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.
3 Comments
@LordDarias - That's pretty much the limit. The idea is great, vertical cover shooting as a 40's style rocketeer? Love it. The implementation though is sadly lacking. It lacks set pieces, variety, character and polish leaving a middle of the road title sadly.
Yeah its sad, there was a lot of potential here. Early 7th gen capcom was kind of a mess
LordDarias
10 months ago