"Gears of War + Jetpacks + Awesome = Dark Void"

Truth be told, “Dark Void” is a game that I was not following very closely. At a distant glance, it looked to be yet another third person shooter in a crowded market of first and third person shooters. To my surprise, Dark Void ended up being one of the funnest demoes I played at this year’s PAX.

The demo started off by teaching me how to use the game’s most notable feature: the jetpack. Double tapping the “Y” button put me in a full-on flight mode. Using the jetpack in this mode was quite similar to controlling a plane. You can use the analogue sticks to steer around and rotate yourself. There’s also air brakes and a boost bar that allows you to go extra fast by holding a button down.

In addition to the actions mentioned above, there are also special maneuvers that can be performed. The most notable of these was a quick turn that allowed you to pull a very fast 180.There doesn’t seem to be any limit on how long you can fly and even the boost bar recharges itself when not in use. This gave me a great feeling of unreserved freedom.

While flying, you use guns attached to your jetpack rather than standard guns. The weapon I had in the demo was a simple machine gun with infinite ammo that never paused to reload. Later in the game, you will be able to upgrade your jetpack in various ways, but this was not shown in the demo.

Another function of the jetpack is hover mode. While hovering, you use the guns held in your hands rather than the jetpack’s weapons. My favorite thing to do in the demo was to fly at boosting speeds down toward a platform with enemies, switch to hover mode a bit before hitting the ground, and start shooting all the enemies below me as I floated to the ground. It gave off a fantastic sense of momentum that made me feel like an action hero.

While on the ground, the game starts feeling very similar to Gears of War. There is an almost identical cover system, though thankfully taking cover and running are mapped to different buttons. You can aim from cover, shoot blindly, or lob grenades. You can also acquire the weapons of your defeated enemies.

In spite of its competence, the ground combat didn’t really seem like anything new. The jetpack, on the other hand, made this game what it is. The ability to fly around really set this apart from the other shooters I’ve played. The Dark Void demo has transformed the game into a highly anticipated title for me and I look forward to getting my hands on the full version early next year.

Tags: capcom, Dark Void, hands-on impressions, jetpacks, PAX '09, PAX 2009 COVERAGE, third person shooter

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.