It’s difficult to pen a review when there’s very little to be said for the game in question. Titles of this description are sadly faceless and do very little to set themselves apart from any mediocre release from the past.
Unfortunately Dark Void, developed by Airtight Games and Published by Capcom for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is one such title, and finds itself somewhere between absolutely awful and mildly passable.
Story and Gameplay
Dark Void’s story takes place during World War II and focuses on protagonist Will Grey who has been dishonourably discharged for some vague reason, and now runs freelance courier missions wherever the winds may take him. A fine young woman named Ava, with whom Will has a history, unexpectedly joins him for a routine mission which takes place over the Bermuda Triangle.
Predictably, the expedition goes awry and the two of them are sucked into an alternate dimension known as ‘the Void’. Within the Void Will finds tribes of Aliens and Humans known as the Watchers and Survivors respectively.
Will reluctantly bands with the Survivors in the hopes that he may one day return to his own world. At some point he is handed a jetpack, albeit for no clear reason, and spends the game trudging or flying aimlessly through a story that makes very little sense.
To make matters even more confusing the game begins with an unexplained mission whereby you are instructed to fly around with a jetpack you know very little about and kill some alien crafts which appear out of nowhere for an unexplainable reason.
The only basis for this that we could fathom is that the first mission, although impossible to understand, may serve as encouragement for the player to trudge through the rest of the game in order to get to the bit where Will starts flying around and shooting things – which is admittedly quite cool. This was a bit like shovelling down the broccoli your mom put in front of you as a kid only to discover that the desert you had been looking forward to was stale birthday cake.
The gameplay in Dark Void is based on a typical third person shooter with the added flight simulator benefits of the jetpack mode. While in flight players have the opportunity to ‘skyjack’ enemy aircraft and bring them down by nefariously tampering with their interfaces. We found this to be a long and drawn out affair and eventually stuck to the equally frustrating and repetitive dogfight.
On the ground the player engages in the typical third person antics such as taking cover, ducking, throwing grenades, blind firing and melee attacks.
The game also features a vertical combat mode where a player can hang on to a ledge while simultaneously shooting bad guys. Unfortunately this proved to be too tiresome to justify; in the end we stuck to the limited yet highly effective melee attacks.
Visuals
If you’re a fan of stoic, expressionless robot aliens and their bug eyed, slightly awkward human counterparts then Dark Void is for you. For everyone else, it hardly makes the best of the Unreal Engine, and looks decidedly dated against other games using the same tech.
Longevity
None, in fact we may have already forgotten that we ever played it. This is Dark Void’s biggest issue – it does nothing to define itself from the numerous middle-of-the-road games which are published on a monthly basis. Nonetheless, if you are in need of a touch of mindless fun which can be picked up and put down at will then this might be a contender.
Although the flight scenes are impressive at times, they are generally repetitive and lacking in texture, nonetheless this is certainly the most entertaining portion of the game.
Discuss Dark Void in the forums
Loading ...
