Weapons and Darkness Powers

You're going to come across plenty of different ways to kill guys in The Darkness, some of which will be more useful than others. We'll give you a glance at the various killing powers that you'll run across in the game in this chapter.

Guns, Guns, Guns!

You're going to find plenty of guns in The Darkness, from the not-so-lowly dual pistols to a mighty assault rifle that the developers probably couldn't call an M4. In point of fact, none of the guns have names, so we'll do our best to give them generic names. We're not going to go in-depth here, however, since most of the guns are fairly similar: you point them at people, pull the trigger, and they go down.

Who Needs To Reload?

For the pistol and the SMGs, you won't actually reload your weapons; instead, you'll drop them when they're out of ammo and simply start using another one from your collection. You'll find plenty of different kinds of pistols and SMGs throughout the game, but they won't function very differently. Some of the pistols will be revolvers, and only have six rounds in them, but apart from ammo considerations, you won't need to worry about the differences between these weapons.

Boom! Headshot!

Even for the other weapons, you'll only rarely want to actively reload. For pistols and SMGs, you can just click on the fire buttons until you run out of ammo; Jackie will automatically drop the gun and start using a new one at this point. If you run out of ammo while using one of the heavier weapons, then you'll automatically insert a new clip and resume firing.

If you attempt to reload or drop a weapon manually, you'll lose any ammo that was remaining in the weapon or the clip. It can be useful to reload a weapon that only has a couple of rounds in the clip remaining, especially if you think you're going to be turning around a corner and being forced into a gunfight. Otherwise, though, reloading manually too often will just cause you to throw away a lot of good ammo.

Auto-Aiming and Weapon Selection

The auto-aim feature in The Darkness is incredibly generous on its default settings. If you're playing on the Medium difficulty with the default auto-aim settings, then you're going to find that the entire game can be played without using anything but the pistols. You'll find plenty of advanced weapons, but the sustainable fire of the pistols (one weapon can fire while you drop the other) makes them usually best for firefights, since you can keep firing them constantly where an advanced weapon like the M4 would require frequent bouts of reloading. They're also quite accurate, whereas most of the other weapons, especially the two shotguns, but also including the SMG and the AK-47, have a large spread of fire, making it difficult to hit distant enemies.

So for the most part, you'll want to be using the pistols as your killing weapons. You'll find plenty of them, and they'll make it easy for you to get headshots, even a good distance away. Their accuracy will also make it relatively easy to shoot out lights with them. The M4 is the only weapon that can really match them for accuracy, but you won't be finding a lot of ammo for it until late in the game.

Of course, if you're facing off against enemies in close-range encounters, then you'll be able to make use of your full suite of weaponry. When you don't have to worry as much about accuracy, you can bust out with your other weapons, notably the SMGs, which really shine in close-range combat. The shotguns are still rather poor weapons due to their inaccuracy, but feel free to try everything out!

Darkness Powers

The Darkness that infests you in the game also brings with it a great deal of powers that you can use to further your goals in the game. Mostly this consists of killing lots of dudes. Some of the powers are more effective at this than others, though…

Using and Recharging Your Powers

Devouring hearts is necessary if you intend to gain more Darkness Energy.

The powers that you obtain are scrollable by pressing up and down on the D-pad on your controller. Each of the powers that you use will require Darkness energy, though. You can obtain Darkness energy by withdrawing into a dark area of a level and letting your Darkness tentacles suck up the night juice. Your Darkness energy will also be drained if you spend time in a well-lit area with your Darkness shield, up, however. (You'll hear the tentacles sizzling in this situation, so either shoot the lights out or simply drop your shield until you reach safety.)

If you run out of Darkness power, then your tentacles will drop (along with the damage shield that they afford you). You won't be able to use any powers until you resummon them, which will usually only be possible in a dim location. If you run out of Darkness power in a bright spot, then you usually won't be able to resummon your tentacles, so be careful!

Devouring Hearts and Darkness Level

If you kill an enemy, you can walk over to his body and devour his or her heart. (You can't eat the hearts of innocent civilians that you kill.) Eating hearts will allow you to pump up your Darkness Level, which you can check in the Select menu. Increasing your Darkness Level mostly appears to increase the amount of Darkness power that's available to you, so the more hearts you devour, the longer you'll be able to survive in sunlight and the more damage your Darkness Shield will be able to absorb. Eat the hearts of any one you kill, and you should be able to max out your Darkness Level around the 250-275 mark.

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