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Darkest of Days
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Graphics & Sound:
It breaks my heart to review games like Darkest of Days. Most game critics won't think twice before smiting a game that is beyond redemption, but when a truly great idea falls so far short of its potential, it's legitimately sad. Darkest of Days could have been awesome, but it sinks in a sludge of sub-par presentation, poorly-designed controls, and terrible artificial intelligence.
Darkest of Days probably would have looked right at home on the original Xbox, but the severe texture and object pop-in issues would still have threatened the immersion factor. The animations are so stiff, you'd think that every armed conflict in human history was fought by legions of robots. The lighting is schizophrenic, the Menus are ugly and blurry, there are clones aplenty, and the subtitles often do an atrocious job of keeping up with whoever's speaking. The game's coolest moments are hamstrung by a framerate that stutters too much when things get crazy. There are also some clipping problems, and most of them are severe enough to impact the gameplay. During the Tannenberg mission, a German soldier got stuck in a tree. I was unable to shoot him, but he was able to shoot me. Enemies like to hide under low-hanging trees and in bushes. This makes them nearly impossible to spot, because more often than not, you won't see a muzzle flash when he fires. That's not fun at all.
The audio design for Darkest of Days is a mixed bag, but the bad outweighs the good. The voicework is usually quite decent, and with the exception of some of Agent Dexter's lines, the game's writing isn't bad. However, battlefields don't sound like battlefields, and most situations don't inform the music very well. When I was marching with Union soldiers to engage an enormous line of Confederate soldiers, I really wasn't feeling it -- and I can blame the sound design for that. |
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Gameplay:
Darkest of Days begins during the Battle of Little Bighorn. You are Alexander Morris, one of General Custer's men. The instant Custer is killed, a giant bubble appears on the hill and out pops a man who is clearly not from this time period. Morris is instructed to enter the bubble, where he is transported roughly three hundred years forward (which is, from where we're sitting, the near-future). Morris learns that he has been saved by KronoteK, a mysterious group of time warriors that recruits people who have gone M.I.A. during history's most catastrophic events. For example, your partner Dexter was a first responder on 9/11 who was rescued by KronoteK just as the Twin Towers began to fall. KronoteK's primary goal is the preservation of history through time travel. The leader of the operation, Rainier Koell, has gone missing, and the higher-ups at KronoteK have been monitoring several temporal disturbances that threaten to upset the balance of history. As Morris, your job is to take a bunch of futuristic killing ordinances to the past and make sure that history is kept intact.
Doesn't the above paragraph sound like an excellent premise for a first-person shooter? Most would probably think so, but I didn't mention that the objective rarely (if ever) changes from "head to the next checkpoint and shoot enemies on the way." Furthermore, too many of your allies are idiots who only know how to shoot at trees, get stuck, and die. You can simply sprint past some of the big set piece battles, provided you know where to go. Based on the maps, the areas you fight in are really huge, but invisible walls are oh-so-conveniently placed everywhere to keep you near the action. This kills the sandbox vibe that the earlier missions hint at.
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Difficulty:
Darkest of Days isn't an overly difficult game, but it's tough to look past all of its problems and enjoy it for what it is. There are multiple difficulties to choose from, and each offers the kind of challenge it claims to.
During a few scripted sequences, I found myself being fired upon while the game was in control. By the time I regained control of Morris, he was near death. The autosave kicked in, and when I finally bought the farm, the game didn't revert Morris to the sorry state he was in when it saved. The situation wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it's one of those little things that hurts the game as a whole.
Many enemies will concentrate on you and you alone, but others will engage your friends. That's usually quite a spectacle, and not in a good way. You're packing some serious heat in some battles, so these particular encounters are meant to feel one-sided, to say the least. These moments are unquestionably the best parts of Darkest of Days. When I got my hands on a high-powered assault rifle and used it in the Battle of Antietam, I was laughing my head off as the Confederate line fell apart.
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Game Mechanics:
Perhaps it is here that Darkest of Days suffers the most. The unchangeable control scheme is pretty standard for the most part, but again, it's the little things that bring it down. For starters, none of your actions can be toggled. That means you must click and hold down the (Left Analog Stick) if you want to be stealthy.
Your objectives are primarily displayed on your map. You can only view the map by holding down the (Back) button, which is clunky and not in the least bit intuitive. Opening your map doesn't stop the action, but it will usually stop you from going anywhere -- it's not smart to walk around a battlefield with a map in front of your face.
There's a reloading system that bears a slight resemblance to the smartly-designed active reload mechanic from the Gears of War games. I say "slight" because the reload mechanic in Darkest of Days is neither exciting nor rewarding. Success means you finish reloading a half-second early, and failure means you spend three more seconds fixing a weapon jam. It's not worth the trouble.
One idea that I really like that works better than most everything else is the weapon upgrade system. Every time you go on a mission, you'll see enemies surrounded by blue auras. These enemies are historically important characters whose identities are unfortunately never revealed. These enemy NPCs must be kept alive. At the beginning of each mission, you're given a handful of experimental weapons called Chasers. Throwing Chasers at these particular enemies will home in and incapacitate them. Saving these people will allow the R & D team at KronoteK to spend more time upgrading your arsenal (translation: you are given points to spend on these upgrades). If you kill the guys with the blue auras, they'll have to spend that time cleaning up the mess you've left behind (translation: you get fewer points). Unfortunately, you're forced to throw every single Chaser in your inventory when you'd much rather use only one or two. This is kind of a pain, because it takes too long for all of them to come back to you. Quirks aside, this is one of the game's high points.
Darkest of Days is a very disappointing game. It's not technically sound and it's not all that much fun to play. However, the tragedy here is not how bad the finished product is, it's how good it could have been. |
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-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications AKA Jon Carlos |
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