Dark Void Review

Gamers often complain that games drag on a bit too long or that some artificially lengthen the experience to such a point that the game is no longer being fun. It’s ironic, then, that while Airtight Games’s Dark Void is certainly guilty of stretching out the action, it does so via the worst possible method: Holding the game’s main hook–a jetpack–until a third of the way into the game. Although Airtight, a team comprised of developers from 2003’s Xbox dogfighting classic Crimson Skies, has an idea of how to soar through the clouds, Dark Void proves that the team has its work cut out when it comes to fun at lower altitudes.

Dark Void thrusts you into an alternate-reality Bermuda Triangle circa 1938 with all the genteel tact of baptizing an infant by casting it into the deep end of an Olympic diving pool. As Will, the square-jawed aviator, you’ll kick off the game mid-dogfight with a fully functioning jetpack, guns, and nary a clue how you’re supposed to take down the myriad of UFOs attempting to smite you. From there, you’ll spend a third of Dark Void wrestling with clunky cover-based shooting, misdirected melees, and bland locales before upgrading your jetpack and unleashing your main motive for playing the game.

The premise is simplistic, if not a patchwork of predictable sci-fi “hero’s journey” conventions: Will and former flame Ava are lost in the Bermuda Triangle, which has been overrun with waves of Watchers — an android race of aliens trying to enslave humanity. Will survives these encounters for a few chapters before running into Nikola Tesla, who sets him up with a neutered hoverpack around the third or fourth chapter.

When Will is grounded, the action is competent, but unexciting. The cover system pales in comparison to most contemporary action games and movement out of cover feels constricted. The mechanics of vertical cover-based shooting, where Will can hang from a cliff edge and shoot up at enemies using cover a la Gears of War, lacks pizzazz and ultimately feels like you’re just shooting further down a typical horizontal corridor. It’s nice in theory, but in execution it doesn’t work so wonderfully.

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