Game Review: Darkest of Days
Stars and Stripes
Sep 21, 2009
What do you do when a line of Confederate soldiers charges at you across a cornfield?
a) Fire your rifle as quickly as possible.
b) Fix your bayonet.
c) Run.
d) Pull out your assault rifle and mow them down.
In "Darkest of Day," you can safely answer "d" - at least part of the time. The M-rated first-person shooter from Phantom EFX and 8Monkey Labs lets gamers hop among several time periods and sometimes use futuristic firepower to correct the balance of power on historic battlefields.
You play as Morris, a trooper assigned to the 7th Cavalry just before the Battle of Little Bighorn. Since your paperwork was botched - imagine that - there's no record of you at Custer's last stand. That makes you an ideal candidate for Kronotek. The time-travel group picks up history's MIAs and turns them into agents who go back in time to study history's mysteries or fix problems caused by other time travelers.
Your primary goal is to save a Union soldier at the Civil War's Battle of Antietam and a Russian at World War I's Battle of Tannenberg. Trips to a World War II prison camp and the ancient Roman Empire add a bit of depth to the experience.
Normally, you're equipped with weapons standard to the period in which you're working. However, a major imbalance in the course of events will prompt your companion - the salty-tongued Dexter - to offer some new heavy-hitting options. These include assault rifles, laser-guided rockets and more. These segments can be a lot of fun, but they're rarely easy because of the number of foes involved in the fighting.
The story line is pretty good. It offers an interesting mix of narratives and is always keen to point out the dangers of tampering with the natural course of events. This theme is also highlighted in the game play.
For example, many of the soldiers blazing away at you will be bathed in a blue aura. These men are deemed "historically significant." If you kill one of them, things get very nasty very quickly and you'll lose points that can be used to upgrade your weaponry.
However, the graphics don't rise to the level of the story. The landscapes and the vegetation are rather rough, the characters are a bit stiff and the frame rate can get choppy. Most elements don't offer the detail or texture found in most Xbox 360 games.
Glitches aren't uncommon, either. Oncoming cavalry passed through my character and once an enemy took cover inside a tree.
I also was disappointed that I couldn't go back and replay certain levels after completing the game. Only the last few levels played are saved and available. There's no online play or co-op mode.
The enemy artificial intelligence isn't great but, once again, their great numbers make things tricky. Fortunately, your companions can be unusually helpful if you don't outrun them.
Although I had quite a few gripes about the game, I did enjoy it because of the story and impact that my actions had on "history" - and it sure was fun to unleash high-tech fury on hordes of low-tech opponents.
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Copyright 2009 by Stars and Stripes
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