If this is the future, where's my damn jet pack!? That's what I shout at my iPhone when I'm feeling unimaginative and I'm sat in a traffic jam on my own. It turns out, my jet pack's somewhere in the 1930s.
Plot? OK. Dark Void is about a chap called William who decided one night (well, it looked like night) to fly into the Bermuda Triangle. This takes him a bit further than he planned, in as much other dimensions can be given a relation to ours in terms of geographical distance. He ends up in a reality that is dominated by a bunch of alien nasties called the Watchers. So, he teams up with a group of humans called the Survivors to beat the blue sluggy snot out of them. He does this with the help of guns and, most notably, a jet pack.
So far, so pulpy.
When Tim, the Evil Editor, saw Dark Void he quickly exclaimed it's Uncharted. He was wrong fooled by the jungle setting and the fact that this is a third-person action game. He also missed the part where I had a jet pack. While the game is not an Uncharted rip-off, however, Tim's theory does have a huge great sumthin'-sumthin' going in its favour Nolan North, the man with the vocal chords behind Drake, voices William. If you've spent any time with Uncharted, it's difficult not to hear Drake cracking wise every time William opens his mouth to say something a bit predictable.
Anyway, play is divided into three basic mechanics. The first is running around on foot and shooting stuff, with a spot of hovering provided by your jet pack to help you along. This feels aesthetically reminiscent of Halo 3 at times, between the jungle, the aliens and the energy weapons. It doesn't play like Halo 3 so much, unfortunately.
It uses a cover system a bit like Gears of War. It's not so necessary to take cover as it is in Gears, but the game will prompt you to do so the moment a viable spot comes into sniffing distance. This is all well and good, but it's often frustrating trying to get your guy to move around the cover like you want him to, and you often find yourself jumping and rolling into open space when really you wanted to nip over the conveniently placed hunk of ancient stonework in front of you.
Then there's the vertical stuff. Yes, Dark Void explores 'verticality'. This means that at certain points you'll be prompted to use your jet pack to boost between platforms, using said platforms as cover much as you would a wall on the horizontal axis. Alternatively you can go groundwards, swinging over ledges and dropping down. This bit is quite good fun. It's very satisfying to do a rocket-powered jump then shoot a skinny alien and watch it plummet to make a corpsey mess on the floor.
Plot? OK. Dark Void is about a chap called William who decided one night (well, it looked like night) to fly into the Bermuda Triangle. This takes him a bit further than he planned, in as much other dimensions can be given a relation to ours in terms of geographical distance. He ends up in a reality that is dominated by a bunch of alien nasties called the Watchers. So, he teams up with a group of humans called the Survivors to beat the blue sluggy snot out of them. He does this with the help of guns and, most notably, a jet pack.
When Tim, the Evil Editor, saw Dark Void he quickly exclaimed it's Uncharted. He was wrong fooled by the jungle setting and the fact that this is a third-person action game. He also missed the part where I had a jet pack. While the game is not an Uncharted rip-off, however, Tim's theory does have a huge great sumthin'-sumthin' going in its favour Nolan North, the man with the vocal chords behind Drake, voices William. If you've spent any time with Uncharted, it's difficult not to hear Drake cracking wise every time William opens his mouth to say something a bit predictable.
It uses a cover system a bit like Gears of War. It's not so necessary to take cover as it is in Gears, but the game will prompt you to do so the moment a viable spot comes into sniffing distance. This is all well and good, but it's often frustrating trying to get your guy to move around the cover like you want him to, and you often find yourself jumping and rolling into open space when really you wanted to nip over the conveniently placed hunk of ancient stonework in front of you.
