Capcom's desire to branch out into Western development sounded like a good idea at the time. The goal was to create a division of the company that catered to Western gameplay ideals; primarily different to the more ardent (and oft whacky) Eastern gaming concepts Capcom Japan have been known to embrace.

The first two cabs off the rank then are Bionic Commando from GRIN Studios, and Dark Void from Airtight Games, the latter being the reason we're presenting you with this feature today, and also the reason for "Capcom's desire to branch out into Western development sounded like a good idea at the time".

It's not that Dark Void is a lacking game, it's just that it's deficient in anything original barring its story. Everything else barely scratches the surface of innovation, and while it might seem like the Rocketeer element is the game's answer to the above, it comes across more as a gimmick than anything else, or at least a component of the game that is not nearly utilised to its fullest, and really, with this game's story foundation there is more than enough reason to utterly explore the jet pack.



I am, however, fully obliged to tell you I only saw a small portion of the game, and that for all intents and purposes, there's a chance I'm completely wrong and Dark Void will be that all-important piece of software that advances videogames and the action genre to unparalleled heights. But I've been in the business a while, and from what I've seen, there just isn't a lot of originality here, and that's likely not going to change for the final product.

But let's set it up for you. You play the role of Will, a hapless hero who's been sucked into a parallel universe after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle. It turns out this is where all those mysterious Bermuda Triangle vanishings end up, and you come into contact with a host of humans who've been living here for ages, including the infamous Nikola Tesla.

Humans are not alone here though, and the survivors have been at war with an alien race known as the Watchers, beings who once controlled humans until a handful of Adepts managed to banish them to the realm from which you, yourself, are now trapped.

With Tesla's help, sheer determination and reverse-engineered Watcher technology, Will must lead the fight for the humans and stop the Watchers from returning to Earth once again.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the game's story is definitely an awesome, original sci fi offering, with the inclusion of Tesla being of particular importance and cool. But the example of gameplay and game structure I saw just didn't parallel the solid narrative foundation. Visually you're looking at a game that seems like a cross between Halo art-direction, and Mass Effect characters and set-pieces (only not as good). The tech behind the game is sold, and it stands-out, it's just nothing overly original or groundbreaking.



We saw Will flying around a small enclosed area where a host of gun turrets were trying to swat him out of the sky. The goal was to take out the turrets so your own ground-forces could be dropped off at an enemy stronghold at the centre of the map.

Our demoer then went on to show us how to engage in the game, with Will flying towards each turret and firing his own mounted weapons at them. Each turret took around two passes and this process look tedious and annoying. Hovering about the map, also, were enemy ships, so time was of the essence. Once the turrets are taken care of, the transport ship holding your buddies lands and they begin their assault on the enemy stronghold. This was interesting because we saw this actually happen a few times (our demoer died a fair bit through showing us various gameplay mechanics), and if Will ignored the assault (ie just kept flying around) the ground troops would always die. Intervention then, was key to keeping them alive, but it didn't bode well for friendly AI (especially because it all played out the same pretty much every time), but again – this is just preview code, so it's tough to say how the final result will fare.

Once the initial baddies had been taken out, it was on to a mini-boss (who was actually massive), and while it did look intimidating, it didn't look like it took much to take him out. Once he was dead though, Will had access to an even bigger cannon (though, much like Halo, picking up bigger weapons like this slowed Will down heaps), which we could then dish out to waiting baddies further on.

This was a case in point to show off the different types of weapons, and much like Gears of War, there were various, brutal melee attacks available based on which one you were using. Actually, in mentioning Gears, Dark Void's cover system is almost exactly the same, including a blind-fire option. You can advance between cover and use it to heal (as your health replenishes ala Halo, Gears etc). All of this was pointing to the game just standing as your usual action videogame affair – but some differences in action gameplay were waiting for us just around the corner.



Move onto the next room, and now we need to ascend a massive room with various baddies positioned and varying heights. Well, Will does have a jetpack, let's create a vertical cover system and invert the view for the player. Okay, slightly neater, and with the option to fly to the next cover point really quickly, I was relieved to finally see an original concept rear its head in the game. Unfortunately, the 'original' concept was used to achieve a completely unoriginal task making it seem more like a superfluous bit of flashy design than an ultimately functional idea. Damn, back to square one.

At the end of the demo I really just wasn't convinced Dark Void was going to offer us anything cool beyond its storyline and the fact that Battlestar Galactica composer, Bear McReary, is doing the game's soundtrack.

There's so much potential in the core mechanic of the game's character being able to fly, but not showing anything remotely compelling with said mechanic to the press told me beyond the initial idea, maybe Airtight just haven't exercised enough creativity. But again, this was a hands-off preview demo – we still have E3 next month, so we'll just wait and see. For now though, know that Dark Void has a lot of convincing to do to this games journalist.