an otherwise unaware bad guy, usually by slitting his throat in rather gruesome, gushy fashion.

These darkling sections are context sensitive, so you can't just control your little budy whenever you want. Hopefully those contexts go beyond "bullet-shielded light sources" as the game goes on.

You Will Hate the Bad Guy (in a Good Way)

The leader of the brotherhood is a reprehensible man. Gaunt, scarred, and sporting a haircut that looks like what was left of Hitler's head after he blew his brains out, this nasty, hissing creature is dead-set on getting the Darkness out of your body, and the only way for him to do that is to convince you to do it willingly. As you may have seen in some of the trailers, he does this by effectively trapping Jackie, crucifying him (literally nailing his hands to a cross), and showing him the many ways that Jackie has screwed up, even going so far as threatening to kill every member of Jackie's family until he gets what he wants. Unsurprisingly, this goes over poorly with both Jackie and the Darkness.

I seriously can't wait to murder that dude. You know it's coming.

It Doesn't Suck

Far be it from me to prognosticate a game's quality just based on preview sessions, but I sense good things for The Darkness II. Doing a sequel all these years later, with a new developer to boot, is a challenging proposition, but Digital Extremes appears to have built on Starbreeze's sturdy framework, and constructed something that feels like a proper follow-up. The shooting is good, the Darkness powers are appropriately violent, and the story offers more than its share of intriguing possibilities. Plus, Digital Extremes now has the benefit of a few extra months to fix bugs, tweak mechanics, and generally just make the game better.

Here's hoping it all comes together.