Developer – Airtight Games
Publisher – CAPCOM
Available on – Xbox 360, PS3,PC
Reviewed on – Xbox 360

Dark Void is a refreshing new IP developed by near unheard of Airtight Games and published by CAPCOM. The game takes place during the dawn of the second world war. It follows the story of a cargo pilot William Augustus Grey, who crashes into the Bermuda triangle and winds up in an inescapeable dementional in-between called ‘the Void’ in which a highly technologically advanced species of other-dimensional aliens called ‘Watchers’ rule. Will joins a resistance of people trapped in the void, including Nikola Tesla (father of commercial electricity), and accompanied by a love interest from his past (Eva), he must fight for his survival and search for a way out of ‘the Void’.

The game introduces a number of interesting game mechanics, including a jet-pack, and a strange verticle fighting mechanic, in which you cover behind ledges as you climb up and down cliffs or buildings. The game begins without a jet-pack on a jungle island where your plane has crashed, for the first forty minutes or so you fight against Watcher guards as you are led to a village of surviving humans. During this part the game plays very much like a poor-man’s Uncharted, this is not hurt by the fact that Will is voiced by Nolan North. Once you reach the village you meet with Nikola Tesla and he asks you to help him collect some parts for an invention of his he is working on, he gives you a proto-type jet-pack he has been working on to help you obtain the parts, this is where the game gets interesting.

The jet-pack handling takes a while to get used to but once it’s been mastered is surprisingly comfortable. The control layout is not the games strong point though. “A” is used to hover small distances which is all well and good, but “Y” is used to launch proper flight and also to boost during flight, whilst the left trigger goes unused, unless your jet-pack is fully upgraded in which case it was used for a secondary strong fire, holding “Y” is not a natural configuration on the keyboard and pressing buttons randomly trying to remember how to jump or throw a grenade results in a lot of boosts into full flight in a narrow hallway.

I played the game on the hardest difficulty and it took be about nine to ten hours, which is not particularly long but it worked perfectly with the story, despite it being a little rushed at the end. The game would have been considerably shorter if not for the immense number of times I died, some points in the game taking 20-30 minutes to complete but only 2-3 minutes in a single life, most of these parts in the earlier (and considerably less enjoyable) half of the game.

The story was very heavily situated in the second half of the game and even then it could have been explained much further. The romance we were supposed to be witnessing between Will and Eva was difficult to believe because over such a short game we see little interaction between the two until the last boss in which she controls a survivor fighter plane and *assists* in the fight. Character development is a largely lacking component of Dark Voids story, though how much the game would have benefited from this development is debatable and I would argue for little.

Graphically and sound-wise the game serves it’s purpose and nothing more. The game instead of using the traditional healthbar (which I’ve always liked and have never understood why games sometimes think it should be replaced with something less useful) is replaced with a fading and blurring of the screen, effectively making the game harder as you die, which things generally tend to be, but since when did a game have to operate how things need to be. This does create a pretty cool effect when you are low on health whilst flying though, as it makes you appear to be traveling much faster and maneuvering becomes more difficult. Will has an extremely low threshold to damage, which is probably why I died so many times, but he also has the ability to replenish his health by avoiding damage for a relatively short period of time.

I remember seeing a trailer showing off Dark Void and the vertical cliff-combat in 2008 and being somewhat interested in the game, though it slipped my mind almost immediately after until it arrived at my door. Having now seen it in execution I am less interested. It’s always nice when a developer tries to implement new game play techniques but this is not one that I can endorse or enjoyed. You are never completely under cover so can be hit by enemies at all times, enemies will jump back and forth behind different covers and you are always outnumbered so keeping track of where everyone is can become annoying.

Another game mechanic that Dark Void employs, although not as original as it’s others, is to put quick-time events on everything it can, heavily armored enemies are defeated with a quick-time event,melee attacks are escaped with a quick-time event, space ships are commandeered with a quick-time event, even the final boss is defeated with a quick-time event. Quick-time events have no place in existence, the sooner game developers accept this the sooner a better alternative to making it difficult to steal a vehicle can be created.

Load times became irritating, particularly given you had to face them over each time you died. Unarmed combat was also odd in that it was very scripted and almost operated under a basic turn-based system.  You are given the choice of six different weapons (for outside of jet pack combat) but since half of these aren’t unlocked until well into the game, and all weapons are upgradeable, by the time you can swap to better weapons, you have already upgraded the early guns and become to accustomed to them to bother changing, combined with the small amount of n0n-jet pack combat you participate in after these guns are unlocked, the only purpose they really serve is for a repeat run-through.

Re-playability is not completely out of the question if you played your first save through on an easy difficulty, as after completing the game you can play any level on the difficulty you choose, and your mini-map now displays the location of secret items. This would also be the only way you would be able to collect enough upgrade points to get all the weapons and your jet pack to full power. Although having played through once I could easily see myself never touching this game again, and the distribution of achievements for completing the game on Hardcore is enough that there is little reason that I would.

Dark Void

70%

The Good -

• Jet Packs are awesome
• Interesting New IP
• If you concentrate hard enough the story is kinda cool
• Pseudo-Cameo by Nikola Tesla

The Bad -

• Quick-time events
• Short (6-10 hours depending on difficulty)
• Lengthened only by immense death count
• Cookie-cutter character design