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When I was first told of the concept of Darkest Of Days the newest XBOX 360 game from Phantom EFX, I couldn’t help but think, amazing.  A war game that transcends 5 different War eras, but unlike the Call of Duty series where you are multiple people, you are the same character all the way through.  But how can that work you ask? Time Travel.

After getting whisked straight from Custards Last Stand, to 300 years in the future, you find out that somehow, the outcome of the wars are changing.  It becomes your job to go back in time through the different wars to ensure certain people make it out alive, and maintain the history books.  What makes that even more difficult then it sounds is that not only do you need to make sure people on your side don’t get killed, there are certain people on the other side you have to make sure survive as well.  That’s right, you are getting shot at by people who you can’t kill, well you can but it will only cause problems for you in the future.  These NPCs, notated by their blue auras, can be taken out by the use of chasers, little balls that act like mini personal homing concussion grenades, harmlessly knocking out the opponent soldier that needs to survive.

While the games story really drew me in, I immediately noticed a few blaring problems with the game that made it very hard to work with.  First off is the lack of “hero complex”, i.e. you play someone from the civil war era, who is transported to the future, and he isn’t freaking out?  Today we have TV, Movies, and SCI-FI programing to tell us, hey maybe it can happen.  Back then they had no such thing and I find it hard to believe our hero would be able to adjust as quickly as he does in the game.

Secondly is the long list of game play problems I had with the game.  The guns accuracy definitely has kids gloves on.  At a long distance, intentionally shooting over the shoulder of the enemy we were still scoring one hit kills. Graphics at many times was blocky, and the refresh rate was very poor. Many of the sounds in the game were repetitive, including a very loud and annoying Indian war call that sounded like kid was just hitting a button as many times as he could to make the one sound clip keep playing over and over again.  The music was just as bad, I never really heard it change, it was the same few notes over and over.  Controls were sluggish but I think I can chalk that one up to game mechanics.  If it was my first time using all these new-fangled weapons I’d be a bit slow too.

With the all those little hiccups it made it hard for me to play the game.  If you can get past those little hiccups there is a great story to be had in this game, and the more you play, the more the story becomes apparent.  This is one of those games that you can choose the simple path to get to the end but if you want to get full enjoyment out of the game you have to play as many levels as possible.  

Final Rating: 7/10 – Graphics and below average gameplay, scar a great story line, but the story line still shines through

till next time…