Despite being something of a staple in science fiction, time travel is one of the thorniest concepts any writer can choose to address. It’s not a subject to be tackled without either a good sense of humor or the ability to stick to a relatively convincing set of rules. Darkest of Days has neither of these, but that doesn’t stop it from relying on time travel as a plot device. Not only is this 2009 FPS dated and broken, the story it fumblingly attempts to weave makes little sense and breaks almost every rule it invents.
That’s a real shame, because the premise is rife with possibilities. An organization called KronoteK (no, I can’t explain the capitalization of that last ‘K’) sends its agents traveling through time to recruit individuals who went missing, never to be seen again. (Since they were missing anyway, their disappearance from history will supposedly go unnoticed.) You play as one of these freshly minted KronoteK agents, Alexander Morris. Morris was supposed to die at the battle of Little Bighorn, but KronoteK plucked him out of the path of an incredibly insensitive Native American stereotype. He now finds himself aligned with them in a war against another shadowy organization that you’ll still be trying to make sense of as the credits roll.
That’s a convoluted set-up, but the potential should be obvious. Play it straight, and you have the harrowing tale of a man whose entire conception of reality is shattered, and who gets a new lease on life only to be thrown into a series of conflicts in which he has no personal investment. Play it for laughs, and you could have the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure of first-person shooters. Even as nothing more than summer blockbuster-style action, it could at least have provided a few hours of mindless entertainment.
Sadly, developer 8monkey Labs couldn’t make up their mind which direction they wanted to take, from either a plot or a gameplay standpoint. Most of the story is treated seriously, but never seriously enough. We’re not given the slightest hint of how Morris copes with suddenly being flung a couple of centuries forward in time. His stereotypically gruff mentor Dexter seems to feel some remorse for all the people he kills in service to KronoteK, but that doesn’t stop him from cracking bad jokes and comically mispronouncing “stegosaurus”. The game goes for a bit of realism in the mechanics (such as introducing the possibility of guns jamming while reloading), but it also gives you access to a few futuristic weapons that should blow the minds of the Civil War and World War I armies you fight alongside throughout the game.
Speaking of which, the Civil War and World War I aren't just a couple of examples of the many time periods you’ll visit in Darkest of Days. Until the last few missions, they're literally the only settings you'll visit. Eventually, you do get to do two missions in World War II Germany, and one in Pompeii during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, but it’s small consolation for the time you spend trudging through oppressively brown and virtually identical representations of Russia and America’s east coast. Of course, like all action games these days, the ending is designed to set up a sequel, so I suppose the developers were just saving their good ideas for later.
Believe it or not, I’ve hardly scratched the surface of all that’s wrong with Darkest of Days, but to say more would be to court the tedium of the game itself. It’s bad enough that the game is so dreadfully dull; that it also squanders a genuinely promising scenario just adds insult to injury. Darkest of Days was obviously made on a shoestring budget, and while that excuses some of its technical failings, nothing can excuse doing so poorly by a story idea with so much potential.
That’s a real shame, because the premise is rife with possibilities. An organization called KronoteK (no, I can’t explain the capitalization of that last ‘K’) sends its agents traveling through time to recruit individuals who went missing, never to be seen again. (Since they were missing anyway, their disappearance from history will supposedly go unnoticed.) You play as one of these freshly minted KronoteK agents, Alexander Morris. Morris was supposed to die at the battle of Little Bighorn, but KronoteK plucked him out of the path of an incredibly insensitive Native American stereotype. He now finds himself aligned with them in a war against another shadowy organization that you’ll still be trying to make sense of as the credits roll.
That’s a convoluted set-up, but the potential should be obvious. Play it straight, and you have the harrowing tale of a man whose entire conception of reality is shattered, and who gets a new lease on life only to be thrown into a series of conflicts in which he has no personal investment. Play it for laughs, and you could have the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure of first-person shooters. Even as nothing more than summer blockbuster-style action, it could at least have provided a few hours of mindless entertainment.
Sadly, developer 8monkey Labs couldn’t make up their mind which direction they wanted to take, from either a plot or a gameplay standpoint. Most of the story is treated seriously, but never seriously enough. We’re not given the slightest hint of how Morris copes with suddenly being flung a couple of centuries forward in time. His stereotypically gruff mentor Dexter seems to feel some remorse for all the people he kills in service to KronoteK, but that doesn’t stop him from cracking bad jokes and comically mispronouncing “stegosaurus”. The game goes for a bit of realism in the mechanics (such as introducing the possibility of guns jamming while reloading), but it also gives you access to a few futuristic weapons that should blow the minds of the Civil War and World War I armies you fight alongside throughout the game.
Speaking of which, the Civil War and World War I aren't just a couple of examples of the many time periods you’ll visit in Darkest of Days. Until the last few missions, they're literally the only settings you'll visit. Eventually, you do get to do two missions in World War II Germany, and one in Pompeii during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, but it’s small consolation for the time you spend trudging through oppressively brown and virtually identical representations of Russia and America’s east coast. Of course, like all action games these days, the ending is designed to set up a sequel, so I suppose the developers were just saving their good ideas for later.
Believe it or not, I’ve hardly scratched the surface of all that’s wrong with Darkest of Days, but to say more would be to court the tedium of the game itself. It’s bad enough that the game is so dreadfully dull; that it also squanders a genuinely promising scenario just adds insult to injury. Darkest of Days was obviously made on a shoestring budget, and while that excuses some of its technical failings, nothing can excuse doing so poorly by a story idea with so much potential.
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