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.

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.