If you’re an avid FPS gamer, at one point you’ve probably wondered ‘What if I could use this BFG in a historic war like World War I?’ at least once. You haven’t? Oh…

Whatever. You don’t even have to wonder what’s it like to use modern weapons, or even futuristic weapons in historical wars. Darkest of Days is the title that lets you shoot these futuristic weapons in the American Civil War. Or maybe even better, Pompeii.

So is it all fun as it sounds? Well, that’s a tricky one for us as well. The vicissitude between the highs and the lows of this game is so great that we don’t know how to present Darkest of Days well. Is it a good game? Is it a bad game? We’ll just tell you what we saw; you decide.

The storyline of the game is definitely solid, at least until the end. We shouldn’t spoil you with more details, but it’s gonna be either “I loved it. Want more” or “WTF? I hate it!”. That being said, until the deciding point of whether you loved it or not, I’d say the storyline was interesting enough for me to keep playing it ’til the end. The player starts out as a guy who’s teamed up with a foul-mouthed partner named Dexter to go back in time and in an attempt to maintain the original flow of history as it is. Dexter has a few jokes up his sleeve, and has his cool moments here and there as well. The problem I see is the presentation. The story could have been so much more compelling and intriguing if the presentation was done right. Maybe a narration from the main character. Maybe a better explanation on mission objectives.

The mission objectives are explained on the map you bring along with you. The map in Darkest of Days is actually really cool; the paper and navigation marks change as you travel through different times. But then again, you can only see the mission objectives while you’re looking at the map. There’s no compass on the UI, which shouldn’t be a huge problem if you’re good with directions but others might find it a bit irksome. It’s a minor issue though, as you’ll be busy making your way around about a hundred bodies.

Best Map Ever

Yes; a hundred. This is possible thanks to the Marmoset Engine, created by 8monkey Labs, the developers of Darkest of Days. This shows how ambitious they were with this project, and I really admire the effort they put into it. The result is somewhat surprising, in both good and bad ways. The blur effect was somewhat different, and the animation of the characters looked somewhat…different. Maybe we were too used to common engines like Source or Unreal Engine 3. The details on the people were amazing when you look closely, but somehow the colors and lighting didn’t always look natural. The game loads surprisingly fast; I’ve never seen any game load this quickly, especially one that utilizes all the modern 3D technologies including Nvidia’s PhysX engine. My guess is that the Marmoset engine was optimized with a few tweaks here and there. Just to give you a frame of comparison, our fastest PC was equipped with a Radeon HD 4850, Intel Q6600 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

One of the coolest sniper rifles I've seen so far

The audio was pleasant, but a bad mix of quality voice acting disappoints the player from time to time. Sometimes you hear very high quality voice work, then another character’s voice jumps in with such poor quality voice acting that it even makes you wonder what’s gong on.  Some of the voice acting is pretty good!  But the ones that are bad can be a real pain to sit through.

Other than the random story and presentation hiccups, I think the game was very well done, especially for a new company with such a great vision. But on the other hand, I just can’t help myself from thinking, “what if this game had a bigger budget with hundreds of more staff to work with?”  With a vast range of weapons and eras, what if there were awesome multiplayer modes? There are just so many good and ambitious ideas, but not everything was executed correctly. There are many good moments, but no doubt bad moments kick in time to time as well. For about $40, this game can be a good purchase if you really like the key elements, such as time-travel and historical wars.

Our Score: 6 / 10

Story has good moments. Needed a better presentation though.

The time-traveling shooter, historical FPS is finally here.

You’ve probably already read our couple of previews, but just in case you forgot again, we’ll list the features:

• Wreak Havoc with Future Weapons in Antiquity: Something nearly every gamer that’s ever played a shooter based in the past has always wanted is the ability to bring a futuristic weapon back through history and kick some major butt. How differently would Custer’s last stand have turned out if the General was equipped with an M-16 assault rifle? You’ll be able to answer questions like this in Darkest of Days. While not every battle and situation will allow you to wield weapons from the future, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to unleash futuristic fury on your unsuspecting foes.

• Brand New Engine: The dedicated team at 8monkey Labs has created an all-new, groundbreaking game engine known as Marmoset. The Marmoset Engine not only breaks from the all-too present Unreal engine FPS clones flooding the market, but also allows for some amazing graphical capabilities. You’ll fight through epic battles filled with literally hundreds of NPCs on the screen at the same time, all with an advanced AI and all without a hint of graphical slowdown and all set against wide-open environments that are lushly detailed and dynamically lighted.

• Compelling Storyline: Darkest of Days is a compelling, action-packed first-person shooter to be sure, but it’s not just mindless run-and-gun, blow ‘em up gameplay. You’ll have to not only think about how to approach certain key battles and situations, but you’ll also have to take care when fighting – certain key people that were never meant to die will be marked with a special blue aura. If you kill them, you’ll face dire consequences…

And what else is better than the words from CEO himself, right?:

“For me and everyone else here at Phantom EFX and 8monkey Labs that have been working on Darkest of Days for the past three years, it’s almost hard to believe that launch day is already upon us,” said Aaron Schurman, CEO of Phantom EFX and lead writer for Darkest of Days. “We’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into this game, and we’re extremely proud of what we have accomplished. We feel that Darkest of Days is not only a fantastic game on its own merits, but that it will serve as a breath of fresh air into the somewhat crowded FPS genre and give players across the world a truly memorable, exciting gaming experience.”

Oh RLY?
We have editors already working on the review, so stay close and see if it’s worth your wait.

The price is set to $49.99 on Xbox360 and $39.99 for PC gamers. Soon enough, the digital distribution will be available as well.

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.

Cedar Falls, Iowa – August 10, 2009 – Phantom EFX, a leading developer and publisher of entertainment software, with independent game development studio 8monkey Labs confirmed today the PC demo of Darkest of Days, a free-to-play version of the highly anticipated historically-based first person shooter, will be available on August 11, 2009.

“Custer’s infamous last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn, and the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history… these are just a few of humanity’s darkest days, and you can dive into both of these in the Darkest of Days demo,” said Aaron Schurman, Chief Executive Officer at Phantom EFX. “This hour-long demo lets players experience unrivaled carnage and to experience what it’s like to use futuristic weapons in period settings and see what happens when you alter history while fighting against hundreds of enemies during some of man’s greatest struggles in History!”

The demo features some serious action, throwing players into the middle of raging battles, while also giving players great hands-on time with a variety of weapons. To get a more in-depth look at the rich weapons loadout, check out the weapons training video at Gametrailers.com.

Key features of Darkest of Days include:

• Brand New Engine: The dedicated team at 8monkey Labs has created an all-new, groundbreaking game engine known as Marmoset. The Marmoset engine not only breaks from the all-too present Unreal engine FPS clones flooding the market, but also allows for some amazing graphical capabilities. You’ll fight through epic battles filled with literally hundreds of NPCs on the screen at the same time, all with an advanced AI without a hint of graphical slowdown and all set against wide-open environments that are lushly detailed and dynamically lighted.

• Compelling Storyline: Darkest of Days is a compelling, action-packed first-person shooter to be sure, but it’s not just mindless run-and-gun, blow ‘em up gameplay. You’ll not only have to think about how to approach certain key battles and situations, but you’ll also have to take care when fighting – certain key people that were never meant to die will be marked with a special blue aura. If you kill them, you’ll face dire consequences…

• Wreak Havoc with Future Weapons in Antiquity: Something nearly every gamer that’s ever played a shooter based in the past has always wanted is the ability to bring a futuristic weapon back through history and kick some major butt. How differently would Custer’s last stand have turned out if the General was equipped with an M-16 assault rifle? You’ll be able to answer questions like this and more in Darkest of Days. While not every battle and situation will allow you to wield weapons from the future, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to unleash futuristic fury on your unsuspecting foes.

• PC powered by PhysX: Only available for the PC on NVIDIA® GeForce® GPUs, NVIDIA® PhysX® technology delivers real-time and hyper-realistic physical gaming effects in Darkest of Days. “Canned” reactions are a thing of the past with PhysX, which brings Darkest of Days to concussive life with blazing explosions and weapons impact effects, reactive debris, realistic water and fog, and lifelike environmental effects including smoke, dirt, dust, and wind.

To download the free-to-play version of Darkest of Days, please visit www.darkestofdays.com to view a list of sites that will host the official demo.

To pre-order Darkest of Days, please visit store.phantomefx.com.

When we received a showcase invitation from Phantom EFX, a highly successful online casino game publisher, it struck me as odd. I knew them only as focusing on online casino game publishing, with two of their games placing in the “Top 10 Sellers of the Year” in the PC gaming category in both 2006 and 2007. We didn’t know what to expect when we approached their meeting room.

Our expectations were turned 180 degrees almost immediately as we stepped in Phantom EFX’s E3 2009 booth. The CEO/Director Aaron Schurman of 8 Monkey Labs (the game’s developer) gave us a presentation of their latest project, Darkest of Days, and as we took down information about the game, we could understand why Phantom EFX decided to take a chance and push toward this new and challenging path.

Darkest of Days is categorized as a Historical First Person Shooter (FPS). The player would be in a total of five different historical events–if we have our notes straight: The Battle of Antietam, Civil War, World War I, World War II and Pompeii. How can you be at all of those events? Simple: time travel.

You’ll usually start with a simple objective, like saving a certain person to somehow better the history of humankind. But as you can only imagine, the time traveling doesn’t always end up how you might have expected. Sometimes, you’ll have to be on the German side, and the next second, you have to help the Russians survive. The events and storyline can be altered quickly as the player progresses through the game. On one mission, you thought that accomplishing Objective A would help you, but later you’ll find out the decision you made before would work against you. Sometimes you won’t even know why you’d have to do certain things until the last minute, the last remaining seconds. Not only that, the AI acts in such a manner that a wide variety of results is possible even if you’d experienced the battle differently before.

And did we mention the time traveling? Yes, it means that the player can bring his/her own future weapons to the old historic events and vice versa. Just imagine bringing BFG to the World War I battlefield. The possible weapon combinations are limitless.

Sounds too good be true? Well, the demo that we witnessed worked smoothly, and they were able to represent the gameplay very well. And 8 Monkey Labs’ own game engine, Marmoset, didn’t look bad at all. To be honest, I might have seen a better game engine or two, but 300 people in one map with their own animations is interesting enough to be compared with some of the leading engines today. Developing and creating their own IP and their own game engine, we could really see their ambition.

The one possible downside is that it might have been fun if the game had multiplayer. When we brought this up, Aaron hinted that it could be in the sequel of the Darkest of Days. We certainly like the idea.

The title is expected to be released in Fall 2009, on PC and Xbox 360.

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!