You know how Darksiders is gaining all manner of praise for combining aspects from many different sources, refining them, and coming up with something even better? Well Dark Void has tried the same principle, yet failed almost completely.

Developed by Airtight games, Dark Void tells a rather hackneyed story of a plane crash in the Bermuda triangle that leads to an adventure killing bizarre robots which were apparently responsible for stirring up the nazis in the lead up to world war 2. Fan of Lost? If so then the story in Dark Void will definitely feel very familiar. Plane crash on a desert island? Check. Person killed by who knows what just after the crash? Check. Ship stranded in the middle of said island? Check. I’ll be surprised if there isn’t a lawsuit from the Lost writers!

The big hook of the game is supposedly the jet pack which the player gets to use to soar through the air, killing enemies all the while. This is teased in the prologue to the game during which you have a fully powered jetpack at your disposal which you use to take down some UFO’s. The jetpack sections are without a doubt the most enjoyable parts of the game.

So far so good then. Unfortunately though, as the game proper starts you are stripped of your jetpack and forced into a rather poor third person shooter (think Gears of War, but nowhere near as good). The cover system is poor, often leaving you still vulnerable to fire. Zooming in moves the camera just that little too close in causing you to lose track of where you are and making movement difficult. Enemies often take up to a full clip of ammo in order to die which is almost reasonable considering they are mainly cybernetic. Strangely though the player also seems to be able to take a full clip of ammo before being killed, despite only wearing a leather jacket for armour.


As you progress through the game you slowly unlock a better and better jetpack however the problem persists that you are constantly thrown back into these sub par third person action sections. Exploration of the island (think Uncharted, but nowhere near as good) is really not as enjoyable as it could have been as for the most part you have an underpowered jetpack when you are longing for far more.

Graphically the game is nothing special with below par textures permeating the poorly designed levels. The soundtrack is nothing to write home about either. The control scheme for both jetpack and third person sections is poor and inaccurate. All of these factors serve only to confirm the conclusion that this is a poor game indeed.

In conclusion, I would seriously recommend avoiding Dark Void unless you have played absolutely every other game you are even slightly interested in. Playing the game wasted several hours of my life that would have been better spent doing pretty much anything else at all.

Verdict: 4/10. Poor