The Characters:

You used to be Alex Morris, a recently transferred solider under the command of General Custer. Well at least until you watch him die and you are thrown into a time portal by a Time Agent. Now you are Alex Morris, a newly recruited Time Agent - your mission is to figure out what or who is disrupting certain events in history. You are guided by another Time Agent named Dexter, who you first meet at the weapons training ground. After that introduction, you are given missions by 'Mother', the wife of the inventor of the time traveling portal. There are more characters you interact with, but those are the main ones.

The Weapons:

Unlike some of the other FPS's out there, you do not get to experience weapons from the Civil War era, World War I era or modern times. You have weapons like: the Springfield Musket, the Morgan James Rifle, the “Broomhandle” C96, the Gewehr 1898 Rifle, the Automatic Machine Pistol-60, the Assault Rifle-55, the C07 Shotgun, the MA-22 Rocket Launcher, and many more you are able to obtain throughout the game. But why do you need anymore? You have a shotgun. There is a reload timer when you need to reload your weapon. At times it can either save you or could be the end of you if you don't hit the green area on time. This is especially true with the older weapons where it takes forever to reload. After each mission you can upgrade your weapons and reload rate is one of the options along with fire rate, accuracy and clip size. Trust me, with some weapons you run out of ammo extremely fast.

The Look, Music and Feel:

I will admit, graphically it may not be the best looking game out there. It is certainly not Crysis, but with 8Monkey Labs creating a new engine, called Marmoset, it certainly works for them. The engine's main strength is allowing hundreds of A.I. on the field at the same time. What does that mean for you? Well it means that you will get that epic battle feel you would get if you were physically in the Battle of Little Big Horn or the Battle of Antietam. I'm not talking like any other FPS, where you go in one area, follow a path, then into another area. We're talking about wide open lands where you will see allies and enemies in front of you. Partner that with the music, it certainly helps keep the feel of the game when you are running around gunning down enemies.

My Take:

For a game that nearly went under the radar at E3, I can proudly say that I really enjoyed this game. A lot. Darkest of Days certainly does time travel right. It is fun, entertaining, and it certainly has its 'what the fuck' or 'holy hell' moments. Maybe the most annoying part is seeing enemies with Blue Aura around them. The blue aura indicates important people you are not allowed to kill. So, when you have about 5 people shooting at you, with one or two of them having that aura, you have to do your best not to kill them. It can be frustrating at times, but not enough for me to scream at. Well maybe scream a little if you kill enough of those aura-covered soldiers and several time agents kill you for screwing up history. If you are a history buff and love first person shooters then you will certainly enjoy this title. Hell if you just like FPS's then you will like this game as well. Darkest of Days is out for the XBox 360 at the price of $49.99 (USD) and PC for $39.99 (USD).