Dissection: Dark Void

When I play Dark Void I think of a movie made for TV – sure, you’ll get some light entertainment out of it and you might even spot a well known actor or two, but there’s the knowledge that it’s a low budget and mundane experience, never destined for any great heights.

Developer Airtight Games have obviously watched a lot of these movies.

Will Gray is a down-on-his-luck courier pilot who crashes his plane in the Bermuda Triangle during the 1930’s and ends up in a another dimension called “The Void”.

Will (who is a half-tucked shirt away from Nathan Drake) and his cookie-cutter British female love interest Eva, soon discover that this dimension is inhabited by a mysterious alien race called the Watchers (clones of the Geth from Mass Effect), various survivors and of course Nikola Tesla.

From there the narrative disintegrates into a rough collection of fantastical story threads that had potential but never form anything remotely engaging or even entertaining. It often feels like scenes are missing as time skips ahead erratically.

Now, this lack of a cohesive story could be forgiven if the gameplay was good - but unfortunately it suffers the same fate.

What you do in Dark Void is separated into two parts – ground-based third person shooting and aerial combat. While the ground combat is pedestrian and riddled with small flaws – enemies are bullet sponges, the weapons are unimaginative and your targeting reticule is imprecise – the vertical cover system, where you take cover and fight enemies while climbing is an interesting move, but the aerial combat is something that actually tries to be different.

About an hour into the game you meet a decidedly not David Bowie-looking Nikola Tesla who after little conversation, gives you a jet pack (with mounted machine guns nonetheless) – thus completing one of two interactions you have with him in the entire game.

At first, controlling the jet pack feels rather difficult – especially when trying to hit a moving target as there’s no lock on – and after a while controlling the jet pack is still pretty difficult. The momentum and twitchiness of the jet pack is hard to master. It’s seems absurd that after the countless suspensions of disbelief you face in this game, Airtight have seen fit to try and keep the flying as “realistic” as possible.

It also doesn’t help that you do nothing interesting while using the jet pack. Dogfights are tedious wars of attrition as you struggle to keep control yourself while trying hit your UFO enemies (or hijack them – which involves a repetitive mini-game and getting yourself killed) and avoiding motion sickness.

The bigger problem is a lack of flexibility or creativity – sure, you can use the jet pack during the ground sections but doing so is suicide because you’re always in a narrow corridor. It’s with this I see so much lost potential – with the right level design (like some open areas to play around in), Dark Void could have stood out and delivered a unique experience.

It’s strange, considering that while not an especially pretty game, Dark Void has a visual style that suits its premise beautifully - characters look slightly cartoonish with their bigger than normal eyes and expressive faces and the environments are rich in colour from the leafy green jungles and earthy reds and browns of the various canyons to the cold blues of the Watcher ships.

I’m also a big fan of the soundtrack – it is utterly charming and adds a layer of momentum to otherwise tedious sequences. They’ve seen fit to play most of the tracks in 8-bit form over the credits, a much better reward for beating the game than the story’s climax gives you. The voice work is also generally good. Man of the moment Nolan North does a great job as Will, but isn’t given anything interesting to say for the most part.

That said, Dark Void also has a few technical issues that emphasise a lack of polish. The frame rate seems to dip frequently, oddly enough during the on foot sections more so. Will seems to be the best animated as the enemies and NPC’s (who are dumb in combat situations – let’s make no mistake) look wooden and many of the environments suffer from instances of texture pop-in to rival Mass Effect.

For a game that’s been in development for over two years these technical issues are unforgivable and make the game look amateurish in spots.

Dark Void also seems to fail as a value proposition – with the story mode clocking in at around six hours and offering very little replay value beyond arbitrary collectibles and harder difficulties. I’m one of the first people to bemoan the fact that every game that comes out has multiplayer, but here I feel it could’ve worked – third person shooting with the possibility of team dogfights is something that no other game has.

This sort of mode, as well as a Panzer-Dragoon style challenge mode – where everything becomes on rails as players compete for better scores, could have rounded out the package.

So while Airtight games sit down for their celebratory Hallmark Channel movie night and play “spot the Baldwin”, they deliver an experience that fails to be cohesive in any sense. The story seems half-finished, the game play is restrictive and pedestrian and overall it just feels like a lightweight experience. In one of the busiest first quarters on the gaming calendar ever, Dark Void doesn’t do enough to make me recommend it to anyone.




WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT –


Music to my ears: Ranging from sweeping orchestral pieces to snappy synth melodies, the soundtrack truly treats your ears. Bear McCreary of Battlestar Galactica fame does an excellent job.

The colours, children: There’s something striking about the palette in Dark Void – while at first glance it might not seem much, the various environments feel truly alien as the browns and greys are kept to a minimum.

He’s the voice: Nolan North does a great job as Will Gray – he brings same glib one-liners as with a certain other hero. Now if only the script was any good.....


WHAT THEY GOT WRONG –


Stories High: Dark Void’s story is uninteresting and poorly told, with mundane characters. No game or movie should ever preface an event with “6 hours later”.

Montana aint got nothing: Simply put – enemies in this game are bullet sponges. Up until the later levels I was emptying a clip to kill one enemy using one of the worst crosshairs I’ve ever seen.

Technical problems: Bad animation, a choppy frame rate and texture pop-in plague this game constantly.

Pigs can’t fly: Flying the jet pack in this game is too difficult – when it should have been a fun arcade experience. Especially considering Airtight Games last title, Crimson Skies.

Rigidity: Why can’t I experiment with combat? Using a jet pack inside should not be suicide.

Light on? Right on: Unless you’re a sucker for dumb collectibles there isn’t any reason to go back. Where are the other modes?