Gulp it down: The Darkness 2 is free right now

"Give the guy a gun and he's Superman," Hard Boiled said. "Give him two and he's God." But give the guy two guns and two hungry tentacles and he can only be the mafioso host of a demonic power. Discover that in The Darkness II, which you can grab for free for keepsies right now. The Humble Store is giving the game away for a fleeting 48 hours to celebrate the launch of a new sale. Made by Warframe devs Digital Extremes, it has buckets of guts and a surprising amount of heart.

Quick premise: we play as a New York mafioso caught up in the usual mob troubles and oh, he's also the host to an ancient demonic force which gives him murderous tentacle arms that can and will tear people in half then swallow their hearts. It's good.

As our John said in his The Darkness II review:

"I was genuinely expecting a brash, stupid shooter, noise and bluster and shooting at heads. That it's so smart is a fantastic surprise. Without this, I think the game's frustrations might have pushed it too deeply into a crowded crowd. But it's not without this – and it's enigmatic with it. I’ll obviously not spoiling the endings, but that ‘s’ just there tells you something. And I'll say that they’re brilliant which is a rarely used word when talking about how games end.

"It's a decent, if overly-busy shooter, a cacophony of gore and screaming. But it's also a surprisingly smart take on familiar territory, with some really interesting twists. I really was only expecting brains to feature when splattered across my monitor."

Alec will tell you it's one of those great 7/10 action games too.

Humble are offering free Darkness II Steam keys until 6pm (UK time) on Wednesday. Grab it by then, and its yours for keepsies. Miss it and it'll be back up to £20.

This is to celebrate the Humble Store's Indie Mega Week sale, which makes this a weird choice but I suppose Darkness publishers 2K have an indie publishing label these days and the word 'indie' is meaningless these days anyway.