Hot Tentacles Shooter Review

[Lilliana Adames]

Fourarms: it was so obvious. It must be galling for other shooter developers. They've spent decades since Doom trying to work out ways to innovate on the FPS model, to make shooting people feel fresh and interesting again. They've tried vast open worlds and they've tried hurling Hollywood-size production values at projects, but the Darkness II manages it by just giving anti-hero Jackie Estacado four arms.

Well. Technically he only has two arms. These are his normal limbs, functioning as arms do in games where arms are only necessary to hold guns and occasionally fire them at swarms of enemies. He also has two demonic snake-tentacles.

At first, the four arms feel cumbersome. Jackie can already dual-wield all but the bulkiest shotguns and assault rifles, and The Darkness II's guns by themselves make for a satisfying shooter. Even the weediest pistol has a powerful kick, and they're almost comedically accurate over distance, lending Jackie a sense of overwhelming power that is consistently fun to direct toward your foes. But couple that with the option to whip the Darkness's serpentine limbs into scuffles, and it seems too much to fit around one WASD-ing hand.

Heart-eating might be the Darkness's simplest move, but impressively, it's not the ickiest. Jackie also has a variety of execution moves he's able to perform on staggered enemies. Throw a target off balance with a withering enough attack and they'll stumble forward, their hearts and circulatory system picked out through their skin in shining white. Tap E and your tentacle friend will grab them, dangling them just in Jackie's eyeshot, from where they can be eviscerated in a number of fascinatingly gruesome ways.

Jackie's demon-arms can also be employed as impromptu whips: holding the middle-mouse button and slashing sends a high-speed swipe across the screen. I used this skill least, however: it's useful to clear a glut of foes crowded in front of you, but the default control method makes it a touch fiddly.

The Darkness makes Jackie superhuman, but it's not a 'win-all' button. Jackie can only employ the Darkness, fittingly, when he's in the dark. Lights banish the snakes from his shoulders with a shudder and a hiss. So too does Jackie's 'darkling' disappear, a three-foot goblin-like sidekick that somehow manages to stay endearing despite cracking wise for the length of the game and urinating on enemy corpses.

The lighting problem necessitates a systematic elimination of illumination: lightbulbs are the first thing to go after I enter a room. With the room submerged in gloom, I am free to rampage effectively, Jackie's full range of abilities at your finger and tentacle tips. Some later lights are invulnerable to gunfire, forcing you to find their power supply. Later again, enemies start to carry portable arclamps, cutting off parts of the battlefield with sweeping beams of horrible brightness and making a chap consider his surroundings carefully before launching assaults.

The Darkness II's enemies are so unquestionably nefarious that I rarely had time to stop and question the linearity of the levels. Your main antagonist has a hunchback, a limp, and a burned-up face, for God's sake: if he's not comic book evil, I don't know what is.

On the friendlier side, Jackie has a supporting cast of mobsters to help in his quest for vengeance. Between missions, you're sent back to the Estacado homestead, a plush apartment in central New York. These sections serve to add character to the gang Jackie is acting head of, but they could do with being a touch more interactive: after trudging around the grounds I was rewarded with one bottle-shooting minigame and a few incidental conversations.

Also, it lets you pull peoples' guts out of their bum with giant demonsnake arms. The Darkness II is a dumb shooter that's three times as clever as it looks. So too is Jackie's murderous repertoire three times as extensive as that of other shooters. It might not last long and the action doesn't alter its tone, but The Darkness II's charms stuck with me long after I turned out the light.

The Bluetooth standard advertises that Bluetooth 5.0 has two times the speed, four times the range, and eight times the broadcasting message capacity of older versions of Bluetooth. One of the biggest benefits of Bluetooth 5.0 is that it is very energy efficient and that is why Tentacle Sync has been able to increase the battery life of the Sync E mkII.

Would it be nice to have an in-built screen and more buttons? Yes, and no. Having a screen would allow you to make changes without needing an app and it would also let you clearly see the timecode. On the flip side, adding a screen and controls would make it larger, and heavier, and with physical buttons, there is always the chance of them getting accidentally knocked.

The Sync E mkII uses a built-in rechargeable and replaceable Lithium Polymer Battery that gives users up to 50 hours of continuous run time before it needs to be recharged. This is an increase of 15 hours over the Sync E.

What you clearly need to be aware of is by opening the housing of your Tentacle unit, you will terminate the warranty of the device itself. This kit is for Tentacle units that are outside the two-year warranty period. If your device has battery problems within the warranty period, please contact [email protected] prior to your purchase.

With drift, the camera you are using and whether or not you are using AUX (LTC) timecode or a BNC cable going into a dedicated timecode input can all be variables. It is always wise to test the setup you intend to use before shooting.

In a nice personal touch, when you open the box from Tentacle Sync you are greeted with a nice personal note. I may sound a bit old-fashioned but I really like this additional attention to detail. It makes you feel like you are buying a product from a person and not a large corporation that just wants your money.

You also get a printed-out quick start guide. Again I really like when a company gives me a physical guide for a product. Too often these days you have to download a manual or go online to find out answers. Having a simple, small quick start guide means you can keep it with your equipment and reference it quickly if you forget how to do something.

Again I might be sounding like a broken record, but getting everything you need to get up and running straight away is a nice touch. The only thing missing from the set are Tentacle BNC adapter cables and which cost $27 USD each.

Timecode sync devices need to be straightforward and easy to use. Nobody wants to go through countless menus and combinations of pressing buttons to get up and running. For a Timecode Sync device to tick all of the boxes for me, it has to be simple, reliable, and not get in my way.

The Tentacle Setup App for mobile devices allows you to synchronize, monitor, set up, and change basic parameters of your Tentacle device. This includes settings such as timecode, frame rate, device name & icon, output volume, battery status, user bits, and more. You can download the Setup App here: www.tentaclesync.com/download

Switch on your Tentacle devices

Before starting the app it is recommended to switch on your devices first. During operation, the Tentacles constantly transmit timecode and status information via Bluetooth.

Once you have done the initial pairing up of the devices the system is super easy to use. You literally just turn them on, open the app and sync them up. I will give you a step-by-step run-through in the next section about how to do this.

Tentacles can be linked to up to 10 mobile devices at the same time. If you link it to the 11th mobile device, the first (or oldest) one will be dropped and has no longer have access to this Tentacle. In this case, you will need to add it again.

The nice thing is once everything is synced, you can get out of the app and go back in at any time without having to pair the devices again. As long as the Sync E mkII devices stay on everything is fine.

The Tentacle Setup App is straightforward to use and the instructions and interface are very easy to follow. As there are no displays on the Sync E mkII devices it is imperative that the app works well and provides the user with the correct information.

I personally just prefer to rename the individual units with the camera name or recording device they are attached to. I find this to be the quickest and easiest way to not only monitor but also sort out any issues quickly if they happen to arise.

Cable unplugged: This warning appears if the device is running in Green Mode, but no cable is plugged into the 3.5 mm jack

Inconsistent frame rate: This indicates two or more Tentacles in Green Mode outputting timecode with mismatching frame rates

Not in sync: This warning message is displayed, when inaccuracies of more than half a frame occur between all devices in Green Mode. Sometimes this warning can pop up for a few seconds when starting the app from the background. In most cases, the app just needs some time to update each Tentacle. However, if the warning message persists for more than 10 seconds you should consider re-syncing your Tentacles.

The Tentacle Sync E mkII features a small built-in microphone, which can be used to record reference sound on cameras or devices with a stereo 3.5mm mic input. It is located in the little notch behind the rubber band on top of the device. By using the mini jack cable, the timecode signal will be

recorded on the left channel, reference sound will be recorded on the right channel.

The whole process can be done fairly quickly (although this depends on how many clips you have and how long they are). The Tentacle Sync Studio brings up an easy-to-read window during the conversion process that gives you all the relative information.

There are even options to transcode the material to different flavors of ProRes, AVC Intra, as well as low-resolution H.264 files. Of course, you can just choose to use the Pass-Through Original option which means you end up writing the same file with the newly embedded timecode back onto your original camera media card.

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