Time travel is an almost ideal theme for game implementation. Each of us can easily come up with a hundred interesting features of such a project. In which eras can you fly, what can be changed there, how to fight. I’m not exaggerating – everyone. But what’s surprising is that the developers, who are supposed to invent things in their jobs, don’t create games about jumping into the past or the future. This topic comes up extremely rarely and is always not fully demonstrated. Only some echoes of the dashing idea reach us. However, the studio 8Monkey Labs didn’t beat around the bush, but created Darkest of Days, where the entire gameplay is based on using a time machine. What happened?
They stole Morris!
If you remember, in the novel “A Sound of Thunder” it was enough to crush a butterfly to create a worldwide nightmare. So all time travelers know well: if you were able to overcome the space-time continuum, then be kind, look with your eyes – don’t touch it with your hands.
The KronoteK company, which has learned to jump into the past, has long been guided by this principle. To study history, you don’t have to throw stones at the Romans. You can be a passive observer.
Only one day the head of a corporation disappeared. And to hell with it, the future began to change quickly, quickly. In addition, Morris was also dying at these moments from the sharp arrows of Indian fighters for independence and elegant scalps.
Who is this man? The main character who has never heard of time travel. Lately he had been more concerned with the redskins and their strange desire to kill the pale-faced ones. So there was no time for physics. And one day, when he was about to part with this mortal world and go straight to the frying pan in hell (only before our eyes he sinned about fifty times with the Colt, and another hundred – he wanted the death of his neighbor, but missed), he was saved Halo fan man in futuristic suit. Threw him into a water sphere and sent him to the future. “Mother KronoteK” was waiting there, and she told Morris about his important role in preventing a big disaster. When you reach this point while playing, go make tea. I have already told you briefly that this lady will spend about fifteen minutes talking about it.
It’s just the wrong story and it makes the wrong honey
When the tea is brewed, and Morris, in a quarter of an hour, has come to terms with the fact that his whole past life is over, and now he knows where he is and will do who knows what – we begin the normal game.
But we’re starting out in an unusual way. We are allowed to choose a mission. Icons of the American Civil War and World War I are lit on the screen. Wherever we want, we’ll go there. Then, however, we will still have to go through the remaining task, but we ourselves determine the sequence, and if you get tired of running through the trenches and killing the Germans, welcome to the corn fields, there is a large and dangerous southerner here – the hunting season is open.
The tasks in the mission https://fivecascasino.co.uk/mobile-app/ itself are often set to us of the same type – you just need to kill the enemies at a selected point or find one of the important characters, and together with him kill the crowds of spiteful critics. Sometimes we attack, sometimes we defend. Everything is standard.
Except for weapons. We almost always have a cannon with us, characteristic of the era. If we fight during the Civil War, we run with a musket that needs to be reloaded after each shot. It’s long, inconvenient, and after the salvo there’s a cloud of dust left behind. But it’s still unusual and fresh.
In World War I, the weapons were a little different. In addition, machine guns have appeared, and therefore it is much easier to defend positions. But it’s not just weapons that these two wars are different from each other.
Fundamental difference in passing style. In the Civil War we run on a flat surface, fight in a bare field, and in the First World War we hide in trenches and usually move along the hills, there are always forests or ravines all around. And yes, there are still Russians there. And we always fight with them.
By the way, about assistants and partners. There is no group as such, but we almost never fight alone. The developers specifically focused on large-scale battles. That’s why sometimes about a hundred people run with us at once – the scale is inspiring.
In general, these are the things. In one era we ran and shot, we fly to another. Either with a revolver in his hands, or with a musket. And although the developers formally announced four historical events, almost all attention comes down to the two listed above. We’ll tell you about the rest a little later.
Looking ahead, I will say that DoD sometimes I really like it a lot. And this is largely due to interesting finds and unusual tasks. So, in one of the battles we are automatically squeezed into a squad, and we run through a corn field along with a hundred other soldiers. Cannonballs explode right next to us, someone falls, the rest run on. Shouts: “Hurray!", firing somewhere ahead and. We stop abruptly. Literally ten meters in front of us are southerners. Everyone raises their muskets – a salvo. Reload, take aim, or. How often have you seen something like this in games?? I didn’t have a chance to encounter. Moreover, the developers tried this trick once and did not repeat it again. The feelings haven’t faded away.
Another example. We fought as usual, as always. And then they climbed into the airship and began to kill enemies from it. And not just shoot at the enemy, but bomb him, throwing shells with your hands. We run, look in different directions, take aim using the eye and throw the “bomb” down. Again, new, unusual.
Or, one day the Germans used a chemical attack during an attack. I had to put on a gas mask and quickly retreat. At the same time, other soldiers suffocated, fell, died. And again, the developers did not make this a “feature” of the enemy’s offensive. We’ve been poisoned once and that’s enough for us.
Meanwhile, there are also very funny battles with futuristic guns. Just three minutes ago we stood in a line and fired at the enemy once every three seconds, when suddenly we received a machine gun and killed a hundred southerners in a minute. They run away, scream, we force a huge horde of people to retreat. Unprecedented sensations. Moreover, it’s nice that opponents really get scared and run away. Not at the command of the script.
An appetizing picture emerges. But, damn it, they managed to screw her up. Moreover, in all the examples that I gave above, there are some shortcomings. Just like in the whole game.
Hundred-on-hundred fight ten meters from the enemy? Everything would be great, but for some reason the allies shoot seven times slower than the player, but they stupidly can’t hit us. The developers were able to convey the spirit of such a battle only in the first ten seconds, and then for another five minutes they had to grieve.
The airship is cool? Wrong word. But how do you like the fact that the Germans fired from. homing mortars? No, this is not a super-invention of an evil genius, but a crooked hand 8Monkey Labs. They decided that the core could select a target and adjust its flight. These are, in general, adequate people?
What do you think of the AI, which is almost asking to be killed?? There are many enemies, but apparently they all have the same brain. The allies, however, do not yield. Fairy idiots. Sometimes you start to think: maybe you yourself are somehow wrong. You hide in shelters, don’t run from side to side like you’re scalded. Yes, and you shoot accurately, and not somewhere at sparrows.
It is also unclear how the Russians in the First World War learned the most popular cry when attacking: “For Stalin!»? Why are Germans called Krauts, although this became popular only during the Great Patriotic War?. And why, for the most part, the entire gameplay comes down to simply shooting the enemy on the scale of genocide?
Even when we get to the Second World War, we will also just shoot, shoot, shoot. And in Pompeii they won’t give us a sword, they’ll give us an uber-gun and force us to kill bad guys from the future. We’ll only meet Roman legionnaires a couple of times, and even then it’s some kind of nonsense when a fighter with a shield rushes at a shotgun. Okay, the first fifty soldiers don’t realize that I can kill them from ten meters without a chance, but why didn’t the other three hundred understand this??
And here the ending is completely lost. A more or less sane story turned into nonsense about terrorists.
It’s a shame, it’s a shame, but the game was even able to like it. Yes, I really like it. You can play it for five or six hours, but you have to give it up during World War II. So we don’t know for sure whether to recommend it for review or whether it’s better to save you and recommend something more adequate.
Pros: interesting idea; often cheerful gameplay; many lucky finds.
Cons: an abundance of monotonous actions; thousands of imperfections; severe mental illness of the developers, due to which they introduced all sorts of “homing mortars” into the game.