Video Game Review: The Darkness II for Xbox 360

"The Darkness II" is a first person shooter that sets it's self apart from the crowed market. After many complaints by critics over the original game, it's sequel was able to address those problems and then some. You play as Jackie Estacado, the leader of  a mob who tragical lost his girlfriend and is now trying to rebuild his life again. The only problem is that "The Darkness" won't let him. "The Darkness" is an evil entity passed down to Jackie which allows him to have the ability to grow two evil demon arms and summon a creature called the "Darkling" to do his binding. These abilities play a major role in the gameplay as you not only have a large arsenal of guns at your disposal but you can use "The Darkness" to rip enemies in half, pick up environmental objects to perform fatalities, and to enhance your gun wielding abilities. This may seem like you're character is overpowered but there are a few elements that keep you from being too powerful which ultimately is the games main problem. First though, I'd like to point out elements that are good. I think that the gameplay is "The Darkness II" strongest element as you can shape the way how you want to play. The player can have an experience where he can rely only on the use of guns, darkness powers, or a combination of both. It not only changes the way you play the game but makes the game have high replay value. "The Darkness II" also uses an upgrade system to make Jackie stronger. The player obtains points by performing different ways of kill the opponents and then can spend those points to enhance certain areas such as increasing the amount of ammo you have, unlock new execution moves like summoning a black hole, and raising Jackie's defense. This may not be an original idea as it's been done before in many other games but it's nice to see that while you progress through the game, Jackie does as well. The player also has the option to start a "New Game +" which restarts the singleplayer experience while you still retain the powers you have earned from the previous playthrough. Also included in the package is "Vendettas", the multiplayer of "The Darkness II". Vendettas is an entirely new campaign in which four players can play online as Jackie's friends, which have both there own characters and abilities. While there wasn't much of a story and the characters seemed one dimensional, I still thought it was an enjoyable experience as I didn't experience any connection problems whatsoever. All of these features make up "The Darkness II" but there are a few things that keep it from being a fantastic game. First is the weakness of using the powers of "The Darkness" in both the singleplayer and multiplayer campaign. Apart from taking damage from bullets and objects, light also contributes. That's right, whenever you stand under a light, you take damage as the player can only use "The Darkness" powers in the dark. There will be moments where you'll been in a bright room full of enemies and you can't direct you're attention to these two things. The only way you can heal yourself is eating enemy hearts which really starts to become tedious by the time I was six or seven hours into the campaign. Also I felt I was constantly low on ammo I had to either pick of up different guns after every enemy I killed or  I had to run away. It really started to be frustrating as I can remember dying over and over again just because I didn't have ammo and enemies were too far away. Overall, "The Darkness II" is much better than the original and host a new bunch of content but at times is incredibly difficult.