Dark Void Review

You can upgrade your weapons and jetpack with tech points, but it's a wafer thin system.

The mission objectives are equally unsatisfying, and repeated throughout. Take out the anti-air guns, kill all the Watchers, destroy the consoles, rinse and repeat. Dark Void's feet spend too much time on the ground and hiding behind cover, when they should have focused on vertical combat and flying - all you really want to do is open up that jetpack and fly with glorious abandon.

In Dark Void's defence, being able to seamlessly transition between in air combat and on foot combat is unique. We can't think of another cover-based third-person shooter that allows you to fly away when the going gets tough. Dark Void is a new concept at a time when sequels are the norm – and that should be applauded. It's a shame, then, that things haven't quite worked out as they might have done.

Perhaps there's a story behind why Dark Void feels at best rushed and at worst unfinished. Whatever the truth, we know for certain that the frame rate is awful - and drops so frequently that you almost get used to it - the graphics are dated, the lip syncing is all over the place, and the audio glitches. We even experienced a few game breaking bugs. In one level, you're tasked with defending human prisoners from waves of Watcher attacks. Unfortunately, the prisoners failed to spawn, so the Watchers failed to show. In another level, you need to take down a giant Watcher ship by shooting turrets that pop out before disappearing again. The turrets along one side of the ship decided not to join the party.

Dark Void could have been good. It could have been the Crimson Skies/Gears of War hybrid it looked like it might have been. Unfortunately, something somewhere went wrong. After finishing the six hour campaign, you'll be hard pressed to recall any outstanding moments. One level, set in a Watcher weapons manufacturing plant, offers something a little different to the tiresome norm, and the final boss battle is decent enough. But really, we're clutching at straws.

And once the brutally short campaign is over, Dark Void is over. Without a multiplayer mode (which, we reckon could have been quite good), Dark Void rests on its single-player. Unfortunately, it's not up to the standards set by the best, and there's no motivation to play through it twice. Dark Void isn't bad, or broken, or busted. It's just average, generic, and instantly forgettable.