Game Review: Dark Void

We've been on the virtual front lines enough in the last few years to know what makes a good shooter and what makes a bad one, but it seems some developers are still struggling to figure it all out. Cue Capcom's latest failed experiment, Dark Void, a weird Gears Of War and Iron Man hybrid that somehow manages to do almost everything that's been done a thousand times totally wrong.

After being greeted by a half-dramatic title menu where a flying, steel Dark Void logo flies over what can only be described as a blue neon vagina, things kick off when pilot Will Grey (voiced by Nolan "One Voice For Every Hero" North) crashes his plane in the Bermuda Triangle, which turns out to be overrun by aliens called "The Watchers". Typical. Fortunately, Will stumbles across a gun and, hiding behind some conveniently placed rocks, gets to shooting.

The loading screens look gash

Unfortunately, the shooting is arguably the worst thing about Dark Void (apart from Nolan North, of course). Don't get me wrong, the cover and shoot gameplay works well enough (it would probably be more surprising if it didn't), but because of the weapons and AI it's incredibly dull. When the cover system works in games - Gears of War is the obvious example - it's because the enemy is smart enough to try and flank or expose you. There's none of that here; the enemy is quite happy sitting behind a column or tree trunk or park bench or whatever, popping in and out of cover until you've loaded it with bullets from one of your unimaginative weapons or smacked it around enough - which is basically done by hammering the melee button in the hope that you happen to initiate the attack quicker than the target, watching Will perform the attack from a slightly more cinematic angle (at which point you're unable to control him, so there's every chance that he could finish the attack only to find a grenade at your feet), then rinsing and repeating a few times until the alien falls over. Almost every ground-based shoot-out plays out this way, making the Dark Void experience utterly forgettable.

Wait, is that a flying Geth? Is there anything this game hasn't pinched?

This chug along in this manner for a while until Will meets up with a group of humans known simply as "The Survivors", who quickly hand him Dark Void's party piece: the jetpack. It starts of with fairly basic hovering - which is pretty nifty, and spices up the shoot-outs for a few minutes - but quickly becomes used for proper flight, allowing you to quickly take off from the ground and join in the dogfights. It could have been good but the jetpack doesn't handle particularly well. Standard flying is easy enough, but pulling off any kind of manoeuvre is a faff - you have to hold down one of the analogue sticks then flick both of them in a certain direction, which is way too much fuss when five UFOs are bearing down on your exhausts - and aiming is wild, making it almost impossible to target enemies and, consequently, making the dogfights more frustrating than fun.

Annoyingly, with the jetpack comes the introduction of a ridiculous amount of quick-time events. Pretty much anything that isn't simply hitting a Watcher in the face comes with a quick time event, and some of them are far to drawn out. Hijacking an enemy spaceship is the worst of them, because chances are you'll have to do that quite a lot what with the aiming is so bloody finicky. Normally quick time events have you press buttons in a certain order while something cinematic goes on in the background (see Uncharted 2/The Force Unleashed), which is fairly naff in itself, but hijacking in Dark Void is even worse. You don't press different buttons, you just hold down one and watch as Will pulls away at a sheet of metal. Pulls very, very slowly. You'll actually be sat there for a good thirty seconds, holding down one button while nothing really happens. Someone genuinely thought this was a good idea. You wouldn't even want them stacking the shelves at Gamestation.

Even at full boost, the pointlessly massive environments take far too much time to explore

As stand alone elements the combat and flight simulator are pretty poor, so it's no surprise that things don't get any better when they're combined. Dark Void's jetpack allows for a virtual cover system - let's say you're using the jetpack to climb a rock-face with a enemies at the top; you can use your jetpack to boost up the side of the cliff, grabbing on to protruding ledges and, while hanging from them, use them as cover as you make your way up. It's a novelty at first, but it still has all the problems that the regular horizontal gameplay does - except now you get a few particularly stupid enemies hiding on the wrong side of cover.


It's a shame really, as Dark Void should have been so much better. With the cover system shooting, the jetpack and the seamless transition between the two, it could have ended up as a decent game. But it's marred with poor gameplay decisions - namely the quick-time events - and lazy development, resulting in a drab, repetitive experience that you'll forget about five minutes after picking up a different game. To sum it all up: Dark Avoid.

...I'm sorry.

4/10

I'm sorry for the first caption as well...

Reviews Coming Soon:
Glee (Series review)
Being Human (Series review)
Mass Effect 2 (Game review)
MAG (Game review)