Gamersmint Review: Dark Void

I knew there was going to be some flying involved the moment Air Tight Games was announced as the developer for Dark Void. Being the team behind the acclaimed Crimson Skies series, it was no wonder why Capcom had faith in them. However, while containing some interesting ideas, Dark Void falls flat on its promise. This rocket thruster just ran out of fuel. Mayday Mayday Mayday…

The Story

Sometime during World War 2, swashbuckling pilot (or so they say) Will Grey is on his way to deliver a courier with his old acquaintance Ava. Things go horribly wrong as Will’s plane is damaged while flying above the Bermuda triangle. The couple crash land in what seems like a tropical forest infested with technologically advanced aliens. What follows is an uninteresting tale about a dangerous foe called the Watchers who were trapped in the Void by earlier human civilizations. The Watchers are now supporting the fascists in the war, hoping to cause destruction on Earth, so that they can escape the Void and take over the world. Yawn…it’s as boring as it sounds and while the initial intrigue may keep some gamers interested for an hour or so, don’t expect brain-boggling plot-twists or deep character development. Dark Void is as generic as it gets.

Oh yeah…in order to drum up some publicity among the science geeks, the developers thought using a prominent figure like Nikolai Tesla (who surprisingly looks like Walt Disney…weird) as an important character in the game might help. Yeah right.

Gameplay

Dark Void’s gameplay can be broken down into three different portions. First, we have the on-foot segments which control like the hundreds of third person shooters out there. Will Grey can take cover behind walls and shoot aliens with the usual assortment of guns. The assortment of guns is pretty limited and even the alien weapons don’t feel varied enough. The shooting segments make up the bulk of the game, and it is here where the developers made their biggest mistake. Firing weapons never really feels satisfying enough.

On top of that, the enemy A.I is laughable at most. There were times where I would be shooting enemies right in their face and yet they would be aiming somewhere else. Even the hit boxes for the enemies are suspect, as shooting straight at their heads does not register many times. The only saving grace here are the melee takedowns which are effective and have satisfying results. In majority of the firefights, I found it easier to melee enemies one after the other, than waste ammo on them. There is hardly any enemy variety and the combat soon becomes monotonous.

The text behind the game box boasts ‘full 3D combat’ and ‘first game ever to use vertical cover.’ At times in the game, you can scale the sides of cliffs or structures while taking cover behind rocks; hence the name ‘Vertical Cover.’ While it’s true that vertical cover is something new, the bad shooting mechanics sabotage this part of the game as well. Once again, it’s far more practical to jump towards the enemy and attack them with your bare hands. Also, there are so few sections of the game that use vertical cover; it feels like a missed opportunity by the developers.

Finally, we have the flying sections. Thankfully, the flying mechanics are well done, which does not come as a surprise…these are the people who made Crimson Skies after all. A couple of levels into the game Will receives a jetpack with the hover ability from Tesla. Soon after, players get access to the rocket thruster which allows them to fly. This is where the game truly opens up and shows what it has to offer. Unfortunately, it takes almost 2 hours for the game to reach the fun part; I’m afraid that many gamers will put down the game before they reach these segments. It’s very easy to control Will as he soars across the sky raining death from above. But you are not the only thing flying in the skies. Watcher UFO’s patrol the skies, making your job even more difficult. Taking them down is as easy as lining up the shot and barraging them with the guns on your rocket thruster. Will can also hijack the UFO’s which results in a fairly lengthy mini-game. Unfortunately, even this becomes tedious after the first few times. It’s much better and faster to gun the UFO’s down than watch Will do the same string of hijack animations over and over again.

The flying segments keep the game from becoming torture but very few enemy types, and the same generic environments for every fight make them repetitive as well. You might be noticing a pattern by now. Every element of Dark Void is introduced well, but wears out its welcome soon. It seems the developers could not flesh out the initial crop of ideas into something more interesting. Dark Void is a short game, clocking in about approximately 7 hours. What it is, however, is an hour long game, replicated as much as possible to seem like a full retail game. This might not be the end of the review, but I’m saying it now. Dark Void is not worth $60….not when you have so many AAA games out there.

The Graphics

The game uses the Unreal Engine 3 but fails to stand out from the rest of the pack. Low resolution textures and texture pop-in are rampant and defile the experience. An important event in the game, which was supposed to be emotional, ended being a laugh riot, thanks to the character noses disappearing and appearing at random. This is far from what a retail product should look like. There are far too many visual discrepancies and bugs; I’m surprised how the game even got green-lit for release.

There are some areas in the game that look good, but these backdrops are repeatedly used for the flying segments, following the usual trend of repetitiveness that is an occurring theme across all aspects of Dark Void. Animations of all the characters are decent at best; nothing that will turn heads or get acclaim. It’s a good looking game…just not great.

The Sound

Will Grey is voiced by none other than Nolan North, who is fast becoming the go to man in the video game industry. He is a damn fine voice actor, but it is annoying to hear him voicing characters in almost every game. He tries his best to project himself into Will Grey, but the drab script does not really help. All other characters including the British love interest Ava sound bored and uninspired.

The music is another aspect of the game (apart from the base flying mechanics), which is worth mention. Composer Bear McCreary of Battlestar Galactica fame does a good job with the rousing orchestral score. Once again, the bugs rear their ugly head and distort the music. There are even times when the music stops abruptly only to start after a checkpoint.

Next Page – Entering the Void…

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