Dark Void Hands-on Preview

Gears of War is one of the best games of this generation. Crimson Skies on the Xbox was criminally overlooked and one of the games most deserving of a sequel it probably won’t get. So when we saw that Capcom’s Dark Void is in development at ex-Crimson Skies dev Airtight and appears to borrow quite a lot from Gears, we got quite excited. If you’ve been longing for a third-person shooter mixed with arcade aerial combat, step right up.

In Dark Void you play as Will, a pilot who accidentally flies through the Bermuda Triangle while delivering cargo. As the game’s title suggests, he ends up in a void where things aren’t quite as they are in the real world. There’s a war going on between a group of freedom fighters and an enemy known as the Watchers. Will joins the resistance and helps scavenge materials in order for the freedom fighters to build a means to escape. It’s all very sci-fi and presumably there’s more to what’s going on than what we’ve seen during a brief 20 minute demonstration.

Our demo began with everything looking very much like your typical next-gen third-person shooter. Will can hop in and out of cover, blind fire, zoom in slightly with the left trigger, fire with the right trigger and finish off enemies with melee attacks. It’d be unfair to label it a Gears of War clone, but it felt rather familiar. The first difference comes from Will’s jet pack. Initially this allows Will to hover and shoot while in the air. This gives Dark Void a clear point of difference over its shooter rivals, and this is just the beginning.

Just as you’re settling into the familiar third-person shooter mechanics things change completely – you’re suddenly having to move vertically through a section. This is one of Dark Void’s big selling points. As during normal on foot sections, you can once again move from cover to cover and pop out to shoot enemies, but you’re doing so while clinging onto objects above you. On the Xbox 360 X makes Will leap from side to side while Y makes him leap upwards onto a platform above his head. To add some danger to proceedings you can fail to grab hold properly, with the game making you hammer a button in order to gain a good firm grip. Even melee combat works while you’re clinging on, with Will able to pull enemies from platforms to their death.

The combination of hovering and vertical gameplay sections make Dark Void a fairly original prospect, but we haven’t got to the Crimson Skies influence yet. Third-person shooting is joined by full-on aerial combat, either with Will using his jet pack Rocketeer style or by hi-jacking Watcher UFO-type craft. In these sections (we saw some dogfighting in a canyon) the game becomes what we can only imagine a next-gen Crimson Skies would have looked and played like. Hijacking the saucer requires you to take out the pilot, and once you’re in control it’s a case of using the rapid fire weapon and homing missiles to take out all that stand in your way.

As our Capcom rep pointed out, Dark Void is a Western developed game – something Capcom is doing more and more – but it’s not without its Far East influences. One such influence became apparent as our demo came to its conclusion. After taking out the last enemy saucer using our supreme aerial dogfighting skills a cut scene kicked in. On screen appeared a giant mechanical creature that resembled a scorpion crossed with a beetle. Sadly the demo ended before we had a chance to show it who’s boss, but it promises a game full of impressive boss encounters.

Dark Void has a lot of development time left before we’ll see it in retail stores. According to our Capcom rep it’s about a year from release, and as such can’t be compared to titles shipping this holiday. Having said that, the slow frame rate aside, it’s shaping up extremely well. Built using Unreal Engine 3 it’s looking excellent, with some great enemy and level design work already clear to see. The freedom fighters use Watcher technology to help their cause, so Will sports a fancy helmet and Watcher weapons, giving him a cobbled together appearance. We’re pretty hopeful that Xbox 360, PS3 and PC owners will get a smart looking game on its release late next year.

It’s easy to be lenient on games that are a long way off, but Dark Void shows genuine promise. Although from the outset it appears to be yet another third-person shooter, the combination of vertical gameplay and full-on flight sections give it a rather original feel. It’s also probably the closest we’re going to get to a Crimson Skies sequel, with Microsoft showing no signs that it’s going to revisit the series. Dark Void could well be the next big new IP from Capcom, a publisher which has already proven to be one of the best of this console generation.

Dark Void is due for release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2009