Darkest of Days pitches you neck-deep in a Soldier-and-Indian-esque battle right from the beginning. You struggle to survive the fight until, eventually, you are narrowed you and your army pals find yourselves helplessly over run.
Game Over!
Ok, not Game Over…
A time portal opens up and a space man, of sorts, rescues you and takes you to future, where time travel is nothing more than any other ordinary Tuesday. But you were saved for a purpose, of course. You were selected to be part of an on-going mission to correct the wrongs of history. Someone is going around changing crucial aspects that need your immediate intervention. No, you’re not Time Cop. You don’t do splits or speak with a funny French accent. You won’t mind the lack of splits and accents since it’s a first person shooter. You won’t see both legs when you split anyways.
Gameplay
Darkest of Days throws you at a tutorial that, sure enough, will teach you all you need to know. It’s not too hard. Pretty much anyone can mash buttons until the right thing happens and poof, learning occurs! On screen you have your basic ammo, grenade, and “chaser” indicators. What are “chasers”? Eh, we’ll get to that later. Additionally, the screen turns red and bloody to act as your damage indicator. Your damage recovers when you take yourself out of the heat of battle – the latest FPS (first person shooter) rave!
And now onto the actual gameplay.
As you look around, if you’re a seasoned gamer, you might think that you’re in an original Xbox game. The people and scenery come off as a bit stiff. With that said, the special effects do a decent job at covering for this. Gunfire sounds and visuals display nicely before and after they hit enemy targets. Non-playable characters, both good and bad, crowd around you to remind you that you are still at a war.
There’s good and bad to this; however, as the NPCs (Non-playable characters) in the Darkest of Days sometimes do not search for appropriate cover or even cover you from enemy attack. I speak, of course, of your good NPC’s, who sometimes make you question their aim as your enemies hit you dead-on almost all the time.
In your larger fights, you can’t help but notice the lag when the screen is filled with about 50 NPCs.
The voice acting is done well; however. The characters all have their own individualities that clearly demonstrate the consideration put into them.
As for the overall aspects of Darkest of Days; there are a few on and a couple of off points. You get to handle some colonial and World War ‘X’ weaponry, and you get to play around with some fancy futuristic weapons. An astute gamer might question how an 1800′s soldier would know how to handle futuristic automatic and ballistic weaponry. But, at least, you do get "chasers"Â. When tossed, they’ll incapacitate the historical "no-no"Â targets that you shouldn’t kill. That adds some depth and frustration to your everyday bloodthirsty gamer. You’ll get rewarded with weapon upgrades if you stay away from the "no-no"Â targets.
In closing, it’s a game. If you have it, you’ll play it. The achievements will taunt you to stay, too. There’s nothing that will really push you away from it. But you can’t help but finding yourself just going through the motions. They’re ok motions, but you’ll do them over and over again.
A 6.5 out of 10.
Original post: Darkest of Days Game Review