Have you ever imagined fighting in one of the greatest battles of the Civil War, World War I, World War II and even at Pompeii in one single game? Darkest of Days will deliver this to you, but in such a dull and repetitive way that not many of you will have the patience to actually make it to its final levels where the game starts to impress. You start the game as a simple soldier who is at the brink of losing his life in the battle of "Little Big Horn". While you take your last breathe, a high-tech soldier appears from nowhere and pulls you into a weird bubble. You wake up in another time period facing a computer monitor with huge eyes that will give you the first assignment. Seems like the human race has discovered a way to travel in time and change history. Therefore a secret agency governed by the Mother (that computer from the last sentence) is working for the history's security, helping and repairing what others wanted to alter in the course of time. You are the perfect candidate to work for the agency along with your only friend Dexter (who comes from the contemporary New York). Despite the interesting story that revolves around the gameplay, you will discover the answers to all your questions after you will take part in repetitive and linear rescue missions from important battles like: Antietam (Civil War), Tannenberg (WWI), Pompeii, etc.
I still can't believe how the developers would spoil such an interesting concept delivering a retarded A.I. and a linear level design, which despite its hugeness, forces you to walk a single path to reach every objective. In one level I had to climb a hill which was a strategic point. From there I could see a quite impressive environment which gave me the impression that I could wander freely everywhere. But invisible walls are spread everywhere constructing in every level a single path on which you are able to walk. It's really frustrating in battles to walk always on a single 'corridor', without having the ability to take advantage of the terrain or to take cover behind every object from the environment. In the battle of Antietam I felt like I was actually sucked into the middle of the corn field. As you enter in line along with your comrades, you can no longer control your character movements, everything being scripted without any specific reason. There are situation when you end up being stuck in some invisible wall while you feel like you have followed the correct path to the objective. But no, the developer imagined the path differently. The A.I. is almost non-existent, the enemy deliberately being offered as a safe target. It doesn't matter if they will attack in pairs, or separately, they are still paralyzed by an omnipresent force, giving you the chance to take them one by one like in a cheap Moorhuhn game. There are levels where the enemy is consistent in number, the Marmoset engine (specially designed for this game) having the ability to display hundreds of NPC's in small areas creating a veridical feeling of war. But if you are good at running, you just have to perform slalom through the enemy line and 'voila', you just reached the next checkpoint.
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Weapons are another tricky thing in this game. Normally you will use weapons from the period of time you are in. If you are in Civil War you will use in general the Rifled Musket (featuring a single shot and a very long reloading time), the Henry Rifle (a classic western weapon), if you are in the WWI or WWII the Mosin-Nagant, Gewehr 98 or the Mauser stand at your disposal. At some points in the missions, Dexter will you give access to future weapons in order to face the increased number of the enemy. Their effectiveness is somehow artificially increased, the laziest weapon being a real death spreader due to its remarkable accuracy and damage. The only thing that might rebalance your fire power is the reloading system similar to the one present in Gear of War, where you have to push twice the reload button in order to complete the operation. First of all you push it to start the operation and the second time you have to push it when a filling meter reaches the green sector. In this way you will get a faster reloading time but if you miss the second push you gun will stuck and you will become a walking target for a couple of seconds. A good addition are the artillery weapons and the cannons which can be manipulated and cause terminal damage on the battlefield, but their accuracy is questionable.
In general the missions feature a single major objective: find and save some important historical characters that were never supposed to fight in those battles. In this way you will keep the timeline unaltered. But besides these key characters, you will meet along the battlefield also NPC that carry some kind of an aura, character's that should not be killed, but only knocked down by some kind of energy balls that you will carry in your inventory. It's not clear what role have these characters in the game and why your comrades actually shoot them to death without any consequences. The plot in general is even more peculiar, as your character never speaks or shows his face, and has no comments to add when he is brought for the first time in the future. He has no feelings regarding the changes that take place neither in his life nor against the assignments that he has to complete. Your character can manipulate the futuristic arsenal from the beginning without anyone explaining to him how they work, showing an unbelievable knowledge of present geography and politics.
Darkest of Days looks dull most of the time, with a graphic style that would have impressed the gamers a couple of years ago. As I've already mentioned not even the level design can bring this game to an acceptable quality standard even if the final missions show the right way of how this game should have looked like.
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Conclusion
A few great ideas and an original concept (the fact that you can take part in historical battles from different periods of time through time travel technology) are wasted by a repetitive gameplay and a stupid A.I. making Darkest of Days a game not worth taking in consideration.
Gameplay: 63
Great to play a couple of levels just to see what it is all about. If you are not bothered by invisible walls that will force you to follow the developer's path or by opponents that get stuck like puppets when you appear in the middle of the battlefield, then this is your game. The fact that you can play in different historical periods, sometimes even with futuristic arsenal, is an unique experience nevertheless, but the concept is so bad implemented, that in the end it really doens't matter anymore.
Graphics: 74
I believe that the Marmoset engine (specially designed for this game) has enough potential to create much better visual effects and level design. The only question for a successful product based on this engine, is who will manipulate it? Definitely the developers behind Darkest of Days didn't know exactly what to do with it, as their final product turns out to look dull and faded most of the time with some exceptions in the later levels. I almost forgot to mention the presence of the PhysX effects, which offer a dynamic picture to the otherwise static graphics. No problems in running the game with this option activated, but I have to mention that the game was tested with an NVIDIA graphical card. Unfortunately for the ATI graphic card owners, only patch 1.04 has optimized a bit the framerate problems.
Multiplayer: N/A
Sound: 61
There is little to say about the sound of this game in general. The weapons sound inconclusive, even the biggest guns lacking of any powerful effects.The environmental sounds are there, but who gives a damn about their presence?!
Hardware: 70
I did have some problems in running this game with Ambient Occlusion option activated. I've been encountered also choppy moments while moving the sight with the mouse. Compared to what graphics has to offer, I think that the hardware requirements are too high. Check them out below:
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP (Service Pack 2)
Processor: 2.0 Ghz
Memory: 768 MB RAM
Hard Drive: 5 GB available hard drive space
Video: nVIDIA® GeForceTM 6600 or ATI Radeon® 9800 with at least 128 MB of video memory
Sound: a working sound device
Keyboard, Mouse
RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP (Service Pack 2)/Windows® Vista
Processor: 2.0 Ghz or better dual-core CPU
Memory: 2.0 GB RAM
Hard Drive: 5 GB available hard drive space
Video: nVIDIA® GeForceTM 8800 or newer/ATI Radeon® 3000 or newer
Sound: a working sound device
Keyboard, Mouse