Dark Void

Dark Void is a new game from developer Airtight Games, trying to bring something new to the; "take cover, shoot bad guys over chest-high walls" games that have cropped up in recent years. They do this, by adding some fun flying sections to the game, and a verticle cover system. It's quite an interesting concept, but is it done well enough to be a good new franchise?

There are a few sides of Dark Void. There's the Ground, Verticle Cover and flight combat. All of these have varying amounts of sucess when concerned with how fun the game actually is. You'll have an alright time with the inital ground combat, it's your typical shooter, after all. Once you get your first jetpack, it starts getting a little more interesting. This enables you to fly onto cover above and below you, and the verticle cover beings. You can pull enemies off ledges, and generally perform the same way as you do with normal cover, bar flying up or down to the next chest high wall. Near the end of the first Episode, you get your proper jetpack, that flies and has guns and everything, and it's great fun. You can fly around, roll, flip, do tricks, shoot stuff, and it seems to work rather well. It's a good idea, but could have been done a bit better. If they sotred out all forms of combat to be equally fun, it might just be a good game, but it's just a small bit aways from that.

From the skies, everything looks very good. The vast landscapes and interesting structures stand out and look very detailed. On the ground, up close however, it's a different matter. Everything looks less detailed, even when you can't fly in the earlier levels. It seems that you were meant to see this entire game from the skies. This lets the game down immensely, as it's not a bad game at all, but when you're looking down a corridor of horrible textures, it kind of ruins it for you, especially after you were zooming around a canyon that looked spectacular. Speaking so much about flying, and being in the air, looking up at the sky is also a beauty. The sky boxes are amazingly done, very interesting and unique. It brings a lot of life and colour to the game, while giving it a feel that's purely it's own.

The characters in Dark Void don't seem to be that engaging, even with the protagonist being voiced by Nathan Drake himself, Nolan North. You don't really carea bout any of them, and they're just thrown at you and not really developed. There's some backstory and banter, but it's minimal. The game itself, however, does get a lot more engaging as you proceed through the levels. It definatly starts picking up around the beggining of the second Epsiode. The story itself is original enough, but again, doesn't seem to go into much depth. It seems like if a sequel is made, it'll be flushed out a lot more.

Dark Void does show some promise. It's unique take on changing cover systems into the verticle is refreshing, and mixing in flying and hover sections in with the ground combat is a nice idea, but it just hasn't got it's own legs yet. It's definatly one to look out for if it does successfully become a franchise and they improve on some errors in judgement and level design, but as a game on it's own, it just doesn't reach the sky yet.