The Darkness II Message Board older than one year ago

What mad form of ultraviolence will I be introduced to next, I often wonder. This time it’s quad wielding in The Darkness 2, making me realise it wasn’t long ago that dual wielding was an exciting prospect thought to be possible only in John Woo films, but then Rise of the Triad came along with its guns akimbo and ludicrous gibs. Judging by this new video, The Darkness 2 won’t disappoint on either the gore or the preposterous death-dealing fronts. With a gun in each hand and murderous tentacles sprouting from his flesh, Jackie Estacado can rip the door off a car and cut a goon’s face off with it while firing two automatic weapons, or ensnare an unruly gangsster, casually lob him into the air, and then fill him with bullets before he hits the floor. If you don’t believe these things are possible, watch and learn.

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If you’re one of those oxygen-wasting oiks who feels compelled to snarkily observe upon the relative advanced age of things you see on the internet, a) do be quiet b) team RPS has been busy attending the EG Expo and then The Wedding of Walker so we’re still catching up with all the gameosity that bobbed to the surface of this endless electronic ocean over the last few days. Next is a story trailer for 2K/Digital Extremes’ demonic manshooter/manmangler The Darkness II. Which reminds me, I still need to write a preview about this based on what I saw of it at Gamescom. My notes mostly just say ‘IT’S SO NOISY’ repeatedly, though. Then there are some damp, streaky marks that I can only imagine are tear-stains. Which is odd, given I wrote those notes on a laptop.

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If in doubt, alliteration. Don’t worry about the terrible harm it might wreak upon the English language – your reward will come in pun-heaven. Or hell. So hard to tell the difference these days.

Anyway, just a quickie for you, missus: spooky-tentacle ‘em up the Darkness II has been delayed. It’s slipping from this October to February 2012.

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Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend.

The Darkness, Starbreeze’s 2008 shooter, was unusual in many ways. Though it was violent, it wasn’t defined by this violence. It had a strong sense of place, a grimly entertaining story and a variety of gameplay. Anyone who sat with the protagonist’s girlfriend for the last time and watched To Kill A Mockingbird until she fell asleep on his/your shoulder couldn’t fault the fineness of the storytelling. The many side-quests you could get in the NYC underground station (jumping on the tracks to grab nickels, scaring off punks) cleared it up; this was a very pure FPS-RPG, guns and conversation perfected, unusually without compromising the shooter or the story.

So, so much for the original; how about the sequel?(more…)

It has started. The flood of E3 trailers has begun. Below you can watch the first in-game trailer for The Darkness 2, which features people being brutally evisecarated by black tentacles. There’s also a lovely scene where the protagonist is being nailed to a door or something. It’s not pleasant. Fortunately I’ve also embedded a video of a cat cuddling a sleeping kitten, just in case you require an antidote to seeing metal spikes being hammered through your hands.(more…)

Just after Brad and I finished speculating about what Starbreeze might be working on next during this week's Bombcast, the Swedish developer has started talking a bit more about its mysterious Project RedLime.

As pointed out by Internet sleuth superannuation, Starbreeze is a publicly traded company in Sweden, which means the developer must issue financial statements on a regular basis. Given Starbreeze's main source of income is games, its latest statement does talk a fair bit about Starbreeze's gaming plans.

What little we know about Project RedLime involves continued rumors about a Syndicate reboot. The Syndicate rumors stem from the original project announcement, which called for Electronic Arts and Starbreeze to collaborate on something "to reinvent one of EA's most acclaimed classic franchises."

EA and Starbreeze have apparently decided to expand "scope" of Project RedLime. I've used Google to translate Starbreeze's Swedish-laden financial documents, by the way, so excuse the garbled English.

"The reason for our joint decision is above all that we wish to implement a number of creative enhancements, we want simply [to] do an even better game," said CEO Mikael Nermark. "It also requires an expansion of the project because of the high staff turnover during the autumn and winter, as we have previously reported. It has taken time and resources to recruit key employees, while it takes time for new developers to come into the project. We have now secured the [manpower for] RedLime."

It's still unclear when we'll hear about Project RedLime, but hey, E3 is just a few weeks away...

In addition to Project Redlime, Starbreeze has been self-funding a downloadable game.

"The gaming industry is [in the] midst of an interesting and tumultuous phase of great changes [for] both publishers [and] game developers, as well as in the distribution chain, with more focus on including downloadable games," said Nermark. "We must, of course, adapt to changing market conditions. We will continue to do AAA games and we should more often work with new business models for small downloadable games."

Makes sense. Unfortunately, nowhere in the document does it say Starbreeze has decided to hijack development of The Darkness 2. Having just finished playing The Darkness, that really bums me out.

A teaser trailer for Digital Extremes’ sequel to Starbreeze’s 2007 comicbook man-murdering game The Darkness has been released. Although the brief trailer shows nothing of the game whatsoever, we do know that this iteration will be a little more comicbook in its presentation, apparently using techniques similar to those of Borderlands to create a lovely “graphic noir” world. That said, you can only just about make out the sort of outline effects they’re talking about in the (crappy) images that have been released so far. The game will also feature “quad-wielding”, which – although appropriate to the character – makes me do a bit of a facepalm with its FPS one-upmanship (“Well our guy has FOUR ARMS!”). Other information: it’s out in October.

Teaser below!(more…)