Dark Void Review

18 Jan 2010 at 15:34:34 by Andy Alderson
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Like the Beach Boys, Nolan North gets around. You may not recognize the name but you’ll certainly know the voice as he has recently portrayed Assassin’s Creed’s Desmond Miles, Uncharted’s Nathan Drake and now Dark Void’s Will Grey. While Capcom’s third person action game shares good company in terms of voice acting, unfortunately, in terms of gameplay quality, it lags some way behind. That’s not to say developer Airtight Games hasn’t come up with some good ideas, it’s just that they are buried beneath frustrating, simplistic game design.

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Dark Void tells the story of cargo pilot Will Grey who, after getting caught up in the infamous Bermuda Triangle, finds himself (and his lady friend) transported to another dimension in which an evil alien race known as The Watchers is keeping the poor humans down. The Watchers, apparently, are the physical manifestation of a powerful extraterrestrial force and actually created the human race. Like the fickle morons we are, we worshipped them as gods and they treated us like a ginger step-child. Eventually special humans, known as “the adepts,” established a resistance and banished the aliens to another dimension. The very same dimension that Will Grey now finds himself in, as he joins forces with the human survivors and, somewhat bizarrely, real life scientific pioneer Nikola Tesla . It sounds like a lofty sci-fi premise, but the story in Dark Void is actually pretty ropey and feels like a series of loosely connected cutscenes featuring conversations like “Oh, do you remember a few months ago when we were together but it didn’t work out?”

Luckily for Airtight, gamers probably won’t pay too much attention to the story as Dark Void is all about the action and, all credit to the developer, there’s a lot of action. The gameplay in Dark Void is divided into three basic principles: ground combat, vertical cover and aerial action. The ground combat plays out in classic third person shooter fashion with over the shoulder aiming and a cover mechanic. It’s all pretty prosaic stuff and pales in comparison to recent third person classics like Uncharted 2. Luckily, Airtight has some tricks up its sleeve and attempts to break new ground with the vertical cover system. At certain points in the game, you’ll find yourself in vertical cover as you need to climb up or down.  During these sections you’ll be attacked by Watchers and will have to use your vertical cover wisely to advance. In reality these sections are no more fun than the standard third person combat but they do help to break up the monotony.

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