Operation Darkness

As its militaristic name suggests, Operation Darkness mines Nazi interest in the occult to vaguely spooky effect, mixing conventional turn-based strategy with World War II and lots of melodramatic supernatural trappings. Unfortunately, no quantity of vampires, werewolves, and undead zombies can salvage its dreadfully tedious gameplay.

Edward and the Wolf Pack blast through Nazi thugs from the deserts of Africa to the streets of France in over two dozen campaign missions. But the stark and sterile graphics seem dredged from the distant past, and an atrocious battlefield interface makes everything from determining line of sight to establishing effective range a painful wrestling match with a hopelessly twitchy camera. Soldiers level up and earn powers (like pyrokinetic fireballs and claw attacks), but survival boils down to your med-kit stash — even as idiotic enemies heal themselves before they’ve taken any damage. For each kill, you earn points you can spend on weapons and supplies, but the pace of upgrades is lethargic. Every wearying flaw compounds the next: enemy reinforcements materialize out of thin air, many deaths end the game immediately despite resurrection abilities, and you can save only in-between missions (most of which are an hour long).

Online matches might’ve been a high point if you could’ve set your squad of freaks against a friend’s line-up, but instead you get repetitive co-op side missions that simply multiply the time spent idling between scuffles. Of course, when the rest of the game is so maddening, why should multiplayer be any different?