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Man have the past few weeks been a drag. Hot Tub Time Machine was hilarious but a bit overhyped, the Clash of the Titans remake was somewhere between "nice effort" and "what the hell was the director smoking," and the only thing I actually enjoyed that came out recently was the Blu-Ray of Sherlock Holmes. It seems a bit weird that in the year 2010 we manage to botch up a remake of a pretty good ancient Greek monster movie, yet are able to make a somewhat good movie out of a time traveling hot tub, then say something about how originality is hard to come by. In terms of media this seems to happen a lot, no one really knows why though many theories are up for debate, but in order to keep the public from being jaded towards any attempts to make lightning strike twice, one must always keep their mind open to new possibilities. So, in that spirit, I've decided to review Dark Void.
The story of Dark Void takes place in 1930 with more WWII tension than an Indiana Jones movie and follows the adventures of a pilot named Will. He is stuck doing some kind of delivery in his trusty plane and winds up flying through the Bermuda Triangle. Of course, the game wouldn't be interesting if nothing happened, so it turns out the Bermuda Triangle is a portal to another dimension! Disoriented by the immediate change in environment, Will crashes his plane. Looking for aid, Will stumbles upon a human resistance, led by famous scientist Nikola Tesla, that is set up inside the other dimension known as The Void against a race of aliens known as the Watchers who are attempting to take over Earth. Using Tesla's technical brilliance and stolen Watcher laser guns, Will aids the resistance by flying around The Void in a jetpack and helps defeat the Watchers.
The gameplay can probably be summarized as a 3rd-person shooter. Good old fashioned laser shooting over the shoulder along with hiding behind cover and regenerating health. So what makes Dark Void different from Uncharted and Gears of War? Look at the cover and figure it out, and if you can't, it's the jetpack! The difficulty curve is pretty generous when it comes to training you in how to use it. First, you start off with the jetpack just being a jump aid for vertical gunfights (yeah, there are vertical gunfights in this game), then, by about two more missions, you'll be flying around full blast doing strafing runs and hijacking Watcher UFOs.
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"Hey! You in the UFO! You're doing 500 in a 55! Pull over!!"
What makes this bit of gameplay less fun however, isn't the environments, because they are massive yet not ridiculous, nor is it the limited maneuverability (which it isn't!), but it's the character of Will. Will is voiced by Nolan North, who has proven himself time and again that he can give great performances, yet he is treated as the game talent equivalent of Samuel L. Jackson; they don't really know how to use him but know if he's in it, it will sell. While Nolan does his best to bring some form of warm lovability to Will, it's overshadowed by the major fact that Will is acting non-chalant and casual when he's being attacked by UFOs in an alternate dimension run by aliens! Kinda makes me wonder if Will's adventures in The Void is actually a fever dream brought on by his schizophrenia medication or if the game simply cut out scenes of him freaking the hell out, which I would have loved to see! It doesn't really bother you at first, but after a while, the immersion is broken.
Speaking of broken immersion, the pacing and presentation of the story of Dark Void is a mess. By the end of the game, I felt completely cheated. There are too many jumps in time during the game, and nothing is really explained inbetween. So there will be situations where you'll be done blowing up a Watcher battleship, then "Seven Weeks Later..." you're leading the resistance into a maximum security Watcher stronghold because apparantly they found Will's love interest there. What happened inbetween? Well, as far as we know, three fucking insane no-holds barred Star Wars style gunfights, two great emotional crescendos by Will after coming to terms with the fact that he is in an alien world with no escape, and a haircut. In any other game, I might have let such a thing get away, but with a game that offers so much, Dark Void sells itself a bit short.
In other ways, the game ends up a bit short. The game can be finished in about seven hours, which just compounds the idiotic amount of cutting and unnecessary brevity the game already has. The enemy pilot AI can get a little hilariously stupid in terms of occasionally crashing into stuff. Also, unless you're really good at making your own fun, the gunfights can get a bit repetitive. In terms of a game, Dark Void is something I really wished had more time and money put into it, because gameplay wise and what I've seen in terms of potential, it could have been an easy contender for Game of the Year. As the released version stands, it's just a slightly better than average 3rd person action game with a story that shoots itself in the foot with a poison dart half an hour in.
Buy or Rent? I'm going to say if you crave something that is just mindless fun and can ignore seeing a potentially great story go bad, and believe me the jetpack gameplay is very fun, this is a strong rental!
