Review: Darkest of Days

World War I with assault rifles? Sounds interesting right? Maybe even similar Time Splitters. Well, the only thing those games share are the graphics.

Darkest of Days follows Alexander Morris, an soldier from Custer's last stand who becomes MIA when Kronotek picks him up right before he dies. And that's the catch; help Kronotek find the Father of Time and help correct history or be sent back to right before you die. So you are sent through some of the world's greatest battles like WWI and the Civil War, in order to find important people and save history to avoid ruining history forever.

Every level begins with the firecracker-like snap of the warp portals that get real annoying real fast. You're dropped some where close to a huge battle and will have to fight wave after wave until you get to one check point,then another then hike all the way back into a warp portal for the next rendition of this. It gets boring real fast with almost no other missions than "your at point A, charge through an entire army then get to point B". I'm not kidding about the entire army thing though. It wasn't unusual to have 100's of NPC's on screen at once, which would have been awesome to behold if I wasn't worried about how many more bullets I can actually take.

The health system is flawed. The red, blood splattered screen isn't good enough to show how much health you have left. At times, you seem invincible and other times you can only take about 3 shots. Don't even get me started on hit detection, it's not there.

Also, the reload system is just awful. There is a timed reload, kind of like in Gears of War, that rewards you with a faster reload if you get it right. However, the speed for this meter is completely random and seems to just pick whether or not you actually timed it right. Most guns don't take much longer to reload without this anyways so it's basically pointless.

The only genuinely good parts are listening to your often humorous partner, Dexter and anytime you get a futuristic gun to mow down enemies. Why you can't get these weapons every time you have 15 Confederate soldiers shooting at you, I have no idea.

To wrap it all up, the graphics look like it was made last generation and the voice actors seem to think they're just talking to one another in a conference room. I'll give that the story line was pretty good and messing with history can be as interesting as taking rocket launchers to the Old West but at the asking price and number of errors the game throws at you, it's just not worth the hassle.

The Good:
Futuristic assault rifles during the cowboys and Indians times is pretty sweet. The writer for Dexter should have written the whole script.

The Bad:
This game looks and feels like it was made 5 or 6 years ago and tedious tasks are just annoying. It isn't worth doing the mission just to go onto another one to do the same thing.

Bottom Line:
Play the demo if you're really set on playing this. It covers everything good in the game and only has one task so it won't get boring. Otherwise, avoid and don't buy.

This review is based on the PC version of the game on normal.

P2 would like you to know that the hardest difficulty is called "With Chest Hair".