The Darkness, if you don’t know, is a game based on a comic book series from Top Cow that has been around since 1996. You take on the role of Jackie Estacado again and this time there’s a whole new army of bad guys who don’t like you, so let the massive bodycount tally begin! This time round there’s a secret society, The Brotherhood, that wants to take the Darkness from Jackie and will stop at nothing to get it. Of course Jackie is still pining away for his true love, Jenny who dies some two years ago now. She was the only thing holding the Darkness back in Jackie and so he chose not to unleash its power, until now, when hit squads attack Jackie and his crew.

So enough about the story, I don’t want to ruin that part for those who have not yet played it. Let’s move on to the all important bits of the game.

Quad-wielding is a major piece of the puzzle that is The Darkness II. You’ve got Jackie’s two standard arms and then the two arms of Darkness that sprout out of his back and act like appendages. It’s a pretty cool system even if it does get overwhelming at times to try and manage everything. I think that’s mostly because humans aren’t used to having six appendages and so trying to actively use all four used for fighting gets messy. But you’ll figure it out, as I did. The Darkness arms aren’t just for holding weapons, in fact, they don’t hold weapons, per se. You can pick up bits of the environment and use them as shields or projectiles and honestly, there’s nothing more satisfying than impaling a distant enemy with a pipe or spike launched from one of the Darkness arms.

But the Darkness arms are more than that. You can also stun an enemy and then grab them with the arms and execute them to gain a bit of power, ammo, etc. There are different classes of executions which have different effects once you start buying talents (which are like skills in other games). Or you can launch at enemy at others. There are also certain areas in the game where you need to use the Darkness arms to break through a barrier or bust something open.