How would the Civil War have been different if you’d been there with a modern machine gun? I’ll tell you: It’d have been much🎉 more awesome. In Darkest of Days, you play as a 19th-century American soldier plucked out of his own time moments before becoming a casualty at General Custer’s Last Stand.

He’s then shanghaied into service for an organization of time traveler꧂s that specializes in maintaining the integrity of the timeline. His mission: to protect and extract certain important individuals who’ve been put in harm’s way by The Opposition, a time-traveling force that’s attempting to change the course of history. The twist: these interventions mostly occur duringཧ the Civil War Battle of Antietam and World War I’s Battle of Tannenberg - two of history’s bloodiest clashes.

DoD borrows more than a little from Call of Duty - like recharging health, scripted battles and legions of easily killed and dumb-as-clay-pigeon soldiers - but it also brings in a few ideas of its own. The main one is central to the plot: certain enemy troops, highlighted in blue, are meant to survi🌱ve their war and therefore must be handled with non-lethal force to avoid tangling up the timeline. You can shoot them in the leg or the shoulder to bring them down alive, or toss a handful of marble-like devices called Chasers that track down and immobilize “survivors.” The presence of these enemies means you can’t just go for headshots or grenade everything in sight; you have to think a little more during combat. I wish they were a little more consistent, though, because sometimes you’ll go through most of a level without seeing a single survivor. I know the casualty rates in these conflicts were high, but not that high.

The majority of the levels are typical corridor shooter rail-rides, but DoD keeps things lively with open areas where you ꦜcan choose the order you want🤡 to tackle objectives, turret defense segments, zeppelin rides, sniper missions (with an awesome high-tech sniper rifle) and more. There were a few problems like frustrating invisible walls and the inability to jump over waist-high wooden fences, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed most missions.

For about two-thirds of the game you’ll be arme🌠d with period weapons like the Civil War-era one-shot Springfield muskets, Henry repeating rifles and Colt revolvers, or WWI-era German Gewehr and Russian Nagant rifles, and Lugar and Mauser pistols. Every shot counts with🔥 these relics, since frequent reloading turns you into a sitting duck, making the game play differently from your typical run-and-gunner.

Getting accustomed to slow-firing weapons also has the bonus effect of making you feel like a total badass when the game hands you a futuristic assault rifle with auto-targeting and lets you loose on an entire formation of doomed-anyway Confederate soldiers. Most of the future weapons are great - and the last gun you get in particular, which I won’t spoil, is a viciously awesome weapon. It’s easy to go mad with power while wielding one; several times I ran into the open blasting away at the enemy only to find that a strong offense doesn’t necessarily eliminate the need for defense when✅ vastly outnumbered and surrounded.

Which leads me to one of my chief criticisms. First, the difficulty is wildly inconsistent in places. While I was able to smoothly sail through most areas without dying (unless I did something stupid and totally deserved it), in others I felt completely screwed over by huge numbers of enemy troops and a lack of cover. This would have made me extremely angry at the stupid checkpoin🐈t-only save system, except that it seems to save every couple of minutes, so I never had to replay very far to get back to the trouble spots. As it is, I’m just a little angry at the stupid checkpoint-only saves.

Another quibble: the graphics seem stuck in a time warp, lagging behind most big-budget shooters by a generation or two, particularly in the character model department. On the other hand, the large, cinematic environments often do a fantastic job of making you feel like part of a big𝔍ger historical battle, especially when dozens of soldiers crowd the screen at once and the air is thick with bullets and smoke.

Would Darkest of Days have benefited from another $10 million worth of development time for polishing and voice work improvements? Absolutely. But it makes the most of what it’s♒ got, and it&rs𒉰quo;s worth every penny of its modest asking price.

PC Gamer scores games on a percentage scale, which is rounded to the closest whole number to determine the GamesRadar score.

PCG Final Verdict: 80% (good)

Sep 16, 2009