Publisher: Phantom EFX
Developer: 8Monkey Labs
System requirements: Windows XP; 1 GB RAM; 2 GHz CPU; DirectX 9 compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB of video RAM; DVD Rom drive
Genre: First Person Shooter
Release date: Available now
Review by: Marcus Spears

Have you ever wanted to be an agent for a time-traveling agency, getting to visit famous locations in the past while preventing changes to the time-line, a la Time Cop? If so, Darkest of Days, a new first-person shooter developed by 8Monkey Labs and published by Phantom EFX, might be for you. Fortunately, it does not involve being shot at a solid wall in a rocket-powered sled. But you do get to have fun visiting five different time periods, including Little Big Horn in 1876, the Battle of Antietam in 1862, the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, a German P.O.W. camp in 1941, and ultimately Pompeii in 79 A.D. on the day of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

You assume the role of Alexander Morris, a soldier in Custer’s army at the Battle of Little Bighorn. You’re badly wounded and a few seconds away from being overrun and killed by the Indians, when you’re rescued by a man in futuristic armor and taken through a blue portal. The next thing you know, you’re in the headquarters of KronoteK, a company founded by Dr. Koell, who has developed time travel technology. Dr. Koell is missing, and disturbances have started appearing through history, putting people who played key roles in history to be placed in danger. You’ve been selected because you are an “orphan” in time; nobody knows if you’re alive or dead. Your name doesn’t even appear on the MIA lists from the Battle of Little Bighorn, and this makes you perfect for recruitment. After a crash course in modern weaponry, ranging from World War I to the late 22nd century, you’re given the task of tracking down two men who are not where they are supposed to be: Cpl. Welsh from the Union Army in the American Civil War of the Battle of Antietam and a Russian Army officer named Petrovich from the World War I Battle of Tannenberg.

Gameplay is pretty standard for a first-person shooter. You can carry two weapons, plus a few grenades. Guns include everything from the Springfield 1840 musket, the Henry repeating rifle, the Remington Model 1858 revolver, the Mosin-Nagant rifle, the Mauser C96, all the way up to futuristic guns like the AR-55 assault rifle and a fully-automatic combat shotgun, which you get in only a few missions. The best weapon, of course, is saved for the very last mission. In addition, in most missions, some people will have a blue aura; these people must survive the battle, so you must either disable them without killing them, usually by shooting them in the leg or using a “Seeker” on them. Seekers basically zap them with a taser charge, leaving them completely unharmed. You get upgrade points after each mission, which you can use to improve the traits of your weapons, such as reload speed, clip size, and accuracy. You’ll get an average of 3 upgrade points per mission, as long as you don’t kill too many of the blue aura people. The more of them you kill, the fewer points you get, because then the scientists have to spend more time fixing your mistake than they do working on your weapons.

There are a few nuisances with this game. The response time to strafing seems to be a little spongy. You also don’t stop instantly when you take your finger off the key, though rarely an issue, because invisible fences prevent you from accidentally stepping off a cliff. Unfortunately, they also sometimes prevent you from taking any route other than the one the level designers intended. In addition, only the first level is set in Little Big Horn, and only the very last level is set in Pompeii. Everything else is in one of the other three time periods. I guess I expected the game to cover more time periods than it did, and that’s why I’m a little disappointed, but at least the ending definitely leaves it open for a sequel.

Like several other games, when you are badly hurt, your vision goes gray, the edges of the screen turn bloody, and you know you need to seek cover fast. There is no save-anywhere feature in this game, though it makes plenty of auto-saves (often 10 or more per level); if you die, you merely go back to the last auto-save. When you start a new mission, all the auto-saves from the previous level (except for the one at the very start of the mission) are automatically deleted, so you don’t have to worry about cluttering your hard drive with dozens of saves.

If you’re a fan of first-person shooters, this might be a great game for you. The graphics are excellent, making full use of NVidia’s PhysX technology and multi-core CPUs to allow over 100 men on-screen at once. The weapons sound and feel authentic, except for the obviously fictitious ones; the music, when there is any, is never intrusive; and the story is well thought-out. However, in my opinion, Darkest of Days is more evolutionary than revolutionary, and the whole campaign will probably not take more than ten hours for a skilled gamer. For this reason, it just narrowly misses out on my “Buy it” category.

Our Score:

Our Recommendation: