The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

On the Bombcast recently, they had this argument over whether Prototype 2 was Dumb, or dumb. Like, is it dumb as in stupid and silly and fun? Or is it Dumb as in completely stupid bullshit that’s painful to play.

Anyway, The Darkness 2 is dumb in the fun silly way, and I really enjoyed it.

I mean, the combat is pretty silly stuff? You shoot a dude. If you run up to them, you can slash them with your evil back snake, or grab them with the other evil back snake and then tear out their guts and get healed or whatever. It’s breezy and silly and pointlessly gorey and a lot of fun. It does get annoying near the end, where you’ve got dudes with big flashlights and guys with these stupid laser whip things that steal your weapon in the mix, but it never gets so annoying that I wanted to even dream of stopping.

It was kind of clever in a lot of ways too. Those eat a dude kill moves varied up by what button you pressed. Each one got you a different benefit. You could get health, or extra ammo, or recharge your evil powers. It made no sense, really, but it was pretty fun because it gave you more of a reason to want to rush in and do them all the time. “I could really use another blast of swarm for that shield dude, so I’ll run in and eat this guy for recharge power… and now my really good gun is out of ammo, so I’ll eat the shield guy I just stunned with swarm for ammo…” It made a nice flow to the combat.

Anyway, the story was pretty stupid. Very grimdark in a pretty silly way. It had this mob story too, that it was trying SO HARD to make “a thing” but it was really just this huge bunch of crazy stereotypes… and it was trying to convince me that maybe the whole game was a delusion as well, which was just silly. But it was, for the most part, an entertaining silly. I didn’t even listen to a podcast while I played it. It kept my attention. That says something, certainly.

The best parts, though, were the collectables. Hearing the crazy man, Johnny, describe the history of the collectibles in this game was just fantastic. It was, hands down, the best writing and acting the game has to offer. Very, very funny, and oddly relevant to the game as a whole. It almost made me want to go back and get all the collectables! But, not really. I mean, I hadn’t played a console game in forever because I’ve been so busy. I’m not that sort of player. But it made me search a lot harder for them while playing, to be sure.

This was a fantastic rental and a fantastic like 7-8 hour romp. I really enjoyed myself. What I played of the first Darkness felt stupidly complicated and I didn’t want to fuck with it. This was simple, but it did what it was trying to do well. I had fun. Give it a try if you want a light, fun shooter, for sure.