Customer Reviews

Dark Void

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Okay, before this review gets voted 'not helpful' hear me out first. I love playing genuinely good games for xbox 360 but I also love boosting my gamerscore. If you enjoy doing the same this game might just be for you. For those of you that played Capcom's other quirky-action-third-person-shooter, Bionic Commando, you pretty much know what to expect only this game is easier, the achievements are even easier.

4/5 for achievements. 3/5 otherwise.
Game is not bad overall, it could have been improved. I'll break it down.

Story: It's okay. But what is a good story in games these days, the game that gets a 9.9 on ign.com that everyone obsesses over for... a week until the next game? I've seen better stories in worse games as well as better games with lame stories, it's highly subjective.

Control: It does take getting used to, but I found them to be quite comfortable relatively quickly. Just be patient. Again, like Bionic Commando, but the controlls are actually easier and similar to TPS games we all know and love.

Visuals: The character renderings themselves aren't bad, but I think the visuals from the stages are really cool and creat a nice atmosphere. Once again, pretty objective.

Sound: Although there are well known voice actors, the voice acting could probably be better but maybe it was the script's fault. The music for, what it is, is not bad but does get repetitive. The sound effects are pretty cool, but any game in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround sounds cool.

Fun: Again, from an achievement standpoint, I had a lots of fun with this game. All of the achievements are painless. The game is pretty enjoyable itself and is a nice break from playing Modern Warfare 2 online with glitchers and lag switchers. It is pretty short though.

Is this game worth buying? I have no regrets buying this at full price on release date. Some, however may want to rent it first, but even then those who rent may also finish the game in its entirety while renting. Beware of unfair harsh reviews though. Obvioulsy this game has faults, but we've all played worse games. Also in this game's defense, most people bashing this game have only played the demo of which does not do this game jusice.

Games come and go. Some stay in your head others buzz off and are forgotten. And then there are the few that you sit down and play through till it's done and then can't help but ask yourself, "what the hell was that?" Dark Void is that game.

You play as Nathan Drake, as The Rocketeer. No, wait; you're Will, my mistake. It's so easy to confuse the two (damn you Nolan North. How about taking a little break before over exposure gets us all Northed out). The story takes place in the ever popular, rarely ever used in video games, World War II era. But there is a twist. You get sucked into the Bermuda Triangle and get thrown into another dimension where there is a war going on between the Survivors, humans who have gotten there the same way you have, and the Watchers, a sort of alien/robot species that once ruled over humans and who are trying to get back into the regular dimension to take control and enslave humanity once more.

And that's about where I lost track of everything.

Somewhere between bad story telling, mediocre third person shooter gameplay, and trying to not fall off cliffs and ledges to my death, I was starting to lose interest really fast. It's as if they wanted the gameplay to tell the story for them so they didn't bother introducing characters or explaining who and what. This is fine. But not when what you're doing is boring and slowly paced. That is, until you reach the later parts of the second half of the game. That's when someone pushes the Ludicrous Speed button and passes by the stuff that you were actually wanting to know.

So why did I keep playing? Simple. I'm a sucker for flying. I love flying in games. That coupled with my love for the 1991 Disney movie The Rocketeer, Dark Void had an unfair grip on my jetpack ignition. Don't get it twisted, the flying is not the greatest, but if you need a fix and want to do some air combat then this will tie you over. They had some neat ideas when trying to put this game together, it's just too bad they were poorly executed. Like hijacking a UFO, which sounds like fun doesn't it? Well it was the first time. But doing it's drawn out button pressing over and over isn't exactly a good time. And then there's the "which way is up? Oh, never mind, I just found this nice hard wall" problem that kept popping up for me. If that wasn't when I was trying to follow something in the air, it was the kickback from initially turning the jetpack on where I'd go shooting off flailing in the air for a few seconds before I rocketed head first into a wall. Apart from a few annoyances, I can't complain about this aspect of the game because it is what I was looking forward to the whole time. I guess you can say I had fun with it. Sadly, those flying levels took up about 35%-40% of the game itself.

The rest of the game you were on foot shooting different colored robots. This gameplay is what made me grow weary. It was playable, but there just didn't feel like there was any depth to it. And then you had this weird vertical cover system. Where you would rocket up to a ledge, and hang underneath it but not like you would think. You're crouched behind a vertical ledge in a very uncomfortable and unnatural looking position especially for someone with a jetpack on their back. And if you think that would mess with your head and cause you to go a little dizzy, trust me, you are spot on.

In the end, it's hard to say go out and play this game. Because I for one would be happy never touching it again. Sadly, the ending leaves it wide open for a sequel. It's too bad you'll be left wondering what the hell just happened when the game ends, leaving that want and need for a sequel nowhere to be found. The story felt very slow and then very rushed with no happy medium. And the only part of it all that's enjoyable is a small percentage of the game as a whole. When it was over the smile on my face was priceless, because I knew that I can finally toss Dark Void into itself. (Get it? A dark v... nevermind.)

Final Judgment,
2.5 Water Bottles Full of Pee, out of 5

Speaking of which, be careful after you play a lot of the flying levels and then go to pee. This surprisingly deadly combination caused me to get dizzy and almost fall over into my toilet.

This game is really a perfect rental. You will complete it in about 2/3 days on the hardest difficulty and there is absolutely ZERO replay value. The game controls while you are fighting on foot really remind me of Mass Effect. The guns are actually similiar, and very loose (i am not however comparing the overall game to Mass Effect at all). While engaged in combat it is really pretty easy to stay alive. You do not get any special moves other than a jet pack that allows you to get around (and up and down) quickly, and even on the hardest difficulty engaging on land based battles is pretty easy.

The flight controls are VERY loose, but after some time you will figure out that it is easier (and a lot more fun) to just fly around tapping 'B' to hijack everything. If you just try to dogfight everything in the sky, I would imagine it would be very frustrating, but the hijack thing was actually very smart to add to this game. It actually seems out of place for this game, but because of the imperfect flight controls, it makes the dogfights much more managable and a lot more fun.

Not a lot here as far as weapon customization, and there really are about only 4 different guns you will actually use with any consistancy. There are only about 3 vehicles you will ever fly in (besides your jet pack) so the game is not that diverse. The chapters however are short and managable, there are a lot of battles that you will fight while climbing or dropping vertically, which is an OK change of pace. All in all, this is a fantanstic rental since it will get your attention for one playthrough. It is however not a great game, it has framerate issues, the controls are very loose, the story is well, I have skipped most the cutscenes at this point so the story is irrelevent. 3 stars is very fair, but I feel that most will enjoy playing it, especially when held up to other titles that have been recently released that fell wayyyyy short of what they should have been.

For what this game is priced at currently, it is fantastic - for the graphics alone. There are a couple of frame rate isssues here and there, but nothing terrible.

Unlike the other reviewer, the jetpack just takes some getting used to, is very unique, and after a little time it will be fairly easy. A lot of the game is very reminiscent of Halo, GOW, and Mass Effect, not bad comparisons.

It is an unusual games at points with some unusual objectives. Flying around takes a little practice and targets can be hard to hit unless you think strategically and practice a little. It's not a terribly hard game, and as I already stated the graphics are GOOD. If you don't think so, you must be playing games I've never seen, because I've seen quite a few at this point.

If you don't take it too seriously and just want to fly around and run and gun in some well designed environments, I'll bet you'll wind up liking DV.

I'll make this simple for you right off the bat: if you aren't a fan of pulp fiction, you will hate this story. Dark Void is pulp all over -- WW2-era, robots, exotic locales, aliens, fighter pilots, jetpacks and even Nikola Tesla. So right off the bat, I really dug the world Capcom created with this game and it kept me playing.

However, from a gameplay perspective, it needs a lot of work. Flying is a lot of fun, but it's also extremely difficult to maneuver and very easy to get lost and/or dizzy before you crash into a wall. There's also quite a bit of repetition throughout the game. For stages when you're on the ground, even that can be troublesome. Going for cover doesn't always seem to work, and sometimes I actually found it MORE effective to run headlong into a group of enemies and just melee attack them instead of trying to pick them off one-by-one with my gun. Because aiming is annoying. The game has an aim feature, but all this does is generate crosshairs and zoom in slightly. You still have to maneuver the crosshairs, which is difficult when you've got dozens of enemies firing on you. There should really be a lock-on feature here but there's not.

The big question is should you play Dark Void? If you're a pulp fan, I say it's worth at least a rental. Or in some cases, it may be cheaper to buy it (I found a used copy for about $5) and then sell it later to get some of your cash back. It's not a game you're going to devote hours of time to, but it's still fun to pop in if you've got an afternoon to kill.

This game is rather simple. With 3rd person gameplay features such as a cover system similar to Gears of War the game comes rather naturally to those that have played similar games. There is really nothing to separate this game from others of similar 3rd person/cover system style other than the "vertical combat" which simply flips the cover system on its side as you scale walls and ledges fighting enemies. However, you have a rocketpack and that changes the game significantly when you finally gain acess to it. It felt like the first section of the game was a slow, albeit rather interesting, tutorial which really wasnt necessary as the game is not so complex that you need to spend so much time baby-stepping through it until you get to the rocketpack and with the game being so short I felt much of the game was wasted. The best parts are near the end when you get to experience the rocket pack combat and even then the levels feel under-developed and too basic.

Without writing a lengthy review I'd like to quickly go over some aspects that I felt took away from the fun of this game. The game engine is fun, the levels are lacking and overall the game is short with only one real "boss battle" which was probably the most fun of all the levels (boss battles are under-rated).

The AI of the enemies is rather stupid, often they'll think they're behind cover when exposed and often they won't react when you start to shoot their exposed body parts.

The lead role is voiced by Nolan North, the same actor who voiced Nathan Drake of the Uncharted series. It was somewhat difficult not to see Nate in this character but North plays it well and adds to the charm of the story.

I picked this game up when it was released at a price of around $40. Is it worth that amount? Probably not. I'd wait until its about half that amount to feel like you're getting your money's worth as the game is so short and under-developed. However, the story is quite interesting and the game leaves room for a sequel which I have to say I am rather excited for. Hopefully they'll spend more time developing the levels rather than polishing the game's engine. If you can rent or borrow this game I'd say do that rather than buying it, but if you're a collector pick it up. Be warned this game is short and somewhat lacking in many aspects but fun to play through.

I could go and drill on what's all been done before about this game, or... I could let you read just about any review that's been published thus far: Nolan North lends his voice to the hero, Will, and the story is reminiscent of the Rocketeer, Independence Day, etc., and so forth.

So yes, I COULD say that, but I won't.

Even though I did.

So sue me.

NOT REALLY, THOUGH.

In any event, the game, despite its shortcomings, is still a lot of fun. I wouldn't rate it as the number one game of the year by any stretch of the imagination (I'd actually set that particular honor aside for Mass Effect, Darksiders, or Bayonetta (in that order)), nor would I rate it the worst. The controls are rock solid, and I absolutely love how the transition from ground to flight is perfect. That is, I can have non-inverted controls on the ground, and it immediately switches to the inverted controls typically associated with flight sims the second you leave the ground.

However, the problem with leaving the ground is that it can be a rather lethal affair if you're not ready for it. And sadly, even after hours of playing, you're still very seldomly ready for it. The jetpack, as is noted by one of the characters when you first find it, is dangerous. It's a prototype, and surprisingly, works rather well for a prototype. It's quite amusing to note, though, that just about everyone I've talked to about it has smashed into the cliff upon taking their first jump.

That being said, let's go ahead and wrap this up:

Gameplay: 3/5
Despite the fact that the controls are pretty solid (buttons are placed where you'd logically expect them to be), the game suffers from various hiccups and other glitches here and there. For example, I managed to get stuck in the environment at one point (only being freed by CHANCE after a minute or two of struggling), and at another was killed, but didn't know I was dead for at least a minute after (I'd thought my console had just frozen). It also took me a while to figure out exactly how the game's unique radar worked, but... that may just be my inadequacy as a game, I dunno.

Graphics: 4/5
Nothing truly special, but nothing shy of... pretty, either. The environments, specifically the large outdoor arenas where you get to take advantage of both flight and ground combat, are very well done. Going back to the first mission that you're introduced to the jetpack, I really loved how they executed that. If you haven't bought the game, do yourself a favor: check out the demo. It's this mission that they showcase in it.

Audio: 5/5
I'm a stickler for audio. That being said, the game's score is very well done, though a bit repetitive after a few missions (as the track does seem to be a bit... limited).

Replayability: 3/5
I don't see myself going back to replay the game after I've beaten it (and I have). It's a short game, roughly eight hours long, and you can purchase upgrades from tech points that are either dropped from slain enemies, or found casually laying around the various mission areas. One aspect about replay, which I particularly enjoy, is that you can go and choose a specific mission. So if there's one that you prefer above all others, you can go back and play out that portion of the story alone. Obviously, if you're into Achievements, you've got that to look forward to.

Bottom Line: 3/5
It's a neat game, definitely one of those games you play through once and then put on the shelves to... well, rest. Check out the demo, you may be surprised.

Dark Void can be far from a disappointment, if you know what to expect of it. Rarely will you find such a mixture of both brilliance and ineptitude. Fortunately, that ineptitude is present mostly in the storytelling aspect - you are likely to enjoy the rest of the game.

So let's get the bad stuff out of the way. The story sucks on every possible level. The plot is insufficiently well explained. That's not to say you won't be sick of hearing about it - by the time you're halfway through the game, the fact that the aliens are influencing human affairs from the void will be firmly implanted in your brain for the rest of your life. But exactly how they are doing it, what their motivations are, or how humans got in the void in the first place remains a mystery, along with many other story elements. Maybe some of those things were even mentioned, but if they were, it was far beyond the point when I stopped caring.

The game introduced too many concepts and characters, and thus made it impossible for any of them to seem important. The fact that the void is a bridge between worlds, shapeshifting aliens, the adepts and prophecies each play such a minor role that you probably wouldn't notice if they weren't there at all. All characters except Will and Eva don't do or say much more than is necessary to push the plot forward, making it very obvious that they're not living, breathing characters. All characters come across as stupid, and their actions seem pointless. **Spoiler alert (not that you should care)** E.g., a shapeshifter shaped as Nikola Tesla kills the real Tesla, and instead of disposing of the body and using the position of power Tesla had to aid alien causes, he just leaves the body for everyone to find, and disappears. Why bother morphing into Tesla's shape in the first place if you weren't gonna use it, Mr. Shapeshifter? Could've just stabbed him in any shape.

I don't think you should care, really. If anything, use the story to get a few laughs. I don't know why people dismiss Dark Void because of it's weak story so much. Prototype's story also sucked epically, but no one seemed to mind. I myself have given up on storytelling in games since the day the adventure genre died. Even the best of games can barely keep up with the script of an average movie.

Dark Void is real pretty to look at. Graphics are really stunning. I loved the ship designs, especially aliens ones. The aliens themselves look rather neat, too, and you get good close-ups when Will does his finishing moves. The setting is a mix of 80% SF with it's hi-tech aliens, and 20% fantasy with it's stone spires and dreamy sky, and I think it comes together perfectly. The void is beautiful, pure joy to fly through.

The soundtrack is composed by Bear McCreary, who did the Battlestar: Galactica's soundtrack. If you enjoyed BSG's ST, you'll surely enjoy this one. It consists of weird alien sounds, peaceful instrumentals and percussion-filled battle pieces. Most game STs tend to stay in the background, so that later you can't even remember what they sounded like. Unlike them, Dark Void's ST often captures your attention, making the game more immersive, giving you something to remember it by.

The gameplay is both original and fun. Some battles take place in the air, some on the ground. While on the ground, you can use your weapons, melee attacks, jet-pack's hover function, and occasionally you can enter full flight. Many people find the ground battles bleak in comparison with high-speed jet-pack destruction, but I found it almost as fun. You just have to know how to make it fun. Some weapons, mainly the ones you gain later, can be fun to use if upgraded, but melee combat is where ground battles really shine. Sprinting or flying right into a group of aliens and beating them do death can give you an adrenaline rush, especially because you can't completely ignore using weapons, running away from exploding enemies, and using cover. There's a lot to look out for. Shoot from afar and you're doomed to boredom. People also complain that there isn't enough room to enter full flight in confined placed that ground battles often take place in. That ain't quite true. While you certainly can't fly freely, you can fly for a second and get from one part of the map to the other extremely fast, and if you learn how to do that, you'll add a new and exiting element to ground combat. There's also an original addition of vertical combat in which you fight while leaping from platform to platform (vertically, of course). It fun for a while but it gets old soon. Fortunately, developers realized that and presented it rarely enough to keep the fun alive.

Dogfights are without a doubt the most entertaining part of Dark Void. You'll feel mighty taking on dozens of ships using nothing but your jet-pack (and in-built machine guns and missiles, of course). Air combat is fast-paced and rich, allowing you to perform various maneuvers to throw a ship off your tail, avoid a missile, or quickly change direction. You can hijack enemy ships, enter friendly ships, slow down your jet-pack and shoot weapons and sometimes shoot turrets from 'the ark'. While fighting with a jet-pack doesn't differ much from fighting in any ship, it's the thrill of the fight that keeps you glued to the game. There's much more to experience than there is to say about it. Just be sure to increase your mouse sensitivity in air. A lot of people thought air control was poorly done because they didn't notice 3 different sensitivity sliders in the options menu, only one of which pertains to air combat.

Oh, and you don't get your jet-pack right away. That seems to bother some people, but I think the wait isn't too long (about half an hour of playing), and it helps build the excitement about getting it. No one seemed to mind the wait for the lightsaber in Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast II.

If you're looking for some fast-paced action, with not too much thinking involved (hey, we all need to rest our brains now and then), I can't recommend this title enough. If you also long for a good story, then you'd best watch a good movie before playing.

I don't write many reviews, but Dark Void definitely is the hardest one so far.

The reason why I don't review games all the time (on websites that is) is because I'm picky. The game I'm reviewing had better either be astonishingly good or bad, and if that's accomplished, I'll write a review only if the game isn't cluttered with a million other reviews (or sometimes just for the fact that I'm too lazy). However, I feel as if I should write a review of Dark Void to challenge myself and probably finally get an actual opinion on the game.

Yes I played it, and yes I beat it, but I still just can't bring myself to say what sort of quality the game illustrates. It sure isn't a good game, but I'm still conflicted to say if it's either okay or bad. I'll try and figure it out over the course of me writing this, and hopefully, you reading it. So grab your snorkel and Speedo and let's dive into Dark Void! ("WAIT YOU FORGOT YOUR...!" -sploosh-)

Dark Void has you playing as WWII pilot Will who's voiced by... oh Christ, Nolan freaking North (AKA Nathan Drake: Uncharted, Desmond: Assassin's Creed, the dude from Shadow Complex, The [NEW] Prince of Persia, and soon to be a billion other roles). Just by finding out the voice actor of Will, it should be pretty clear as what kind of character he is. If you guessed "grizzled, smug, wise-cracking, generically handsome, white guy with a lousy haircut", then go get yourself a well deserved meatball foot long. I wouldn't mind Nolan North being in so many games, if he didn't portray the same friggin' character in every single one. Tommy Lee Jones can get away with portraying the same character because he does it well and it fits him. But when ever Nolan voices a main protagonist, that character becomes almost completely unlikable the moment it completes its first sentence.

Coincidentally, that's exactly what happened to every other character in the game. They're all so bland, clichéd, and uninteresting you'd think they were taken straight from the set of 24. I'm not even going to go into detailed descriptions of them or even the story. Because if you've ever played a game or a seen a movie about a bunch of dudes droping into a pocket dimension controlled by some evil force, Dark Void will come across as a collaboration of every tired cliché that particular sub-genre has created.

"But hey, tons games of have had less than stellar stories but still manage to be awesome in the long run (see Dead Rising, Painkiller, San Andreas, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., etc.), after all, the whole point of a game is to play it!"
I couldn't agree more, Previous Sentence, but the problem is Dark Void doesn't handle the whole "game" aspect well either.

Unless if you've been following the hype train or looking at the box art, the main selling point of Dark Void is the fact that you get to fly around in a jet pack. With it, you can you blast through some really pretty levels at mach 10, engage in dog fights, hijack enemy saucers, and take cover under and over ledges and platforms. But for some reason the game seems to forget about those features in favor of making the player boringly run 'n' gun on foot the first few hours and so forth (even the final stage is an endless trudge through dozens of narrow corridors) instead of just letting us "Rocketeer" the whole shebang, which honestly would've made for a MUCH better game. Still, when Dark Void finally coughed up the jet pack after the first two and a half hours of repetitive third person shooting, it was extremely gratifying.
The controls were fluid, the level of scale was huge, and you got to fight lots of flying saucers and giant robots. It was fun, infact, it was really fun! But sadly, the fun factor started slightly fading away after the next few levels. Dark Void makes the same mistake Madworld and Red Faction: Guerilla made by introducing a cool gameplay innovation but not really doing anything with it and having said gameplay innovation become mind numbingly repetitive:

-You shoot down enemy ships (or steal them through an over done quick time event).
-You take cover and shoot at some dudes on the ground.
-You smash a computer.
-You kill an even bigger dude.
-The process repeats

After demanding the jet pack after almost three hours of monotonous gameplay and finding out that the jet pack levels weren't really all that good is like waiting for grandma to finally serve Thanksgiving dinner after hours of playing fifty-two pick up and finding out that the meal tastes like something you'd get from a drive thru. It's definitely eatable, but missing all of the panache and quality that makes it special and memorable.

Actually, come to think of it, there is something special about Dark Void...

It's perhaps the most truly mediocre game of all time.

It doesn't have the kind of Halo or Final Fantasy mediocrity that's actually a weak disguise for its stagnating pretentiousness. Nor the kind of Brütal Legend/Uncharted mediocrity where the cool story/gameplay makes up for the bland gameplay/story. Dark Void is the kind of mediocrity where everything about it is so blisteringly okay it just can't be good or bad. The story may be clichéd and bland, but yet it's not bad enough to not want to know what happens next. The gameplay may be repetitive and stale, but it's all functional, virtually glitch free, and can actually be exhilarating at times. At certain moments, I even found myself wanting to stop playing the game but yet I couldn't make myself do so. It was almost like I was in some kind of gaming purgatory.

Dark Void is the game EA always wanted to make (sadly Capcom beat them to the punch). It's a game so bland, mediocre, clichéd, and so outright okay, it stands a perfectly balanced high wire act between good and bad games. Just that little factoid alone should make you in some small way intrigued enough to try it out. I would go as far to say borrow it or rent it. What ever you do, aVoid buying it.

This is a really, really enjoyable game if you give it a chance. No it's not breaking any records, or pushing any boundaries but it's a good quality fun-filled game.