Darkest of Days

[crainger]

Originally Posted by Kaguya

Lol, channel it into the game!

I wasn't too keen on her voice in the demo either, but I suppose you get what you pay for. Is 8 Monkey Labs Australian? (quick Internet search) Nope, their from Iowa. Weird. I guess Australia must go on to conquer the world in the future, which would explain Mother's accent

Damn, I keep debating if I should buy this now for 10% off or wait until later when there's another sale. I just don't have time to actually 'play' it now, but hate to miss a deal

I think they needed a cheap voice actor. They found one.

[crainger]

Been playing some more. It has a strange charm to it. The word, while feeling sterile in a way, also feels real. Feels kinda like a cross between Call of Juarez (the 1st one) and Postal.

Still fun. A good diversion until Res 5 hits.

[Kaguya]

Originally Posted by crainger

Still fun. A good diversion until Res 5 hits.

Agreed. I picked it up last night (despite the Aussie world-domination undertones) and played some WWI. I actually love using period weapons so when I saw bitching about that in the reviews I knew it wouldn't bother me. Only things that do bother me are:

1) The robotic voice of Mother (maybe I should turn subtitles on and volume off ).
2) Weapon upgrades... I guess I understand it for period weapons I bring with me, but does the game know to keep the ones I snag in battle as default?
3) Time is always a mind-*&%#... I have to go fight battles to earn points and make 'time' for their researchers to find weapon upgrades which, as far as I'm concerned, have already been researched so they should all be available

Still, so far, so good... I tried shooting a glowing soldier in the leg to see what would happen (chasers have a pretty short range ...) and it scared the hell out of me because his glow disappeared and he hit the ground. I looked around for baddies to appear all around me but luckily nobody showed up.

[NarcissistZero]

You can shoot them in the leg... just don't kill them.

Also, I think you can kill one a level without the baddies coming.

[Kaguya]

Originally Posted by NarcissistZero

You can shoot them in the leg... just don't kill them.

Also, I think you can kill one a level without the baddies coming.

Is it possible to just leave them be, or are the levels designed that you have to incapacitate them in some way to move on? Also, can you run out of chasers?

[NarcissistZero]

Originally Posted by Kaguya

Is it possible to just leave them be, or are the levels designed that you have to incapacitate them in some way to move on? Also, can you run out of chasers?

You can run by them... a lot of levels have tons of optional combat, especially the open levels.

And yeah, however many he holds is how many you have... you do run out. You will see one less everytime you use one.

[Dirthead]

Well i have to say for a low budget game it was fairly fun, just would like to see a group like the makers of half life or another big game company buy the rights and make a second one in which will have more money and able to make a better game.Its fun not really worth the cost but it is good start at making of a great game.

[Kaguya]

Now that I've actually played a number of missions, I'll give my brief overview of my likes and dislikes.

One thing that someone on the Steam forums pointed out was a big flaw according to him, was the lack of good 'feedback'. I wasn't sure what he meant at the time, but once I got back into the game I knew exactly what he meant. In some respects it doesn't always feel like you're part of the game, and little things like sound queues, reactions, and responses to your movements (proper sounds and feel of getting hit, knowing you've hit others, etc...) It's difficult to pinpoint without playing the game and keeping it in mind.

Another low point for me is the music. It was SO repetitive that I actually turned the music volume down to 0 and just play with the gameplay audio. To be honest, I think this works out very well.

And we've all heard how Mother's voice actress is awful. I was especially disappointed with her after we first started to meet the other time travellers, and what was supposed to be shock and disappointment on her part sounded like she was a robot reading lines on a piece paper.

Now, the good stuff... I actually love the period weapons, and having spent most of my time in the Civil War period thus far, I like seeing how some of the battles feel... the slow reload of the Springfield Musket makes combat very different. The AI is sometimes very interesting, especially when it turns and runs or turns to find cover. It can, though, get pretty screwed up, which will bring me to my last comment.

Though not a criticism, just a fact that I think can make or break someone's experience. The game seems very heavily scripted, but not nearly as refined in scripting as CoD. Infinity Ward has that down to a science, and 8Monkeys are just getting into it. There's a few times where I was 'supposed' to kill all the badguys before I moved onto the next portion, but decided to just run to the checkpoint. This can result in a few different things, first it can cause the existing AI to go wonky and just run past you to get to the 'next' position, and it can cause certain queues to get out of sync (during a battle I actually shot someone who was from the last group and then one of my fellows said "that's the last of them, let's head up the hill" but we'd already headed up the hill.

Anyway, it's fun - glad I got it with 10% off. Not my favourite game, but definitely an experience worth having if only to say that you played that game that Destructoid gave a 1/10 to

J/K :P

[NarcissistZero]

This game supports multiple monitors well, for those who care. I just wrote it up on WSGF.

[Kaguya]

That's neat... so you can play across monitors?

Another thing I really love about this game is how quickly it starts. Without a bunch of rapid sponsors like EA etc... you don't have to sit through a million different intro clips to get in... you hit the exe and you're at the main menu

I was thinking a bit last night about how the game makes me feel somewhat like I'm playing a singleplayer Red Orchestra. RO is an awesome game with a lot of rifle use with the occasional open map. The AI in RO is about the same caliber as well (although it's meant as a multiplayer game). Not a bad thing, I love RO, just an observation.

[AdamK47]

I finished the game not too long ago. It has very strong points, but also very weak points. Character animations are severely lacking. The AI is weak but passable. Main character voice acting is good. All other character dialog seem to be voiced by the developers themselves. Textures are a mixed bag. Some are good and some look to come out of a game 7 years old. The ending is very abrupt and unsatisfying. I was hoping for more there. The Physics are very good and add to the experience. The amount of AI on the screen at one time really adds to the whole feeling of going through a battle. I had fun with the huge amount of AI on the screen at one time. Mowing them down with a futuristic weapon was a blast.

There's my rambled mini-review.

[Kaguya]

Originally Posted by AdamK47

I finished the game not too long ago. It has very strong points, but also very weak points. Character animations are severely lacking. The AI is weak but passable. Main character voice acting is good. All other character dialog seem to be voiced by the developers themselves. Textures are a mixed bag. Some are good and some look to come out of a game 7 years old. The ending is very abrupt and unsatisfying. I was hoping for more there. The Physics are very good and add to the experience. The amount of AI on the screen at one time really adds to the whole feeling of going through a battle. I had fun with the huge amount of AI on the screen at one time. Mowing them down with a futuristic weapon was a blast.

There's my rambled mini-review.

That's a good take... the voices around are definitely not well done. I'm still not particularly fond of Mother but Dexter's voice acting I can deal with. I think they could have easily gone into (not sure if they do later) Dexter's experiences being ripped from (his origin *no spoilers*) to the future as an alternative to exploring your own personal loss.

Actually, that's something that the devs could have explored if they had the time or interest: One of my biggest turnoffs in TimeShift was the mute main character. Sure, it's cute in HL, but there's a lot of times it just makes the story very bland, and DoD is one of those games. Here we have the opportunity to explore the psychology of a person 'stolen from time'. He could have a picture of his girlfriend in his pocket (well, in the 1870s maybe a picture would be a little extreme, but at least a love note or something). He could reflect on what's going on. If he was, say, 10 or 15 during the civil war (in order to be of significant age by the Battle of Little Bighorn) then these would be battles of his childhood. He could reflect on that. World War I, he could think on how the wars are just getting worse... (seeing has WWI is the future for him)... I mean, there's so many angles that could have been used to make the game really amazing. It's almost ripe for fan fiction (no, I'm not volunteering ).

However, even without the cool story that's totally missing, the huge battles of the Civil War were especially moving as I could almost picture these soldiers running up in huge groups and watching the entire first row fall, only to be replaced by more. And I haven't even minded the future weapons that much as they don't appear to have ammo caches around, so if you overuse them you'll run out of shots and have nothing to fight the badguys with.