I finished Dark void a day before the official UK release, it was quite possibly the most painful thing I’ve ever had the misfortune to play, The only decent voice actor, Nolan North who voiced many characters, from Nathan Drake to Gill Hammerstein also voices the main character, though it’s very clear that all they wanted was Nathan Drake, it’s still not too bad.

But it seems that every other voice actors sheer incompetence brings down his acting, he seems so out of place because of how terrible everyone else was. I also can’t understand the title “Dark Void” It’s not empty, and it can’t be the adjective “Invalid” So even the title is messed up, I also notice that the main character “Will” is basically almost identical to Rocket Man, the hip super hero. A far better name for the game would be “Rocket man the game” as terrible as it sounds it still makes more sense, and that way people wouldn’t think they nicked the idea, because there’s no mention of rocket man within the game.

On to story, it’s so utterly idiotic that the game actually attempts to confuse the player into thinking it has a story that holds, the only interesting part being the “Watchers” who I suddenly lost interest in when the game claims that in World War 2 England had more war machines than the watchers! The game is broken on so so many levels, getting trapped under stairs, enemies not appearing, making objectives impossible. I found myself having to hurl into rocks to die in hope the enemies would spawn this time, they did eventually, but it’s the kind of thing you’d not expect in a game on a next gen console, or any for that matter. The fire fights become dull, and pretty much any can be won with a few punches.

The flying is absolutely terrible, so terrible that Will has to tell the player it flies well. The rocket pack vs UFO fights become long and annoying, as you spend most of the time figuring out which is your cross hair and which is an allied ship, and then grappling onto an enemy UFO to attempt to hijack it, just for it to be blown up by one of your allies, which is the only time they’ll actually bother to shoot anything. The missions are linear, and the game makes sure of this by closing things off as you go forward, or in many cases, closing the path you’re meant to go off so you get stuck.

Then just when you think it can’t get any worse it dedicates half of the bloody game to an escort mission, and the bloody thing is a mobile base of some kind, what kind of base needs a little guy to fly around it on a jet pack to make sure it doesn’t blow up!? The cut scenes often glitch and Will moves behind the rest of it, and ends up attempting to pull a box off air. Also there’s an achievement for killing so many enemies in an anti gravity shield, but I found no enemies that use these.

And finally, the watchers have made a new grenade: The non explosive custard grenade, an expanding ball of yellow…something will destroy everything in it, or at least that’s what the loading screen said, which means the game lied. It did sod all.

Games: Dark Void, Platforms: Xbox 360, Genres: Action, Publishers: Capcom, Developers: Airtight Games