TGS 2007: Operation Darkness Hands-on
War is hell, especially when zombies, vampires, and werewolves are involved.
by Tal Blevins
September 21, 2007 - After two days of running around TGS, I can honestly say that there's not too much exciting on the show floor this year. There really haven't been many new announcements, and most of the game builds are from E3 or other more recent events that we've already covered. However, seeing as how TGS does focus on the Japanese market, we're always on the lookout for games with interesting premises that don't necessarily cater to the United States market. Sure, there are a handful of dating sims, horse racing tycoon titles, and Hamtaro games every year, but I found something really strange and fun this year: Operation Darkness.
One of the biggest surprises of this year's show was undoubtedly Success' Operation Darkness, mainly because this is the first time we've ever had a chance to play the game. Being shown at the Microsoft booth, 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 going straight for the jugular of Hitler himself. Videogames have certainly explored this plotline before, but in true Japanese fashion, Success has put a whole new twist on the tale by adding a host of supernatural characters to the mix such as zombies, skeletons, vampires, werewolves, and even dragons.
While the premise sounds far-fetched (as well as totally %&*#ing awesome...am I right?), the gameplay is fairly standard for a squad-based tactical game. During the demo, I was in charge of a team of six soldiers, each with their own specialty. One was a rifleman, one was a machine gunner, one was a heavy-weapons expert, one was a sniper...you get the idea. As a turn-based tactical game, each round your squad mates can perform such actions as moving, attacking, taking cover, and the like. As is standard with these types of games, movement is resolved on a diamond-shaped grid that emanates around your character, demarking how far you can run each round. The more you move, the less accurate you become with your chosen weapon, which include rifles, SMGs, grenades, bazookas, pistols, and a variety of other typical WWII-era arms. Move too far and you may not even be able to shoot your gun at all, which is where the strategy of moving to an optimal position, taking cover, and then firing really comes into play. You can also poke your enemies with a knife if you get in close enough, which is a dangerous but very effective tactic, especially if you can sneak up on them around the corner of a building or vehicle.
In addition to the tactical gameplay, Operation Darkness also includes some RPG elements as your team members level up and gain extra skills and abilities as they achieve success in battle. From what I could tell, you can't pick individual skills, but it looks as if your abilities increase the more you use them. For example, if you're the kind of character who uses the SMG a lot to spray several enemies at once, your SMG skill will increase; if you toss a lot of grenades, your throw skill will increase over time.
Battles play out fairly straightforwardly, although you can opt to use parts of the environment as a distraction in combat, such as leveling a water tower on your foes with your trusty bazooka. However, just because you take everyone out on a particular level doesn't mean you're in the clear; their first death is sometimes just an appetizer before the main course.
After the initial takedown, a few of my fallen foes rose from the dead as zombies to take up the fight again for the Jerries. "Not a problem!," I exclaimed. "Just let me turn into a gun-toting werewolf and bust a few caps in their undead asses!" That's right, not only are you up against a horde of supernatural enemies, but some members of your squad can also turn into werewolves, giving them enhanced abilities such as added speed -- as represented by a much larger movement area -- and extra health so they can take a massive beating and still keep on keeping on. A few members of the squad can also use magic to not only harm the Nazis, but also increase their abilities and give them added defensive bonuses. Overall it's a very unique premise, and certainly one that's a refreshing take on the overdone World War II setting we see in so many videogames.
Although we didn't see it in the demo we played today, previous movies and trailers of the game have shown the team fighting massive fire-breathing dragons and colossus-type enemies, so expect the vampire Nazis to just be a scrape on the surface when it comes to the forces that stand between you and Hitler.
Unfortunately, I have some potentially bad news for most of you reading this preview: it looks like Operation Darkness is going to be a Japanese-only release, at least for now. It's slated to hit Japanese stores in mid-October of this year. On a positive note, although there are no definite plans for a stateside release yet, a representation from Success did tell me that we might see Operation Darkness in the United States, but it wouldn't be until 2008 at the earliest. It sounded like a big "maybe," though, and knowing how games like this are usually received by an American audience, I wouldn't put too much hope into seeing Operation Darkness make its way across the Pacific.
With that said, being a fan of squad-based strategy games such as Jagged Alliance and X-COM, I'm hoping Japanese publisher SEGA will decide to bring this title our way. It would definitely be something different on the Xbox 360, and while the production values and graphics aren't up to the level of games like Gears of War and Halo 3, the gameplay was solid and the premise itself is reason enough to want to play this one through to the end. I mean, who wouldn't want to play a game where you can be a bazooka-wielding werewolf taking the heat to Hitler? Sign me up!
Bron
