I was fortunate enough to review Zoetrope’s first Darkness Within offering, which at the time I declared to be my favourite HP Lovecraft-inspired video game. All I can say is that with the arrival of this fantastic sequel, that’s no longer true.
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage sees the player reprising the role of former detective Howard E Loreid, but this time it’s not murder you’re investigating, but your own mysterious family history and its links to the dark and ancient cult that was partially exposed during the first game. It’s worth noting that you don’t really need to play the first game to enjoy this one, but if you’re a fan of the work of HPL then you should certainly consider it.
A major plus in this latest instalment is that Zoetrope haven’t just recreated the engine from the first title here. So, gone is the somewhat tiresome clicking to move to new areas of the game, replaced with free-movement around a sumptuous 3D environment backed up by a very impressive physics engine (the game even boasts NVIDEA PhysX support, normally unheard-of in the adventure genre). Once again, though, it’s all about the atmosphere and capturing the essence of terror that defines much of HPL’s work; things are eerie and unsettling from the outset, and this is built on throughout with the brilliant use of music and ‘half-heard’ sounds. The new keyboard and mouse controls all add to making the experience more immersive than before.
As with the first title, you pick up much of the backstory and clues on how to solve the puzzles through the many books and manuscripts that litter the game world. There are a wide variety of puzzles to solve throughout and three difficulty levels that govern the detail of the in-game hint system; even as a seasoned adventure title player I found the ‘Senior Detective’ setting very difficult indeed, and ended up playing most of the title on the middle ‘Detective’ difficulty level. The new physics engine, which allows you to interact with and move many items, certainly made some puzzles more difficult to solve in the early parts of the game, as I found myself shifting a lot of furniture around that didn’t really need to be moved in order to progress.
One downside is the voice acting – once again, as wooden as a log cabin. Thankfully, the cast of speaking characters is so small that any loss of immersion is mitigated.
The developers obviously have a deep knowledge of Lovecraftian lore and while this is – at least from my point of view – the game’s greatest achievement, it could also potentially make it a little inaccessible for those people who don’t know their weird fiction so well. As for me, I’ll be playing Darkness Within 2 again (and again) as it satisfies my inner lore-geek in a way that no other title has managed thus far.
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