Lucid

I wanted to make a quick meantion of Yeaboing‘s Lucid.. the developer has temporarily made the game available on a pay what you want, if you want, scheme, for PC or Mac, over on their website.  Otherwise, it’s available on Steam.

Lucid is a match-all puzzle game, where you clear areas of coloured blocks by drawing a line through them with your mouse.  The painted blocks then disappear, with remaining blocks filling in the gaps and more dropping in from the top.

The game is really easy to pick up, and clearing large areas feels quite satisfying.. but there is a trick..

You can only clear an area if your line passes through every block in that area.  I thought I was being smart and setting myself up for a huge bonus, but instead trapped a large pile of blocks here!

Despite blocking myself in a bit, I was still able to clear other blocks, fill up the meter, and pass the level.

Lucid is a nice, casual game.. easy to play, lovely to look at, and rather relaxing.  The music is rather soothing too.. that’s also available to download in OGG format for the time being, on Yeaboing’s page here.

Some Love for The Valentine’s Bundle!

I just picked up the Indie Royale’s The Valentine’s Bundle, which came with five games and bonus DLC!  The first three games, Zeno Clash, Hoard and Lume, along with the bonus DLC for Hoard, all came with Steam keys 🙂

Zeno Clash, by Ace Team, is an action-fighting game in a strange fantasy world.. the visuals are colourful and varied.. but also a bit disturbing, with repugnant, deformed half-bird half-human creatures in a variety of bizarre, revealing outfits.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the game at first, with the initial cutscene of babies, mannequins and cooking pots, and then the tutorial where player-character Ghat is taught the basics of combat by the growly-voiced Metamoq.  The game seemed a bit weird, and I wasn’t sure whether I would get to grips with the melee combat enough to enjoy it.  I don’t normally play fighting games, and I found the timing of strikes and dodging a little hard to get right.  Fighting felt brilliantly violent, though, with a satisfying thud when I landed a blow 🙂

The story sees Ghat and flee the initial town after killing his “mother-father”, with the assistance of a friend who then faces exile with him.  There are flashbacks to previous fights with members of the crazy Corwid, and other combat lessons with Metamoq mixed in withthe journey.  More advanced fighting moves were introduced in these later tutorials, but it still seemed easiest to just punch the enemies over and over, and hope not to be surrounded.. many of the fights featured multiple enemies where it became harder to dodge blows.  I’ll be trying the gamepad when I next launch the game to see if I find it any easier that way.. I do want to see where this story goes 🙂

I already owned Hoard, by Big Sandwich Games Inc., but hadn’t picked up the DLC: Dynamite Roll! and Flame-Broiled SANDwich.  I wrote about Hoard when I got it back in May, and the game itself hasn’t been changed aside from the addition of the DLC here..

New buildings means more variety, and an extra heal from within the Bell Tower is nice if you’ve taken damage while trying to intimidate a town, but the bomb wagon is possibly the most noticeable addition from the Dynamite Roll! DLC, adding a wagon full of fireworks instead of the usual tithe wagon.  These wagons still carry gold, but if you don’t back away after setting it on fire, it will take off a large chunk of your health.

You can use the explosion to damage enemies too 🙂

The Flame-Broiled SANDwich DLC is a new tileset, with a new look for all buildings, units and terrain, and even the dragons have more feathery scales.  Tilesets can be swapped in the game options, under graphics.  Available tilesets are: normal, snow, desert and random, and there’s also an option to set the game to night-time, for a completely different look to the map 🙂

Lume is a point and click puzzle adventure, with beautiful paper and cardboard scenery.. the game was nominated for the IGF’s Excellence in Visual Art award.  When I first glanced over the contents of the Valentine’s Bundle, it was Lume, by StateofPlay, that really got my interest.

The story follows Lumi, who has gone to visit her grandfather.. but he’s left to find out why there’s no power in the nearby village.  In the meantime, he left lots of little puzzles for Lumi to figure out, with the goal of restoring power to the house.

The first few puzzles were fairly easy.. finding a broken solar panel and re-wiring it, for instance, was a matter of clicking the squares to rotate them and get all the lines to join up.  I quite liked this one 🙂

When it came to the later puzzles though, I found one in particular a little frustrating.  There is no hint system in the game, which meant looking for a walkthrough.. something I’m not keen on, as I often end up seeing the whole solution when I only wanted a quick pointer.  After dealing with that puzzle, I went on and completed Lume fairly quickly.. in part because it is a short game, but also because completing each puzzle led straight to the next and the next.

Lume is actually the first part of a larger story, with the next part currently in development.. progress can be followed on StateOfPlay’s blog!

Completing Lume left me with MagicalTimeBean‘s retro RPG defense games, Soulcaster and Soulcaster II.  Soulcaster was previously released on Xbox LIVE, followed by Soulcaster II: this is the PC premiere for both titles.

Soulcaster is the tale of a wizard who manages to awaken the undead in his travels.. fortunately, he also discovers the statues of three heroes, and gains the ability to summon them in order to assist him.  The heroes are: Shaedu, the archer, Aeox, the warrior, and Bloodfire, the alchemist.  You can summon an image of the heroes by pressing Q, W or E, for Shaedu, Aeox or Bloodfire, with as many summons as you have Summoning Orbs.. you can also summon three of the same hero if you wish.

Each have different strengths and weaknesses; for instance, the archer can do a lot of damage, but needs a clear line of fire, while the warrior has little range but can take lots of damage.  Positioning the summoned heroes matters; Aeox can be used to block the path while Bloodfire stays safe behind him and throws bombs to destroy attackers.

Enemies spawn as you progress through a level, sometimes coming from behind you, which can mean repositioning your heroes to face the oncoming attackers.  To reposition the heroes, you first need to recall them by pressing R; however, this recalls them in the order they were summoned, rather than allowing you to select just the one you want to move.  A shame, as otherwise the controls were great.

If one of your summoned heroes dies, you can re-summon him after a short delay.  Bloodfire explodes on death though, which causes damage to all around him including you.. after being backed up in one dungeon I managed to get myself killed this way!

There’s also a merchant on some of the levels, where you can spend all the gold you find laying around in the dungeon.  He supplies health potions and scrolls, and upgrades for the heroes’ gear, as well as the rather expensive Summoning Orbs.  You have room for up to five Orbs, which would allow you to have up to five summoned heroes in play at once.

This game surprised me.. I hadn’t expected it to be this good, and hadn’t expected to want to carry on playing as long as I did.

As a quick look at the bundle wouldn’t be complete without it, I also took a very quick look at Soulcaster II.. and found it very similar to the previous game.  I quickly found that I wanted to carry on playing, but ended up cutting it short because I really want to finish the first game before getting too far in!

For a quick look then.. just the first few levels.. this seemed to be more of the same gameplay, with the three heroes from the previous game along for the journey, and undead attackers springing up to try and ambush us.  The description of the game on the dev’s site promises new puzzle elements and a new upgrade system, so I shall look forward to those!  These two games really reminded me of my old Spectrum days 😀

The Valentine’s Bundle is available for a few more days yet.. go and get it, and show your love for the indie devs 😉

Fail-Deadly

I came across Josh Sutphin‘s rapid-fire RTS Fail-Deadly thanks to a high-score challenge competition on Eurogamer.  As it’s a Unity game, it runs nicely in a web browser without the need to download anything.. so trying it out is a no-brainer really 😉

The game has two opposing factions at war, and you.  You’re a sly third party with secret agents hidden within both factions, and your goal is the destruction of both factions!  Every five seconds, a building or power-up appears in the build queue, for you to deploy to the map.  It then belongs to whoever’s side of the map you placed it on, and produces units for that faction, or provides a boost for them.

This turns into a balancing act, as you don’t want either side to win.. instead, you want them to keep fighting until you can force them into nuclear war, where mutual destruction is assured!  The longer you can get them to hold out, the higher your score 🙂

However, in pursuit of a very high score, I found a slight flaw.  The boosts stop coming once each faction has three of each, which makes the game easier.. and the longer you last, the less each new item matters in the balance.  I guess chasing silly high scores wasn’t quite expected! 🙂

I also had a quick look at the developer’s blog, and I found this.. a quick overview of the techniques he used in making the game.  It’s not a beginner’s tutorial.. those can actually be found on the Unity forums, but I love it when developers share info like this.. the more people learn, the more awesome games we’ll end up with 🙂

Todd Howard’s DICE Keynote

I’ve just watched Bethesda’s Todd Howard and his DICE Keynote over on Gamespot.. “Why we Play, Why we Create”.

I found it rather interesting.. best practises in development, moods, why ideas sometimes have to be cut, and so on, all giving examples from the development of Skyrim.

Then there was the awesome “sizzle” video from Game Jam Week (21 mins in on the above video)!

For Game Jam Week, the team was told to make something cool for adding to the game.  They came up with loads of ideas, some of which didn’t make it to the game, but still.. so many brilliant ideas and improvements!

Magical and Ranged kill cams would have been great, and I’d have liked to ride a dragon or build my own home too!  I’m sure these and many more will be available soon through the Creation Kit, though 🙂

The Darkness – Completed!

After trying out the demo for The Darkness 2 last week, I was reminded that we have a copy of The Darkness for the 360..

Player-character Jackie Estacado is a mobster hitman, only just turning 21 and coming into a rather evil family inheritance: The Darkness! Following a botched job, a car chase and crash, and a rather fun shoot-out in a construction site, Jackie narrowly escapes his Uncle Paulie’s attempt to kill him in an explosion.  The mobsters were still coming after Jackie though.. when the Darkness decided to show itself in spectacular gory fashion!

The cutscene showed some awesome powers, and though most of them were locked to start with, I did get a few to starting off with: the ability to summon Beserker Darklings, a huge demon arm, and my favourite for most of the game, Creeping Dark!

Creeping Dark is a snake-like projection able to climb walls and fit through narrow gaps.. good for scouting, or sneaking up on enemies and launching at them for a fantastic, sudden attack, as well as for finding hidden collectibles.  Using this ability drains Jackie’s Darkness Energy, which means you can’t use it indefinitely.. though I still got a lot of use out of it by eating the hearts of those I killed as I went along!  Aside from a few clipping issues, I really loved this power 😉

After clearing away the mobsters, I found myself in the subway.  The different areas of town are all accessible via the subway, and there are quite a few people wandering around, some with quests, and some purely for ambience.  To start with some of the exits were locked; later I was able to take the train and wander through areas at will, to complete side-quests or look for collectibles.

I went to visit Jenny, Jackie’s girlfriend.. she had no idea about Jackie’s mob connections, or the fact that he now has demonic abilities.  Having just fought off some of Paulie’s men in the streets outside and eaten their hearts, sitting on the couch and watching TV felt a little surreal.

I soon left to meet the next NPC, Butcher, who was busy “cleaning up” at the back of a restaurant.  Butcher pointed me in the direction of Dutch Oven Harry, a drug dealer, who could be removed to disrupt Paulie’s operation.

Dutch Oven Harry’s den proved to be somewhat frustrating, thanks to the checkpoint positioned at the top of the stairs leading down to the secure door.  The henchman standing in for Harry had a rather powerful weapon.. if he didn’t kill me, his goons did.  The Darkness shield didn’t seem to make much difference to the damage taken by the goons, and I resorted to waiting in the shadows for them to come one by one.

Even after the intercom chat with Harry.. which felt like a natural break from the action.. a death anywhere within the den or in the carpark outside, threw me back to the checkpoint, with the whole thing to do again, including running through dialogues which rapidly became annoying.

A little disappointment followed too: instead of allowing me to vent my frustrations onto Harry, I only got to watch him fall to his death.

If I needed any more reason to dislike Paulie, I got it next as he kidnapped and killed Jenny! The Darkness prevented Jackie from doing anything but watch, and soon after, Jackie shot himself.

The next part of the game was set in some kind of hell, with World War trenches, bombings and blood red sky.. I fought my way out of the hostile German trenches and eventually found my way to the British trench, which felt horribly depressing as I’m sure it was intended to.

Wandering through the British trenches, I eventually came across Jackie’s great great grandfather, who admitted he had been the one who let The Darkness inside him, for it to then manifest in the males in the family as they reach their 21st birthdays.  He did give some clues on how to defeat it though, and told me where to find the Darkness Guns, meant to be able to control The Darkness.

While the guns seemed fairly good, I still preferred my Creeping Dark and went back to using that as soon as I was back in the “real” world.. which is where I ended up after going through preparations for an attack on the enemy German bunker.

Back in New York, there were some side quests to do; handling a few thugs, finding a lost brother, and playing chicken with a train for the amusement of a crazy old lady!

The main story, however, involved tracking down a briefcase full of evidence.. and then going after Eddie Shrote.  I learned the Black Hole power while going for the briefcase, and despite my love for the Creeping Dark, I switched to the new power as it was much more effective against multiple enemies.

I went to meet Shrote in the church back in Trinity Cemetary.. bringing the briefcase plus bomb.. and walked into a rather tough but fun fight with SWAT members and floodlights, before finding out how much of a psychopath Shrote is!  Demon arms plus briefcase bomb made an end of Shrote and myself.. again!

Back to the creepy hell world to finish off the bombardment of the German bunker.. though I was rather uneasy in this world, this time there was an on-rails tank ride, which was good fun as well as a break from the “make Black Hole; devour hearts” that the game had started to slip into.

I also confronted The Darkness, in what turned out to be a slightly confusing non-fight.. that is, until I figured out that I was supposed to not fire on him, despite the two attacking Darklings making it feel like I was supposed to fight.  Fighting him makes him stronger.. but accepting him was to control him.

Back to the real world, and this time for even bigger fights, one on a boat where I was to kill the Captain, and the second to go and help Aunt Sarah and a few of the other friendlies in a shoot-out with Paulie’s goons.

I approached both of the fights in the same way.. Creeping Darkness as far in as I could, and then Black Hole for those I couldn’t easily reach.. but once I got to the door of Aunt Sarah’s house, I was no longer able to use The Darkness.  Normal weapons just don’t feel as powerful as using The Darkness.. 🙁

Finally, I headed out to deal with Paulie.. in his mansion over on a little island.

I was joined by two Darklings.. and then many more as I got closer to the mansion and Paulie’s thugs.

Unlike anywhere else in the game, Paulie’s men were constantly spawning, though it took me a while to realise as I was approaching carefully, shooting out the lights and wanting to pick off all the men before going into the mansion.  My black holes made awesome piles of bodies here though..

Once I reached the doors of the mansion, I was frustrated to find myself relegated to spectator, as The Darkness took over and obliterated the front of the building, the men and even a helicopter.

I was given control back long enough to chase Paulie up into the lighthouse, and to shoot at him to injure him.  I would have liked the choice to leave him once he begged for his life, as each kill was another step towards being The Darkness’ puppet.. but the door was shut preventing me from leaving, and he eventually found a pistol and started shooting at me, which forced my hand somewhat.  For story purposes, though, it probably makes sense for Jackie to kill Paulie.. as he killed Jenny.

Having found a number of collectibles in the game, there were some cool bits of extra content available afterwards, including concept art and comics.  I like getting to see stuff like this 🙂

Indie Gala 2 – Quick Overview

I grabbed my bundle of shiny new indie games from the Indie Gala 2 yesterday, adding Greed Corp, Roboblitz, Critical Mass, Fortix 2 and Bunch of Heroes to my Steam library, and to my ever-expanding backlog!  So on to trying them out, in no particular order..

Fortix 2 is a reverse turret defense game by Nemesys Games, an indie developer from Hungary.  The aim of the game is to capture the castle by capturing the land bit by bit, while avoiding the dragons, cannons, and other monsters..

I tried out the Fortix 2 demo a while ago, and found the gameplay rather easy.. maybe too easy.  At the time I resisted buying the game in part due to that, but also because of the backlog.. so I was rather glad to see it in the bundle and have a bit more of an excuse to get it 😉

I’m happy to note that the full game includes more difficult enemies, including Blood Bats which travel along the base line, meaning nowhere is safe!  Maps start to contain hazards such as bat caves, which when captured release more bats to plague you.. the added challenge was certainly appreciated!

One small niggle, though.. the game takes your name from your Steam profile, with no option for renaming.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but with a character limit in place, it trimmed my name to “Sir CoffeeScam”!

Vanguard Games‘ Greed Corp is a turn based strategy, where you need to find the balance between harvesting the land for resources and preserving it. Each hexagon of terrain has a number of layers which collapse as you harvest the land.. these can also be strategically destroyed to throw enemy units and buildings into the abyss!

Combat between walkers is simple.. the larger force on each hexagon wins.. but when it comes to the buildings, you need to look at the layout of the map before doing anything!  Harvesters can be built on any land you own, then on each turn they generate resources out of the terrain they are on, as well as those around them.  However, this erodes a layer as well..

You can use these to sabotage your enemy by destroying the land under them; when a hexagon falls, any buildings or units on it fall too!

I only took a quick look at this game, playing through the tutorial to see how it all works.. I’ll be coming back to this one later, and maybe trying out the multiplayer: you can take on up to three other players across a range of maps 🙂

Bunch of Heroes was next: a four-player co-op shooter by NGD Studios.  Aliens are invading Earth, and summoning a Zombie army to assist them.. and the Bunch of Heroes are our last line of defense! 🙂

There are four playable characters in the Bunch, each with a different special attack:  El Comandante, the Cuban Commander, throws exploding cigars, while Jared Joe, the Quarterback, can make a touchdown for his special move.  Captain Smith, the Duke, can call in a bombing run to assist him, and Agent Liu, the spy, can set enemies on fire!  To use the special attack, you need to kill enemies and pick up the energy they drop.

There are three modes: Campaign, Survival and Timed Mode, with a few different scenarios.  Campaign mode consists of simple missions such as clearing enemies from an area, defending a point for a short time, and rescuing cheerleaders.  I found the cheerleader rescue rather funny, as you have to sling her over your shoulder and carry her..

Aside from screaming when you pick her up or put her down, the cheerleader dances at intermittent points while not being carried.  At one point I died while carrying her, and found it rather funny when she almost instantly started dancing at my corpse’s feet! 😀

The game is designed for four players, and as there are no AI bots, playing by yourself means being somewhat swamped.  After trying the first Campaign, I tried out Survival.. my first attempt was rather brief.. 😉

Roboblitz, by Naked Sky Entertainment, is a puzzle platform shooter featuring a little robot technician who lives aboard a Space Cannon Facility.  The Facility comes under attack from pirate robots led by the MegaNOAD, and Blitz has to get all systems up and running in order to fire the Space Cannon while fending off attacks from the various invading pirate robots.

You start off with only your grabby arms and a spin attack, which is fine for dealing with the Pirate Scouts, but ineffective on larger enemies.  Blitz can also gather collectible Upgradium, which can be used to purchase new weapons: the first of these is the EMP gun, which stuns enemies for a short time, but other weapons are able to destroy them.

I liked the variety of puzzles, spread across different areas which you can access at will, but I found the controls and movement occasionally quite poor.

Blitz’s item handling wasn’t as accurate as I’d have liked, and in getting close enough to pick some items up, I found myself bumping them away instead.  More frustrating was the jumping: in particular, I found jumping into one certain pipe in the Coolant Tower was more miss than hit, with a miss causing Blitz to get stuck on the edge, holding on by the arms.  After a few misses in the fan room, and having to go back to try again, this annoyed me enough that I decided to move on to the final game in the bundle..

Critical Mass, a 3d action puzzler by Manic Games Studios!  There are four modes: Classic, Survival, Meditation and Rush, but the core gameplay is the same in each.. destroy the mass by creating colour combos of four or more blocks.  Simple to understand, but difficult to master! 🙂

I tried Classic first, and quickly realised that this has the makings of an addictive game.. winning a level means proceeding to the next, slightly more difficult level, while defeat means retrying the level.  In this mode, the camera zooms in during play until the whole structure shakes and destroys itself.. producing a combo pushes the camera back and gives you just a little more time, while Survival ‘rewards’ a combo by throwing more blocks into the fray.  Rush mode times your efforts, with the object to clear the mass as quickly as possible, and Meditation is the calm, thoughtful mode where you can aim for the biggest combos on the board, without distraction.

The bundle came with music as well, and I have to note I don’t really listen to game music outside of the games themselves.  However, games without music wouldn’t be the same, so it’s good to see some support for indie music too 🙂

Come Home

I just played something beautiful: Come Home, an interactive and rather personal true story by independent developer Quick Fingers.

A beautiful but sad story.. I thought it was very cleverly done and the rain fits how this made me feel.

This was produced in just two weeks, using Unity as well as image stock and music.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo

The demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning came out on Steam last week.. an action RPG in a colourful fantasy setting, with four playable races and a fully customisable set of skills and abilities.

The game has been developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, but is published by EA, so on launching the game I had to log in to my EA account.  Doing so unlocked a few items for use in the full game, if I go ahead and purchase later, as well as some themed armour for Mass Effect 3.

Players start as a blank slate, risen from the dead thanks to the powers of the Well of Souls.  After dragging myself out of a pile of dead bodies, I went in search of the exit.. finding starter gear, some gnomes, attacking Tuatha Soldiers, and eventually, the gnome researcher working with the Well of Souls.

The Tower was eventually overrun by the attacking forces, and on the way out I had a final battle with a Rock Troll.. a chance to string a few moves together after being shown the basics of weapons and magic.

At this point, my character’s abilities with each weapon was the same, but I liked the dual-wield daggers best.  During the exploration part of the demo, I found some better-quality daggers with bonus acid damage.. and after levelling up and spending some ability points, I was able to make a rather nice dashing combo too.

Levelling up provided me with a skill point, which I used to improve Detect Hidden, allowing enemies and treasure to appear on the mini map, and ability points which I used to increase damage with daggers, as well as unlocking the Shadow Strike ability.  This was all personal choice: I could have chosen any combination of abilities from Sorcery, Might or Finesse to suit my gameplay.

Reckoning Mode was interesting.. accessible after filling up the purple Fate meter, this gave me extra power and allowed me to finish off weakened enemies with special, and rather showy, moves..

I got different moves each time, too 🙂

The demo was reported to contain a few bugs and glitches: the first of these for me was the worst, as I had no graphics!  A friend told me this was down to having a Radeon, and to turn off post-processing, which fixed it.  Elsewhere, I had the odd short freeze, as well as text which appeared and then disappeared too quickly for me to read it.  The developers were aware of this, and replied to a thread on NeoGAF.  Apparently the demo was created by a third party, from older code, and so the full game should be free of these.

Bugs aside, I think this demo was very well done.  It allowed me to see the basics of the game, get an idea of the forces at play, and then explore the world as I pleased for up to 45 minutes.  For me, this was long enough to see that I’d enjoy playing it.. though I will probably wait till I’ve cleared some of my backlog before picking it up.

Castle Story Devs talking Unity and Voxels

I’m watching Sauropod Studio‘s Castle Story out of interest in the game itself, but I’m also interested in the latest blog post on how they’re building it, using Unity3d.

I’ve always been interested in game design, but I’ve not studied it.. many technical explanations are inaccessible as they use terms I don’t understand, or refer to other concepts I’ve never heard of.

That’s why I was pleased to see this post, and an explanation which covered some basics.. hopefully there’ll be a few more of these too!

Demoing Darkness

This week, the demo for The Darkness II, by Digital Extremes and 2K Games, was released on Steam, Xbox LIVE, and later, the PlayStation Network.

Player-character Jackie Estacado is the don of a crime family, as well as the owner of a demonic power called The Darkness.  After the death of his girlfriend, Jackie has tried to control The Darkness.. but it wants out!

Jackie is also being hunted by others who want The Darkness for themselves, and the demo starts with a scene of Jackie being crucified and beaten in order to try and force him to give up his powers of his own free will..

Earlier events have Jackie going to a restaurant and meeting some girls before one of them is shot and a car rams its way through the wall, crushing Jackie’s leg and foot.  This results in Jackie himself having to be dragged away by a henchman while he shoots the enemies who have come to capture him..

This bit was on rails, but I found the shooting fun, with plenty of enemies appearing from all around.

Once outside, though.. that’s when The Darkness put in an appearance! 🙂

One of the new features of this game is quad-wielding: Jackie can use firearms while still manifesting powerful demon arms, unlike in the previous game where you used either The Darkness or guns.

The demon arms are powerful enough to pick up enemies, who you can then execute or throw away to their deaths; other items can also be picked up and thrown too.  I got extra points for impaling an enemy with a thrown bit of scaffolding.. very Bulletstorm 🙂

There are also bonus points for different executions.. and lifting an enemy into the air with one arm and then splitting them in two with the other does feel rather powerful!

Once out into the street, car doors can be torn off and used as a shield while you shoot it out, or you can throw the door itself at them if you prefer.  All these abilities are available via different buttons on the keyboard or mouse, and while this saved me from having to switch between active abilities, I found the use of middle-click strange and slightly uncomfortable.

In the first Darkness game, there were a range of Darkling types with their own unique abilities: Beserker, Gunner, Kamikaze and Lightkiller.  In this game there is just one Darkling with some importance to the story and gameplay.  He is able to help out in fights, interact with the environment around him, and scout out areas for Jackie.. more of an ally than expendable minion this time.

Certainly, he is rather unique.. as well as having an affected British accent, he’s wearing a Union Jack for a jumper and has a dead cat on his head..

Upgrades for Jackie’s various abilities can be acquired at various Dark Shrines.  Essense can be spent on various abilities or improvements via the talent tree, and I was pleased to see that you can spread the points around or specialise as you wish!  I’ll be taking the extra-strong demon arms, thanks 😉