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At Gamescom, Digital Extremes gave us another taste of what's in store for Jackie Estacado in The Darkness II, and holy shit, it's ultra-violent. We're shown the Hellgate Field amusement park level where Jackie is off to track down some good-for-nothing named Viktor and his gang called The Brotherhood. This new pack of enemies aren't the usual fodder that Jackie and his death dealing tentacles are used to, no sir. These guys know that throwing in flash grenades, turning on lights and generally making the place look less bleak with any illumination they can find, removes the darkness powers from the moody hero.

Even though it was just revealed a few weeks ago, The Darkness II is already far enough to have a playable demo on the PAX East showfloor. The hands-on session directly mimics the events we saw and detailed here, so this preview will focus on the actual controls and how the game's heart-chomping tendrils affect the action.

At one point Jackie’s tentacle arms bit into the legs of an enemy and ripped him in half. “That’s called the wishbone,” a developer at Digital Extremes said with a smirk, “It’s one of many finishers we’ve added to The Darkness II.” In all honesty, he could have stopped right there, given us the release date, and sent us on our way. We’d seen all we needed to see. But they didn’t stop—they kept showing more, and the more we saw the more excited we got...

Our first real glimpse of The Darkness II was, interestingly, of darkness – along with a strange, rhythmic ringing sound. Someone started talking, and the dark faded away as Jackie Estacado – the reluctant, super-powered gangster who was fused with the demonic Darkness entity in the first game – opened his eyes to see the source of the ringing: a railroad spike was being driven into his own left hand.

At the beginning of our hands-off demo with The Darkness II, Jackie is crucified and held captive by some bad people who not only know what he is and what he’s capable of (insight the first game’s villains didn’t have until it was too late), but who want him to voluntarily give up the Darkness so they can take it into custody and put it to use for their own ends. As their leader (a man with half a face) came closer, Jackie recognized him as “the cripple from the restaurant” – and after he’d talked for a bit, the scene faded into a flashback from earlier that night...

Just last week we saw new areas and powers in The Darkness II, reported by Nathan Irvine as he toured through Gamescom. This week, at PAX Prime 2011, 2K Games opted to show the US crowd the same demo it revealed at PAX East earlier this year – well, almost the same. While the events were identical to March’s preview, a few new gameplay elements were introduced that hint at Darkness II’s improved combat...

When we caught our first glimpse of The Darkness II back in March, we didn’t exactly see Jackie Estacado in his finest hour. Oh sure, he’d become a top crime boss since we’d seen him last, amassing his own “family” after being possessed by a demonic force known as the Darkness in the first game. And that same demonic force still allowed him to tear a bloody swath through any thugs that stood in his way, now more gruesomely than ever.

However, it hadn’t been enough to keep him out of the hands of a menacing group called the Brotherhood, who – when our very first demo started – were in the process of nailing Jackie to a huge wooden cross. Our latest hands-on with the game took us back to that scene, showing how Jackie wound up in that awful predicament – and what happens to him afterward...

With an ancient power like the Darkness on his side, Jackie Estacado may seem like an unstoppable one-man army, but everyone can use a little help now and then. That’s where Vendettas, the just revealed four-player co-op mode for 2K's The Darkness II comes in. Our hands-on impressions...