Darkest of Days

To make it clear: this is a bad game

When you see a game from a developer who has no proven track record, you can feel a bit apprehensive to want to play it.

In most cases though, it’s unfounded and you find some thing about the game you like be it the graphics, sound quality or just finding a cool partner in crime. It is mostly skewed logic to presuppose the game will be a dud and often you’ll sit back and have a good time (see Spelunky).

However in Darkest of Days your initial apprehension is right on the money.

Darkest of Days, the first release from 8monkeylabs pits you as a time traveling trooper, sent back through the ages to fix mistakes made in the annoyingly linear past. You go back to various periods, most notably WW1 and the American Civil War to save people who weren’t supposed to be involved and to discover what nasty characters are tweaking the past. Although the general premise for the game is good, the execution is less so.

First of all I should say the game isn’t a complete dud. It’s a passable first person shooter, feeling like it was made pre-COD 4, with a few clever ideas. First of all, the different time periods lead to a great gamewide arsenal of weapons; which is good. The plot is a strong idea but unfortunately let down by some major holes, not least my feeling that if one were brought forward in time and told to fire a futuristic gun they’d probably have a question or two, but I nitpick.

It does have some lovable, funny characters such as Dexter, your cowboy-hat-wearing pizza -loving fellow squaddie, but the story’s biggest flaw is the fact the last few levels are really good fun, too good compared to levels before which felt generic. So I wonder, surely gamers wouldn’t persevere with dross at the beginning to enter the relative land of milk and honey at the end.

As for serious problems, well the game has many. For a start, it’s ugly.  The textures all look really low resolution and the models lack in detail. Worse, the narrative misses out crucial animations to explain things, leading both ally and enemy to saunter along in perfect harmony at times.

The maps not only look terrible but play badly and there are more invisible walls in this game than in WoW which can be really fustrtraing. The AI is also appalling and appears to use a design from early 3D games, with AI only activating once the player reaches certain areas.

Additionally the AI uses the old trick of constantly respawning enemies in certain areas, making your kills worthless. Darkest of Days also struggles with some of its mechanics, like enemies in blue auras (ones you can’t kill but AI-friendlies will hunt after) and the active reload system it nicked from Gears of War. Finally, the audio design is rather lacking – most of the gun sounds are flat and the voice acting is terrible.

I suppose one thing to remember is that Darkest of Days is the first game from developers 8monkeylabs, but saying that it’s no excuse for the state this game is in. The entire game stinks of a rushed product and unfortunately wastes the clever premise. To make it clear – This Is A Bad Game. If you need to play a time traveling game, go play Braid.