Dark Void Review

Dark Void is a rare breed: it's a Bermuda Triangle game. Can you think of any others?

It was always going to be aliens, wasn't it? There we are thinking the Bermuda Triangle leads to some parallel paradise where gamers with skills are worshipped like movie stars and eating pizza tones your abs instead of flabbing them up. But no. It leads to aliens. Big, ugly, hissing aliens hell bent on enslaving humanity.

That's according to developer Airtight Games, anyway. In Dark Void, the studio's new game, the Bermuda Triangle leads to a mysterious purgatory-like place called The Void, where The Watchers (the aliens in question) have been waiting for years, "preparing" the human race as they plot their return.

The Watchers, though, didn't factor Nathan Dra... sorry, Will Grey, Dark Void's Nolan North (yes, him again) voiced star, into their nefarious plan. But then, neither did Will. His involvement in the battle to save humanity is a coincidence. Well, so it would seem.

Dark Void begins in August 1938. Average Joe pilot Will and his lady friend Ava set off on a bog standard delivery flight carrying bog standard cargo in a bog standard plane. But, as they pass through the Bermuda Triangle, strange things happen, the plane dies and they crash land. Emerging from the wreckage, the two set out to explore their surroundings. It's at this point that things start to go seriously downhill.

If you were to play Dark Void for only its first hour, you would probably cast it aside as a badly-made Uncharted knock-off. The similarities are so stark that they border on the hilarious. Will is voiced by Nolan North, aka Nathan Drake. He also looks like Uncharted's rugged hero. Dark Void has a cover system and third-person shooting. The first act is set in a jungle-like environment. There's even a female AI-controlled co-op partner, called Ava. And they banter as they run about.

Further comparisons, however, are less favourable. The Void's jungle environment looks awful, Ava's running animation is cringe-worthy, and the backgrounds are pathetic. The Watchers, disappointing, generic aliens that attack on sight, are easily dispatched in typical whack-a-mole fashion with your unsatisfying weaponry.