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Darkest of Days is a great concept marred by unquestionably mediocre execution. The idea of traveling back through time with modern weaponry is awesome, but the presentation and gameplay are so bottom of the barrel that it isn’t worth the effort to scrape through just to see the few things the game actually does right. On the bright side, it does give you an Achievement for punching a horse, so it isn’t all bad.
Find out all of the details right here.
Game Details
- Publisher: Phantom EFX, Valcon Games
- Developer: 8monkey Labs
- Also On: PC
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: FPS
- Pros: Interesting concept; time travel done right
- Cons: Looks and sounds awful; bad gameplay; poor value
The story behind Darkest of Days is actually really interesting. It centers around an organization whose job is to maintain the time stream. They can tell when something isn’t happening the way it should, so they sent people back to make sure history takes the path it is supposed to. To do this, they use people considered MIA by the history books. A soldier whose transfer papers were lost so officially they weren’t even at the battle that day, or a firefighter who had the day off but went in to work to try and help anyway, just for a couple of examples.
Not everything goes the way it was planned, however, as another group of time travelers show up and start trying to intentionally mess up history. By the end of the game you are playing both sides off of each other and actually spend a fair bit of time fixing problems you yourself caused and even a few occasions where you’re essentially fighting against yourself.
One nifty sequence has you dodging mortars in a zeppelin that another timeline version of you is firing. Mind blowing stuff.
Truth be told, the time travel is actually really well handled here. In any time travel story you can usually find big enough holes to fly a plane through, but they did a pretty good job here.
Gameplay
The greatest story and concept in the world can’t save a game with bad gameplay, and that is ultimately where Darkest of Days stumbles it’s way into obscurity. It is a first-person-shooter, but the gameplay feels like it is at least a generation behind. It is slow and clunky and just plain not fun. Compounding this is the fact that the A.I. is incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes they’ll be annoyingly perfect shots and kill you way too quickly, other times they will sit there and not fire at all, and more often than not enemy and friendly units will be standing feet away from each other and won’t do anything. Also, unless your objective is to stay and defend an area, you don’t even really have to fight a lot of the time. You can just run to your next objective marker and not even worry about the enemies.
There are a few additional gameplay elements beyond just the standard shooting. First, there are special enemies throughout the game that are supposed to survive, which you can ensure by shooting them in the knee or tossing special items that knock them out. Kind of neat, actually. The other element is that you get to use modern weapons back in the Civil War or WWI or other important historical locations. Taking an assault rifle or riot shotgun back through time is awesome, but unfortunately you don’t get to use them all that often. Instead you are stuck with period weaponry, which, while fine and dandy, completely blows compared to the modern weapons and just aren’t fun to use in this game.
There are some set pieces thrown into the mix here and there as well, such as turret sequences, defending a zeppelin as it slowly flies over the battlefield, or taking part in a (completely terrible strategy … what the hell were people thinking back them) Civil War straight firing line. These things make things more interesting than the standard shooting, but aren’t particularly well done themselves so they don’t add much. One thing we do like is the Achievements that are stupid and easy to get. Drown yourself – 25 points. Blow yourself up – 25 points. Punch a horse – 100 points. Good times.
Graphics
Darkest of Days is a pretty awful looking game. Bad character models and ugly environments are all that really needs to be said. V-sync issues, pop in, and an unstable framerate certainly don’t help.
Sound
The sound is sort of a mixed bag. The voice acting is okay, but the music and sound effects aren’t anything special.
Bottom Line
Basically, you don’t want to play Darkest of Days. Reading the story and concept is a lot more interesting than anything the game has to offer, which is a shame because it actually does a pretty good job with this aspect. The presentation and gameplay, however, are just too poor to warrant spending too much time with it. Skip it.
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