Is Darkest Days really that bad?

The latest title from… NHN (who the heck are they?) launched on Steam to pretty bad reviews. And when I say pretty bad, I mean I haven’t seen a game ripped apart like this in years. As I write this, 17% of reviews on Steam are positive.

So is it really that bad?

Yes. It’s comically bad. It’s as though someone played the first State of Decay under the influence of… something heavy, wrote up a game design document in the middle of a drunken bender, and then handed this document to a game studio and gave them one week to spit out a complete game. And the game developers spent most of the week on a drunken bender as well, why not?

At least, that’s how it feels. But it would be unfair of me not to dig into things just a little deeper here. I mean, surely it can’t be THAT bad, right? Right?

It’s THAT bad

If there’s one thing the game gets right, it’s the movement. Yes, when you press forward on the keyboard, the character moves in that direction. So that’s pretty cool. The list of redeeming qualities ends there.

Parts of the movement aren’t great. If you dare to sprint, you’d better get into the habit of manually deactivating that sprint. Releasing the key doesn’t work. Releasing the movement keys doesn’t work. You just carry on spriting forever. It’s like an auto-run button, and it’s weird.

The combat is pure jank. There is no ADS, just a slightly zoomed-in right click which stops working if you reload, and you’ll have to tap and hold the button again. Firing your gun works, sometimes. Mid-fight, it just refuses to fire every so often. Oh, and other times it does fire but produces no sound effects, so the only feedback you have to go on is the screen effects, which are subtle.

When your gun does fire and you take down an enemy, it takes them a while to realize they’re down, and you’ll just have to be patient and wait for them to die. Alternatively, you could keep spraying them down, but that’s just wasteful, right?

Oh, but no worries, ammo is free. Yeah, there’s no ammo crafting in a zombie survival game. In fact, there are no hunger or thirst mechanics at all. That really blows my mind. Every zombie survival game has this in some form or another, because it’s a core gameplay element at this point.

This is turning into a rant, so let’s mention one or two last things before we move on. You can dodge, but it’s not exactly Elden Ring-levels of responsiveness. Once, a dodge took a good second to register, after the zombie had already taken his swing and hit my laggy character.

I will say this, though: the cars feel weirdly nostalgic. It’s like driving in DayZ (the old mod) all over again. But at least we don’t have to change our tires every time we hit a pebble in the road.

Are there any positives?

Look, making a game is hard. There’s no doubt about that. And if all you’re after is a very basic looting simulator, Darkest Days will do just fine for you. I mean, it’s a free game, so there’s that. But it needs a lot of time.

It’s important to note that this is a mobile game, essentially ported to PC. The developers are mobile-focused, which I’ll discuss further in the next section.

As far as the bones that are there on PC, they need serious refinement. The combat is a mess, the movement feels clunky, and some mechanics in the game don’t seem to work. I once sent out a survivor on an 8-hour raid, and the next time I logged in, he was just sitting around the base. I wasn’t sure if he brought anything back or whether it registered the raid at all.

The building system seems okay, and there’s a skill system, too, although that seems all but useless for the moment. Wait, this section was supposed to be about positives, right? And yes, there is one.

Zombies. The genre had become a little less oversaturated over the past couple of years, and it’s about time someone launched a damned good zombie survival game for modern platforms and technology. But this, my friends, is not it.

It has potential in that the bare bones of a game are there, but that’s about as far as it goes. This game will require significant refinement if it’s going to attain any level of success.

But where on earth did this game come from, and why is it so bad? I have your answer.

Who is NHN?

NHN is a Korean game development company that, as far as I can tell, has exclusively released mobile titles up to this point. And therein, perhaps, lies the crux of this game’s Steam performance. I mean, as a mobile game, it wouldn’t be bad. As a PC game? Hard pass.

So, as NHN’s first serious foray into PC gaming, Darkest Days was bound to be… rough around the edges. The damage done by an 83% negative review score will certainly be hard to overcome, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

It all depends on how the studio reacts to this. Do they hang their head in defeat, or do they patch the most pressing problems and deliver a game that’s actually playable? I mean, the looting is fun. Looting is always fun. But that alone won’t carry a game in this genre.

So, what does the future look like for Darkest Days?

Dark. It looks dark, for the moment. It’s got a couple of things right. The looting mechanic seems good, and there are special zombies that you can find in the wild. They’re a lot tougher than your usual breed, but they don’t drop anything cool. When gamers kill an elite enemy, they want something cool; that’s game dev 101.

Overall, though, with multiplayer features and some serious, serious refinement, I don’t see why Darkest Days can’t turn this one around and deliver a good product. The bones are there, it just needs a whole lot more time.

Plenty of folks took issue with the microtransactions in the game, but I saw no real reason to use them at all. I have no issue with microtransactions in general, as long as they’re fairly priced. They give fans a way to support their favorite developers, who have salaries to pay. Since the game’s free, microtransactions were virtually guaranteed before you even downloaded it.

Personally, I feel like this game can scratch an itch for those still waiting for a decent modern zombie survival title, but it’s not quite ready. It feels more like early closed alpha than early access, but I do hope they succeed in the end. They will certainly need a lot more time, however.

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