“renting this tomorrow”
When Dark Void was announced by Capcom, expectation where high. What we had was a promise of an action packed third person shooter mixed in with some rockateer/crimson skies adventure, what we actually have here is none of the above.
You take on the role of Will (voiced by Nolan North), a pilot on a routine air cargo flight dropped into incredible circumstances as he crashes in the Bermuda Triangle leading him to be trapped in the Void. Let’s be honest here, the story is not very interesting and the gameplay fair not much better.
From the get go, the controls on foot feel floaty. What should feel more like Gears Of War ends up feeling a lot like Fallout 3. I’m not having a stab at Fallout 3 as Fallout was not a 3 Person action adventure game but that is the kind of motion you should expect coming into this.
There is cover mechanics built into this game that does not work very well, again I hate to bring up Gears Of War but don’t expect to feel like your actually behind cover as Dark Void does a bad job of getting into and coming out of cover.
There are some positives to the ground combat and that comes in the form of the vertical shootouts you encounter at several stages throughout the game. This is one of Dark Voids strong points however the game never really expands on this positive as these segments are limited in scope and only happen on a few occasions.
The flight combat is where the game shines and although there is no real sense of speed when you are in flight you can tell a lot of time has been placed on the flight controls and combat of the game. You really do feel like the rockateer once you pin down the controls which may take a few minutes to get a grip of.
The game also suffers from some pretty bad frame rate throughout the entire game at one stage during a shoot out the game froze totally for around 8 seconds before coming back to life.
Dark Void is a very short game that will take most gamers around 5 hours to complete. With a pretty ordinary story and unpolished gameplay, Dark Void ends up being a game that most people will end up “renting this tomorrow”
