Customer Reviews

Darkest of Days

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Darkest of Days for the PC and 360 is one of those games which you will enjoy. The game takes you to different time periods and you have to use that period's weapons but the game sparse it up with the occasional future weaponry. Your objective is to stop the alteration of time because some random little errors are popping up and that is of course is not good.
Your companion through all of this is a man named Dexter. Dexter is awesome and his dialog though the game will keep you definitely involved in what is going on and will give you the occasional laugh. Through the game you will have a side that you are on, ranging from the Yanks (North), Rebels (South) in the civil war to the Russians in both world wars and throw in a couple of time agents along the way to the conclusion of the game which ends the current events and set things up for a nice sequel which I hope they make.
The game uses a new engine named Marmoset which allows for literally hundreds of enemies that are not half bad in the intelligents department to be on screen at once. This make the huge battles extremely fun and I really hope to see this engine implemented in other games as the possibilities for awesome are quite high.
Likes: Dexter, large battles, the dialog, The Zeppelin level, Final level, Briefings
Dislikes: Slight lag, lack of variety in the achievements
Gameplay
Gameplay for the game is simple in its set up, you go back in time to various periods after you are rescued from you imminent death at the beginning of the game. You can choose which periods you wish to go to which gives so variety to the game. Once there you and Dexter, who will often be in a separate area but occasionally you work together, take care of what your objective is while trying to maintain historic accuracy.
You use the period's weapons as stated before in combat, though the general categories can be modified for increased accuracy, clip size, ext, for both the rifle and pistol which you will be equipped with when you go back in time. You do this by earning points by not screwing things up in time. This basically amounts to not killing people with a blue aura around them. This can be done by ether using the Chasers which will target these people and knock them out safely so you don't have to worry about it.
You will go through various time periods from Custard's last stand where you were about to die when rescued, to the Civil War, and both World War 1 & 2, along with the final location which I will keep a secret so the surprise in not spoiled for you. In these periods you can view your map to see where you need to go and the objectives will vary from, get to him, assault this position, participate in battle, find this guy, ext. The objectives do vary enough even though I didn't make is sound so.
Graphics
In the graphic department the game does pretty good. I am not big on graphics so rarely does a game disappoint, but this game does its environments well. From the Civil War to both World Wars the environments will not disappoint.
Characters have a variety to them, so you will not feel like you are gunning down the same guy for, what was it, the 714th time. Dexter who is your main companion and friend through the game has an interesting look to him. He always has a hat on and the style would make you think he is from maybe the west but he comes from New York City. Then you have Mother, the Doctor's mysterious research assistant who you only see on screen. She is done in a way that will keep the mystery alive as she never appears in full face on screen.
Graphically the game will not disappoint.
Presentation
The games presentation is of medium class. The game does give an interesting concept which is good but it doesn't wow you but at the same time it doesn't disappoint. The manual is the basics of the game and not much flair is put into it. Not a bad thing, but I like it when they make the nice fancy manuals with character descriptions and game facts.
Overall in the Presentation department the game is average. Online marketing is awesome but the game itself is pretty average in this category.
Value
Is the game worth buying? Yes, the game was already coming out at a discount price which was very nice way of saying "Hi we're the new guys, try our game.". Since then the game most likely game down in price and you can get further discounts so the game meets the asking price and will not disappoint Value wise.
Fun Level: 4/5
Closing statement
I have seen on other websites poor reviews of the game; well frankly they don't know what they hell they are talking about. Just because this isn't just another mass produced corporate game doesn't make it bad. I enjoyed the game thoroughly and I know you will to. That is why it gets my recommendation.
I would recommend though that if you have a PC that can play it that you get it for that or install it to your X-box 360 to improve performance.
Final Score 3.8/5 (rating system 1 to 5 how good it is. -1 to -5 how bad it is)
Parental Warning
The game contains blood, death and war along with some mature subject matters that they may not be ready for regarding morality. As always use discretion when choosing and allowing your children to play games.

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As many other customers have stated, this game has potential, but a few things are missing. I agree, visually, there are things lacking. From a game play stand point, yes, it has its goods and bad's. I don't want to spoil too much with this game, but there were so many things that could have been done with this game to make it a first rate five star game. Was it worth the seven dollar rental, yes. I don't know if I would advise running out and paying full price for it though. Overall, I enjoyed most of it, but I did not find myself wanting to play it again right away as I have some games in the past.

Seeing reviews for this game with a majority of 4/10 reviews, I went in with no expectations for this game, but ended up enjoying it greatly, good mindless fun. Flawed, but fun, 8/10 for me.

Lots of fun for the whole family. The kids really love it. A trip back in time. Found this a great price compared to locally.

This game is really good not only in a game play sense but in the fact that except for the time travel thing it is rather historically accurate. If you have had a chance to try out the demo in America I would recommend buying this game from Amazon these European game developers did really well.

After hearing about darkest of days unique take on the shooting genre, I thought I should check it out because of all the time period wars the player could take place in and large scale battles. darkest of days is pretty much a sub-par shooting game with bad animations
,physics and terrible friendly AI.The protagonist is a deaf mute and has zero personality similar to half life lead character. but all in all I had a fun time with darkest days,One of the most impressive aspect of the game is that its mostly void of any linearity,not to say its a sandbox game but I found out that most battles were large scale and open ended ,so much its puts linear fpss like call of duty to shame. The story is somewhat interesting with its back to the future-esque plot and ocassional chuckles here and there.Although its not the most high end shooter out there alot of its concepts give it alot of potential, but with sub par graphics and dull gameplay this game is a rental at best.

First mistake, I bought this game strictly off the box saying going to war at atleast four different times in the world which were historically accurate. This seems to have good expectations and would be fun even if the game is not up to modern video game standards. The game is no where close to historically accurate. The story behind the game is to travel back in time to complete a mission, but to do as little damage to actual history as possible and your told over and over to not be a hero since you can not change history. But you find yourself time and time again either leading the fight or fighting by yourself against whole groups of men that no matter what you do you can not avoid them you have to fight. For the other problems; the controls are never constant one tap of the trigger will either fire a single shot or (if you have a weapon other then the musket) will become full auto; you never know. Also standing up walking is about the same as most shooters, but as soon as you kneel down the left and right become so sensitive that its very hard to control your position. WARNING Game spoiler: I will pick on the Civil War time frame. The person you play as is about the only person in the Civil War that has a musket everyone else has a lever handle rifle. Just about all the enemies appear to be snipers that hardly miss you even if your sprinting. The enemy also can see you even if your hiding in a corn field not moving and you can't see but five feet in front of you but your being shot from multiply bad guys. Your allies for the most part are useless. I will leave all the other time periods alone in case you play the game. I suggest if you wish to play this game borrow it and save yourself the money.

Here's the deal: I played this game for the first 4 or 5 levels. I though "these negative reviews are crazy, this game is really fun." A few levels later, everything came to a hault. I realized, this game is not very fun. Some of the achievements are glitched for one thing. Also, you expect that you'll be using advanced futuristic weapons against soldiers of the past. Yes, you will, once every 2 or 3 levels, with limited ammo. Most of the time, especially, the Civil War levels, you get stuck with a one shot musket rifle that takes forever to reload. This would be ok, except you always seem to end up alone against 5 to 8 enemies. So you either have to just run around them, or go so slowly and methodically that it isn't fun. I'm all for a stealth battle, but it's just boring standoff after boring standoff. I didn't even finish the game I got so bored. I bought the game at a used media store for $3.95 in the scratch&dent bin, so I got my money's worth. If I would have paid retail? Sheesh, I'da been ticked.

If the curiosity is more than you can stand, please...rent it first. I can't really think of anything good to say about this game. The graphics are ugly - I've seen games that looked better on the first xbox. The framerate is horrible considering the primitiveness of the graphics. The gameplay isn't much better. I can see elements of other (better) games have been lifted and re-used here. The time travel storyline was done to much better effect in Timeshift. The "quick reload" timing mini game has been recycled from Gears of War. When using a mounted turret, you lose your targeting reticule, and there's no clear aiming sight on the weapon, so it's really just pot luck as far as guessing where your shots are going to go, and the targets are usually so far away that you can hardly see the impact of your bullets, so the only real indicator you get as to whether your shots are going where you want is when your enemy keels over. Thankfully the game's auto-aim assistance is more than a little forgiving. Just wait until you have to don a gas mask, it cuts your field of vision down to about 25% of the screen, and if you think that's bad imagine trying to look at the in game map thru your one "eye-hole". It's a joke, I can't believe this made it thru beta testing. Another thing that I found annoying were the use of "invisible walls". You'll be walking along in an area which appears wide open and easily accessible, then you run into one of these invisible walls simply because the game needs you to go in a specific direction. Why not just insert a thick growth of brush or wall of trees instead of simply blocking your path with..nothing? It's a cheap trick. The voice acting is generally amatuer, the only one that really stood out was the actor who voiced the character of Dexter - I was certain it was Brian Doyle Murray, but it turned out to be someone else. I can't really tell who this game is marketed towards, maybe history buffs? The period weaponry is interesting for a bit, but using a one shot musket gets old pretty fast. Maybe they were targeting FPS fans, but the shooter element of the game is rudimentary at best. Enemies don't really use cover as they should, generally they just try and bum rush you. When they do use cover, most of the time they'll helpfully leave their melons fully exposed, ripe for the plucking. The controls - which are pretty much standard fare for fps's - are about the only thing Darkest of Days has going for it. My only complaint is the look speed is just too slow and cannot be adjusted. You'll often get shot in the back 3 or 4 times before you can turn and return fire. Sadly a solid control setup is not enough to save Darkest of Days. Please, take my advice and rent this first if you must try it out, save your hard earned cash for a better game.

This game would make a decent PC shooter.....from 2000. Just from looking at the game, it's unimpressive. The graphics are very dated and having more than a few enemies on screen causes slowdown. The lag that this game causes is entirely unacceptable for a game in this generation. In some cases, it almost makes the game unplayable.

The game's story isn't much better. Without giving away too much of the game's plot, the story makes very little sense and seems like an afterthought to tie together the Civil War, WWI, WWII and the future. The ending is terrible too. The game's recorded dialogue can't keep up with the subtitles, either. The subtitles will run way ahead of the dialogue and in some cases the subtitles will be gone a full 10 seconds before the dialogue finishes. Also, the amount of profanity is appalling. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with profanity, but they throw it in every other sentence just to be "edgy," and it's just excessive.

As for the gameplay itself, it's very sub-standard. When compared to other modern shooters, the missions are lame and most of the challenge will come from not being able to figure out what's going on or having to reload your period weapons.

Some of the novelty aspects of the game were a good idea in theory, but in practice, it's just annoying. Period weaponry seems cool, but the reload times, ammo capacity and firing rate just make the game drag and often leave you open to attack. The enemies with the blue auras that you can't kill because they're "important" to the future is also a novel idea, but in practice, they just get in the way. You'll find yourself getting killed by them while trying to knock them out too often.

I do have to give this game props in a few areas. The WWII levels are actually really fun and the most enjoyable part of the game. The achievements also have a nice sense of humor. You get one for drowning yourself, one for blowing yourself up, and one for punching a horse in the face and killing it. Yeah, the Horse Puncher achievement is easily one of my favorite achievements of all-time.

This game is ok for a rental if you want something short to play or an easy 1000 gamerscore, but if you're not prepared for a game that's made frustrating because of its poor quality, pass on it. Personally, I only rented this game for the Horse Puncher achievement, and I question whether or not it was worth playing the whole game. Other than that, this game is just a prime example of wasted potential.