Capcom's Latest: Dark Void

Void just about sums up Capcom's latest third person shooter. You play as an ex-fighter pilot trapped in the Bermuda Triangle, flying around with your jet pack fighting evil, fascist-loving aliens who want to take over the world. Too bad the game leaves you grounded more often than naught.

As stated above, you play as Will, a downed pilot who finds himself trapped in the Bermuda triangle. You quickly find out that the place is overrun with reptilian creatures from another dimension that want to aid the fascists, bring about world war and enslave humanity. The player finds most of this out through informative blurbs during load screens, but Will just automatically assumes the aliens are helping them because the aliens are bad guys and that's what bad guys do. The game takes another banal turn when you are given your jet pack by none other than Nikola Tesla who just happens to be doing research within the triangle. If Capcom was trying to go with a Pulp or retro-style story with Dark Void it misses the mark in a big way. Aside from our plucky ace pilot and Tesla the game's look has the same generic looking baddies as almost every other b-list game. The graphics are great, beautiful in fact, but the design of everything is just very unoriginal so it kind of squanders it.

The gameplay is so-so. You fight on three plains; ground, vertical and air. First is your standard on the over-the-shoulder, ground fighting. You fight dozens of alien cyborgs at a time through lush jungles and plane wrecks. The game has you use cover, similar to Gears of War, to evade enemy shots; which adds some depth to the battles. You pick up weapons from fallen humans and aliens that can be upgraded at weapon boxes littered throughout the game. You begin fighting vertically when you receive your first jet pack. There are ledges throughout the game that you will need to scale with the assistance of button prompts. Enemies chase after you during this so you have to fight while hanging on for dear life. It takes a little while to get used to the button prompts and trying to gun down enemies while hanging upside down made me dizzy more than once. It's not bad, but it can get pretty annoying during particularly long sections.

Then finally, the air combat. For the big selling point and draw of the game, the air combat is not as much fun as it should be. The controls are very sensitive and jerky. Trying to do anything with an iota of precision will jerk you in a new direction and most likely into a wall. You use both analog sticks when flying which leaves you constantly readjusting yourself, as one changes your direction and the other changes your angle. You could practice, but the air combat levels are so few and far between it makes it unnecessary. Capcom also added a completely useless lock-on feature. When you press the button you lock-on to the nearest ship, but instead of Will turning around and facing it, the camera just swivels to focus on the ship leaving you stupefied as to where you are flying off to. It is great to know where the enemy is but not so much to slam into a mountain. You have two options for combat while flying, a pair of machine guns or boarding their saucers. The machine guns have limitless ammo and fire in whatever direction you are facing, but since it is so hard to pinpoint anything, these aren't all that helpful. Boarding the saucers is tricky. By pressing the prompt button when near an enemy ship, Will flies towards it and lands on top. If you hit the prompt buttons in the correct sequence you will pop open the cockpit, dispense hot leaded justice to the alien inside and take their ship. This is actually a lot of fun, but actually getting close enough to a ship to do this was rare. I only ever managed to do it by accident.

Dark Void does have its good points though. The music, composed by Bear McCreary of the Battlestar Galatica fame, did an amazing job with it and I enjoyed every piece I heard. The graphics are well polished and gorgeous to look at, especially when flying. All of the characters and enemies in the game are well rendered and move very fluidly. I actually feel a bit bad about not liking this game that much. There were a few times in the game when I was diving at a boss from the air, firing all the while or punching out a robot and seeing it's head fly off that I was really having a good time, but it didn't make up for bland story and missions or the jerky controls. The game does have potential though and If Capcom reworked it there could definitely be a new franchise in it for them. Right now Dark Void just isn't worth the sixty dollar price tag, but it does make a good rental.