The concepts behind the story and the gameplay seem like solid ones on paper. Set in an alternate history around the time of the outbreak of World War II, you embark on your grand sc-fi adventure by accidentally flying through some inter-dimensional rift while flying through the Bermuda Triangle. Once there, you embark upon an adventure involving real-life scientist Nikolai Tesla, rocket packs, aliens and an intergalactic battle where the fate of the Earth rests in your hands.
The game it’s supposed to feel like an old-timey swashbuckling serial from the 1930s, but instead of intentional cheesiness, the game confounds with unintentional weirdness. For instance, at a point during the beginning of the first level, protagonist Will says to love interest Ava something along the lines of “did you see that thing that flew in front of us before we crashed?” Um, how about all the effing robots you just killed. The ones shooting energy weapons at you? That didn’t blow your freaking 1930s mind?!
Later in the story, there are occasionally huge disconnects between what happens in a cutscene and the subsequent mission, not to mention a whole silly plot thread about being the “chosen one” here to save the strangely English-speaking natives of the rift world. I enjoy my sc-fi without the supernatural prophecy-based hooey, thank you very much. Aside from all these missteps, Dark Void fails to establish any kind of overall tone to the story and the world, making it hard to really latch on to anything original or different about this particular intellectual property.
A lot of games have nonsensical storylines, but where Dark Void really shoots itself in the foot is by presenting the whole thing in a shoddy way. The presentation values are seriously lacking here, from bad audio mixes on character voiceovers (making two people walking though cavernous ancient ruins sound like they’re having their conversation in a sound booth), to dull and dark levels (Tesla can invent a rocket pack, but not a flashlight?), and to stiff animations (hell, the androids in the game move less robotically than the human characters). The one saving grace is the unique musical score, excellently composed and recorded by Bear McCreary, the guy who scored Battlestar Galactica. It shows a level of craft that the rest of the product seriously lacks.
The concept behind the gameplay is a great one, too, and it feels like the developers succeeded more than failed here. The hybrid gameplay features cover-utilizing third-person shooter gameplay—inspired by games like Gears of War and every other game that lets you blind fire over the top of a crate—plus a flying component featuring the aforementioned rocket pack. Flying is pretty good, though the method for pulling off acrobatics maneuvers is clunky. You really need some of those maneuvers when you’re engaged in aerial combat, but you can get through most of the game without doing them once. A better targeting system would have helped the air combat, too.
On the ground, the game is kind of dull. It’s not that the cover-style combat is poorly designed, but everything that goes into it. The weapons are uninteresting, even when upgraded, and the different enemy classes don’t do exceptionally different or original things either. Playing through can be a bit of a grind at times, so it’s good to throw in the jetpack stuff as much as you can. It will make certain situations more fun. But I can’t imagine what this game was like before they put in the ability to hover in mid-air (something that was added very late in the design process, delaying the original release date of the game).
But, again, there’s a downside. Despite the gameplay being relatively solid, some of the levels are horribly designed, with autosave points set too far apart and ledges that you can’t see (due to the dark color pallette), which you’ll senselessly fall off. I like the concept of the vertical cover system, where your whole perspective changes and “up and down” become “front and back”—it’s a clever idea. But can someone please explain to me why there are a bunch of randomly placed wooden platforms on those cliff faces? Is there some use for them other than you using them to traverse the environment in your jet pack? A ladder seems easier. Again, though, Dark Void too often ignores any attempts to stick to the logic behind its own mythology, and instead we get totally random objects placed in the game world that are there for no discernible use other than as gameplay elements. And did I mention the escort missions? Do developers not know how much we hate those things?
The final nail in the coffin though is bugs. Playing the full retail version, I had my rocketeer get stuck on the edge of the map; had him teleport from one end of a room to another; saw characters floating about two feet off the ground, without their own rocket packs—and all of it presented with a choppy frame rate at inopportune times. Oh, yeah…it hard crashed my Xbox 360 twice, too. Not good.
As a complete experience, Dark Void has moments of intense action, broken up by abject foolishness. With its poorly thought-out narrative and game world, as well as an overall lack of polish (both artistically and technologically), there’s not a ton on which to recommend Dark Void. It might have otherwise slipped into obscurity if it wasn’t for the cool concept behind it. Ultimately, though, a failure of execution leaves us with a thoroughly mediocre game that should have been thoroughly awesome.
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