So I got a few minutes of the PC demo in, and it was a lot of fun. This game looks great, and the little bit of the first level that I played was a lot of fun too. I've seen some reviews knocking it pretty hard, but I got my November PC Gamer yesterday, and they gave it an 80! Nice work guys.
I'm a cheap/poor college student though, so I'll be waiting on it to drop in price a little like I do with most games before I pick it up.
I beat the game in less than 4hrs? That doesn't seem right...
Overall I'd say 75/100
Fun game, but not a lasting experience.
Some of the things that annoyed me:
- Even at max graphics settings, textures were muddy, low res and badly compressed
- Character animations were extremely robotic (including 1st person anims)
- The fast reload system didn't really make sense, since the "fast" portion came up more than 1/2 way through a reload animation, shaving off maybe 1/2 second, if that
- Characters turned into sprites are relatively close ranges and as their lods popped out, their animations stuttered like the matrix
- AI was pretty weak
- Short game
Outside of those issues, I really did enjoy the game. It was cool zipping around time like that. Don't want to spoil the ending for those that haven't beaten it, but
I didn't make it a goal to zip through it quickly, that's for sure. I ran from waypoint to waypoint, stopping to kill people I came across just like any other FPS. Maybe the Steam page is off a bit? It says 3.9hrs, so I dunno =\
I finally played through the demo, and whoa, that level was harder than I was expecting. Maybe it was because I loved the period weapons too much to rely on my machine gun? Great work, this is one I'm 100% sure I'm going to get now!
I am of course a little biased here, but i think the overall point is that DoD is a low budget, unpolished game. If your main concern with the product is it comparing to other high-budget titles on the level of polish it has, i think you'll be disapointed. If you can muster up a little suspension of disbelief and just enjoy the game for what it is, a fun somewhat arcady shooter with cool guns, and not get caught up in the fact that it isn't going to win any awards for story telling i think you will enjoy it. Also i think they had some technical issues(poor performace) on the xbox that likely played a huge part in their overall experience. Unfortunately it seems everyone is reviewing the xbox version(even one site simply reposted their xbox review as a pc review) which is leaving a bad taste in peoples mouths. Again i would suggest giving it a go on pc($35 on steam?). If you liked the demo you will most likely enjoy the full game.
I've seen it rated as high as 80 and as low as 10, so i think its pretty hard to go on reviews to tell if you would actually enjoy this game.
I think it looks beautiful, and you guys with your eight man army, have done up a cool title, with a cool time travel story... don't sweat that website..
I finished it yesterday and found the whole experience to be great
It looks like the UK version is not going to be released until Oct 13th...im glad i got it before they changed the date because it really is a good game and i think they have done a brilliant job!
It's because everyone is playing the 360 version. At least they mention that the PC version was the primary version.
Wow, people actually buy their games based on reviews by those asses. They were taking the piss before the game even loaded, after which point i closed the page.
Isnt jeff gerstmann that guy who wrote extremely shitty gamespot reviews until he got fired for evil corporation advertising money reasons and suddenly became martyred as the best games journalist ever?
Oh shit, they caught me! My guy in the jumpsuit and a bulletproof vest is a rip off of HALOZ! They both have helmets even!
To be honest, the game has some flaws, but it is pretty lame to see them try to break the missions and point out things that are in every other game. For example, have you seen the ragdolls in Bioshock LOLOLOL! There are invisible walls in COD 5 LOLOL. What is this 1991!?!!!??? You can run right past the enemies in Gears 2 before they even spawn!!!! What does this game Fallout 3 think they are doing??? I have to WALK for like 2 MINUTES!!!! LOL Characters faces in HALOZ 3 look bad! Hey I found low rez textures in Left 4 Dead!!!
Is it these guys schtik to mock games or what? I have never heard of them before.
That video was just passed around the work email. The discussion around here was mostly about the UI of the game (or general lack thereof). While the video was pretty funny, I was also conflicted knowing that EQ and such a small team worked on it. No, it isn't a AAA game, but who seriously thought that it would be?
Is it these guys schtik to mock games or what? I have never heard of them before.
Nor have I. Not terribly interested in hearing the opinions of puerile 'journalists' that are obviously bitter having to content themselves with writing about games instead of making them.
Isnt jeff gerstmann that guy who wrote extremely shitty gamespot reviews until he got fired for evil corporation advertising money reasons and suddenly became martyred as the best games journalist ever?
Oh shit, they caught me! My guy in the jumpsuit and a bulletproof vest is a rip off of HALOZ! They both have helmets even!
To be honest, the game has some flaws, but it is pretty lame to see them try to break the missions and point out things that are in every other game. For example, have you seen the ragdolls in Bioshock LOLOLOL! There are invisible walls in COD 5 LOLOL. What is this 1991!?!!!??? You can run right past the enemies in Gears 2 before they even spawn!!!! What does this game Fallout 3 think they are doing??? I have to WALK for like 2 MINUTES!!!! LOL Characters faces in HALOZ 3 look bad! Hey I found low rez textures in Left 4 Dead!!!
Is it these guys schtik to mock games or what? I have never heard of them before.
they're a legit site; aside from the regular stuff they run the best gaming podcast(imo) and have a lot original video content. dunno why they decided to shit on DoD this much.
just read the PC Gamer review, they gave it 80% which isn't bad at all. the reviewer -Dan Stapleton- had a few small gripes like auto-save (really guys? auto-save???) and unbalanced difficulty but thought it was goof overall. the closing paragraph was:
Would Darkest of Days have benefited from nother $10 million worth of development time for polishing and voice work improvments? Absolutely. But it makes the most of what it's got, and it's worth every penny of its modest asking price."
I dont think i have ever seen such a discrepency in reviews.
Destructoid makes the claim that darkest of days is "Darkest of Days is the worst first-person shooter of this generation." giving it a 1/10.
Ive only played the demo, but no way in hell is that justified.
I finally got a chance to play the full game last night and I really enjoyed it (only played a total of 2 hours so far). Sure it has its flaws (read Vassago's post), but I can look beyond that because I know it was made by a really small team and a considerably low budget.
I think it's worthy every penny and anyone who has a spare $35 laying about, should pick this up on Steam and give it a go. I wasn't blown away, but I definitely wasn't disappointed!
Crongrats on the game 8 monkies. I see one of your guns on the art header here all the time. But, I played the demo and it seemed like there wasnt much emphasis put on character creation, the soldiers from any stand point (south/north/native american) were all the same. The gameplay was too rigid, stand here shoot there, ok done shooting? Go over there do this, then stand and shoot some more. Maybe it was just the time era and the setting felt dull. Amidst the negatives there was a lot of positives, the weapons felt right, the movement was beautiful and the idea is very solid. I just think it could use a lot more work.
invisible walls, no pda ugly particles effects(I disagree) OHNOEZZZ :0 !!1 so dumb. atleast there we're seemingly legit complaints like AI.
really sorry your game became such a punching bag.
listening to a recent eat sleep game podcast they were shitting on it a bit but quickly stepped back and wondered why DoD was getting so much flak with far worse games released recently.
I played this for most of the weekend and finished it (it was a little short), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved that the tech weapons were given to you sparingly, so when you did get them, you got to enjoy them a whole lot more. You were always given the right weapon for that situation as well. Really nicely paced.
I honestly loved this game, I actually wanted more when I was done and will definitely play through it again.
Is Darkest of Days even available in the UK... I have been watching it on and off for a long time, enjoyed Marmoset and fancied playing the game. Play.com and Amazon.co.uk don't seem to know it exists?
I think the character Dexter illustrates what was wrong with Darkest of Days. He's a cool character, with a cool back story, great character model, tex, etc.
His rigging made me go "wtf?!" His shoulders are warped out of whack almost 100% of the time.
I loved the idea that he's a firefighter from 9-11. Though, the way he revealed it seemed a little contrived.
when he says "aint it fun to fight at the battle of antitum?" it was almost as if the game was begging for praise. Like the game had to tap me on the shoulder and say "hey, that was fun... did you notice?"
Some things were great. Being in the civil war was intense. I loved the lines of troops trading vollies. Knocking that confederate officer off his horse while he casually walked behind their line was great. It seems like the AI was optimized for situations like this, and kind of fell apart when it had to do anything else.
Loved the intro. Little big horn with Custer. OMGCOPTER!!!
Also the sequence where you kill the blue-hazed guy to trick the space marines into appearing. That was clever.
Zeppplin ride was the bomb.
personally, I thought hte particle effects were great.
I hope it didn't sound like I'm ragging on it. It was a cool little game. But if it gets bad reviews, I think its for a reason. It's a mixed bag of amazing models, designs, levels, and crappy rigging, animation, storytelling.
Just beat the game, and I loved it. I was skeptical at first from the demo, but it wasnt really representative of the full game, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because I know a lot of people who decided not to buy it because of the demo. I'm on a quest to try and get people to give it a chance though, because it really is a good game.
It definitely feels like a last-gen game in a lot of parts, but thats easily over-lookable because the game is just flat out fun. There are a lot of experiences to be had that I doubt we'd ever get to play in another game. The Civil War and WWI are eras where pretty much nobody has gone and tried to make a game on because theres simply not enough interesting content to justify a full game, but Darkest of Days is unique in this regard because it takes some of the few interesting parts of each war, and then mixes up even more with unrelated, future based missions. Fighting in Pompeii by the erupting volcano pretty much blew my mind because its such a unique backdrop for a video game to have.
The game has good and bad parts obviously, but really the bad aspects are all on the technical side of things, and easy to overlook when theres so much great stuff on the gameplay side.
Congratz on the release guys. With this much publicity you gotta give yourselves a pat on the back. IMO the bad reviews are because its a B grade game (budget and dev time etc) that keeps giving you the feeling its an AAA game. Basicly these reviewers are hitting it hard as though it was a bad AAA title rather than a great B title (not familiar with the grading systems :P )
Played the demo and loved it, sure there are drawbacks and a lot of things that could be better but for the price its top notch. I'll be getting this on steam next month.
I've been playing through it, and am having a good time. I just really wish there were modding tools or a multiplayer mode because once i beat i'm afraid i wont play it much
I didn't realize there aware gaming studios in the Midwest. I'm originally from Nebraska and fled. Cool to see that there are dev studios out there, congrats on the game!
Replies
I'm a cheap/poor college student though, so I'll be waiting on it to drop in price a little like I do with most games before I pick it up.
Ok, well only part of that is true.
Overall I'd say 75/100
Fun game, but not a lasting experience.
Some of the things that annoyed me:
- Even at max graphics settings, textures were muddy, low res and badly compressed
- Character animations were extremely robotic (including 1st person anims)
- The fast reload system didn't really make sense, since the "fast" portion came up more than 1/2 way through a reload animation, shaving off maybe 1/2 second, if that
- Characters turned into sprites are relatively close ranges and as their lods popped out, their animations stuttered like the matrix
- AI was pretty weak
- Short game
Outside of those issues, I really did enjoy the game. It was cool zipping around time like that. Don't want to spoil the ending for those that haven't beaten it, but
Seaseme: Uh some crappy website released a passworded copy of the demo, for who knows what reason, try getting the demo from a different site?
I am of course a little biased here, but i think the overall point is that DoD is a low budget, unpolished game. If your main concern with the product is it comparing to other high-budget titles on the level of polish it has, i think you'll be disapointed. If you can muster up a little suspension of disbelief and just enjoy the game for what it is, a fun somewhat arcady shooter with cool guns, and not get caught up in the fact that it isn't going to win any awards for story telling i think you will enjoy it. Also i think they had some technical issues(poor performace) on the xbox that likely played a huge part in their overall experience. Unfortunately it seems everyone is reviewing the xbox version(even one site simply reposted their xbox review as a pc review) which is leaving a bad taste in peoples mouths. Again i would suggest giving it a go on pc($35 on steam?). If you liked the demo you will most likely enjoy the full game.
I've seen it rated as high as 80 and as low as 10, so i think its pretty hard to go on reviews to tell if you would actually enjoy this game.
It looks like the UK version is not going to be released until Oct 13th...im glad i got it before they changed the date because it really is a good game and i think they have done a brilliant job!
they'll have a "First Look" feature on DoD soon
http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-darkest-of-days/17-1370/
It's because everyone is playing the 360 version. At least they mention that the PC version was the primary version.
Wow, people actually buy their games based on reviews by those asses. They were taking the piss before the game even loaded, after which point i closed the page.
To be honest, the game has some flaws, but it is pretty lame to see them try to break the missions and point out things that are in every other game. For example, have you seen the ragdolls in Bioshock LOLOLOL! There are invisible walls in COD 5 LOLOL. What is this 1991!?!!!??? You can run right past the enemies in Gears 2 before they even spawn!!!! What does this game Fallout 3 think they are doing??? I have to WALK for like 2 MINUTES!!!! LOL Characters faces in HALOZ 3 look bad! Hey I found low rez textures in Left 4 Dead!!!
Is it these guys schtik to mock games or what? I have never heard of them before.
Nor have I. Not terribly interested in hearing the opinions of puerile 'journalists' that are obviously bitter having to content themselves with writing about games instead of making them.
yep thats him
they're a legit site; aside from the regular stuff they run the best gaming podcast(imo) and have a lot original video content. dunno why they decided to shit on DoD this much.
Would Darkest of Days have benefited from nother $10 million worth of development time for polishing and voice work improvments? Absolutely. But it makes the most of what it's got, and it's worth every penny of its modest asking price."
Destructoid makes the claim that darkest of days is "Darkest of Days is the worst first-person shooter of this generation." giving it a 1/10.
Ive only played the demo, but no way in hell is that justified.
Kinda ironic that destructoid tried to give me a virus when i went to that page
http://www.destructoid.com/review-darkest-of-days-147921.phtml?s=50#comments
It really makes you think about how much these reviewers would be assholes in real life.
Anyways ill be shelling out for this when i have the spare cash
i think he wrote his own ironic wikipedia article, so he's qualified as a pretty big douchebag
I think it's worthy every penny and anyone who has a spare $35 laying about, should pick this up on Steam and give it a go. I wasn't blown away, but I definitely wasn't disappointed!
Once again, great job 8 monkey and 3PS guys.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/darkestofdays/review.html
it looks like a solid game, and i'll put down some monies on it.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-hd-darkest-of/56345
invisible walls, no pda ugly particles effects(I disagree) OHNOEZZZ :0 !!1 so dumb. atleast there we're seemingly legit complaints like AI.
really sorry your game became such a punching bag.
listening to a recent eat sleep game podcast they were shitting on it a bit but quickly stepped back and wondered why DoD was getting so much flak with far worse games released recently.
I honestly loved this game, I actually wanted more when I was done and will definitely play through it again.
^^
AFAIK its a separate publisher for UK and they have they're own timeframe for release.
I think the character Dexter illustrates what was wrong with Darkest of Days. He's a cool character, with a cool back story, great character model, tex, etc.
His rigging made me go "wtf?!" His shoulders are warped out of whack almost 100% of the time.
I loved the idea that he's a firefighter from 9-11. Though, the way he revealed it seemed a little contrived.
when he says "aint it fun to fight at the battle of antitum?" it was almost as if the game was begging for praise. Like the game had to tap me on the shoulder and say "hey, that was fun... did you notice?"
Some things were great. Being in the civil war was intense. I loved the lines of troops trading vollies. Knocking that confederate officer off his horse while he casually walked behind their line was great. It seems like the AI was optimized for situations like this, and kind of fell apart when it had to do anything else.
Loved the intro. Little big horn with Custer. OMGCOPTER!!!
Also the sequence where you kill the blue-hazed guy to trick the space marines into appearing. That was clever.
Zeppplin ride was the bomb.
personally, I thought hte particle effects were great.
I hope it didn't sound like I'm ragging on it. It was a cool little game. But if it gets bad reviews, I think its for a reason. It's a mixed bag of amazing models, designs, levels, and crappy rigging, animation, storytelling.
It definitely feels like a last-gen game in a lot of parts, but thats easily over-lookable because the game is just flat out fun. There are a lot of experiences to be had that I doubt we'd ever get to play in another game. The Civil War and WWI are eras where pretty much nobody has gone and tried to make a game on because theres simply not enough interesting content to justify a full game, but Darkest of Days is unique in this regard because it takes some of the few interesting parts of each war, and then mixes up even more with unrelated, future based missions. Fighting in Pompeii by the erupting volcano pretty much blew my mind because its such a unique backdrop for a video game to have.
The game has good and bad parts obviously, but really the bad aspects are all on the technical side of things, and easy to overlook when theres so much great stuff on the gameplay side.
Played the demo and loved it, sure there are drawbacks and a lot of things that could be better but for the price its top notch. I'll be getting this on steam next month.