The Darkness 2: new clips explore enemies and abilities

The Darkness II developer Digital Extremes knows you hate Mondays, so it's released a bunch of clips filled with dark rage and violent enjoyment. Besides a three-minute rundown on the game's antagonists, The Brotherhood, there's previews of some of the special abilities on hand (um, or tentacle) to antihero Jackie Estacado. A 3.5-minute gameplay clip lets you see some of these elements in action.

Here's a little backstory and current-events pertaining to Jackie's enemies in The Darkness II, The Brotherhood. It's nice to know that the grandaddy of all secret societies is still a goal-oriented, future-focused outfit.

The Darkness II is about gunfighting and black magic. Of course, it's best when the two go together, such as through quad-wielded guns and environmental weaponry.

The Gun-Channelling ability lets you focus your Darkness powers into gunfire, resulting in attacks it'll take more than a kevlar vest to stop.

Creating a Black Hole during combat sucks your enemies out of existence and into... well, it's not really important. They're not there to shoot you any more is the main thing.

It's not wise to go up against an opponent with powers such as the dark energy-summoning Swarm ability; but really, if you're trying to win a gunfight by standing in the middle of a subway track and firing wildly up onto the platform, you're probably aware that things aren't likely to go your way, Swarm or no Swarm.

The Darkness II's Darkling serves the same purpose as Tails, Daxter or Roman Bellic: helping out during action sequences and being distractingly obnoxious the rest of the time. Sidekicks: God love 'em.

Finally, here's some gameplay footage of the game's Lucky Mannequin level, which we talked you though in our recent hands-on preview. Expect to see more between now and The Darkness II's February 2012 launch.

Oct 10, 2011