dark void - self explanatory

So who's excited for Dark Void? Anyone? I'm going to guess that you're not. I know I'm not. Hell, even Capcom, the publisher of the game, isn't excited. Not only have they pushed the release date back right before releasing the demo, but they publicly stated in an interview with Kotaku that "Our experience...has demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new titles to overseas companies." Because of the failure of Bionic Commando, and the impending failure of Dark Void, Capcom have stripped all original title development rights from their western studios and will only allow them to work on sequels, dlc, etc. while the Japanese teams handle new IPs. Wow...that's pretty harsh. I mean, Bionic Commando bombed pretty hard, but the fact that they've already given up on Dark Void before it's release is a huge statement...so how bad is this game?

The first thing I noticed upon starting the demo up is that the protagonist looks a lot like Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series. And then he talked...and guess what? They are voiced by the same fucking guy, Nolan North. Are you kidding me? Not only did they to create the most generic-looking guy they could, but they still found a way to make him look like Nathan Drake and, hell, just to seal the deal he even has the same voice. Smooth move...I'm sure no one will ever catch that. I probably don't even have to say it, but yes, they also have nearly identical personalities too. But let's move along to the gameplay.The above image looks like it could have been taken from Dead Space, another exaomple of this game's identity crisis. Dark Void actually focuses on both aerial combat and exploration, as well as Gears of War style "hide behind an obstruction and shoot until all the bad guys are dead" action. Flying around on your Rocketeer jetpack sucks. Aiming is even worse. It's not fun and I never feel like I'm flying...I feel like I'm floating wildly through the air. Nathan Drake/Dark Void guy can yell "whoo hoo!" as much as he wants, but there is nothing exciting about flying in this game. You'll be glad when you shoot down all the generic robot sentries out of sky so you can get on the ground and fight.

So when you're on the ground you have a big gun and you shoot aliens. I have nothing good to say about this aspect of the game either. The cover mechanic is pointless because the enemies are too retarded to pose a threat. Speaking of the enemies, for a second I thought I was playing a really shitty version of Metroid Prime 3. Yeah, if Metroid Prime on the Wii got raped by Gears of War, and then Warhawk for PS3 flew overhead and took a massive shit all over everything. That's pretty much how I would describe this game. I know it's just a demo, but why the fuck any developer would waste their time and money working on this uninspired garbage is beyond me. Make sure you don't make the same mistake.

-Brian T.