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.
Another Games with Gold gem.
It's absolutely incorrect to blame Nolan North for this, but he is the kind of golden ticket giving developers permission to do insane shit with Latin American countries. All the natives are white? They worship robots? I think Nolan North keeps calling the robots fascists?
The idea of the vertical, ascending cover system is neat. But the effect wears off almost immediately after being introduced.
I didn't even stick around for more than two hours.
It's absolutely incorrect to blame Nolan North for this, but he is the kind of golden ticket giving developers permission to do insane shit with Latin American countries. All the natives are white? They worship robots? I think Nolan North keeps calling the robots fascists?
The idea of the vertical, ascending cover system is neat. But the effect wears off almost immediately after being introduced.
I didn't even stick around for more than two hours.
Bad
One of the first Xbox 360 game I ever played, and god I was so disappointed. I thought everything was so cool about this game...until I actually played it. It was so, so, so, so, so buggy.
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.
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.
This game has a really strange vibe behind it I can't even describe...