Operation Darkness – 360 – Review

It’s not very often that a title
that turns up has a crazy premise that immediately sparks interest. Operation
Darkness is one of those titles, offering strat-RPG gameplay with a ridiculous
story of werewolves and monsters in a World War II setting. While the premise is
certainly a lot of fun, the gameplay sours the whole experience with unforgiving
mechanics and awful camera angles. Operation Darkness had a lot going for it,
but falls well short of expectations.

Operation Darkness puts you in the
combat boots of Edward, a young soldier who gets shot by a felled Nazi while on
the battlefield. As Edward lay bleeding to death, a man named Major Gallant
comes along and gives him a blood transfusion, saving his life but ultimately
imbuing him with supernatural powers. Edward then becomes a member of Gallant’s
elite covert group, The Wolf Pack, and fights the good fight against Nazi
powers.

While the werewolves/Nazis/zombies
premise is admittedly badass, the game’s actual conveyance of the storyline is
done quite poorly. The dialogue can be pretty dumb at some points, and downright
boring at others.

Operation Darkness is host to one of
the most frustrating and annoying gameplay elements ever: if one of your
characters dies on the field, then they are gone forever. FOREVER. Meaning that
if you put a lot of effort into leveling up a specific character and put a lot
of work into them, it won’t matter one iota if you make a mistake and they die
on the battlefield. You’ll get a replacement character at level 1 and be forced
to go through the procedure again. While there is a character that can revive
fallen characters, he’s just as susceptible to getting killed, and once he’s
gone, he’s gone. The only way to truly rectify these deaths is by restarting the
whole battle over again, and since they can be pretty long, this is a huge pain.

Another way that this issue is
exacerbated is through the XP system, which levels up characters depending on
how much use you get out of them, so characters that rarely get used won’t get
leveled up with the rest of your group. This means that the characters that are
higher in levels and get the most mileage are the ones more likely to get killed
on the battlefield, leaving you with inexperienced noobs rounding out your
group.

Another major issue with the game is
the camera. Basically non-functional, the camera is a huge hindrance, constantly
getting caught on objects within the environments before settling on a position
that obstructs your view of the enemy. This requires a fair amount of wasting
turns by running around the battlefield trying to find a good angle to attack
your enemies, and is really no fun.

Graphically, the game is rather weak
as well, with weak textures, murky environments, and downright ugly character
models. The interesting premise lends itself to some interesting choices in art
direction, but the game doesn’t utilize this and the whole experience looks like
it could’ve been done on the Dreamcast.

The sound effects don’t fare much
better, I’m afraid. The voice acting is very cheesy and poorly done, while the
music is pretty generic stuff.

Operation Darkness has a unique
premise that is ultimately sullied by rubbish gameplay. Don’t be roped in by
promises of werewolves, zombies and Nazis; this one title is better off left on
the shelf.

Review Scoring Details for Operation Darkness

Gameplay: 4.0
Lousy camera angles and frustrating combat mechanics make this strat-RPG a
mess and no fun to play.

Graphics: 3.5
Average quality for a Dreamcast game, and nowhere near indicative of what
the Xbox 360 is capable of.

Sound: 4.0
Weak voice acting and a forgettable score.

Difficulty: Hard

Concept: 4.0
Werewolves in WWII is an intriguing concept for a strategy game, so why is
the dialogue and story so damn boring?

Multiplayer: 4.0
You can enlist three friends to play this game co-operatively.

Overall: 4.0
Operation Darkness takes an intriguing idea, but ruins it with some awful
gameplay.