Darkest of Days
Platform: PC, Xbox 360
Developed by: 8monkey Labs
Published by: Phantom EFX
Release date: September 8, 2009
Official website: darkestofdays.com

Game summary from Phantom EFX:
"In Darkest of Days, players will travel back and forth through the annals time to relive some mankind's most dire hours, when human society was at its lowest points. By fighting through terrible events such as The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest conflict of the Civil War, and the volcanic eruption in Pompeii in the year 79, the player will attempt to save certain key individuals who were never meant to become involved in these truly monstrous events and thereby change human history for the better."

Review Summary:
Darkest of Days falls short on basically every aspect as compared to other first person shooters on the PC and Xbox 360. With an interesting story and a promising setting, the game surprised many people before its release. But horrendous voice acting and lack luster controls bring the game back down to its "budget" category. Traveling through time using both local and futuristic weapons is fun, but their lack of "weight" take away from any fun to be had. Read through the rest of my review to see my recommendation.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Read the full review below.

Darkest of Days review

Every year, games are released on game systems and PCs that have great premise, but fall way short in the execution. Although every developer sets out to make a polished, fun and engaging product, sometimes they run out of time and money. Darkest of Days from 8monkey Labs and Phantom EFX has fallen into this trap in 2009. You play as a silent protagonist snatched out of Custer’s Last Stand and recruited into Kronotek, a company from the future. You are charged with traveling through time to save important figures in history and changing the past to save the future. Sounds like a good premise because it could allow the story to go through many different settings, using any number of weapons. Once I played through the game, I found a standard first person shooter with numerous issues.

From the first bullet fired by you, the graphics and controls show their lack of polish. The game, visually, is not on par with most other FPS experiences released in 2009. The animations do not fare much better due to their robotic nature and even the title screen shows the "budget" nature of Darkest of Days. I would have to say that the best looking part of the game is the water effects associated with the portals that allow you to travel through time. I also thought that the facial animations were pretty accurate and better than many other games. But, the voices that came out of those characters was some of the worst voice acting I have heard in years. It is almost like the placeholder voices were left in the game due to lack of time for development or budget. That was the definitive factor that completely took me out of the experience. And at only about 4 hours to complete, Darkest of Days didn't even give me that much time to get back into it.

As you play through the levels set in the four different time frames, you use both current and futuristic weapons. Along with that you have seekers, which are used to indicate key figures that are important to history. These characters have a blue glow around them and helping those folks survive can give you even more points to upgrade four different weapon stats. This mechanic allows you to increase your rate of fire, shorten reload times, and clip sizes for both your main and secondary weapons. As you may assume, these are very important when using a single shot musket or a bolt action rifle from the Civil War and both World Wars. I just wish the weapons could have had more "weight" because when firing a single shot musket, there was little to no recoil. This was also the same when firing a futuristic shotgun.