are you fucking telling me right now that any gamer could get dark void for twenty bucks from any bargain bin in 2010 but if i want one today i have to pay a surgeon in seattle 9,000 dollars
Full disclosure: couldn't play through the game because of constant crashes. Will probably give it another try sometime in the future. Still, I felt justified in rating it based on my limited experience.
I quickly realized I didn't like the story and began skipping the cutscenes, so I figured I might as well download a save file and jump through most of the missions to avoid the crashes.
Shortly before the game's release I played the demo of it and was so impressed that I couldn't wait for the full game to come out. But I remember when I finally gave it a try, the early sections of the game got me so bored that I just kinda moved onto other games.
And it is true that the beginning of the game is kinda slow. You start off with a quick jetpack tutorial and a dogfight, which is pretty fun, but then it kinda drags you into this very slow and mediocre cover-based shooter with a lot of cutscenes, dialogues and walking sections.
Once they give you the jetpack again, there's strangely another dogfight tutorial that is exactly the same. But you also get to do some cover-based shooting with the jetpack, and I gotta say, this is kinda where the game's potential lies, and what impressed me so much with the demo. Imagine a cover-based shooter where you can fly over enemies and ambush them from behind or attack from the air. In addition there is vertical cover that totally shifts the plane of combat. The possibilities here were insane: fully three-dimensional combat and fully three-dimensional exploration of open levels. That's what it could've been.
In reality though, I feel like the systems don't really interact with each other, and often undermine each other. The levels are pretty linear and often wouldn't let you switch between hovering and boosting because you'd immediately start hitting walls and lose control. The floors and ceilings are also quite noticeable. In more open locations you'd see mountains and wanna climb on top of them, but the game just wouldn't let you. But when the game does give you some open-space combat arenas, you quickly realize that you kinda have to get close to your enemies in order to deal any decent damage, and once you do get close, you kinda have to take cover because you're extremely fragile. Not to mention there are very few locations that give you vertical cover.
In fact, I feel like this game is too short and spends way too much time locking you in linear sections and depriving you of the jetpack, the main attraction of the game. Without it, this is just a poor man's Gears of War.
But the dogfights are really the star of the show here. It's very fun to do maneuvers and outsmart enemies. On top of that, the coolest feature is how you can hijack an enemy aircraft and fully utilize it throughout the battle. Like it's not just a gimmick, they don't break in 5 seconds or limit your movement, they're a decent combat option.
Honestly, instead of crafting a story-driven campaign, they should've just given us procedurally-generated open levels with both ground and air combat happening simultaneously like in Battlefront and Battlefield games, except give us better weapons, higher accuracy, more melee options and maybe some special powers to make us feel like a superhero. Let us dive from the air to the ground with an AOE attack or pluck enemies from the ground like an eagle. Let us kamikaze-attack airships or use a hook to zip towards them. Now that would've been a really fun game. But instead this kinda makes you feel like a dog on a leash in a park. There seems to be so much fun to be had here, but they just don't let you do any of it.
I quickly realized I didn't like the story and began skipping the cutscenes, so I figured I might as well download a save file and jump through most of the missions to avoid the crashes.
Shortly before the game's release I played the demo of it and was so impressed that I couldn't wait for the full game to come out. But I remember when I finally gave it a try, the early sections of the game got me so bored that I just kinda moved onto other games.
And it is true that the beginning of the game is kinda slow. You start off with a quick jetpack tutorial and a dogfight, which is pretty fun, but then it kinda drags you into this very slow and mediocre cover-based shooter with a lot of cutscenes, dialogues and walking sections.
Once they give you the jetpack again, there's strangely another dogfight tutorial that is exactly the same. But you also get to do some cover-based shooting with the jetpack, and I gotta say, this is kinda where the game's potential lies, and what impressed me so much with the demo. Imagine a cover-based shooter where you can fly over enemies and ambush them from behind or attack from the air. In addition there is vertical cover that totally shifts the plane of combat. The possibilities here were insane: fully three-dimensional combat and fully three-dimensional exploration of open levels. That's what it could've been.
In reality though, I feel like the systems don't really interact with each other, and often undermine each other. The levels are pretty linear and often wouldn't let you switch between hovering and boosting because you'd immediately start hitting walls and lose control. The floors and ceilings are also quite noticeable. In more open locations you'd see mountains and wanna climb on top of them, but the game just wouldn't let you. But when the game does give you some open-space combat arenas, you quickly realize that you kinda have to get close to your enemies in order to deal any decent damage, and once you do get close, you kinda have to take cover because you're extremely fragile. Not to mention there are very few locations that give you vertical cover.
In fact, I feel like this game is too short and spends way too much time locking you in linear sections and depriving you of the jetpack, the main attraction of the game. Without it, this is just a poor man's Gears of War.
But the dogfights are really the star of the show here. It's very fun to do maneuvers and outsmart enemies. On top of that, the coolest feature is how you can hijack an enemy aircraft and fully utilize it throughout the battle. Like it's not just a gimmick, they don't break in 5 seconds or limit your movement, they're a decent combat option.
Honestly, instead of crafting a story-driven campaign, they should've just given us procedurally-generated open levels with both ground and air combat happening simultaneously like in Battlefront and Battlefield games, except give us better weapons, higher accuracy, more melee options and maybe some special powers to make us feel like a superhero. Let us dive from the air to the ground with an AOE attack or pluck enemies from the ground like an eagle. Let us kamikaze-attack airships or use a hook to zip towards them. Now that would've been a really fun game. But instead this kinda makes you feel like a dog on a leash in a park. There seems to be so much fun to be had here, but they just don't let you do any of it.
doughy nate drake looking ass
Horrivel a gameplay desse jogo. Inimigos repetitivos e fases sem inspiração.
This can’t have been the best they could do.
This review contains spoilers
Dark Void is a cut and dry 3rd person shooter. Lacking in weapon and enemy variety, with a cookie cutter aliens on Earth plot. The combat is mechanically bare, half the weapons aren't worth looking at. The only saving grace is that the jetpack sections can be kind of cool, when the pacing of them isn't horrible at least.
Don't even get me started on the story itself. I mentioned it briefly already, but it really is just a generic alien story. The plot is very reminiscent of say Crysis, but not even in the same league of quality. They also force an unnecessary romance plot between the two main characters. Of which you randomly find out are exes.
In many ways this game is just mediocre. But it makes a few design errors that particularly bothered me. Such as the entire screen flashing bright red every single time you take damage. Not only does this obscure your view completely, but since it does it individually for every bullet your take, the game turns into a Seizure Machine. Just absolutely horrendous design.
Don't even get me started on the story itself. I mentioned it briefly already, but it really is just a generic alien story. The plot is very reminiscent of say Crysis, but not even in the same league of quality. They also force an unnecessary romance plot between the two main characters. Of which you randomly find out are exes.
In many ways this game is just mediocre. But it makes a few design errors that particularly bothered me. Such as the entire screen flashing bright red every single time you take damage. Not only does this obscure your view completely, but since it does it individually for every bullet your take, the game turns into a Seizure Machine. Just absolutely horrendous design.
No recuerdo una mierda, taba guapo el jetpack tho
This game absolutely rocks. Other than a kind of slow and boring turret escort mission and an abrupt ending, the game moves so quickly, helped by its 5-6 hour campaign. The story is serviceable.
Gun selection is small, but there's some really cool ones, especially the designs of them. I especially like how some of them seem to alter their appearance with upgrades. The cover based gameplay is given a little shakeup too compared to normal Gears of War type combat with hiding vertically on ledges and shooting up or downward. The small shift in gravity and perspective leads to some creative enemy disposal methods like tossing a grenade up, or just climbing over the ledge and punching the guys in the face.
The star of the show though is the jetpack which is so cool. After being given the ability to fly, levels open up and let you boost around freely in the skies and land on the ground to just take in the landscapes. While I wish more levels took advantage of this, I think the novelty of some large scale base siege set pieces is neat. Taking out turrets around and then flying into the base to wreck it and its forces from the inside is such a huge power fantasy. I like this one a lot, might not go back to it anytime soon, but I'll definitely be thinking about it for a while.
Gun selection is small, but there's some really cool ones, especially the designs of them. I especially like how some of them seem to alter their appearance with upgrades. The cover based gameplay is given a little shakeup too compared to normal Gears of War type combat with hiding vertically on ledges and shooting up or downward. The small shift in gravity and perspective leads to some creative enemy disposal methods like tossing a grenade up, or just climbing over the ledge and punching the guys in the face.
The star of the show though is the jetpack which is so cool. After being given the ability to fly, levels open up and let you boost around freely in the skies and land on the ground to just take in the landscapes. While I wish more levels took advantage of this, I think the novelty of some large scale base siege set pieces is neat. Taking out turrets around and then flying into the base to wreck it and its forces from the inside is such a huge power fantasy. I like this one a lot, might not go back to it anytime soon, but I'll definitely be thinking about it for a while.
E um jogo que tem uma história chata e entendiante e sem nexo porém, com um gameplay legal e bem fluído, um jogo de 2010 bem portado no pc, vale a pena numa promoção bem baratinho
I liked flying around but got bored pretty fast.
This review contains spoilers
Recently delisted, Dark Void may be a hidden gem to some in an industry that increasingly loses access to its history like the games industry. Personally, I feel like this game reflects a lot of the ugliest trends in the industry circa 2010. Does this mean it should have been delisted or does not deserve to be played? Absolutely not, in fact its a huge shame that games like this may be increasingly inaccessible in the future. With that preamble out of the way, lets talk about the game.
Dark Void is truly an enigma of a game. I will try to give an extremely butchered plot synopsis here for the curious. It opens with a shot of a brown skyline where a character flies via jetpack while fighting some sort of alien UFOs. The date, 1939. We watch our jetpacked player character fly acrobatically until he crash lands and is killed by some kind of scorpion robot. Cut to earth where we see someone who I assume is the same player character meeting lead characters Will and Ava. These three load up a plane and fly out to somewhere (I saw this a week ago and somehow these plot points escape me). Long story short, Will and crew crash land in the Bermuda Triangle and find themselves stranded on a jungle island. The unnamed player character from the intro is presumably killed offscreen or something because he straight up disappears as we step into the shoes of Will and begin our adventure for real. Will and Ava reunite and navigate this mysterious forest filled with some kind of blue robot guys later called the Watchers. We engage in terrible knockoff Gears of War cover shooting with these robots until Will and Ava stumble into some kind of Aztec civilization that seems to worship these robots. They tell our protagonist to shove off but Will and Ava are swiftly pulled into a lab by my boy Tavi. Turns out Nikolai Tesla, the real person is living in this Aztec temple developing some means to either leave or based on future events enter the mysterious area known as "The Void" (how spooky). Will and Ava scavenge for airplane parts to go home but after a series of events that I can't or maybe don't care to recall Ava is kidnapped by the Watchers after some sort of argument with Will about how he didn't do enough to stop World War 2 or something like that? I'm not sure, the game treats its historical setting with an insane lack of care or seriousness as the conflict and participants of World War 2 are erased from the story. Instead, Will and Ava talk vaguely about "the fascists" and how they are causing all kinds of ruckus in Europe. I chalk it up to narrative cowardice but dear reader I leave you to decide why the writers of this game decided that their game should be set in World War 2 while also taking nothing from that setting beyond vague references to fascism.
Continuing on, Will gains a jetpack and the bulk of the game begins its core loop between cover shooting and flight combat reminiscent of any plane or jet combat game ever but this time with jetpack and the worst hijacking mechanic of all time with animations that last upwards of 35 seconds to perform. You also do a ton of escorting and defending people or objects in this game which is just bottom of the barrel content in most games not named Resident Evil 4.
After the jetpack is given to the player to test out Will follows the now kidnapped Ava into "The Void." Will and the player move from the dark green and grey forests of the early 2010s to a truly terrifying setting, orange and brown rocks floating over an abyss. I can not overstate how incredibly boring the scenery is in this game. Its incredibly bland and even saying that here I know somewhere in the future I'll kick myself for not emphasizing just how bland this setting was even further.
Will meets Atem and links up with the Survivors. This is a group of refugees in "The Void" looking to...escape? I'm actually not super sure tbh, anything to do with the survivors is just incredibly confusing and not at all told to the player through the cutscenes that all just feel like they exist because that's what video games have. They all felt pointless and very few of them explained what the hell was going on in the game.
After lots of meandering and nothing going on kind of like this review, Will and Ava reunite alongside third wheel Nikolai Tesla who apparently has been helping build a big ship called the Ark. I despise the Ark because every mission involving it was a tedious escort that either felt incredibly buggy or incredibly broken on hardcore. I completed one defense mission for the Ark moments away from its destruction because Will was tasked to single-handedly fight 3 mech scorpions that somehow simultaneously shred Will into pieces and shred the Ark. The Watchers' technology is truly frightening.
At some point, Will is told that he is an Adept by Atem who I think I mentioned once before which probably says something about how memorable the cast is in this game. An Adept is basically someone who fights real good and I guess can jump like 6 feet into the air because apparently they're supposed to have special powers but I never got the sense anything Will did was because of powers considering the overwhelming reliance on a super jetpack designed by Nikolai Tesla (I think I forgot to mention he made that) and guns scavenged from robot aliens. Even Atem, one of our other known Adepts in the game is shown to just sort of shoot a robot real good and do some sort of CQC thing as his big feat to show how special he is.
It all starts to blend together here but eventually Will and the crew of the Ark are taken to some kind of prison labor camp in a scene very reminiscent of that moment in Half Life 2 where Gordon enters a pod in the Citadel and you get to see it from the inside except in that game there were things to look at that didn't make my eyes glaze over with all the grey and blue alien architecture. Will is swiftly saved by Atem who apparently planned to get caught to begin the revolution or something? Its also revealed that this prison camp (which probably gives it too much credit tbh) and the Watchers as a whole are supporting "the fascists" on earth with the war effort. So in this alien facility where every enemy shoots lasers and stuff I guess they're also building like Nazi planes and stuff? I feel like making this game connect to World War 2 was incredibly contrived, hilarious in hindsight, but contrived. Will and crew break out and then he fights a big robot dragon for some reason. After the dragon fight where Will sacrifices his super jetpack to kill it, Ava embraces him only for the true villain some alien disguised as Tavi (or maybe it was Tavi the whole time?) throws a knife at Ava stabbing her in the back in one of the most awkwardly shot cutscenes I've ever seen. Seriously, go watch this thing if you can its incredible.
To conclude this nightmare, I do think Dark Void deserves some praise for being a pretty ambitious game that transitions seamlessly between flight combat and third person shooter gameplay that was pretty standard at the time. It feels like an amalgamation of industry trends at the time though which really hinders my ability to mark it as something truly special. From casting Nolan North as our leading man to evoke the charm of Nathan Drake in a character with so little charisma to shoehorning a strange plotline about World War 2 into a game that totally would have been fine without it this game just does not feel like it forms a coherent identity of its own. It truly needed to strike out its own lane in my view if Capcom or Airtight wanted this title to be a hit. Unfortunately that didn't take and we live in the reality where this game will likely be forgotten and ignored because its no longer a stocked product on digital storefronts and finding physical media from the 360/PS3 generation is an increasingly difficult task.
Dark Void is truly an enigma of a game. I will try to give an extremely butchered plot synopsis here for the curious. It opens with a shot of a brown skyline where a character flies via jetpack while fighting some sort of alien UFOs. The date, 1939. We watch our jetpacked player character fly acrobatically until he crash lands and is killed by some kind of scorpion robot. Cut to earth where we see someone who I assume is the same player character meeting lead characters Will and Ava. These three load up a plane and fly out to somewhere (I saw this a week ago and somehow these plot points escape me). Long story short, Will and crew crash land in the Bermuda Triangle and find themselves stranded on a jungle island. The unnamed player character from the intro is presumably killed offscreen or something because he straight up disappears as we step into the shoes of Will and begin our adventure for real. Will and Ava reunite and navigate this mysterious forest filled with some kind of blue robot guys later called the Watchers. We engage in terrible knockoff Gears of War cover shooting with these robots until Will and Ava stumble into some kind of Aztec civilization that seems to worship these robots. They tell our protagonist to shove off but Will and Ava are swiftly pulled into a lab by my boy Tavi. Turns out Nikolai Tesla, the real person is living in this Aztec temple developing some means to either leave or based on future events enter the mysterious area known as "The Void" (how spooky). Will and Ava scavenge for airplane parts to go home but after a series of events that I can't or maybe don't care to recall Ava is kidnapped by the Watchers after some sort of argument with Will about how he didn't do enough to stop World War 2 or something like that? I'm not sure, the game treats its historical setting with an insane lack of care or seriousness as the conflict and participants of World War 2 are erased from the story. Instead, Will and Ava talk vaguely about "the fascists" and how they are causing all kinds of ruckus in Europe. I chalk it up to narrative cowardice but dear reader I leave you to decide why the writers of this game decided that their game should be set in World War 2 while also taking nothing from that setting beyond vague references to fascism.
Continuing on, Will gains a jetpack and the bulk of the game begins its core loop between cover shooting and flight combat reminiscent of any plane or jet combat game ever but this time with jetpack and the worst hijacking mechanic of all time with animations that last upwards of 35 seconds to perform. You also do a ton of escorting and defending people or objects in this game which is just bottom of the barrel content in most games not named Resident Evil 4.
After the jetpack is given to the player to test out Will follows the now kidnapped Ava into "The Void." Will and the player move from the dark green and grey forests of the early 2010s to a truly terrifying setting, orange and brown rocks floating over an abyss. I can not overstate how incredibly boring the scenery is in this game. Its incredibly bland and even saying that here I know somewhere in the future I'll kick myself for not emphasizing just how bland this setting was even further.
Will meets Atem and links up with the Survivors. This is a group of refugees in "The Void" looking to...escape? I'm actually not super sure tbh, anything to do with the survivors is just incredibly confusing and not at all told to the player through the cutscenes that all just feel like they exist because that's what video games have. They all felt pointless and very few of them explained what the hell was going on in the game.
After lots of meandering and nothing going on kind of like this review, Will and Ava reunite alongside third wheel Nikolai Tesla who apparently has been helping build a big ship called the Ark. I despise the Ark because every mission involving it was a tedious escort that either felt incredibly buggy or incredibly broken on hardcore. I completed one defense mission for the Ark moments away from its destruction because Will was tasked to single-handedly fight 3 mech scorpions that somehow simultaneously shred Will into pieces and shred the Ark. The Watchers' technology is truly frightening.
At some point, Will is told that he is an Adept by Atem who I think I mentioned once before which probably says something about how memorable the cast is in this game. An Adept is basically someone who fights real good and I guess can jump like 6 feet into the air because apparently they're supposed to have special powers but I never got the sense anything Will did was because of powers considering the overwhelming reliance on a super jetpack designed by Nikolai Tesla (I think I forgot to mention he made that) and guns scavenged from robot aliens. Even Atem, one of our other known Adepts in the game is shown to just sort of shoot a robot real good and do some sort of CQC thing as his big feat to show how special he is.
It all starts to blend together here but eventually Will and the crew of the Ark are taken to some kind of prison labor camp in a scene very reminiscent of that moment in Half Life 2 where Gordon enters a pod in the Citadel and you get to see it from the inside except in that game there were things to look at that didn't make my eyes glaze over with all the grey and blue alien architecture. Will is swiftly saved by Atem who apparently planned to get caught to begin the revolution or something? Its also revealed that this prison camp (which probably gives it too much credit tbh) and the Watchers as a whole are supporting "the fascists" on earth with the war effort. So in this alien facility where every enemy shoots lasers and stuff I guess they're also building like Nazi planes and stuff? I feel like making this game connect to World War 2 was incredibly contrived, hilarious in hindsight, but contrived. Will and crew break out and then he fights a big robot dragon for some reason. After the dragon fight where Will sacrifices his super jetpack to kill it, Ava embraces him only for the true villain some alien disguised as Tavi (or maybe it was Tavi the whole time?) throws a knife at Ava stabbing her in the back in one of the most awkwardly shot cutscenes I've ever seen. Seriously, go watch this thing if you can its incredible.
To conclude this nightmare, I do think Dark Void deserves some praise for being a pretty ambitious game that transitions seamlessly between flight combat and third person shooter gameplay that was pretty standard at the time. It feels like an amalgamation of industry trends at the time though which really hinders my ability to mark it as something truly special. From casting Nolan North as our leading man to evoke the charm of Nathan Drake in a character with so little charisma to shoehorning a strange plotline about World War 2 into a game that totally would have been fine without it this game just does not feel like it forms a coherent identity of its own. It truly needed to strike out its own lane in my view if Capcom or Airtight wanted this title to be a hit. Unfortunately that didn't take and we live in the reality where this game will likely be forgotten and ignored because its no longer a stocked product on digital storefronts and finding physical media from the 360/PS3 generation is an increasingly difficult task.
Bad
why was this made?
This is definitely one of the games I've ever played
You ever see a one trick pony? I mean like for realsies, in real life. A whole ass pony, with one goddam trick. but like... he real good at the trick, like real good, like real cool...
I played this game when I was 10 and loved it, 10 year old me is objectively correct.
I played this game when I was 10 and loved it, 10 year old me is objectively correct.
Dark Void has a lot of heart but sadly is a great example of ambition over budget.
Dark Void is a game coming from Airtight games, a developer formed largely from the staff who created Crimson Skies, so needless to say held a lot of promise. Unfortunately the end result has not hit the heights it's jet pack was aiming for resulting in more of an easy jet economy flight.
The premise for Dark Void is pretty good but sadly is underdeveloped, full of holes and with some surprisingly bad dialogue and cutscenes that don't cement very well with the rest of the game, which is a real shame. The story starts in 1938 with the main character Will and his struggling cargo delivery company taking a shipment and courier Ava, an old flame of Wills, through the Bermuda triangle. During the flight they hit a heavy storm and crash land in a jungle, having gone thought a tear in space. Soon they meet up with other human survivors that have gone through and join the fight against an alien enemy known as the watchers who are trying to go through themselves and take over earth.
It all sounds good right? The cutscenes are a weird cut though and most of the game feels kind of directionless. Like there wasn't enough budget to keep it going or interesting.
Dark Void plays largely like a third person cover shooter with a few tricks thrown in to spice it up a bit. For a start Dark Void has a vertical cover system on top of the standard horizontal must games of this sort stick with. While not that different it's a nice touch to watch Will use his Jet pack to fly up and down levels using the cover system in such a fashion. And of course key words from that last sentence, Jet Pack. Yes Will can hover and fly being able to go almost anywhere in the levels at any time, though that tends to be a lot more linear then it sounds. The controls for using it are somewhat awkward at first but work surprisingly well making the UFO dogfights spread throughout the game quite a blast to play. If however Wills Jet pack guns aren't quite powerful enough for you he can also hijack watcher UFO's involving mini quick time events to get the pilot out, while entertaining at first by the twentieth time it has gotten rather repetitive. And that's the big problem with Dark Voids gameplay, there are maybe two ground troop types in 3 different colours, one UFO type that occasionally has a shield and a couple of other enemies so the combat though fun looses it's appeal fairly fast sadly.
To kill these troops Will gets a fair armory to choose from of 6 different weapons, 3 survivor built and 3 Watcher built. All of which can be upgraded to level 3 for various added damage and effects using orbs gained either from killing enemies or occasionally hidden on the map. Wills Jet pack can also be upgrade expanding his lethal potential by giving it missiles to match the machine guns.
Technically Dark Void is what I would call a near miss disaster. There is a lot of pop in and textures are ugly on PlayStation 3. Towards the end of the game in dog fights there is also quite a bit of slow down here and there, and in one particular battle the music cut in and out making the game sound a bit like a machine gun which was immensely annoying. Some of the designs are quite nice artistically though there really isn't enough variation to keep it fresh.
The sound however is fantastic. The music was composed by Bear Mccreary who has previously worked on Battlestar Galactica, God of War and Game of Thrones,. The tracks in the game match what is going on with a great tempo, and use of drums especially. Voice acting is also of a reasonable quality with Will being voiced by the everywhere Nolan North of Uncharted fame. Sadly though even his great voice acting can only do so much with the short lines and dis jointed cutscenes he is given.
Dark Void's campaign lasts for about 6 hours and honestly has little reason to be replayed. There are survivor files to be found some taking liberty with historic figures like Amelia Earheart which are can be pretty interesting but outside of trophies add nothing that important if any are missed first time though.
All in all Dark Void had some really good ideas but comes across as being half a game. With sketchy graphics, a wasted story, little replay value and being short, surprisingly it still manages to provide some entertainment for what it is but really it could have been something much better then it turned out to be.
+ Vertical combat and air combat are fun.
+ Great music and decent voice acting.
+ Great story premise.
- Sketchy graphics with some technical issues.
- Plot and cut scenes don't keep the story idea going.
- Repetitive enemies.
- Short with no replay value.
Dark Void is a game coming from Airtight games, a developer formed largely from the staff who created Crimson Skies, so needless to say held a lot of promise. Unfortunately the end result has not hit the heights it's jet pack was aiming for resulting in more of an easy jet economy flight.
The premise for Dark Void is pretty good but sadly is underdeveloped, full of holes and with some surprisingly bad dialogue and cutscenes that don't cement very well with the rest of the game, which is a real shame. The story starts in 1938 with the main character Will and his struggling cargo delivery company taking a shipment and courier Ava, an old flame of Wills, through the Bermuda triangle. During the flight they hit a heavy storm and crash land in a jungle, having gone thought a tear in space. Soon they meet up with other human survivors that have gone through and join the fight against an alien enemy known as the watchers who are trying to go through themselves and take over earth.
It all sounds good right? The cutscenes are a weird cut though and most of the game feels kind of directionless. Like there wasn't enough budget to keep it going or interesting.
Dark Void plays largely like a third person cover shooter with a few tricks thrown in to spice it up a bit. For a start Dark Void has a vertical cover system on top of the standard horizontal must games of this sort stick with. While not that different it's a nice touch to watch Will use his Jet pack to fly up and down levels using the cover system in such a fashion. And of course key words from that last sentence, Jet Pack. Yes Will can hover and fly being able to go almost anywhere in the levels at any time, though that tends to be a lot more linear then it sounds. The controls for using it are somewhat awkward at first but work surprisingly well making the UFO dogfights spread throughout the game quite a blast to play. If however Wills Jet pack guns aren't quite powerful enough for you he can also hijack watcher UFO's involving mini quick time events to get the pilot out, while entertaining at first by the twentieth time it has gotten rather repetitive. And that's the big problem with Dark Voids gameplay, there are maybe two ground troop types in 3 different colours, one UFO type that occasionally has a shield and a couple of other enemies so the combat though fun looses it's appeal fairly fast sadly.
To kill these troops Will gets a fair armory to choose from of 6 different weapons, 3 survivor built and 3 Watcher built. All of which can be upgraded to level 3 for various added damage and effects using orbs gained either from killing enemies or occasionally hidden on the map. Wills Jet pack can also be upgrade expanding his lethal potential by giving it missiles to match the machine guns.
Technically Dark Void is what I would call a near miss disaster. There is a lot of pop in and textures are ugly on PlayStation 3. Towards the end of the game in dog fights there is also quite a bit of slow down here and there, and in one particular battle the music cut in and out making the game sound a bit like a machine gun which was immensely annoying. Some of the designs are quite nice artistically though there really isn't enough variation to keep it fresh.
The sound however is fantastic. The music was composed by Bear Mccreary who has previously worked on Battlestar Galactica, God of War and Game of Thrones,. The tracks in the game match what is going on with a great tempo, and use of drums especially. Voice acting is also of a reasonable quality with Will being voiced by the everywhere Nolan North of Uncharted fame. Sadly though even his great voice acting can only do so much with the short lines and dis jointed cutscenes he is given.
Dark Void's campaign lasts for about 6 hours and honestly has little reason to be replayed. There are survivor files to be found some taking liberty with historic figures like Amelia Earheart which are can be pretty interesting but outside of trophies add nothing that important if any are missed first time though.
All in all Dark Void had some really good ideas but comes across as being half a game. With sketchy graphics, a wasted story, little replay value and being short, surprisingly it still manages to provide some entertainment for what it is but really it could have been something much better then it turned out to be.
+ Vertical combat and air combat are fun.
+ Great music and decent voice acting.
+ Great story premise.
- Sketchy graphics with some technical issues.
- Plot and cut scenes don't keep the story idea going.
- Repetitive enemies.
- Short with no replay value.
played the demo back on PS3 and had my fill of this with it at the time but at some point i think i grabbed this through the BC program on Xbox for really cheap. kinda wish i just left it be lmao.
interesting but finicky jetpack mechanics are really all the game has going for it. the intro starts you off with being able to fly around at will while tackling some combat and it's passable enough for 15 minutes (as it was in the demo) but then the rest of the game happens. enemies are way too spongy and the mid-air combat takes a turn for the worst when the other flying ships and enemies put strain on the wonky flight controls.
also wasn't into the story but that was a given at this point. didn't realize this was going to be a time travel type thing or that it was going to have Nolan North showing up to do the most blatant/annoying case of Nolan Northing that i've ever seen so it had that going for it too.
will try the metroidvania side game someday.
interesting but finicky jetpack mechanics are really all the game has going for it. the intro starts you off with being able to fly around at will while tackling some combat and it's passable enough for 15 minutes (as it was in the demo) but then the rest of the game happens. enemies are way too spongy and the mid-air combat takes a turn for the worst when the other flying ships and enemies put strain on the wonky flight controls.
also wasn't into the story but that was a given at this point. didn't realize this was going to be a time travel type thing or that it was going to have Nolan North showing up to do the most blatant/annoying case of Nolan Northing that i've ever seen so it had that going for it too.
will try the metroidvania side game someday.
expected a middling third person shooter with some cool jetpacking - i got shittier uncharted with a hover mechanic
cover systems are usually boring as is and making them vertical doesn't add any amount of depth to waiting for enemies to stick their heads out and pulling the right trigger on reflex
cover systems are usually boring as is and making them vertical doesn't add any amount of depth to waiting for enemies to stick their heads out and pulling the right trigger on reflex
Dark Void is a fundamentally boring game with one VERY good mechanic that elevates the entire experience. The shooting is bland, the visuals are bland, the story is bland, but the jetpack gameplay is so legitimately fantastic that none of the other problems matter. I had a great time with this game.
Decided to try this one since it was going out of circulation, and it's a solid one. You can see the rough edges of a AA production circa 2010, but the flying is pleasingly evocative of Crimson Skies and the Bear McCreary soundtrack is sublime. Some, well, a lot of the writing doesn't really pass muster (for one, why are they so vague about the actual time period the game takes place in?) but I had a good time regardless.
Anyone that calls a game mid should be forced to sit down and play this, and learn what mid ACTUALLY is.
Tentaram fazer um jogo de Rocketeer daí a Disney deve ter desistido, mudaram os NS por alienígenas e a capcom lançou de qualquer jeito.
Engraçado é escutar a voz do Nathan Drake no prota, o principal do jogo é a mecânica de voo e logo isso é terrível, o tps é só um cópia e cola mal feito de gears of war, no geral muito ultrapassado pra um jogo de 2010.
03/10
Engraçado é escutar a voz do Nathan Drake no prota, o principal do jogo é a mecânica de voo e logo isso é terrível, o tps é só um cópia e cola mal feito de gears of war, no geral muito ultrapassado pra um jogo de 2010.
03/10
They don't really make games like this anymore, and it gets bonus points for that, but it's a very ho-hum, run of the mill cover shooter with these tacked-on dogfights that don't really feel great. I could probably forgive all that, but I had a couple of game breaking bugs, and during numerous firefights, the AI just spazzed out and ran into walls.
I like the setting (pre-WW2, aliens are fueling the facists), but the story itself is lackluster. I like the gunplay, but the shooting itself has no impact. I used the same two guns for the whole game. Kinda Uncharted-esque with a jetpack.
An average game that has just a few too many hiccups to make me happy, and the final boss is SUPER anticlimatic. This thing probably left no impact in 2010, but it's an interesting relic of a pre-UbiWorld universe.
I like the setting (pre-WW2, aliens are fueling the facists), but the story itself is lackluster. I like the gunplay, but the shooting itself has no impact. I used the same two guns for the whole game. Kinda Uncharted-esque with a jetpack.
An average game that has just a few too many hiccups to make me happy, and the final boss is SUPER anticlimatic. This thing probably left no impact in 2010, but it's an interesting relic of a pre-UbiWorld universe.
The most forgettable game with the most forgettable title
One of those games with an interesting premise, but fell in its execution, that said, the gameplay its like gears of war with a jet pack, it works well enough, enemy soldiers have too much hp and the boss fights are generally tedious. 5/10
I paid close to $3 for this and boy is it rough. There’s a great concept in here somewhere but the game was executed in every possible way contrary to it. Despite feeling lukewarm towards it once the escort missions hit, I was determined to see it through.
Unfortunately, a few levels from the end there’s a mission where you have to destroy a battleship after escorting your own through a narrow canyon for about 30 minutes. A narrow canyon where your ship will take the majority of the enemies firepower because it is nearly too big for the area…
The first time I got through it the battleship didn’t spawn so I had to restart thanks to the checkpoint activating there. The second time it did spawn, but its energy core that I was supposed to destroy glitched out, and it kept happening from the checkpoint. I already had an hour and a half or so into this single mission out of about 4 to 5 hours of total playtime, so I decided I wasn’t going to restart it from the beginning for a third time.
If I could, I’d give Dark Void 0 Stars. I normally do not believe in rating things based on numbers but this was such a low effort and so much of a mess that I feel like I am within my rights to quantify the game’s value with those two simple words: Zero Stars.
I mean, seriously, how do you screw up a game set in the Bermuda Triangle with robots being piloted by alien snake-people who have teamed up with Nazis - who use jetpacks during World War 2; which also has Nikola Tesla somehow thrown into the plot for good measure? This answers that.
And yeah, the plot is incoherent, technobabble and nonsense, but you can’t tell me that all those ridiculous elements can’t make for a great gameplay experience. One final thing that irks me is that the game is afraid to outright call the bad guy humans Nazis and instead opts to call them Fascists at every turn; while technically correct, if you’re that uncomfortable with the subject matter to call it by the appropriate name, then you don’t deserve to be covering it.
Unfortunately, a few levels from the end there’s a mission where you have to destroy a battleship after escorting your own through a narrow canyon for about 30 minutes. A narrow canyon where your ship will take the majority of the enemies firepower because it is nearly too big for the area…
The first time I got through it the battleship didn’t spawn so I had to restart thanks to the checkpoint activating there. The second time it did spawn, but its energy core that I was supposed to destroy glitched out, and it kept happening from the checkpoint. I already had an hour and a half or so into this single mission out of about 4 to 5 hours of total playtime, so I decided I wasn’t going to restart it from the beginning for a third time.
If I could, I’d give Dark Void 0 Stars. I normally do not believe in rating things based on numbers but this was such a low effort and so much of a mess that I feel like I am within my rights to quantify the game’s value with those two simple words: Zero Stars.
I mean, seriously, how do you screw up a game set in the Bermuda Triangle with robots being piloted by alien snake-people who have teamed up with Nazis - who use jetpacks during World War 2; which also has Nikola Tesla somehow thrown into the plot for good measure? This answers that.
And yeah, the plot is incoherent, technobabble and nonsense, but you can’t tell me that all those ridiculous elements can’t make for a great gameplay experience. One final thing that irks me is that the game is afraid to outright call the bad guy humans Nazis and instead opts to call them Fascists at every turn; while technically correct, if you’re that uncomfortable with the subject matter to call it by the appropriate name, then you don’t deserve to be covering it.
Flying was good... not like the rest.
Bought it for a dollar at GameStop and then played it for a minute and a half then sold it back to GameStop like5 years later
Starts off really rough, then gets kinda badass in the middle, and drops off to bad again at the end.
This game has a really strange vibe behind it I can't even describe...