Dark Void Preview

You have to feel a bit sorry for David Icke. Once upon a time he was a popular TV presenter at the BBC; now he’s regarded as a global pariah – an international object of ridicule. And why has he fallen from grace? Because he spoke the truth, that’s why. Dave knows that Planet Earth is ruled by the Anunnaki – seven foot tall lizards from the planet Draco. These slippery buggers have the power to shape-shift, and they’ve used this skill to infiltrate every powerful corner of society. George W Bush is a reptile, as is Al Gore and Queen Elizabeth II. Even Kris Kristofferson has a penchant for dead flies, or so says Icke.

But Icke does not stand alone in this quest to spread the truth. Airtight Games has taken up the cause, and along with publisher Capcom, they’re setting out to enlighten the world. The studio’s first release, Dark Void, is a powerful parable about the reptilian threat. It’s also a third-person shooter with a kitschy plot that features jetpacks, UFOs, and giant robot lizards (The Anunnaki have long since stopped using these in real life, as they were a bit of a giveaway).

Dark Void itself has shown a few shape-shifting abilities during its production cycle. Both Tom and Wez have seen and written about the game before, and on each occasion little tweaks and changes have been evident. From my perspective, the most important change between the current build and the one I played at E3 is a more forgiving approach to using the jetpack. Our hero, Will Grey, is a vulnerable sack of meat, and in the past a mid-air collision would inevitably result in his instant death. Now he’s far more likely to bounce off with just a minor injury. It may sound like a minor switch, but when you’re hurtling through the sky, performing aerial acrobatics and duelling flying saucers, you’ve already got plenty to think about.

Aside from the notable shift in difficulty, the core gameplay on offer during my latest hands-on was much the same as on the previous occasion. Dark Void is a blend of Gears of War-style shooting and arcade aerial combat, and most of the time you’ll be able to shift between these two styles at will. With only two months before the game’s final release, we’re now getting a sense of how these elements will fit together, with large, open “bowl-shaped” levels that allow the player plenty of room to zip around. In the early stages of the game players will be limited to a short-range hover pack, but once you acquire the jetpack you’ll be free to take to the skies whenever you like. If you’re in the middle of a firefight and you’re taking too many hits, you’ll be able to launch yourself into the heavens; once you’ve recharged your health, you can either return to the fray or use your ‘pack to launch a swooping attack on your foes.

Of course, you’ll eventually face enemies that can pursue you into the air – a turning point that senior producer Morgan Gray calls “The Oh Shit Moment” – but until this happens, the skies are the backbone of your offensive strategies. The game as a whole is a linear experience, but within each mission the idea is to give the player plenty of tactical options to use. Gray himself was on hand yesterday to demonstrate a few of these to me, via a mission that takes place in the middle of the campaign – roughly eight to ten hours into the action. By this point the human resistance is attempting to flee the Bermuda Triangle in The Ark – a giant ship called built by Nikola Tesla – unfortunately The Watchers have other ideas. The Watchers are more or less the same sneaky reptiles that Icke tried to warn us about: they used to rule the planet many years ago, until the humans rose up and banished them to the shadowy dimension (i.e. the Dark Void) that exists inside the Bermuda Triangle.

For this stage Will’s job was to help fix up the ship while simultaneously defending it from attack. Initially this task required him to power up several generators using the Hypercoil, a sort of hand-held Tesla coil that fires arcs of electricity. Gray had to locate each node, switch his ‘pack into hover mode and then douse the machinery with electricity; after this he’d switch back into full-on flight mode and head to the next point, weaving about and gunning down UFOs as he went. Will’s ‘pack is armed with dual machine guns and with homing missiles, so these fights play out like an arcade flight sim; given that Airtight Games was formed out of the core team that worked on Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, this shouldn’t come as too big a surprise.

After powering up the engines, Will’s next task was to take on several small groups of ground fighters who had invaded the human base. There were a number of approaches that he could be taken here. Gray elected to land and to fight the slender robots up close, but he could have also hovered over them and rained down death from above, or perhaps flown to an overlook point and sniped. If he was feeling really flashy, he could have hijacked one of the flying saucers and then strafed the troops below. As Wez described in his last preview, this involves getting close to the UFO and then hitting a button to make Will grab on to the craft. At this point a sort of cat and mouse style game kicks off: The alien pilot tries to blast you with a slow-moving turret, so you have to lure his aim to one side of the saucer while you crawl around and open the cockpit by following on-screen prompts. Yes, it’s essentially a QTE sequence, but it’s more interactive and enjoyable than a lot of the ones we’ve had thrown at us.

Gray’s demo ended with a fight against an Archon – a large bot that somewhat resembled a metallic lizard. The first one of these you’ll fight will be a boss of sorts, but in typical Capcom fashion you’ll eventually have lots of them thrown at you, to the extent that they become a regular threat. The Archon has quite decent anti-air capabilities, so to take him down you’ll need to get up close and attack his joints. There’s a QTE execution method that can be used to dispatch him but, like the UFO hijacking, it’ll largely be optional. It’s certainly possible to take an Archon with your standard weapons, particularly if you’ve been upgrading your kit. Floating orbs act as currency for these tool-ups, allowing you to power up your arsenal and jetpack via a simple menu system.

Dark Void is somewhat sitting in the shadow of Capcom’s other big future releases, but from what I’ve seen of the game thus far it certainly looks like it’ll have plenty of good stuff to offer. The flight mechanics have undergone several careful revisions, and it shows: it’s a lot of fun to loop about the sky with bullets spewing from your front and flames blasting out your rear. Yes, there have been concessions in the name of accessibility, but at the same time this clearly remains a Capcom game, with a detailed approach to action that should appeal to hardcore gamers. As Tom has mentioned before, it remains to be seen how the mix of flight and on-foot combat will stretch out over the course of a full campaign, but it won’t be long until we get to find out. If Dark Void can continue its upward momentum, it should offer a tight little serving of arcade shooting to help kick off the New Year.

Dark Void will be released on January 15 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.