Wolfenstein 3D: 1992

Dino D-Day: 2011

Bionic Commando: 1988

Operation Darkness: 2007

Persona 2 – Innocent Sin: 1999

I need to pick up Operation Darkness. 

Operation Darkness crawled its way into my heart with its striking visuals and amazing story telling about a boy and his balloon, wait… No no! This game crawled its way into my collection because it was $10. Yep, thats it! The local PX (military base store) had the game marked down from $60 to $10; So, I figured, “why not purchase this little gem?” It does have the Atlus logo on it, after all.

Operation Darkness is a 4 player co-op and is published by Atlus. This game has a Fire Emblem-esque play style and guns. What could go wrong? Well, the developers thought it was a good idea to have the main story of a secret mission to assassinate Hitler in WWII and add in vampires, zombies and werewolves all thrown into the mix. Along with that we have a very anime-based art style (I am a fan of good anime). I really tend to dislike most games that adopt this art style because things tend to very static. On top of all of this, the bad controls and clunky interface are just trips in themselves. For instance, environmental objects can stop you from moving your cursor, so you have to go around it or have to move 20 tiles. Not to mention you move one unit at a time. To sum this up, Operation Darkness is rough; it kind of hurts to plan and it annoys the crap out of you but there is a certain charm to a WWII RPG that makes me play on.

I have this marked as a full review but I think I’ll run over some of the nicer things about the game and leave it at that. Tune in after the break.

Cover – Possibly the only saving grace to this game is the cover system. It is this interesting feature in combat where units can work off of each other very well. Say you want certain units to move when someone or something else moves,you can do that. Plus, when you “Cover Move” a unit gets extended about 4 or 5 squares which is very useful for the bigger units. It is pretty cool because I could set all my troops to move after this tank moved so they stayed in cover until the tank was like “I guess I will roll around today” and then my dudes jump and I am able to bring it down.

Cover Attack (CA) – CA allows a unit to create a circle that enables a unit to give supporting fire when someone attacks something. This is pretty useful for when a big unit needs to be hitting a lot of enemy troops. Since you can only attack once per turn, you set him to CA then use others to attack and your heavy unit will deliver the killing blow. This mechanic opens the door for a very dynamic use of units with the bigger weapons rather than saying “Oh, I got one big, strong guy. Yay me” and then everyone else dies because there are nine Nazis left.

Cover Ambush (CM) – is the last of the group and kind of breaks the game in combination with CA. So, CM allows you create a circle with a unit and shoot any enemies that walk into the circle. The circle is created by the weapon and character stats. The circles are generated the same for both CM and CA. You create this circle and people can still move but you attack every time someone moves. If that person is in range of a CA they get hit by that as well, you can see where this strategy can be over-powered. This caused my play to be: move big dude in middle of map, set sniper to CM, set big dude on CA, Win.

That is really it for anything special or amazing to the game play, from what I have played. Hopefully, I am not missing the holy grail of the game or something. What is not the holy grail is the story. I have never laughed at a story so hard in my life.

You’re a good, old British blond boy that has gone off to war with your friend. These two characters will now be called Hanz and Franz, respectively. You with your awesome platoon of soldiers have got to get some intel from those terrible Nazis.

The first level is quite painful. It is quite difficult to get a hold if the gameplay as it is very easy to lose. One big thing standing in your way immediately is a big Nazi tank breathing down your neck. That’s right, a tank rolls up and causes some trouble for your platoon. Hanz and Franz are now pinned behind a rock, but you command the men and distract the tank with bullets! The Nazi tank gets angry and decides its time to get revenge on the men so he shoots them. You platoon didn’t even try to run, they sat there as the tank SLOWY turns to shoot, I mean COME ON! Hanz and Franz say their last good byes as the tank takes aim. Suddenly, the tank blows up. Three soldiers with rockets save everyone. WHATS THIS?! one of the Nazis is still alive and in last stand and shoots Hanz int he chest. OH NO! HE IS GONNA DIE! Franz pleads with the soldiers that save them to save Hanz. And they do, of course, and have to do a blood transfusion with the Hanz. Apparently, later in the game, this allows you to turn into a werewolf, AND done.

Operation Darkness.

No, it’s not a new Dave Chappelle stand up (we miss you!). Atlus has a solid standing of RPGs released into the states. Stella Deus: Gates of Eternity, the Shin Megami Tensei series, Baroque, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and so on. When it comes to Operation Darkness? Lets put it this way. The developer was “Success”. Pretty ironic play on words seeing as “Failure” more than sums up the short lived experience I encountered.

The story revolves around WWII, mainly the domination and “rehabilitation” of Nazi Germany. The footage used in the opening scene reminds one of images scene with any WW game. The biggest, and I mean BIGGEST, problem you’ll notice right away are the graphics. Rendered on what looks to be a PS2, Operation Darkness is just plain nasty to look at. It’s a tactical strategy game, and graphics aren’t always the big thing to look at. The other side of the coin? You’ll spend 90% of your time on the battlefield.

Free roam camera does not always equal ease of use. To try and get a perfect angle on an enemy spent almost 3 mins. That’s not a lot of time in the long term, but short term it’s a pain. The damage I would do to an enemy wouldn’t even one-shot kill him at this point, yet the game wants me to spend 180 seconds trying to knock of 20% of his HP. Waste.

I wish I could write more. The theory about all they had intended was great. I’m sure it is a gem to some, but junk to the rest of us. I literally played the game for no more than 14 mins. I even gave Halo a better shot than that. Atlus, you just missed the mark on this one. Do we hate you? Not in the slightest. Could you have passed this project up and not released it under your name? Absolutely.

TheVGFix gives Operation Darkness a good ol’ “WTF”.

-SoloBartizzle

For those of you who missed it, Gears of War 2 had it’s first gameplay footage revealed on Friday night.  You can download it directly from live or watch it here.  Pretty decent looking. 

I’d say Gears is right in the hype pocket right now.  They don’t really need to do anything to persuade me to purchase the game this fall.  I was already sold from the first title.  So I’m glad to see this footage, but I’m also not overly excited about it.  Just patiently waiting for its release.  Right in the pocket, as I said. 

I didn’t actually play a whole lot this weekend, considering all the Mother’s Day festivities and working.  When I did have time, it was to continue my friend group’s Mario Kart obsession, which we played until we were too tired to keep our eyes open on Saturday night. 

Sunday found me playing the Operation Darkness demo, which really surprised me.  It’s a squad based, turn based, tactical RPG, set in an alternate WWII reality that puts 1930′s tech with werewolves and vampires.  Europe is split into east and west and your squad is fighting Hitler’s dark army across the continent. 

I was immediately sucked into the depth of the tactics, almost to the point of getting bogged down.  Breaking my squads into 4′s and then 2′s, pairing up complimentary weapon types, watching line of sight, shooting and then moving, or moving and then shooting to put the drop on my enemy.  It’s an interesting game, with an artistic direction that I appreciate.  Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

I also played a bit of Lego Star Wars with Danielle, which is always good for a laugh.  That rounded up my game playing for the weekend.

Before you drop your game playing on me for this past weekend, take a look at this editorial Eurogamer has posted up about the lessons MMO developers can learn from Call of Duty 4.  It basically suggests that there is a place for massive online games, if they don’t try to carbon copy WoW.  It’s well written and worth your time. 

So, did you get to play what you thought you would this weekend?

–WG

Operation Darkness puts you in command of a British Special Forces squad during World War II that has been tasked with taking out the Nazis and Hitler while fighting a host of supernatural characters like zombies, skeletons, vampires, werewolves, and even dragons.

To me, this concept sounds more lazy than it does interesting, particularly after taking a look at the lackluster graphics and gameplay at the game’s official web site. I think I’ll stick with my Wii, thanks.