	Dark Void
	Developer: Airtight Games Publisher: Capcom Release Date: Out Now Players: Single player	Words By:
Dark Void is a third person shooter set in a mysterious dimension between worlds, called the Void. The game has you playing as William Augustus Grey, a cargo plane pilot who crashes in the Bermuda Triangle and is transported to the void. The story is centred on Will and his efforts to reach a portal which can transport him and other humans stuck there, called survivors, back to Earth. To do this they must fight an alien race called Watchers. These Watchers used to control the Earth, with the Humans treating them as gods, but a group of humans called Adepts saw them for who they really were and banished them to the void. They have been trying to get back ever since. The storyline in the game can be involving in some places but I found it to be quite confusing, and soon lost the plot after the first few levels as it can be difficult to tell what exactly has happened. The story is helped along by cut-scenes at the beginning and end of each level; they generally add to the story but there were a few frame rate issues here and there in the videos and some of them confused the already confusing story even more. The gameplay is the same as most other Third Person Shooters with the camera being centred over the shoulder of Will and with a traditional sort of HUD, showing ammo, grenades, map etc. But this game includes one thing which separates it from the competition. Most shooters use cover systems and Dark Void is no different but instead of just the horizontal cover, you can now use vertical cover as well. This is achieved using the jetpack you are usually equipped with, which allows you to complete missions in lots of different ways; for example on one level you have to destroy a shield generator, you can either land on the generator and fight your way to the control panel, or you could just fly straight in, destroy the panel and fly out again. When you have the jetpack equipped the levels tend to be very big, giving you plenty of room to fly around and many contain enemy fighters to dogfight. There are multiple ways of destroying these as well. You can either go for the traditional ‘shoot them till they blow up’ sort of way or you can fly up close to them and hijack them by revealing the pilot and killing it. This then puts you in control of the fighter and in some levels gives you some much needed extra firepower. During ground combat there is a small selection of 6 weapons you can use, with 2 types of grenades, but each of these weapons can be upgraded twice using points acquired from killing the various forms of Watcher. The types of Watchers vary from the ordinary grunt, to the huge, chain gun and rocket launcher-wielding knights. These weapons are effective most of the time, but there are a few glitch areas where they don’t kill the enemy very easily, but resorting to the jetpack seemed to work most of the time. Also there’s a nasty graphical glitch if you change weapon quickly, sometimes it doesn’t load the new weapon’s texture map quickly enough so there is no detail on the weapon and it takes a few seconds for the detail to load. Graphics-wise this game isn’t the best; it could do with being a bit more polished. There are also a few frame rate issues here and there in the game, more noticeable in the cut-scenes. Some of the maps have a few glitch areas which can be seen when flying close to them, such as black spots or one area even had a ‘mirror’ spot, but these are few and far between, but once you’ve noticed one glitch you do find yourself spotting others where you didn’t notice them before. Glitches on maps as large as these are almost inevitable but add to Dark Void’s slightly slapdash presentation. Overall this is a fairly average TPS. The vertical cover system works well and the size of the maps are great, but unimpressive visuals and glitches let the game down a bit. If you’re in to Third Person Shooters and fancy a bit of jetpack action then you may enjoy this game but otherwise you may find the iffy graphics and confusing storyline spoil any originality the game brought to the genre.

Best Bits
- Vertical gameplay as well as horizontal
- Use of the jetpack
- Size of the levels

Worst Bits
- Some graphical glitches
- Frame rate drops
- Lacks polish
- Relatively short campaign


by: coolalien