If Darkest of Days had been released a decade ago it might have been considered average. Unfortunately for 8monkey and Phantom EFX by today’s standards this is one of the worst games of this generation - and not even worth a second glance.
The story is a convoluted mess that attempts to raise moral questions about whether or not it's right to alter time, but fails miserably in it's execution. Instead of being deep and thought provoking, it comes of as pretentious and paradox laden. Perhaps the biggest misstep is how the game determines what will or will not affect the time-stream. Killing thousands of unknown soldiers? That’s perfectly fine. Turning a scientist into a soldier? He'll still go on to invent something awesome. Killing a man with his name in the history books? Oh now you've gone too far. It seems you can completely alter someone's entire life experience with little or no ramification, just so long as you don't kill them. It's hard to believe the writers actually expected us to swallow this tripe.
About the only decent thing the writers did was give you a partner, Dexter. Sure his character is incredibly implausible, and he doesn't really help lead you to where you need to go, but he's fun to have around and unlike other escorts, he actually knows how to shoot.
Speaking of shooting, who wants to spend 10 seconds reloading a musket? Anyone? Well that's about all you'll be doing when you go through the Civil War missions. Fire, reload and wait to be shot. Yes, it's historically accurate, but it just isn't any fun, especially when it's all you'll have for nearly half the game. Weapons during the World War I campaign are a bit more user friendly and inviting, but they still lack any sort of charm. Occasionally you'll get tossed a future weapon and given the chance to actually enjoy your killing, but aside from an encounter with a high-tech sniper rifle, and one with a laser-guided grenade launcher, none of these events are very memorable.
Surprisingly Darkest of Days is one of few FPS games to offer almost no control customization. If a button is somewhere you don't like, you're stuck with it. Also, since the game uses a different control layout than most games, you can expect to have problems. Take the simple action of throwing grenades for example. Many, many games map this action to the Right Bumper because it's next to the trigger, but in this particular game you'll find it's inconveniently mapped to the B button. This results in many attempts to melee an enemy turning into point blank grenade duels. There's no excuse for this limitation.
Article comments
1 - Chelsea Doyle
That is such a shame to hear, I thought it sounded great. :(
2 - Mark Buckingham
From the first preview I saw, it didn't look like much, though the premise had promise. Too bad they hurried it along, probably to preempt the upcoming crowded holiday shopping season.