Game Reviewed: Dark Void (X360)
Reviewer: Recon19D (PSN) R19Delta (Live)
Disclosure: Received 1 copy of game to review and a swag pack
Classification: Third Person Shooter/Flight
Recommendation: Rent
Great games have some basic components to them. Good storyline, interesting characters, solid controls, and fun gameplay that doesn’t get boring in the hours required to complete the game. Dark Void has some of these components, but lacks in others.
For me, it had a good enough story to keep me playing level to level. Dark Void seemed a lot like Seven Samurai with the farmers being useless lumps, much like the natives in this game. The main character reminded me too much of Nathan Drake from Uncharted. Not just because the voice actor is the same, but the characters personality.
The controls for ground gameplay is much like any other third person shooter, with a cover system that feels like Gears of War (without the lumbering feel to it) and blind firing is more accurate than I thought it would/should be. The vertical cover system has the character fighting from cover even when fighting enemies directly above and below him. The difference between the traditional horizontal fighting and vertical is that he can jump down or rocket up to the next piece of cover during vertical combat.
The flight parts of the game are really fun, once you get the hang of flying. If you are flying in the wide open, it is a lot more fun than the parts you are forced to fly in corridors. I smacked into a ledge more times than I would like to remember, due to uncontrolled flight. Hijacking aircraft is a lot of fun too. You latch onto a passing ship and proceed to pry up an access panel. You need to dodge the laser while you do it, but eventually you kick the pilot’s ass and take over the ship.
Unfortunately the gameplay does get old. There doesn’t seem to be enough different ways to attack, or be attacked. The world seems large, but the paths are very linear. That is good for not getting lost, but gets boring, as there are very few ways for enemies to attack. The enemies are not very different from each other, and don’t have a lot of character, as they are robots.
The difficulty of this game varies greatly. The flight parts can be hard, as I smacked into walls and ledges quite a few time, thus killing myself. There are other parts that are simple first time pass, even on the hardest setting. There were some cheap deaths, where missile after missile would be fired while I was pinned down by fire from other enemies. But overall, I would rate this as an easy game.
Lack of multiplayer is what puts this game solidly into the Rent category for me. A single player game can still get my Buy rating, but it would need to put out more than this one did. Also with so many titles out there, I think this one will come down in price quickly.
Finally, I did experience two crash bugs. This is where the game locks up, and you need to reset the system and or return to the Dashboard. To be fair, they did not mess up my save file and I was able to continue from my checkpoint, and I was unable to reproduce it when I died the same way 10 more times.
Available for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC
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