Dark Void: Positives
There is good that can be said of Dark Void. I’m certain of it. I was able to finish it, after all. There were times where I could even describe my experience as fun. It was trickled between the many moments of boredom and apathy, but it was there.
I’m pretty sure it was exclusively the dog fights, and primarily once I stopped trying to hijack vehicles.
If aerial fighters with a control scheme more open to a non-simulationist audience were more common, I’m sure Dark Void would have been bland in that regard as well. As it is, your choice of such games is limited to Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., Ace Combat or Project Sylpheed. If it helps any, Project Sylpheed is the closest to being easily accessible to any gamer. The former are only for players that wish they could hop in the cockpit and soar with Val Kilmer as Kenny Loggins screams Danger Zone into your ear tubes.
As it is, Dark Void can’t help but be at least a little fun due to the dog-fighting action. In fact, the whole reason I would even consider purchasing this game is so some publisher (God please not Activision) could see there is a demand for such action. Sadly the game is not worth it, and as usual there will always be the massive disconnect between the sales numbers and the reasoning for those numbers.
It doesn’t help that the missions aren’t even really interesting. You are typically escorting a ship through a level, trying to kill everything in sight before they destroy your objective. Or there is nothing to escort and you’re just gunning down everything in sight anyway. On occasion you kill everything in sight until the game has decided you’ve killed enough! Such is the variety of the game.
While you can remain tethered to your jet pack as the only human flying exposed on the battlefield, you can also take control of friendly fighters or turrets available on the ship being escorted. This is, of course, in addition to hijacking enemy vehicles, but that process is just too lengthy as to be justified. No, it is merely better to wing it on your own or to kick your friend out of the pilot seat and take over.
It’s a bit of a wonder how early on in development no one thought to abandon most of the third-person shooting action. If the game only had a handful of moments where you landed on your feet to shoot things up while the rest was filled with interesting missions in the sky, it would have been a lot better. As it is there is a lack of balance. Most of the game time is spent on foot rather than in the sky, even though the jetpack is the reason you are playing the game at all.
This is like if they designed MechAssault where you were only in a Mech about thirty percent of the time. The title implies the act of assaulting, but with a Mech present. Then again, the game in question here is entitled Dark Void, though this void we are allegedly stuck in seems to have ten hours a day of twilight. Not exactly dark.
Even with the potential the game had to be fun, it still seems as if it wouldn’t have been saved by the overall apathy it generates. Yes, flying in the sky is fun and all, but it isn’t any more fun than other games available that do just about anything better. I would love to support it as an original IP published by Capcom as well, just as I still feel Bionic Commando got a bit short-changed considering its potential as an awesome franchise. Yet unlike Bionic Commando there is nothing in Dark Void that feels like it can be done a second time, only better. Not even the aerial combat.
It’s a sad shame, but the game may as well not have been made at all.
