Dark Void: Faliure to Launch

Say what you will about Capcom. They at least tried to get their new IPs off the ground, albeit sometimes with very mixed results. The short-lived Dark Void franchise very much falls into that category. I remember Dark Void getting a decent amount of coverage at the time and the demo that was released for the game showed some promise. Unfortunately, it received less-than stellar reviews, sold poorly, and quickly faded into the bottom of bargain bins everywhere. I almost forgot about Dark Void myself until I was scrolling through my Steam library and saw Dark Void Zero (the 8 bit prequel game) which led to me buying a copy of Dark Void proper for less than a dollar. So much like with my recent super-sized Bionic Commando bloggerino, I decided to play through the Dark Void series to see how it holds up in the year of our lord 2024. Luckily there are only two games this time around, so this will move along a lot faster than last time.

Dark Void (PC, PS3, XBOX 360)

Dark Void is not a good game. It’s your basic third-party Uncharted clone (which was the style at the time), with the usual token Nathan Drake hero character voiced by the forever typecasted Nolan North. The third person shooting mechanics are exactly what you’d expect - you can carry two weapons at a time, a set of grenades, and your health regenerates. The enemies are your usual cannon fodder that are easily taken down, mixed in with some bullet sponges that can take way too long to kill. I quickly found out that the melee attack was the easiest way to quickly run through most of the enemies, so I just did that whenever I wasn’t just running past them to get to the next checkpoint. There are also QTEs when fighting bigger enemies and they’re just as fun as you would expect.

The main gimmick is the jetpack, which seems like it takes for-fucking-ever to finally be able to fly around with and then jokes on you because it doesn’t even control very well. It’s like sometimes the controls are alright, but then other times the sense of speed is off and it feels like you’re either going way too fast or not fast enough. At least that’s how it felt to me for the brief time I spent playing the game before calling it quits.

I usually make it a point to complete the games I write about, or at the very least try to get a few hours in before deciding whether or not I want to continue. But this is one of those rare occasions where I had to tap-out fairly early. I honestly couldn’t stomach the game for very long before having to take a break. Not because the game is that awful (I mean I played through Sonic '06 for christ sakes), but because playing it literally gave me a headache and slight motion sickness. I highly doubt the game would’ve somehow won me over anyway. The 2 hours or so that I played were fairly dull and not even flying in a jetpack was able to make the game any fun. So this one gets a big thumbs-down from me. I had a fairly miserable time playing it.

Dark Void Zero (PC, iOS, DSiWare)

Dark Void Zero was released alongside Dark Void as a “found” Capcom title. It is a 2D action platformer in the style of a 8-bit game and was meant to serve as a prequel to the events of Dark Void. Much like in the base game, the main gimmick mostly revolves around using a jetpack to traverse through each stage. Each level has its own main objective. The first level has you collecting various keycards, the second level has you finding switches to unlock the way out, and the third level has you destroying generators to unlock the encounter with the final boss fight. There are also side objectives, but there isn’t really any award for completing them aside from unlocking some achievements.

The developer, Other Ocean Interactive, did a great job emulating the look and feel of a classic NES game quite well, right down to the difficulty. I forgot how fucking hard Dark Void Zero was. Even on Easy the game doesn’t hold back on whooping your ass. The game does save after you complete a level, but the lives don’t reset when you continue and you’re stuck with however many lives you had from the previous level. There are only 3 levels, so if you have to restart from scratch you should be able to get through the levels quickly once you’re familiar with them, so it really isn’t all that bad.

The soundtrack is also pretty damn good as well. Composer, Bear McCreary, knocked it out of the park with the music and it sounds exactly like something you would’ve heard by Capcom on the NES back in the day. Give it a listen!

Dark Void Zero was a well-designed action platformer that deserved to be much more than a novelty tie-in game. For whatever reason, Capcom decided against releasing it on either the PS3 or Xbox 360 digital stores, which was a bit of a strange move considering those were the target platforms for the anchor game. They also had great success with Mega Man 9, and the release of Mega Man 10 was right around the corner, so there was still a market for 8 bit throwback games on those platforms. This is normally where I would say go "check the game out", but Capcom recently delisted Dark Void Zero from Steam (which was the last platform the game was available on), making it impossible for anyone to purchase it. Hooray for the digital age of gaming, right?

I guess there’s no better way to end talking about the Dark Void series than on a whimper. Does anyone reading this even remember Dark Void? Or am I just talking into a void? Let me know by leaving a comment below!