Time travel may be a plot device we’ve seen before, but Darkest of Days puts a great spin on it by encouraging players to take advantage of and enjoy the anachronisms it produces. Change the tide of history with a little help from future technology? Sign me up! Purposely stick with an older weapon for the challenge of it? Why not.

Phantom EFX and 8monkey Labs have poured a great amount of effort into this title, and it’s apparent down to the little details. For one thing, they constructed a new engine for it from the ground up. Not only does this allow for an original look, but it lets the game throw hundreds of soldiers at the player with all of the AI done realtime. Moving away from fully scripted events has been happening more and more as of late, and I’m an ardent supporter of games that respond dynamically to the changes the player carries out.

When you watch the trailer, don’t be deceived by the size of the battlefield. The player’s actions are crucial in changing the tide of battle. With a variety of weapons from the arcane to the ultra-destructive at your disposal, you get to move around the (geographically and historically accurate) battlefield in whichever manner you like, and victory is simply a matter of making effective use of the resources at your disposal.

The lighting and physics provided by the in-house Marmoset engine only help to immerse the player in the environments, and employing different means to take on the different missions promises to add to the replay value. All in all, we’re excited to see more about the title in the next two months–we’re looking at a PC/Xbox 360 release in August this year–so keep your eyes peeled for more to come! We’re headed back to the exhibition floor now, with more to come over the course of the day!