Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Darkest of Days is a time-traveling thriller set in multiple time periods. You play as a soldier that was picked up at the Battle of LittleBigHorn due to the fact you were never registered in the battle due to a mix up with transfer papers. You are pulled into the future where you have to sort out some strange historical occurrences due to the fact that the “Father of Time” is missing.
You are picked in DoD because you more or less don’t matter to the time continuum. It gives a unique motivation for the character, you don’t really matter in terms of the stream of time but you are given the opportunity to Quantum Leap between key, bloody battles and correct the flow of history. Along the way you learn little historical facts and figures about the events you battle through. There comes a point in the game where you are given access to some advanced weaponry for some missions, which more or less throws out historical accuracy (it’s Pompeii, the place isn’t surviving by any stretch of the imagination) and brings up the fun level.
What’s Hot
The story of DoD is rather intriguing. The way the plot weaves itself around a timeline that must not change while you fight in historical battles gives you plenty of reason to fight and think about the choices you make. It also gets your noodle thinking about the fluidity of time and if small changes can make such a large impact. The story has a lot of passion behind it, and it is clear that this is one of those gaming projects that a designer has always wanted to make.
There are some other interesting features like the Gears of War active reloading system to speed up muzzle loaded weapons and the fact there are some enemies on the battlefields that you need to incapacitated rather than splatter against a wall with bullets since they vital to the accurate timeline. You are given a special weapon to do just that very task and gain points to upgrade your weaponry.
What’s Not
There are no two ways about it: DoD is a mess. If the thought of DoD is to sell the “Marmoset” engine created by 8Monkey Labs, the 360 version isn’t a good showpiece. There are technical problems like the active reloading mechanism not working all the time (or it is too forgiving), slowdown and other deadly glitches games can pick up along the way. The graphics are sloppy, generic and uninteresting with a map system that isn’t useful in the slightest. Those poor visuals are rounded out by a bewildering button map and you have a recipe for disaster. If that wasn’t enough, the lack of any attempt at some production value is really the coup de grace for the entire title.
Final Word
DoD is one of those games that has a lot of heart. The problem here is that something went drastically wrong during the course of the game that lead to the squandering of a cool story. With a dismal few good ideas and some of the worst execution seen in quite some time, DoD can’t manage to save itself to be remotely enjoyable.
