It’s been almost five years since The Darkness – one of the better Mafia-meets-supernatural-soul-consuming-dark-power games ever made – was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In The Darkness II, Jackie Estacado has had two years to brood over the events of the last game, all the while letting The Darkness fester inside of him and harnessing its power to become one bitter badass.
But the existence of The Darkness, and the transformational power it lets Jackie wield, isn’t a secret to certain groups that might have evil aspirations of their own. A new CG launch trailer was recently released by publisher 2K and depicts a confrontation between Jackie and the The Darkness II’s new facially deformed antagonist, Victor Valente.
Check it out below:
In addition to an apparent wanton disregard for pistol magazine size, the trailer stresses several of the ways in which Jackie has evolved since the last game. Following up on what we saw during our PAX East hands-on, his new “quad wielding” ability of simultaneously aiming pistols and controlling dark tentacles is on full display. We can also see how Jackie’s Gollum-like Darkling companion is useful for attacking enemies and interacting with the environment – in this case, shutting off a light switch.
It’s not noticeable from the CG graphics in the trailer, but The Darkness II features a unique, half-computerized, half-painted art style. The most recent demonstration of this appeared in the game’s demo gameplay footage. As seen below, developer Digital Extremes isn’t using that as a cop-out to skimp on the gore:
The Darkness was generally well-received by critics back in 2007, but it never reached the levels of commercial success akin to games considered major hits. In a strange way, though, this may have helped the prospects of The Darkness II going forward because 2K and Digital Extremes didn’t feel pigeonholed into developing a fast-paced release schedule for the second offering. In fact, the game was originally scheduled to release on October 7, 2011, but was delayed to it’s current target of February 7.
If you’re more interested in what The Darkness II has under its fingernails, be sure to check out our trailer and batch of screenshots from E3 2011. No, it likely doesn’t resemble your favorite modern first-person shooter, but if our PAX impressions mentioned earlier and E3 2011 impressions of the game bear any foreshadowing, we won’t be surprised to see ourselves consumed by The Darkness once again.
