Darkest of Days Game Review (PC)

Darkest of Days may be one of the biggest disappointments of the gaming season.  While it never really got any real attention prior to its release, the gameplay and concept art that was leaked out to the media looked promising.  What could more fun than a game that allowed you to bring modern and futuristic weapons to a historical battle field?  Take on the Confederate army John McClane style and mow down those rebel soldiers with a machine gun or drop self-guided rockets down on the Hun during World War I. So how could such a cool concept turn sour?  Toss in some ridiculously stupid AI, poor graphics, subpar sound effects, and force player to repeat the same actions so many times that they can see them in their sleep.  Did I mention the huge gaping plot holes?

It’s too bad to because I personally had high hopes for 8Monkey Lab’s first shooter.  It sounded like such a cool concept and the screenshots of a futuristic science lab and the omnipresent female AI (which I now know to be called Mother) looked so great.  So where does the game start to fall apart?  Right from the beginning.

Gameplay

You play as a doomed soldier in the command of General Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn but just before you’re supposed to die you’re saved from your gruesome fate by a fancy-dressed man from the future.  Why?  Because an apparent clerical error means you’re the perfect candidate for a special operations team that uses time travel to maintain the correct historical timeline and safeguard the future.  Sure the plot sounds way too much like Time Cop but the game is better than the movie, right?

Unfortunately not.  While the whole training a soldier from the 1800s to use futuristic weapons and tactics thing is never really explained, I was willing to buy that for the sake of continuity (I mean wouldn’t the guy’s head just explode if he found out he was living in the future—that’s pretty heavy stuff.)  However, when you’re finally sent back, with an annoying companion named Dexter, and dropped into a historical battle with new age weaponry nobody even questions why you’re there, who you are, are why your boomstick is so much better than theirs.  You’d think even a Union soldier enrapt in the heat of battle would recognize a multiple rocket launcher as being a little weird—but they don’t.

Another thing they don’t do is seem to mind you mopping up the suicidal lemmings that pose as the enemy.  This is one of the game’s biggest flaws, the AI blows.  Sorry to be so rude about it but it’s been years since I’ve seen a game where the combatants run around like chickens with their heads cut off, cluster in groups, stand stock still and look stupidly at you, and simply vanish for no reason (that’s right, they vanish and reappear seemingly through invisible doors!)  Even giving you a high-powered weapon to plink with is no fun when the enemy poses zero challenge.  When Playing Darkest of Days, feel free to run through like Rambo and unleash the wrath of modern technology, nobody is going to stop you.

That’s another thing, the battlefields all feel, and generally look the same.  While staring at them from on high, you may think the world is large and expansive but through the strategic placement of invisible barriers 8monkeys has successfully crammed gamers into a fishbowl.  Even some of the buildings cannot be entered (even the ones with open doors inviting you in.)  Eventually they all blend together even though you’re whisked between the rolling hills of the Civil War, the rolling hills of World War I, , the rolling hills of Pompeii . .  .you get the picture.  You’re even sent back, repeatedly, to the World War and the Civil War until it feels as if those are the only two conflicts your new employers are really interested in.

Okay, so if you’ve hung around this long, you’re thinking maybe some of the cool toys you get to play with are worth the torture.  You’d be wrong.  All of the weapons either feel cheap or are just no fun to use.  This is partially due to the Gears of War style active reload system that the coders felt the need to shove into the game.  Picture shooting a single-shot musket and having to play a button pressing mini-game every time in order to reload.  Sounds like fun, ya?  Best part is, if you miss the mark, you’ll have to wait twice as long for your weapon to reload.  It was okay in Gears where you were using automatic weapons whose magazines held more than a single round but who wants to do that after every trigger pull?

Also, the new future weapons really just feel like current-day weapons with a slight twist (maybe different muzzle flashes or colored projectiles).  You also can’t carry your favorite armaments between levels as they disappear every time you’re transported.  As far the big guns, cannons, sniper rifles, and such, they’re too unwieldy, inaccurate, or just plain slow to make shooting anything fun.  Pretty sad state of affairs for a shooter.

I’m not even going to mention the “Blue halo” dudes running around.  If you save them from their fate by using an orb that amounts to a stun grenade you earn points.  You kill them, you face some uber-soldiers from the future—with a single shot weapon and no body armor!  Kinda sad when nothing happens if somebody else kills them!

Graphics

Graphically this game is nearly laughable.  The level design is okay but the details are so sketchy everything looks and feels totally fake.  The character animations (the few there are) look stilted and out of place.  The character design is okay but the battlefields are populated with hundreds of clones!  While the weapons do look okay, that’s not enough to carry the weight of everything else very far.  It’s just not up to par and even at a discounted price point ($40) this game isn’t worth its salt.

Sound

The audio is just garbage as well.  The guns all sound like pea shooters (even the big ones) and the voice acting is painfully bad.  Everything sounds corny and cheap which would have been okay if the game was pulling the “tongue-in-cheek” like No One Lives Forever but it isn’t.

Value

This game also features no replay value.  Big surprise there.  There’s no multiplayer and no unlockables.  All you get is the single player campaign.

Final Verdict

In the end, this game feels like something that was made ten years ago or something you’d find in the “Value Software” section of your local Mega*Mart for under $10.  Play it if you must but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Pros:  Cool concept

Cons:  Poor AI, bad scripting, weak graphics, crappy sound effects, laughable voice acting, repetitive gameplay . . .
 

Overall Score: 4/10

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