Yes, it’s here in our office. Darkest of Days.

Actually, the preview is already out there, on major gaming-related websites right now. And from reading them prior to writing this article, I can see why people would love it and hate it. I also see that many people are being harsh on this title for the wrong reasons, even before they’ve tried the demo. For that reason, I’ll try to keep it short and simple. After all, this is a preview version of the title, not the final.

The storyline for this game is very crucial. You basically time travel back and forth between the past and the future, helping others and sometimes yourself. It can get a little confusing, unless the game tells the story well. In my personal experience, the story of Darkest of Days is somewhat interesting. I expected the worst because time traveling in games isn’t something completely original. But I can tell that Phantom EFX tried to make this title unique. But not everything about the storyline works well in the game; especially the presentation. The storyline itself is interesting, but I wish they had included more about the personal history of the main character. Still, it sure beats another FPS with World War II zombies; at least in my book.

If you are already used to the flashy visuals that even make a dog poop shine, you may not like it. I’m impressed that 8monkey Labs built the Marmoset engine from the ground up. Not a common move for game developing studios making a first FPS ever. So, does it look good? Well, I don’t know. We had some different results with different video cards, but if you adjust the brightness settings and all, it looked pretty good. Many times you’ll end up in the past, like World War I or the Civil War, and so the designs wouldn’t be all shiny and pretty to begin with. But the details are there, and you can see it if you have the video card to show it.

Talking about details, I liked the audio. Music was not too pop or epic, but fit right into the situations. And if you are patient enough to be idling next to the NPC, you’ll hear their random comments, which are many times pretty funny. There are bad voice actings here and there, and some of the recorded voices weren’t consistently high quality, but overall it doesn’t make you cringe. The developers paid close attention to the way people talked in the appropriate time period, with accents and slangs. It adds realism, and for the M-rated game, they sure weren’t shy with their choice of vocabulary.

Another fun aspect of the game is the ability to bring future weapons into the past. Imagine yourself in the middle of battle during the Civil War, with enemies reloading their single shot muskets, while you’re just holding the trigger down on a rapid-fire shotgun.

One thing I noticed is that the game loads rather quickly. Sure, this was the preview version, and may not contain everything the final version will, but it literally took me only a few seconds before I’m able to start the game or enter missions.

For a preview copy, I managed to say quite a bit about Darkest of Days. But let me tell you this again; this is a preview version of the game and we still have months before Phantom EFX and 8monkey Labs are done with their work on Darkest of Days. So far the game looks alright, probably above average, but the level of ambition here isn’t something you see everyday. This is not just a clever rehash of different game elements that worked before. It is something original, and for that, it’s worth our close attention.