Dark Void

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Browsing the plethora of reviews and finding that they handed out mediocre (or worse) scores for this game only served to reaffirm my belief that the majority of so-called "professional" critics and awards (though the latter is another subject entirely that I'll not get into here) are completely worthless. Simply put, the critics got it almost dead wrong when they reviewed Dark Void. At the risk of utilizing too much formality, I will break this review into two parts. The first part will discuss how the vast majority of critics' criticisms are completely off the mark, and the second half will discuss what they somehow missed about this game that makes it worthy of a place on my shelf next to Half-Life 2, Fallout 3, Bioshock, and the like.

For starters, critics complain that you spend too much time without being able to fly. This is flat-out false. First off, the ratio of levels that contain wide-open areas that encourage dogfighting and enclosed levels that encourage on-foot or hover action are pretty even. This is what is known as VARIETY. Not many games can claim that they have a flight simulator, a third person shooter with a super-jump and hover ability, and a platformer (of sorts, which I'll get into later on) in one game, and fewer still can claim that they implemented each mechanic with the same quality and care. In fact, I am hard-pressed to come up with a single example of such a game. Further, even when you are in an enclosed base of some kind (which is NOT the majority of the time), you can still go into flight-simulator mode for a few seconds to cover an amazing amount of ground in the space of seconds, then turn it off and hover...or even drop down and melee someone, earning you style points. And as I said before, it is a rarity that you are in a confined space. On the massive levels afforded to the player, you have three options of movement that you can switch between seamlessly and at will, and the result is the most amazing and fully 3D shooter experience you've ever seen. Even mundane (if you want to join the critics in calling them that) shootouts can be taken to the next level by utilizing your ability to go ANYWHERE. You can jet up and point-blank someone on a ledge with a sniper rifle...you can strafe them with your jetpack machine guns...there are an amazing number of options at your disposal. In addition, even if you do want to turn the shootouts into plain-old shootouts, what is wrong with that? The cover and weapon system is a very solid Gears of War clone, which of course is a fantastic game that even the critics agree on. The difference here? You can then also super-jump and hover or even fly if you like. Even when you think you are being forced into flying, you can often times end up doing other things like free-falling to your target instead (if you like) and seeing how far you're willing to risk it before you hit the hover button to break your fall. And this, I must tell you, is too much fun.

Now, the Gears of War mention brings me to their other criticism that is downright ludicrous: enemies are too repetitive. Wow, really? There's another thing this game shares with Gears of War, except that Dark Void has more impressive and creative bosses: with the exception of a few tougher enemies they introduce along the way, you'll be fighting the same kind of enemies all throughout the game. Shooters follow this formula all the time! If anything, Dark Void is LESS repetitive than other games (particularly shooters) because there are so many different aspects of play. And unexciting shooting they say? It's the same shooting you find in all other shooter games, only you have interesting and creative weapons at your disposal that you can upgrade for a variety of fun effects (something, again, many shooters lack).

Now that we have established how unfair and even downright false the criticisms are, it is time to address what the critics decided to leave out of their reviews that bump this game up from a good time to a great time. First of all, the vertical combat system is ingenious, novel, and all kinds of fun. In fact, I would like to cite an example from early on in the game: you find the U.S.S Cyclops, a naval vessel, hanging vertically from a Cliffside. Since at this early stage of the game your jetpack doesn't allow you to full-on fly yet, you must fight your way up the ship before it falls off. And as you do this, you take cover not behind, but UNDERNEATH various obstacles on the deck. You can then pop up and fire back at enemies who are shooting at you from above or below. In effect, this mechanic is very similar to your average cover-oriented shooter, with a few amazing exceptions: one is that you are obviously facing up or down instead of straight ahead. The other is that if there is another piece of cover directly above or below you, you may either jump or flip down in a stylish spin (depending on which direction) to achieve that position. Then, if you just jumped onto a ledge that an enemy is using for cover, you can grab their leg and drag them off to their doom. And amazing mechanics aside, the level design when based on vertical combat is very well done. Various parts of the ship break apart as you proceed, and at times the tremors force you to tap a random button repeatedly so that you don't lose your grip.

Switching gears a bit, there are a few minigames that start up under certain circumstances and provide yet another avenue of game play variety similar to the way The Force Unleashed did. When hijacking an enemy fighter in the air, you must avoid their rotating cannon while attempting to access the cockpit and kill the pilot and simultaneously making sure you don't lose your grip. Some of the tougher enemies require you to start up a similar minigame to defeat them, which are equally creative and fun. Archons can be taken out either by coaxing the pilot out (via sabotage) and breaking its oddly-shaped neck or grabbing one of its exposed pieces of metal on their weapon emitter, tearing it off, and chucking it into the main weapon's nozzle, causing an overload of some kind (the danger here is of course getting out of the way of the weapon before it fires).

Last, but certainly not least, there is one critical element that elevates this game into great status, and this is overlooked by many (including critics) for reasons I cannot fathom. Just as this game took a bold leap into the realm of freedom of movement, so did the developers demand a quality musical score. Sure, there have been great scores composed for video games in the past...but none of them completely matched the tone of each level, nor did they develop themes that represented various characters or races and evolved with the situation. The care that the composer took not only to develop a quality score but also to ensure that you never heard exactly the same piece of music twice is astonishing. Further elevating the soundtrack's quality is the simple fact that the drums, South American woodwind instruments, string sections...the entire, massive ensemble was recorded live. There is not a single fake instrument sound to be found. The result is music in the background that enhances your game play experience to such a degree that it makes you feel like you're in the latest box-office hit. From racing, thundering Taiko drums underscoring the frantic melodies carried by the French Horns or perhaps the Duduk, to soft, introspective character moments, Dark Void has covered the one area that is so often overlooked by developers to a degree that I have never before seen. Kudos, Capcom, for actually spending money on an aspect of video games that is, in my opinion, equally as important to the experience as the level design or the gameplay mechanics.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that Dark Void has no flaws. I would add my own that hasn't even been touched by the "professional" reviews that I've seen (they can't even get the weaknesses right!): the dialogue is very uninspired. The story is good, but when the dialogue isn't very sharp, it can be hard to be concerned about the plot as much. And in fact, there is one universal criticism that this game actually deserves: there is no multiplayer or even coop featured in the game. Your only option for play is a single-player campaign. The campaign is of course fantastic and hours of fun...but a cooperative mode and especially some sort of minigame mode involving aerial stunts, races, obstacle courses, and the like would have been excellent additions to this game. Better still would have been deathmatch maps for multiplayer play, designed so that players can dogfight or duke it out on the ground in the same area. And, to be perfectly honest, the campaign should have been longer if it was the only game mode to play. This game, while realizing much of its potential, still had more to reach for. But anyone who rates this game as anything less than an 8/10 or so would be a hypocrite, because I guarantee you they had more fun than that. As I would suggest with any medium that has dedicated critics to tell you what is good and bad, ignore them and try it out yourself.

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Graphics: 7/10

They use the Unreal Engine, and as usual it looks great. The color pallet is a little muted, and enviroments can look a little repative. Little details like changing character costumes in different settings are missed.

Sound: 6/10

Voice acting is a little hit and miss, altough more hit then miss. Nolan North does a good job, altough the character feels a little too much like Nathan Drake (of Uncharted series) at times. The sound design is solid, but not spectacular. There are some hicups in the sound at times.

Story: 4/10

This is a B-Movie turned into a video game. You basically are sucked into a link between paralell universes at the Burmuda Triangle, and spend the rest of the game trying to liberate this world. The plot throws some things in there, and then doesn't do much with them. They jump from the proagonist meeting everyone, to months later and having familiarity with everyone. Things are rarely well explained. Most importantly, the character arc of the protagonist is VERY lackluster. The games ends, and you feel like shrugging your shoulders and saying "whatever". There are some fun ideas here, but nothing comes to furition.

Gameplay: 8/10

Every B-Movie is dependent on it's gimmick. In this game, the gimmick is you get a jetpack. Quite frankly, the way they pulled it all off is pretty cool, and makes up for the unremarkable aspects of the game. You start with your basic cover shooter, and this works just fine. Then they give you the jet pack, and give you a level or two to learn the mechanics of it, and now you can play the game however you want. This concept natually gives the game great varetiy, never letting the game get stale.

Value: 6/10

At 10 dollars, why not? The game is on the short side (7-8 hours), and once you beat it, there won't be much desire to go through it again. Once done with it, it will most likely collect dust on the shelf, but for 10 dollars, the 7-8 hours are certainly enjoyable enough.

Overall: 6/10

You'd be tempted to give this one an incomplete. Little details are missed, the story is not very smooth at all, and they could have fleshed out a ton of interesiting concepts that are introduced. Still the gameplay is solid and fun, and almost makes up so a lot of the flaws.

Age Approprateness:

It's a shooter, but there's no blood. Any deep or complex concepts that might be too much for younger minds are not fleshed out, and therefore ingnored by younger players (and us grown-ups as well). 11 or 12 should be a perfectly adequette age for this game.

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If you ever played Crimson Skies you'll feel right at home. Control config. is even the same wich is a good thing. Newbies might have some trouble with camera work but is a skill easily attained. cover system is basic and easy but the real fun is in the flying. 2 hours slipped by me without even focusing on the missions. I gave this game a 4 because the cover system can be a little etchy at times, and graphics arent too wowing, but this is definitely a game that should not b ignored.

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I'm not a great gamer and barely qualify as a dabbler -I bought my PS3 and Xbox mostly for my nephew and niece to use. But DarkVoid appealed to me based primarily on the jetpack angle and the 1940's "Rocketeer" story setting. I ended up playing the entire game through -okay, so I did it on the Easy setting but, hey, this is only the second game I've played to completion and the first since Crackdown a couple years ago. DarkVoid was generally fun -you got to do a lot of shootin', and you got to do some jetpack dog-fightin'; the storyline didn't make a whole lot of sense but it's all just (interesting) window dressing for the gameplay. I wasted some time because sometimes the level goals weren't clear. I also thought some of the on-screen symbology was not clear -example: I didn't realized until I was 95% done with the game that what looked like a bullseye indicating where to shoot was actually an indication to push the circle button on the hand-controller; oy. Bottom line: I liked the game, and became somewhat obsessive/addicted about making progress, but I also know I'm not any kind "power gamer".

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Okay, so this isn't an extensive review. The person who wrote the longer one detailing just what's great about this game and just what the critics got wrong was spot on. And I've even read the reviews not rating this game so high. Nitpicky. All the things they find faulty or challenging about this game, I just thought it was all great. And the guy that talks about the licensing?, really, you'd rather have a game called The Rocketeer? No, you wouldn't; it came out for the 8 bit Nintendo and was terrible and I will never or extremely rarely buy a licensed game because they're just making it as part of the synergy to promote the current largest media outlet of that product: movie games especially. I only make an exception for Spider-Man; I have broken down and bought two of those, but only when they were not tied to a movie of any kind, because then they were independent creations and Web of Shadows really let me down.

But back to this game. Dark Void is a blast. I love it how when you're close enough to enemies and shoot them, you hear the 'tink,' 'clink,' 'skarmp' of your laser blast pelting their metal. I like it when from wherever you start your jet blast, your characters legs flail all out like he's really blasting off--nice animation. I like the variety of attacks you can use and the different visual environments. I'm only a few hours into it and from peaking at some of the levels on youtube, I have quite a ways left to go.

This game is unbeatable for the price. I hope enough people buy this game on whichever platform so that there can be a part II. If you add this game to your library you will not be disappointed. If I had to say it was a mix of games, I'd say it was a cross somewhere between Dead Space and Uncharted. It feels a lot like Drake's brother playing the protagonist. And the neatest thing about this game, is yes, the fully 3-D environment. You can move the camera and see all angles of every piece of the level. You can attack up and right in front of you. I like how one of the in-game hints says "If you can't find where to go, look up!"

I also liked the Bionic Commando game, except for the voicing, and in a way this feels a little similar to me, but if I had to pick one to play, I'd go with this one, you can fly! Okay, I think that wraps it up. Let me get back to playing.