The Darkness 2 Vendettas Co-op Preview

The Darkness has multiplied, from two to four.

Excuse the corny lede, but you should all know that 2K Games and developer Digital Extremes showed off the new Vendettas multiplayer co-op mode for The Darkness II last week at an event in New York.

The Vendettas mode is four player online co-op (though at the event we only got a chance to play with two players) and is set around missions that run parallel to the main The Darkness II storyline. Jackie Esctacado is in charge of a crime syndicate in New York City, and while he's busy trying to bottle up The Darkness and fend off his enemies, four other souls are utilizing their Darkness powers to stomp out enemies of their own and retrieve ancient artifacts.

Vendettas allows you to choose one of four characters: Inugami, a mentally unstable Asian assassin, Shoshanna, a Mossad agent with serious gun skills, Jimmy Wilson, a Scotsman wielding an axe and an accent and J.P. DuMond an African-American doctor that practices the dark arts. The characters stick pretty close to stereotypes, but it seems like there's room for them to grow and develop.

Each character has the ability to use guns, their darkness powers and a combination of guns with melee weapons. I had the chance to play as both Inugami and Jimmy Wilson, and enjoyed the balance of melee and gun play. Inugami wields Kusanagi, a generations-old samurai sword filled with Darkness power, while Jimmy Wilson has an axe fused with dark essence that you can throw into enemies and retrieve. The mix of melee with guns gave Vendettas a solid variety of long-distance and close combat kills; as Inugami I enjoyment with both rushing around, slashing and stabbing people and aiming down some sights to take down guys that were hitting me from a distance. 

If all else failed, I could grab the currency I earned from killing enemies and spend them at Darkness portals where I could develop my characters skills and stats. Fully powered (at least as fully powered as I could get during this short demo session), there wasn't much that could stand in my way.

Missions in Vendettas were mostly based around the "kill everything in sight and flick some switches" idea, but there were some fun moments of enemy waves and location defenses that mixed things up. Enemies aren't always human either; in multiple cases after dispatching a few waves of Mafioso thugs, I had to take down demons and other dark creatures that were desperate to get the artifact in my possession.

It's been several years since 2007's The Darkness, but early next year we'll get a chance to return to the Top Cow's world of thugs, revenge and lots of street lights. We'll know more about Vendettas and The Darkness II as we get closer to the February 7 launch date, so keep a look out for future impressions and play sessions.