[360] Operation Darkness. Europe probably shafted again, blame Germany this time

Operation Darkness is a new strategy rpg from Atlus. It's set in the second world war but being made by Japs, features all manner of silly supernatural beings like werewolves and dragons. Your team is made up of a bunch of British special forces guys (I think their most special ability is their near-flawless American accents) and you fight Nazis.

Equipment is of the machine guns and grenades variety and different equpment weighs different amounts, meaning that loading everyone up with bazookas will stop them from moving anywhere and adding a more tactial depth to equipment choices than the more common "Pick everything with the highest stats". Also, you can grab weapons from downed enemies.

As well as conventional weaponry, your team can utilise various magic powers and some can turn into werewolves. There are also various skills to develop and choose from. All in all there's plenty of customisation and tactical choice.

A new feature is the cover commands. You can tell your troops to cover run, which means moving at the same time as someone else, cover fire which means shooting at anyone who comes in range or cover ambush which is like cover fire but different apparently, I haven't really worked it out from the demo yet.

You get online co-op play and all the environments are destructible so you can blow up houses with the bazookas (Yay!).

From playing the demo, I can tell you that the game is not without it's flaws. The camera controls are horrible and it's a little hard to tell where everyone is without using the mini-map. Also, the voice acting is horrific and the graphics aren't all that (Although considering it's in 3d and most srpgs still use crappy sprites they're live with-able).

I believe the game is already out in Japan and due out in the US fairly soon. No European release date yet, despite the demo being available in PAL regions and apparently publicity materials being sent to European reviewers. Most specualtion about a European release points at Germany's blanket ban on references to Nazis as a reason for it not coming out. We got Wolfenstein though so I live in hope. If it does come out I reckon I'll buy it as I've not played a decent srpg for ages and it'd be nice to play one that's not infested with cutesy anime style characters.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The thing is, I'd hardly call it a decent game or srpg when it's this much of a technical mess.

It's really hard to admit, but I have never seen a camera break a game of this sort before. And I don't just mean lightly break or anything, it's flat out fucked up. It's pretty difficult to strategize when you can't exactly see that far ahead of you or know where your enemies are at at a quick glace. The mini map helps, but is hardly an excuse for how terrible this is.

And I think I'd much rather use clean sprites that the boring fully polygonal models that end up looking like this: http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_m...jpreviewth.jpg

Nothing against using full 3D but a little effort to not make it dull would be required for me to care.

It's a shame too. I was looking so forward to it until before I played the demo. Some of the concepts were pretty neat, but the actual game let me down so very, very much.

I also hope not a lot of the missions are set up with that hilarious instant backup shit the enemies got in the demo, that was kinda goofy.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I agree with above... and honestly, it scares me a little for games like Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3. Hopefully it doesn't suffer from all the problems this game seems to. Especially not the camera. Oh lord please let the camera be better, because the camera in this game is unacceptable and this is coming from someone who never had any qualms with the older Resident Evils or even Silent Hill's zany camera controls.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.