Dark Void Review (360/PS3/PC)

Dark Void is an ambitious game with new ideas and mechanics to the 3rd person genre, but can the game be that good?

Presentation:

As Will you start off with a crash of your plane right into the Bermuda Triangle. What you are going to face along with your partner and formerly lover Ava will bring true meaning to a lost planet; with new breeds of life-form and never seen enemies on Earth.

The game has a very slow beginning, especially regarding the more in-depth story encounters and elements. While the vibe is there at the beginning, the characters, factions and the actual story is not that interesting and I found the dialogue between Ava and Will, and between most of the other human characters, boring. Also the past between the two have nothing to add to the story or even the feel of the characters. Some of the cut-scenes look really impressive and epic; while others look oddly low-res. The main gameplay and story parts do use the jet-pack, and it works well for the most part.

Visuals:

The inconsistency within the visuals is really visible! Some of the environments looks really inspired and detailed with fantastic scale, but most areas look really bland and boring. The character and enemy design is visually fitting, being very sci-fi mixed with an alien idea that works really well. The enemy vehicles, weapons and the miscellaneous bosses look good as well.

Sound:

Overall the voice-overs are decent, some characters sounds fit while some are not. My main dislike is in the two main characters Will and Ava. The characterization and personality of Will is not to my liking and Ava could have been even more extreme with the direction the game is portraying her. Weapons and vehicles sounds really good, even if there is not that much of a variety.

Gameplay:

The game is a 3rd person shooter combined with aerial sections using enemy’s saucer like vehicles and your own jet-pack. While on-foot Dark Void is a cover based action game and added in is some vertical platforming to maneuver the environments to pick journals, technical points (EXP) and enemy weapons.
Dark Void is mainly linear with its missions, but at points there is some freedom; especially when the game is focusing its missions on the more shooting oriented missions, where its driving you to use your jet-pack in different areas while most of the enemies are on the ground, and its also vice versa at later levels when some enemies can fly as well, and that’s where the game is really open for your decisions and game style. 

Dark Void does give technical points for its basic experience system. These you can use to upgrade your jet-pack and the weapons that are in the game and you usually get points from killing enemies or in the open world areas you will have points to get as well; but the actual upgrades really don’t make that much of an impact to the weapons.

While the game has a good pace and direction, all the mechanics are really wonky. The on-foot shooting feels really bad, the weapons feel weak and not accurate (if the sniper feels the best weapon in an action game, you know there’s a problem) and also the shooting with the jet-pack feels weak, even if you are upgrading it, it’s just not there. The platforming animations looks really weird and out of place, same for the melee animations in the on-foot sections, but the biggest problem is the aerial mechanics with the saucer or the jet-pack. Camera issues and just overall really weird mechanics just do not work, big sections with flying can be a very frustrating because of this.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

Fun and satisfying AA\turret sequences. Actually they were the only fun part in the game.

Really cool enemies, with their vehicles and weapons.

Pretty good variety to the environments.

Cons:

The story and the entire narrative is not intriguing as it may seem and most of the characters are not fascinating to talk to.

A very glitchy game. I had at least four or five game-braking glitches with enemies missing from the world but still in the radar. Also the game has inconsistent frame rate issues at points.

All the mechanics in the game has problems. Whether its technical or animation problems I don’t know but then lead to a very frustrating game to experience.

Conclusion:

Dark Void had some really good ideas improving and innovating the genre, especially with the aerial mechanics, but sadly, the entire narrative and set of characters are boring.

Scoring:

Presentation:

5.5 Boring characters with annoying personalities along with a non-interesting story and narrative to be in, the good part is the enemies that give something good to the entire game.

Visuals:

7 Inconsistency is the key word, some great areas but some are really blend, also the design for Will is really unappealing.

Sound:

7.5 Weapons, enemies and vehicles all sound great, voice overs are only decent at best.

Gameplay:

4.5 Some fantastic ideas that are not done well sadly, since it seems that the game had some good set pieces, but its just not good on the actual gameplay, also the technical issues are not helping.

Replay Value:

6.5 Around 8-10 hours for the campaign, some minor exploration for picking journals and extra technical points can help the length a bit.

Final Score:

6 Dark Void could have been a great game to experience, sadly everything about it is not there, boring story and characters, technical problems and bad mechanics to almost everything in the game.