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| The Entertainment Review |
| Genre: FPS Developer: 8Monkey Labs Publisher: Valcon Games |
When players here about the concept of “Darkest of Days,” it sounds like a great gaming experience. Players take on the role of an
unwitting soldier pulled from certain death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn through a time portal by a mysterious futuristic agency called
KronoteK. The agency’s chief scientist, Dr. Koell, has gone missing and it is up to the player to track him down and to fix some
abnormalities that have been appearing throughout history. If the issues from the past aren’t fixed, there could be some very disastrous
consequences in the future. The great thing about going to the past to right some wrongs is the fact that players are able to use
futuristic weapons to take on armies of the past, but that alone doesn’t keep the game from being confusing and a little bit behind the
times.
It is hard to determine whether the project just didn’t have enough funding or the project started to fall apart halfway through production,
it doesn’t seem as though the game is finished. From the user interface to the underdeveloped artificial intelligence to the lack of
quality assurance through the game, it just doesn’t look or play like something that was given enough time to achieve its full potential.
Since it is available for a $50 price tag, it has to be judged against all the other games in the genre that are also available, and it doesn’t
quite add up.
After the opening sequence with Custer’s army, players are thrown into a metallic room and introduced to Mother, a computer with
female eyes that oversees the action and Dexter, the player’s friend in battle that offers new weapons. Players pick missions from a
monitor in the room, travel through time and try to preserve history by correcting issues that are occurring at historical events.
Though the game is setup with a lot of possibilities, players are forced to spend a lot of time in two settings, World War I and the
American Civil War. Players fight in large and usually unremarkable maps filled with large amount of ugly terrain while fighting
disorganized soldiers as they move from one checkpoint to the next using the game’s poor first-person shooting mechanics. Other
than the animation, skins and reload times, none of the weapons have much of a feel of weight to them. A reload system, much like
that of “Gears of War,” has been implemented into the game play, but it doesn’t work very well.
The game’s real standout feature of the combat is there are a large amount of NPC enemies and friendly soldiers fighting, making the
battles feel more realistic, however the game’s shortcomings ensure that players never feel fully immersed in the action, instead they
will feel on the sidelines of a war comedy. Entire groups of soldiers can be seen pointing their guns in the wrong directions, enemies
run right at players without noticing them and don’t notice when they have been shot, or they just stand around and do nothing at all.
Another example of the poorly implemented game play elements are the glowing blue soldiers that can be found throughout the
enemies on each level. These are important characters that could change all of history and killing them would cause historical harm.
Instead, players need to throw green balls at them and pop them near their heads to stun them so they can be collected. The problem
comes in when the player’s friendly NPCs can take them out without any issues happening in history. The storyline doesn’t pertain to
everyone.
The futuristic weapons might offer a break from the poorly designed first-person shooting encounters, but for some reason these aren’t
handed out very often. Every time players are given a future shotgun or an auto-aiming gun, they will be wishing they had spent more
points to upgrade their other weapons to make the rest of the game more fun. The typical weapons that players will use in the game
are poorly designed and function just like sniper rifles, flamethrowers and assault rifles, but with a tiny twist to it.
Criticizing the game’s main play wouldn’t serve much of a purpose considering how it is not trying to be anything but a bunch of
nonsense. It is actually the strongest part of the game, since it seems to not take itself too seriously and happily embraces all of the
clichés and absurdities of the science fiction genre. Time travel terms and jokes relating to a future that the lead character doesn’t
understand are tossed in through the game. Though a lot of this is humorous, these bits offer very little to offset the terrible game play.
In some cases they complicate it since the KronoteK organization, which players are frequently reminded wants to preserve history, has
no problem with players dropping into a musket fight with an assault rifle, but at other times are required to recover all the futuristic
weapons from battle so that history is not disturbed.
“Darkest of Days” is a game that can be explained by its own title. This first-person shooter fails on nearly every aspect of the game.
What starts as a great idea and storyline for a game falls flat when the mechanics, presentation and implementation of the missions
and objectives appear on the screen. The dynamics of the large scale battles are shot down by the erratic and unbelievable enemy
behavior that are made only worse with a number of technical performance issues. With more time in development and a more clever
use of the time traveling concept, this could have been an amazingly interesting shooter. Sadly, in the end the game is a trip that no one
will want to embark upon.
unwitting soldier pulled from certain death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn through a time portal by a mysterious futuristic agency called
KronoteK. The agency’s chief scientist, Dr. Koell, has gone missing and it is up to the player to track him down and to fix some
abnormalities that have been appearing throughout history. If the issues from the past aren’t fixed, there could be some very disastrous
consequences in the future. The great thing about going to the past to right some wrongs is the fact that players are able to use
futuristic weapons to take on armies of the past, but that alone doesn’t keep the game from being confusing and a little bit behind the
times.
It is hard to determine whether the project just didn’t have enough funding or the project started to fall apart halfway through production,
it doesn’t seem as though the game is finished. From the user interface to the underdeveloped artificial intelligence to the lack of
quality assurance through the game, it just doesn’t look or play like something that was given enough time to achieve its full potential.
Since it is available for a $50 price tag, it has to be judged against all the other games in the genre that are also available, and it doesn’t
quite add up.
After the opening sequence with Custer’s army, players are thrown into a metallic room and introduced to Mother, a computer with
female eyes that oversees the action and Dexter, the player’s friend in battle that offers new weapons. Players pick missions from a
monitor in the room, travel through time and try to preserve history by correcting issues that are occurring at historical events.
Though the game is setup with a lot of possibilities, players are forced to spend a lot of time in two settings, World War I and the
American Civil War. Players fight in large and usually unremarkable maps filled with large amount of ugly terrain while fighting
disorganized soldiers as they move from one checkpoint to the next using the game’s poor first-person shooting mechanics. Other
than the animation, skins and reload times, none of the weapons have much of a feel of weight to them. A reload system, much like
that of “Gears of War,” has been implemented into the game play, but it doesn’t work very well.
The game’s real standout feature of the combat is there are a large amount of NPC enemies and friendly soldiers fighting, making the
battles feel more realistic, however the game’s shortcomings ensure that players never feel fully immersed in the action, instead they
will feel on the sidelines of a war comedy. Entire groups of soldiers can be seen pointing their guns in the wrong directions, enemies
run right at players without noticing them and don’t notice when they have been shot, or they just stand around and do nothing at all.
Another example of the poorly implemented game play elements are the glowing blue soldiers that can be found throughout the
enemies on each level. These are important characters that could change all of history and killing them would cause historical harm.
Instead, players need to throw green balls at them and pop them near their heads to stun them so they can be collected. The problem
comes in when the player’s friendly NPCs can take them out without any issues happening in history. The storyline doesn’t pertain to
everyone.
The futuristic weapons might offer a break from the poorly designed first-person shooting encounters, but for some reason these aren’t
handed out very often. Every time players are given a future shotgun or an auto-aiming gun, they will be wishing they had spent more
points to upgrade their other weapons to make the rest of the game more fun. The typical weapons that players will use in the game
are poorly designed and function just like sniper rifles, flamethrowers and assault rifles, but with a tiny twist to it.
Criticizing the game’s main play wouldn’t serve much of a purpose considering how it is not trying to be anything but a bunch of
nonsense. It is actually the strongest part of the game, since it seems to not take itself too seriously and happily embraces all of the
clichés and absurdities of the science fiction genre. Time travel terms and jokes relating to a future that the lead character doesn’t
understand are tossed in through the game. Though a lot of this is humorous, these bits offer very little to offset the terrible game play.
In some cases they complicate it since the KronoteK organization, which players are frequently reminded wants to preserve history, has
no problem with players dropping into a musket fight with an assault rifle, but at other times are required to recover all the futuristic
weapons from battle so that history is not disturbed.
“Darkest of Days” is a game that can be explained by its own title. This first-person shooter fails on nearly every aspect of the game.
What starts as a great idea and storyline for a game falls flat when the mechanics, presentation and implementation of the missions
and objectives appear on the screen. The dynamics of the large scale battles are shot down by the erratic and unbelievable enemy
behavior that are made only worse with a number of technical performance issues. With more time in development and a more clever
use of the time traveling concept, this could have been an amazingly interesting shooter. Sadly, in the end the game is a trip that no one
will want to embark upon.
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