Wow...Darkest of Days is amazingly bad.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Worst game I've played in years. Strong contender (very strong) for Worst Game I have Ever Played Ever.

Holy crap it's bad.

There are not enough superlatives in all the languages on earth to describe it's monumental badness.

It's one of those games (or books, or movies, or whatever) that's so amazingly bad you find yourself wondering why it was even released. How did the dev team not look at this game and think "Good Lord...this is abysmal...we can't release this!" or "I will not have my name attached to this pile of rotting mutant rat feces."

Pretty much everything about the game is horrible. It looks, sounds, and feels like a game from 2002. The visuals are really, really horrible.

The controls refuse to adopt common sensibilities, too. The number buttons don't change weapons...you must use the mouse wheel for that. They're also really numb. There's no reticule or guide of ANY kind for grenade throwing, and the grenades' ballistics are not anywhere close to what you'd expect, so throwing grenades is a pointless crap shoot.

The game also imposes a Gears of War style reloading gimmick that requires to to "hit" a target point as a circle fills. Missing extends the reload time dramatically. Note to game developers: GO FIRE SOME REAL GUNS. They do not jam EVERY TIME.

But easily the worst thing about this game is that you are not in control of your own character half the time. And I'm not talking about cutscenes or dramatic moments. I'm talking about DURING GAMEPLAY. Most of the time it's very poorly denoted, too. During the first battle (Custer's last stand) I found myself being (apparently) pummeled to death (red blood-ish glow on the screen which I can only assume means I was being hurt). I whirled about looking for the culprit, and no one was near. Then, suddenly, I was in a completely different part of the map, unable to move. I realized, upon noticing legs in front of me, that I was lying wounded in a circle of soldiers, several yards from where I was an instant before.I next went to Antietam, and after being dropped into the map a hundred yards from the front lines (why?!) found that, upon approaching the front line, MY CHARACTER BEGAN WALKING OF HIS OWN ACCORD. I LOST CONTROL OF MOVEMENT. I was running through corn fields and NOTHING WAS HAPPENING. I could hear gunshots, but there was nothing to shoot at. Just corn stalks and me not being in control. WTF?! Eventually I emerged from the corn field with the other soldiers to perch on the edge of a trench. Enemy soldiers stood at the other side. I still could not move, my character MANEUVERED HIMSELF into position with the other soldiers and I began taking shots at the enemy.

Terrible, horrible, amazingly bad. What PURPOSE does taking control away from me serve? The game is not doing anything I could not do. It is not creating any cinematic moment (insta-teleport and a corn field...wow). There is no BENEFIT to doing this. Why was it done!? It's beyond comprehension.

Anyway, if you value your sanity, stay the Hell away from Darkest of Days. It's riddled with terrible design decisions, horrible voice acting, a story that does nothing with itself, numb controls, one of the worst cases of "floating camera syndrome" since Goldeneye, random control-stealing moments, dull, tedious gameplay, and not an ounce of fun.

Oh, and that reminds me:The game begins with a solder at Little Big Horn being plucked (from the nineteenth fargohells***assing century) to "the future" (22nd century I kind of guess but they never actually say) and faced instantly with portals, computers, TVs, holograms, etc. with NO QUESTION. There's no STORY there. No "WHOA WTF is this crap get me out of here." He just goes with it. Really horrible. Might as well have used a guy from the 22nd century...why'd they even bother with the Custer bit at all?

The game also brags about it's use of Nvidia Physx. Dunno why. If I were Nvidia I'd be embarrassed to have my name associated with those claims. There's nothing that I saw that couldn't be done without Physx. Nothing even remotely "realistic physics" looking at all. Characters fall stiffly and sharply upon death, and there's not exactly anything in a freaking field of grass or corn to show off physics features. I never once saw anything that looked like it needed or was bettered by the use of Physx tech.

Really, really, REALLY horrible. I cannot believe how bad it is. It must be a joke, that's the only explanation. NO ONE with a functioning brain would make or publish this game. I refuse to believe it is not a joke.

Keep an eye out for games from 8monkey lab in the future so you can avoid them like a plague-ridden zombie carrying a nuke.

[marlin29311]

I enticed the idea that this game could be kinda cool....

....then I played the demo on XBL. Holy cow...I just stepped back into my original Xbox. This game looks terrible...

....and then HOLY COW. This game sucked even more when I started to play it. After about 3 min of gameplay, I decided I had enough.

[Loki]

That's really too bad, I was intrigued by the concept of the game. Yahtzee has a review up for this game as well, he didn't seem to hate it quite as much as you.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Yeah, I was really hoping it would be good. It had so much potential, and NONE of it was used.

[snwbrdr435]

I played the demo on xbox live for probably a minute. There was a bunch of indians riding horses around me. After shooting them and not hitting a thing from point blank i got a message from my friend asking to play flashpoint and i obliged