Time is an aspect that passes throughout our minds even when we aren’t supposed to watch it. Speaking of time, I can’t remember how many video games I have played featuring ‘time travelling’, though I can tell you that seven times out of ten they seem to disappoint. But when we sat down with Aaron Schurman – CEO of Phantom EFX, the publishers of Darkest of Days, set for release on the PC and 360 – he gave us a new reason to believe.

GCO: Your game has recently gained some hype within the industry. Can you tell us about the setting for Darkest of Days and how it was originally conceived?

Aaron Schurman: Darkest of Days has been a dream in my head for about ten years now. Being such a huge gamer, I dreamt of a game that would allow me to visit different battles all within the same title. The game really started that simple. I wanted to visit various fantastic places, such as WWI, WWII, Little Big Horn etc. all in the same experience. Not only did I want to go to various places, I wanted to be in impossible situations: some of humanity’s darkest days in history. The places that immediately entered my mind were events like Little Big Horn, where no U.S. Cavalrymen survived the battle; places like Tannenburg where 80,000 Russians were lost; places like Antietam, the bloodiest day in American History. As I began to think of events like this, I realized there are hundreds of them from all over the world, in every culture, time, and place. Time travel was the evident way to make it happen, but knew it had to be pulled off 100% accurately. It had to make sense, it had to be engrossing, and it had to be realistic.

The exciting notion of Darkest of Days and the type of game it could become made it impossible to accomplish at that time. First of all, there was a severe lack of capital. The next biggest problem was that I envisioned a game where the events were incredibly realistic. If you are going to go back in time, I want the American Civil War to be chaotic, bloody, and terrible – not some vision where there were ten guys on the screen at once. For realism’s sake, there had to be hundreds and hundreds. This, again, made it impossible to even attempt at that time from a tech standpoint. Most importantly, I wanted to make the game myself and not sell the idea.

Years later, after we had established a working game company with great titles and a working knowledge of the development process, we set out to make our own engine, one that could support the lush, varying, detailed environments as well as the hundreds of soldiers. The engine also had to support both long-distance terrains as well as narrow cityscapes (to accurately pull off environments like Pompeii). After the amazingly talented folks at 8monkey Labs created the Marmoset engine, it was finally time to work on the most difficult era, the U.S. Civil War. We picked this area first since it was going to be the most complex to pull off; we wanted it as realistic as possible with so many men doing so many different things at the same time. Once we built it and pulled and pruned it to perfection, it was so harrowing that every time we played it everyone got goose bumps. There was no problem raising capital at that point.

GCO: With a story this interesting, who is the “bad” guy or guys within your title? Or is that a slowly uncovering fact of the game?

Schurman: You have picked up on one of the things readers of the story have been amazed by – the story itself! I have never played a game that has this engrossing or detailed a story. So many folks tout stories in their games, but in reality there is little there. This game will really get you thinking, and that’s what we set out to do.

Time travel is such an amazing thing, with so many possibilities. It’s really a fantasy place our minds like to go to. It’s been so poorly done so many times – it seemed that folks just begged for a story that was believable and “could come true,” as a lot of testers say.

The player gets a chance to “choose where they want to go” as they begin to save folks from history that were never meant to die. As they save these people, and begin to save history, the folks who screwed it up in the first place begin to take notice, and the fight is really on. Not only will people have to deal with being dropped into a fierce environment with death all around them, they will have to deal with other time travellers trying to fit in. It’s pretty wild! It’s awesome to watch how folks have to play that next level to see what happens. I honestly have not seen testers respond like this to a game, where they literally /had/ to get that next part done, or travel to that new time frame to see what happens. It really brings back the fantasy in games. It has been incredible to watch people’s reactions as the perceived “good” and “evil” forces battle.

GCO: I have played many games that have dealt with the time aspect. Can you tell me, since you play as a time traveller, if there are any powers within the game?

Schurman: One of the biggest “powers” a player can have is to possess a weapon in a time frame that does not belong there. You are quite powerful in 1865 with a fully automatic weapon. The tricky thing in developing the game was to give the player a roller-coaster ride of situations, and face them with different weapons. You fight with all the period weapons in all of the six times you travel to – however, in each era, you get your hands on things you shouldn’t.

There is also a matter of “clean up.” As you progress through the game and you begin to accomplish your objectives, there are always repercussions of your actions. As hard as you may try, you may accidentally kill someone that was supposed to have survived the battle, triggering some events. Or, you may be too accurate with your shoulder-mounted rocket launcher in an ancient battle, single-handedly changing the entire tide of the battle. You will need to correct some mistakes, and that always calls for heavy equipment.

GCO: How long have you guys been working Darkest of Days?

Schurman: We have been on the project for just about three years. The first half of that time was spent on building the Marmoset Engine while we wrote story, invented characters, and produced concepts of locations.

GCO: At what stage of development is the game now?

Schurman: The game is in the final stages of testing and is all but complete. NVIDIA has taken great appreciation of the PC version and has been working hard with us to add some pretty incredible special effects that will benefit users. The console version is in the final stages as well.

Along with addressing most of the problems players had with the title, and four more multiplayer maps – which aren’t planned to release simultaneously. Gears of War 2′s newest updated experience ‘Snowblind’ features new achievements for the title. The achievements add up to a total of 250 achievement points. The update will of course be free.

The achievements are as follows:

Rookie Gear (10)
Seasoned Gear (20)
Battle-Tested Gear (30)
Battle-Hardened Gear (50)
Veteran Gear (75)
Never Eat Red Snow (20)
Icy Dead People (25)
Frigid Body Dynamics (5)
The Weather Outside Is Lethal (15)

Question: How are you able to take a hit franchise to present day, make millions of fans, then send it back into the past and keep your fans? Well, first you will have to get all your fans to return to the game. Then you’re going to need the best reason in the world for them to want to buy it and then they’ll tell everyone about the game, and that should do it. And it looks like Treyarch has mastered this skill – no thanks to Infinity Ward’s unfriendly comments that were made last week – but how well did they master it?

Call of Duty games were never really know for long mission or long campaigns, sadly this game doesn’t divert from that fact. The games campaign is still really short, but this time around they really do step up on the voice acting. The game features well known voices from movies like “The Dark Knight” and the hit TV show “24″ and to add to it, it’s very well scripted.

Instead of the normal WWII shooter environment like Normandy and D-Day, Call of Duty: World at War takes place in the Pacific as well as the Red Army’s reversal to Stalingrad. These places give the game some new environments and battle experiences, from sunny beaches and bombed-out cities. But, there’s also a savage part of war and this game doesn’t pass on it one bit. The Japanese soldiers swarm like bees for a hive on to the battlefield, they even play dead and wait for you to walk into their sick little trap, then they’ll get you. Plus it really doesn’t end there, there’s also a very savage Russian Front with plenty of gunning down of wounded and unarmed soldiers by both fronts in the game.

However, World at War really shines in its Multi-player component, which gives you the ability to tackle missions with your friends in co-op or just do a online single or team game. Even if Modern Warfare had, arguably, one of the greatest multiplayer components in history, this game finds away to build, and build on it good. The game still has its ranking system that lets you unlock perks, weapons, and upgrades which you can use to mix and match for your style. Many of us may miss the helicopter which was featured in Modern Warfare, but this game brings in something so much better, dogs. Which swarm around hunting enemy’s to kill, but it’s way more fun to watch then to be attacked.

Closing Statement:

We can all fight and try to say that this game is better then Modern Warfare, but to do that now will be wrong. The multi-player doesn’t have that big explosion as it did in Modern Warfare, but it does brand something new. The game does have a lot more content then the other game, Modern Warfare, and to boot this is one of the best shooters out their and if you don’t own it now what are you waiting for?

Score: A

There have been many World War II games over the years, but one game has been know to be the king of the genre and that game happens to be Call of Duty. But, that isn’t this game? Yeah, I know, but this game is, as you may already know, trying to take the market that was and still is owned by the Call of Duty game franchise. But, what makes this game any different than Call of Duty? That is why you may need strength to get through this review because it’s going to be a hard fight. Just like the Call of Duty games this game is a first-person shooter that takes place in the World War II timeline, but this game is different, it has a squad-based tactical aspect to it much like Rainbow Six Vegas series, but lets just say that’s another story for another day.

Set back and enjoy the show and watch out for the fire works -

Personally I am in love with World War II shooters and this maybe one of the greatest World War II shooter ever made or at least the best one I have ever play. This game has the most realistic gore from limbs tearing off faces exploding and guts spilling all over the place this game has it all. Talk about a time well spent, the guys at Gearbox really captured the look and feel of World War II and did not forget about the blood, they really didn’t. This game has a far contrast from the gray, dreary color palettes of Normandy that many of us are so accustomed. They remade everything that made this part of history something to remember so from us to you guys over at Gearbox studios.

Maybe in another game, but good try -

This game also has it’s many problems and one of them, which really shouldn’t be a problem, has to be the games “Action Camera”, when you score a sick kill or you decide to pop some German heads the game zooms in on that kill and it slows down time. Well, this is a good thing but this also doesn’t feel like it should be apart of this game. I mean really its a World War II squad-based tactical first-person shooter can someone please put an parenthesis on the SQUAD-BASED. It’s cool and all, but if it wasn’t a World War II squad-based tactical first-person shooter it will be alright with me.

Bomb… wait my control isn’t working -

The next part that really grinds my gears has to be the game controls, basically every first person shooter has a basic control set. I really can’t figure out why these controls are so frustrating I really don’t know why Gearbox couldn’t of just used the simple control set like everyone else? This control mapping is crazy -not in a good way crazy but it’s crazy alright. Instead of crouching or throwing a grenade the game slaps us back into cover and I was just in cover. Maybe they should of taken something out of the book of the Rainbow Six series…

Collective studying almost over so here’s the story -

BiA: Hell’s Highway is based on an actual WWII Allied offensive called Operation Market Garden, which was a plan to end the war before Christmas of 44. This game pits you as the 101st Airborne division as you take role of BiA stalwart Sergeant Matt Baker. I know sounds good on paper, but imagine how good it will be in the game. I’m not trying to reveal any of the story here, but I remember one of designers being quoted stated that “by the end of the game you will cry” and you know what, it put a really big lump in my throat.

Score: A-

In the August issue of GameInformer it contains details for the upcoming Wolfenstein a game currently in development at Raven Software (who also created the latest in id Software’s ‘Quake’ series). The game will be released on Microsoft Windows PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 "when it’s done".

• Set in World War II among Nazis experimenting with occult powers once again.
• B.J. Blazkowicz making comeback, this time also having supernatural powers of his own.
• Set in one large city, which will open itself up as you progress through given missions and quests.
• Randomly generated content blocking your path at times.
• AI controlled local resistance, assisting you in fight at times.
• An alternative reality called "The Shroud", some sort of a parallel dimension fueling Nazi powers.

At this time no future details where given on the game.

[Tiscali: Wolfenstein Details ]