Reviewed: September 28, 2009
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Phantom EFX

Developer
8monkey Labs

Released: September 8, 2009
Genre: FPS
Players: 1

4
4
4
4
4.1

Supported Features:

The premise is cool yet fatally flawed and poorly executed from the beginning. You play Alexander Morris, a soldier fighting alongside General Custer during his “last stand” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. You are felled by an arrow to the leg and about to die when a large bubble materializes and a guy from Halo steps out and says, “come with me if you want to live”. Not really, but that’s the general idea.

On the other side of the bubble you find yourself in some futuristic chamber with a giant monitor with the face of Mother (nice Alien reference) on it. She informs you that you are now going to become an agent for Kronotek and travel through time to locate Dr. Koell, their chief scientist who is also traveling through time and screwing things up for the rest of us. Again, a great story concept, but the gameplay falls way short in this otherwise stale and predictable FPS.

Darkest of Days has a few hooks going for it other than the time travel concept. First, there is the appealing promise of being able to mow down the primitive masses with futuristic weaponry – a concept that was popular even back in the 60’s with Star Trek’s “Piece of the Action”. The designers also throw in the added element of key figures who shouldn’t be killed lest you screw up the timeline even further.

With so many wars and so much history on the books I was disappointed that we spend most of the game either in WWI or back in the Civil War. Having recently finished Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, I’ve already had a taste of a Civil War game done right in just the first mission, and Darkest of Days pales in comparison to the opening level of Juarez. There are only five time zones in the entire game, but even reliving moments in Pompeii and WWII offer minor visual facelift from the tedious gameplay.

You fight in huge battlefields giving you the illusion of a grand space, although invisible walls will often impede your advancement or any attempts at strategic flanking. The only real strategy is trying not to kill the blue highlighted targets on the map, as these are the people you must tag and bag, either by wounding them significantly or scrambling their brains with a bag of magnetic marbles you can toss in their general direction.

Other than these “capture” moments you simply kill everything on the screen using your available arsenal. It’s standard FPS with a Gears of War reload system added to give the illusion of an advanced shooter. You’ll fight along large groups of NPC’s but you never really work with them – they are more visual backdrops than anything else, especially if you take the time to watch them and their flawed AI battle tactics. It is also quite easy to interfere with scripted NPC events and glitch the game forcing a restart.

Even as early as the tutorial I knew the cannon was going to be trouble, and things only get worse when you are forced to utilize other turrets, cannons, and a totally glitched Zeppelin rail shooter. If I had not been reviewing this title I would have ended my misery at any of these points in the game. While the futuristic weapons are a clever hook you don’t get to use them all that often and you usually find yourself going into a battle with a time-appropriate weapon, which you can upgrade to some degree in the between-mission menus. It’s a limited and non-rewarding upgrade system but one you must contend with if you stand any chance of winning the later levels.

When it comes to Darkest of Days I’m guessing this was a PC game ported to the 360. The graphics and overall presentation are pretty bad, reminding me of other unimpressive titles like Damnation and Turning Point. The frame rate takes continuous hits and texture draw-in is so obvious it gets distracting. Character models and animation are repetitive, but the engine can put 300 guys on the battlefield, so I guess you have to trade quality for quantity. Even the weapon models, while historical in their look, are rather unimpressive for a modern day shooter.

The audio package is equally as unimpressive with lame sounds for the weapons – the cannon fire didn’t even stir a rumble from my subwoofer. The music is okay in spots but mostly forgettable, and the dialogue and one-liners, while intentionally campy and even funny at times, are undeniably B-grade. The game supports Dolby Digital but doesn't use it with any degree of satisfaction.

There are no multiplayer modes or online support leaving you with a below-average single-player story mode that will take you around 8-10 hours to finish if you have the tolerance for last-gen games posing as next-gen titles. Even the achievements are pretty lame and uninspired. I can in no way recommend a purchase, even at the discounted launch price of $49, and even your rental dollars would be better spent on other more deserving titles. Darkest of Days is headed to the darkest regions of the discount dump bin.

I can’t really say I was disappointed with Darkest of Days since I had no real knowledge of the title before it showed up for review, thus no preconceptions or shattered dreams. I confess to being mildly excited when I read the box cover as my 360 powered up, but I knew things were going to be bad by the end of the tutorial. Fans of the FPS genre can do better with just about anything else out there and fans of time travel have classics like TimeShift and TimeSplitters to enjoy. Darkest of Days is just another low budget PC title that somehow snuck onto the 360 and will soon be forgotten.