The Darkness 2 notes

Mission 1
I start a new game on the default mobster difficulty.
A weedy looking man in a suit tells us about the Darkness. The darkness inhabits human hosts, and has had many throughout history. The men are usually mad bad and dangerous to know. Enter Jackie Estacado, a low level mafia hit man in the New York area.
Jackie inherits the Darkness, and the mafia kill the love of his life. Jackie then goes after them with the full power of rage, revenge and the darkness.
The man warns that the darkness always consumes it's hosts, and pretty soon there will be nothing left of Jackie.
Next we see Jackie telling us of his way to bury the darkness. It seems that Jenny's memory helps keep it at bay.
The game starts properly with Jackie entering a restaurant, he is speaking to various Mafia men. We have limited control and walk through the restaurant only able to look around and see the various sights.
Jackie is seated in front of two blondes in evening dresses. One blonde is shot by a sniper and the other is crushed by a car ramming through the restaurant window. We are under attack, it seems like an army is storming  the restaurant. We are hurt by the car, our leg badly damaged, we are pulled through the restaurant by a friend and have to shoot back as we are dragged.
We hide in the kitchen, gas can be seen leaking from a shot up cooker. A Molotov is thrown in and there is a huge explosion. Jackie survives, though he is even more badly injured. The darkness can be heard begging for release, a man with a cane can be seen watching, he tells a man to push Jackie further and leaves. We are taunted by the armed man standing over us. The darkness can be released if we choose, there doesn't seem to be any alternative. I unleash it and we watch as it produces two snake like tentacles with heads and teeth and tears the men in the alley to pieces. Jackie is healed and we speak to Vinnie, the rest of the assailants have fled down the alley.
down the alley it is tutorial time. First we can pick up specific objects and hurl them at people.
Left bumper pulls an object in, pressing it again lets it fly.
Right bumper does a slash with the demon tentacle, holding it and moving the right stick thrashes the tentacle in the appropriate direction. two enemies are presented from killing with each style. We see Jenny in the distance, a ghost, she is gone when we move closer.
We have to break open and electrical box and slash the wires with the tentacles.
The darkness loses it power in the light, we have to avoid areas of bright light.
Inside this shop we fight enemies, grabbing them with the tentacles and executing them.
Now out onto a street where we can mix it up and get a feel for the mish mash of styles.
A huge explosion knocks us into a building, we are trapped by a man, a darkling appears and kills him, this it seems is our little friend.
We are show how to buy skills from a blob of darkness we come to.
We come back out into the street and fight some more enemies, our own men are here fighting also. The enemies are retreating to the sewers.

Mission 2
We enter the sewers and fight through the tunnels onto the platforms where we have to avoid trains as well as the enemy bullets.
I move down a tunnel after enemies and a train suddenly come, control is taken from me and Jackie ducks into a doorway in the tunnel wall.
We now move through the crashed train and fight along the tunnels. Again I see Jenny in the distance, surrounded by light. As I move towards her a train hits Jackie. The darkness can be heard screaming that the host cannot die.

Mission 3
Jackie suddenly finds himself in a corridor with barred windows, there are numbered doors, it looks like it could a prison or hospital. A man is sitting on a chair acting oddly, his name is Johnny, he it the one who was narrating at the start of the game.
There is a man called Tony, he talks about vegetables, though Jackie knows him, he seems to have lost his mind.
The scene shifts and we are back on the streets, in an alley, brutally killing an enemy. Tony can be seen at the end of the Alley, the same man who only a second ago seemed to be talking about fruit. He appears appears more normal now to Jackie. Vinnie, the man who helped us at the restaurant is ok, we get into a limo and leave the scene.

Mission 4
Vinnie and Jackie are in an elevator, this appears to be Jackie’s house. Vinnie talks about the limping man, as if he was the weirdest part of the night. I am not sure if the henchmen know about the darkness or not, it seems fairly evident that we were in front of Vinnie earlier with tentacles sprouting from every orifice, if he doesn't know he is blind.
Anyway we are to go upstairs to our bedroom, here we have to light a candle for Jenny.
A woman called Aunt Sarah appears and chastises Jackie for hanging onto Jenny.
I have to now speak with Vinnie, Jackie asks him to find Johnny and bring him here.
We have to go and speak to Jimmy in our office, the conversations leads to the fact that someone called Swifty left the restaurant, just before the hit and it may be a lead. We are to go and find Swifty now, I head to the elevator to meet Vinnie.

Mission 5
I have to Speak to Jimmy, Swifty is in a poker game, the area is sealed off and we are alone entering the building.
Inside the pool hall we fight our way upstairs, Swifty leaves in a hurry as we enter and we have to chase him. He escapes outside and into the streets, where we continue to chase.
Eventually we come to an area where Swifty gets into a large ball and chain wielding crane.
This is the first traditional style boss battle. We are hemmed into a square area, with the crane aiming the demolition at us. We can shoot the crane for very limited damage or hurl things at it. The darkling gives us propane tanks which take quite a bit of health away. We also have interference ran by thugs who pour into the area with us. Once the health is worn down, we have to climb up the collapsed crane out of the area.
Moving onwards we arrive in a diner, Jenny can be seen in the distance, this time she comes over and starts talking to us rather than vanishing like a ghost.
She asks us to sit down and talk, she appears to be acting as if this was the past. Though she also seems to acknowledge that this isn't real. We dance with her, then try and kiss her. Jenny moves through a door into the kitchen area, as we follow the vision ends and we are in the now derelict diner alone with the darkness.

Mission 6
We have to climb up on top of some rooftops now, still chasing Swifty.
New here are generator lights, we can't shoot out the light, why I don't know, though we can break generators that are nearby attached by wires.
We now movie inside the warehouses and fight the enemies.
Eventually we get to Swifty, he starts to tell us about the man who hired him to attack us. He thinks that they are weird, he tells us about the leader who met at a brothel called the Brimstone club, which looks like our next target. Before he can tell us any more, and it looks like he was about to, the darkness tentacles kill him.

Mission 7
Back at the mansion we have to speak to Johnny, the man we have kidnapped to speak to from earlier.
We speak to some henchmen, who have been to the Brimstone club checking it out.
I speak to Vinnie and he tells us about a girl called Venus who we should speak to at the Brimstone club.
Johnny asks us where we got the envelope stuffed with cash that we picked up from Swifty's corpse. He won't tell us why he is asking.
I find myself in the brothel car park, inside two bouncers frisk us with a metal detector, we are allowed inside.
We move into the main area of the brothel and find Venus fairly quickly. She asks us to follow her to her room, we move through the brothel seeing some fairly explicit scenes. Venus tells us that the hunchback who now runs the place is holed up on the third floor which is closed off to the girls. One girl was taken up there and hasn't been seen since. She gives Jackie a gun from her room and we are off to kill everything and everyone.
Outside we start moving through the corridors killing the bouncers. We come to a locked door. There are two large generator lights barring Jackie from getting to the electricity box and opening it. The darkling can help it seems. It tells Jackie to close his eyes and we are now controlling it as it enters the vents.
Moving through the vents we see new enemies and they are talking about the darkness and it getting close. The darkness itself seems to not want to go into the next area.
We jump down from the vents and it appears that these men are kitted out like soldiers and appear to be some kind of Darkness worshipping cult.
The darkling can kill and climb pipes into the roof space. We move down again into a room with a fuse box and break it. This allows Jackie to reach the electricity box and move onwards.
Inside there are maps and pictures of Jackie and everyone he knows. The Darkness warns him to go no further.
We move into the fights with these new enemies, it is fun, better weapons here, ump machine guns, riot shields etc.
After fighting for a while we are trapped, suddenly in a small area a pile of lights are turned on and enemies swarm in. The Darkness can't help and we are overpowered.

Mission 8
Jackie wakes to find himself being nailed to a cross, the hunchback is there, disfigured, reminiscent of Hitler, walking with the use of leg braces. There is another man with him, who seems to be his henchman or lover. The hunchback explains that the Darkness isn't his to keep and that  Jackie can't control it anyway. The host must give up the Darkness of his own free will and the hunchback appears to have put some work into trying to set this plan in motion. There is an ancient looking lamp set up in front of Jackie and it seems to be siphoning off the Darkness's power, it is strangely quiet, possibly subdued.
The hunchback points us to a video screen, we can see one of his men is in our mansion, he licks the picture of Jenny and taunts us. We have to choose which of the henchmen to die, I don't care either way, I can't even remember seeing them earlier.
One is shot on our choice. Jackie refuses to give in, the hunchback order the death of everyone in the mansion. He then sends a man in to beat us.
Jackie wakes, it is dark.
We are free, though there are visual cues that this isn't real. We break through a glowing wall into a tentacle filled corridor, then through another into hell. We can see Jenny bound by tentacles. The Darkness reveals that is has her soul. Back in the room the hunchback is still trying to persuade us. The Darkness appears to be offering us Jenny's soul for preventing the hunchback from taking it out of Jackie.
We are to resist, Jackie begins to pull his hand through the nail, making the hole in his hand huge, he frees one hand and then pulls out the other nail and jams it into the head of the man punching him. Jackie then grabs his gun and starts shooting. The hunchback and his friend get away, we hear them telling the men to torch the brothel and kill everyone in the Mansion. Jackie passes out again and is healed by the Darkness.
We wake and have to run through the burning brothel to the outside world.
We now have to make our way back to the mansion. The darkness is adamant that we should get the siphon from the Hunchback.
We move through the rooftops fighting the brotherhood as they seem to be called. Eventually we come down into a garage and meet our men.

Mission 9
We come to the basement car park and have to fight our way to the elevator to the mansion penthouse or whatever it is.
The enemies here now have light grenades and portable spotlights.
Johnny tells us that the Brotherhood are a very ancient secret society that exist to control the Darkness. The darkness can be contained only in human beings, however, the siphon of the angelus, is a device apparently built by this angelus that can keep the darkness trapped inside it. The darkness does not like to be trapped and controlled in this fashion.
We fight through the mansion, heading for the bedroom and the panic room, where aunt Sarah is hiding. The fight is fairly tough here, there are new enemies with shields that need to be taken from them before they can be harmed.
At the panic room door we find Aunt Sarah and the hunchback henchman kills her in front of us. We are then grabbed and shot in the face.

Mission 10
Jackie comes to in the asylum again, this time Vinnie is the nurse talking to him about taking his medication.
We are now free to roam, everyone Jackie knows seem to be here, either as a patient or a nurse. We are to go to the dispensary to take our medication, then we are to go and speak with Dr. James. Dr. James who is actually Jimmy, tries to tell us that the voices in our head aren't real and that the elaborate delusions or running a crime family and having a demon in our head are just fantasies.
we are now to go and see Nurse Jenny. Jenny appears to be a nurse in this reality.
She tries to help us, Jackie can't take this and goes ape. Vinnie and another nurse try and sedate him. Johnny jumps in and we now have to run through the asylum to the outside world.

Mission 11
Jackie wakes in his mansion, Johnny is there. It seems that the Darkness took three days to heal Jackie after he had been shot in the face at point blank range by the Brotherhood henchman.
I have to now go and see Jimmy and then we are off to Aunt Sarah's funeral.
As we approach the funeral we have another glimpse of the asylum, and Johnny tells us that none of this is real.
We speak to Vinnie in the church yard, he seems unsure about what is going on, asks us if the enemy is human or not. We move on and speak to Jimmy at the graveside. Suddenly the Brotherhood man named Bragg appears, he is firing what look like darkness balls of energy, one his the coffin and spills Aunt Sarah's corpse out on the ground. We now have to fight him.
After shooting him a bit he moves off, and enemies arrive to kill. we now move through the graveyard fighting. We meet Bragg again, he jumps from mausoleum to mausoleum employing some kind of supernatural power. We move on through the graveyard some more, encountering a new enemy with a whip like power that takes guns from us.
Eventually we face Bragg down. He jumps around and fires purple and black balls at us.
There are also some soldiers to run interference. A car comes in and it's lights provide problems for the darkness.
eventually I wear him down and kill him. We interrogate him and he tells us that the hunchback is apparently at a place called Hellgate fields.

Mission 12
Back at the mansion we have to speak to Johnny, who tells us that the brotherhood likely have another trap in store for him at Hellgate fields. He tells us that the Angelus is a creature of light, and the exact opposite of the darkness, the two have been fighting forever. The angelus uses a female host, I already know that Jenny is going to be it's host somehow. We have to speak to Jimmy and Vinnie at the elevator, then we set off on the mission. We are going alone, telling Vinnie and the boys to lie low.
Hellgate fields is a funfair, We see Jenny leading us onwards, showing us the way, if she is the angelus, then she is really our enemy. The darkness tells us that it is deceiving us, it knows, even if Jackie doesn't. We come out into the main funfair, and wander around, it is derelict, though there are lights on that we need to break.
I come to a stall, led their by Jenny, we have another flashback, Jenny wants us to win her a blue bear on a shooting stall, I play, but don't win. The flashback ends and the hunchback can be heard, i think his name may be Victor.
We now have to fight a horde of enemies in the funfair and move into a tunnel.
He we have to break some small light puzzles and break a generator box to progress to the next area.
We now have to move through another part of the funfair fighting to get to another scene with Jenny. Here we shoot at another stall and win her the bear, she tells us that she loves us.
More enemies fill the area.
Some of the enemies here are moving around with the supernatural power that Bragg had.
I come to a gate, Victor can be seen moving around on the periphery of the fights here.
The gate needs to be blown up with Propane, we need to get onto a roof.
Here we need to shut down lights. The building across the road suddenly fills with soldiers and we have to go in and work though it. Once out onto the roof we move to a point where the Darkling drives a tanker at the gate and breaks it down.
We follow Victor to the Castle of Horrors.

Mission 13
Inside the castle of Horrors we find Jenny who takes us on the ride itself. We move around the ghost train, with the occasional enemy appears to shoot at.
We finally get to the end of the ride and see an iron maiden. Jenny can be heard from inside it. It is a trap, we open it and victor appears and slams us into it. He tells us that this relic can hold the darkness until the siphon drains it from us. We will then be burned alive by the relic.
Jackie finds himself in the asylum again.
We find victors henchman blocking the way to Jenny's office. We are to find a weapon to get past him. We have to move all the way back to our room and find Dolfo, he tells us that there are weapons in the janitors room. I find the Janitors room and it is locked. A man appears and  speaks in the same way as the darkling, calling us monkey and lumbering around like a chimp. He may be the janitor. Inside the office he tells us to close the door and then changes into the darkling, we are now in vision land, the corridors behind us are distorted and hellish. The darkling is with us and it tells us that the darkness can't hear us because it is weak. The darkling explains that the asylum is a place created by the darkness to keep us from going to hell while it puts us back together. The darkness also wants to keep Jenny from Jackie while he is in this place, it seems that the darkness does hold Jenny's soul. The darkling tells Jackie that he can't let the darkness be taken from him is he ever wants to see Jenny again. The darkling can help us, we can use it in the real world, though this means that Jackie finds himself in the iron maiden in extreme pain while the darkling runs around loose in Victor's mansion.
Using the darkling we have to get to the basement. We move through corridors and tunnels, swiping at electricity boxes and enemies to progress. If the darkling is caught in the light for more than a few seconds it dies.
I come to an electricity box as indicated and after cutting the wires a cut scene starts. Jackie is in the iron maiden and the darkness is taken from him. It is trapped in the siphon. Peevish is to be the new host, Jackie is to be burned alive. Victor and Beamish leave. Back to the darkling and we have to save Jackie.
I make my way through the tunnels avoiding the searchlight bearing enemies that have appeared. I find Jackie and free him. Getting back into control of Jackie, the darkling suggest running for it to Vegas now that they are both free. Jackie of course wants to save Jenny.
We move on following the darkling through the tunnels. We find that this is actually Jackie's father's house. We find his office and an old gun.
We fight through some henchmen and then find Victor and Peevish, Victor impales Peevish with the siphon and he absorbs the darkness. He now attacks us with darklings and the green fly attack. After killing him, which is fairly easy, even Bragg was a harder boss to fight, we get the darkness back. The darkness isn't right though, while we have power, the actual demon is missing. We must hunt down Victor and free the Darkness to save Jenny's soul.
We move through the mansion fighting until we come to a large hall, we were here earlier, with the darkling, though the lights were out.
Victor appears and tells us that our father was an expert on the darkness, after all the Estacado line have been hosts for the darkness for many generations. He wanted to save his son from having to be a host, and did a deal with the Brotherhood to find the siphon in return for giving them the darkness. It took the brotherhood twenty years to find the siphon, and now they want what is owed. Victor tells his men to kill us.
We now have to survive against a few waves of varied henchmen in the hall. we then move on chasing victor into more areas of the mansion.

Mission 14
We follow Victor up into the loft of the mansion for a boss battle. Here we have to fight him, he uses darklings, bolts of dark energy and blades of dark energy. He also spawns in henchmen. Once he is worn down the Siphon falls to the floor and Jackie picks it up.
Jackie tries to trick the darkness, to kill himself with the siphon. He wakes in the asylum. Jackie keeps on ranting, trying to get away from the nurses and doctors. A new Doctor appears, Dr. Vick, who is actually victor, which doesn't help Jackie calm down, the more he rants the more they try and sedate him.
We are told to go and see Jenny, as we move to her office, the darkling appears and leads up to a staircase, this leads out onto the roof of the asylum and we come to a ledge. Jenny and Dr. Vick try and talk us down off the ledge. We are given a choice, stay with Jenny or jump. I choose to jump. This makes the darkness scream and we land in hell.
We now find ourselves fighting in the hell. demonic humanoids and darklings fight with us.
Jenny can be seen, however, I  don't think it is actually Jenny's soul, I think it is the Angelus, somehow held captive by the darkness. We fight towards it and have to release it's bindings. It keeps getting taken away further away by the Darkness tentacles.
I manage to free the second binding and Jenny is free. A shockwave blows Jackie off his feet. Jenny appears as she was, bloodied and wrapped in white rags. She gives Jackie a hug and tells him that they don't have much time. The credits roll.
After the credits, we are back holding Jenny. I get the option to let go. When we do Jenny moves back and tells Jackie she is sorry. She then transforms into the Angelus, who escapes hell into the world, leaving Jackie and the darkness to rot.

9 hours
290 Achievement points for one play-through on normal.

There appears to be more, in the form of a co-op campaign. You can play the vendettas missions with others, or take them on solo.
I am only given the choice of one of four characters it seems. A Japanese man named Inugami. He wields a sword and gun, has no tentacles, but seems to have quite a few darkness powers, also the aversion to light.
I am playing a sort of side story mission where Vinnie sends us to find Johnny, which happened off screen in the main story.

Vendattas Mission 1
We arrive at a junkyard, have to clear all the enemies from around it. We then find Johnny, have to survive some waves and the mission is over.

Vendettas Mission 2
Johnny sends us to search for the source of Dark energy at the docks.
We enter a warehouse and find a large open factory type area. We have to kill lots of enemies. We now have to pull a few switches to progress to the next wave. Once two buttons and two switches have been pulled a darkness artifact is revealed in the printing press. seems the bad men were using it to print symbols on paper. We take the artifact and the mission ends.

Vendattas Mission 3
We go to the projects looking to find the man who had the artifact. We have to fight our way through trouble, then meet Dolfo who gives us a suitcase like package.
We now have to make our way back, plant a bomb on Luigi's trailer and blow him up.
We now finish him and get a relic. The hell creatures attack and then the mission is done.
The relic leads Johnny to the brotherhood.

Vendettas Mission 4
We come to a warehouse and have to clear it out, then take a lift. I move through the roof areas then down into a car park. Cedro, the target is hiding in a television van, we have to kill his henchmen, then face him in a boss battle. Cedro is a difficult boss, only because he has a lot of health and we have very limited ammo at the scene, meaning you have to hit and run to regenerate health using melee attacks.

Vendettas mission 5
We are now following the lead of the television van to a station where they may have the spear of destiny. We fight our way through a parking garage until we see Graves through a window. More enemies arrive and we then have to pursue Graves. going up in a lift we enter an office type environment. I fight through this and then out onto the roof where a helicopter with Graves in it is taking off. This mission proves a little too difficult here for a single player, highlighting that this really isn’t a single player game, designed more as a co-op experience.