Dark Void
Planes are nice, but real men use jetpacks. Nothing says “manly” like strapping a giant rocket just above your butt and taking to the skies, wearing protective gear that provides about as much defense against heavy impacts as a cotton ball. But the sky is huge and inviting, even with enemy swarms filling it with blue-hot plasma, and there’s no way to resist getting up there and blowing up some pinheads while soaring with acrobatic grace. Peaceful resolution is right out, and even a sternly-worded UN missive (had the UN been around in 1938) seems like it would have little effect, so the only answer is bullets delivered at high speed and in great quantities. Dark Void’s gunplay is divided up into two primary styles- on foot and in air. It starts out as a fairly standard cover-based shooter, with Will running, gunning, and jumping behind convenient barricades, with new elements added along the way. It’s several hours, in fact, before the jet pack finally comes into play. Will initially is grounded, with no hint of the aerial escapades to come, but new vertical elements are added one by one until the skies are your playground.
Starting on foot, the opening area has Will ducking and shooting in a fashion familiar to anyone who’s played Uncharted, Gears of War, or any other game where hiding is a simple matter of touching a button near anything that looks like it might be bulletproof. Cover is the usual defensive affair, with blind fire being more protected but less accurate while aiming gives the enemy a convenient target. Twists on the gameplay show up shortly, however, as Will proves that hitting things is as fun as shooting them. The initial enemies go down in a single punch, while later ones need softening up first, but it’s always cool to see a mechanized enemy get its block knocked off with a solid haymaker. The other wrinkle in the combat comes as Will does his best Spider-Man impression, hanging off the underside of ledges while firing back at the Watchers as he leaps from handhold to handhold up sheer cliff faces.
During these vertical cover sections the camera helpfully changes angle, giving a clear view up or down the wall, while bringing on a mild shot of dizziness when it smoothly flattens out again once Will is on solid ground. These sections rely more on firing from a set position before jumping to another spot of cover, because it’s hard to run and gun while hanging on for dear life. Eventually Will gets his first jetpack, good for hovering and boosted jumps but not flying. With this addition, however, the levels start opening up into vertical playgrounds, providing more strategic gunplay as the high ground becomes a tactical option. This is all in preparation for the final mobility upgrade, the full-flight enabled jetpack, and all the joys of dogfighting and clever level design it brings with it. At this point, Dark Void truly kicks into gear.
Aerial combat is different from on foot in more than the obvious ways. The jetpack comes equipped with a powerful gun, fed with unlimited ammo, but it only works while in flight. Once Will is either on the ground or hovering he’s back to using the guns chosen at the start of the level or scavenged along the way, which is good for having the right tool for the job but also uses up the limited (but generously supplied) ammo. The other advantage of flight is that Will can hijack enemy saucers, using their armor to protect his own skin from a nasty case of alien laser burn. Hijacking takes a bit of work, though, unlike the normal gaming method of basically snatching a vehicle as it passes by, and unlike Will the saucers don’t regenerate health after a few seconds of not taking damage, so their usefulness is limited. On the other hand, there’s no denying how cool it is to have a rocketman hijack a flying saucer in mid-air.
The thing about the jetpack is that it’s a tool in exactly the same way the guns are- its use depends on the situation. There aren’t special flying levels any more than there are sniper levels. There are areas where it’s necessary, of course, because it’s hard to dogfight from the ground, but an average mission will be a mix of air and ground based fighting. A mid-game level, for example, has Will clear out some gun turrets so the Survivors can land their airship, fighting off waves of nimble saucers while flying among the craggy spires of an otherworldly mountainous wasteland. When the ship lands, he fights on foot alongside a group of Survivors to open up an underground installation, which turns out to be a mixture of small corridors and large, open areas. The huge central shaft is large enough for limited flight, or Will can make use of the vertical cover system to avoid enemy fire. So long as you don’t get his face shot off neither approach is wrong.
Supplementing the shooty gamplay are the usual collectibles no self-respecting world would be without. Dark Void has two kinds of items to track down- orbs and journals. The journals are filled with information on the world of Dark Void, filling in details that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. There are dozens to find scattered throughout the game, some hidden very well indeed, but once found they remain available even in subsequent playthroughs, making it just a little easier to fill in the gaps. Orbs are a more common, seeing as defeated enemies drop them, but there are some large bonuses hidden in out-of-the-way spots as well. The orbs act as currency, allowing you to upgrade your six primary guns and jetpack. Upgrades are expensive, but it only requires two to fully elevate even the generic machine gun from its original configuration as a reliable but bland workhorse into a stylish high-powered death dealer with glowing blue trim.
While there are only seven items to power up, with two levels to buy apiece, every gun is useful and every upgrade makes it significantly moreso. Dark Void is shaping up to be an epic action title, filled with solid gunplay, aerial derring-do, and a sci-fi backstory loaded with detail. Its stylish enemies are as fun to fight as look at, and the huge world is filled with detail. Once past the introductory levels the constant switching between flight and on-foot combat keeps things fresh, as every situation can be handled in a variety of ways. Admitted, the end result always turns out to be pumping a whole lot of firepower into a whole lot of bad guys, but if that’s what it takes to rescue the rag-tag band of Survivors from the clutches of the Watchers then it’s a price that’s easily paid. Dark Void has hot lead, electric death, and rocket-powered mayhem. What more could an adventure need?
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