If you flip back a few months to my year-end futurespective you’ll find a game listed there that I had some hope for; Dark Void.

Dark Void promised to be a 3rd Person Shooter that opened up third dimension with the use of a rocket pack. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Abraxas, why aren’t you happy with the regular 2 dimensions?”

Because envelopes were made to be pushed, duh.

Anyway, Dark Void said it was going to be different as it would give you a rocket pack so you could fly around and shoot the enemies instead of just hiding behind the standard chest-high walls shooter games are littered with.

And, having played the game I can tell you that Dark Void does indeed deliver- it has a rocket pack. You can use it to fly around. You can even use it occasionally to fly around your enemies and shoot them from the air. It even plays the perspective trick and instead of hiding behind chest high walls it’s ledges you hang on to during the shooting portion. Dark Void gives everything it promised.

But it’s really really really boring.

Like really boring.

And the terrible thing about Dark Void is that it’s not a terrible game. There’s nothing horrible or mishandled other than some minor cosmetic flaws- the character lips sometimes don’t line up with the voicing, shadows are a little off, some collision problems. But nothing that is game breaking.

It’s just that Dark Void forgot to promise fun and deliver on it.

There are no wow moments in this game. There’s no point where you say “Holy shit, that was cool!”

Cause in point: you jump down this shaft that you can’t see the bottom of, and the only thing you have is a rocket pack. This should be a point where you go screaming down the hole at breakneck speeds only to fire the rockets mere seconds before splattering on the ground. Instead you’re supposed to use the rocket pack to gently hover down to the bottom of the shaft.

Seriously? You give me a rocket pack, something that has been promised to use by Science Fiction since the 30’s, and you want me to hover gently down? WTF?!?

No! I should be ripping through the sky at breakneck speeds, dodging geography and bi-planes. Sure the game starts that way, with some weird tutorial you’re just dropped into, but that ends pretty quickly. Then the game really starts, and you’re stuck in a cliché adventure plot where the protagonist guy who is charmingly irresponsible says to the sensible female lead, “Why did we break up anyway?” while he’s shooting at alien robots.

Sure, having characters talk about their history together while the player is dodging or jumping or whatever is a great way to unload some exposition without it being a series of talking heads but damn, don’t be cliché AND boring about it.

Seriously, the only thing I remember about the story for Dark Void was that it was boring and I groaned a lot when the characters were talking. And shoe-horning in Tesla as an explanation as to how or why the jet-packs work is lame. Seriously, let the eccentric inventor rest. It’s neither interesting or new to use Tesla as a way to explain how the “technology” of the game works.

True Story: Tesla could have become the world’s first billionaire if he’d sold his patents to Westinghouse back in the day. Instead he decided to not sell out to Westinghouse, and died a pauper in New York, believing that the pigeon that came to his window sill every day was the reincarnation of his dead wife.

Anyway, back to Dark Void.

The combat in Dark Void is just as forgettable as the rest of the game. There are two essential guns; an under-powered machine gun and an under-powered alien “pew-pew” gun. The melee attack in the game is stupidly over-powered to the point where it’s one hit, one kill. Seriously, it got to the point in the game where it was easier just to run up and punch the robots than it was to jet about and shoot them.

Oh yeah, the antagonist in this game is a bunch of alien robots, or slug-aliens in robot suits, it’s not really clear about that either. Some of the robots collapsed when you punched them in the head, and others had a slug thingy slide out of them. I don’t remember if the game ever explained that either.

So, the game boils down to this- you can take cover or jump about (on some screens, not every screen) wearing the enemies down with clip after clip of ammo or you can just run up there and punch their heads off.

You tell me which one sounds better.

Anyway. The combat mechanics of the game are fine, taking cover works most of the time, throwing grenades works fine most of the time, and the fighting works most of the time but it’s not memorable. None of it furthers the world, the characters, or the story.

Likewise the graphics of the game are run of the mill. Sweeping vistas appear when there are supposed to be those sort of things, closed in spaces that twist in around on themselves, and all the other standard elements of the 3rd Person Shooter. Not a one of these graphical elements builds on another to create a realistic and inhabited space.

Dark Void is not a terrible game, it’s forgettable. There is nothing exceptional about it. Dark Void neither succeeds greatly or fails miserably. Dark Void is another game in a long line of serviceable but highly forgettable games. It won’t make the worst of lists, the best of lists, of even the under-rated lists. In fact, the only lists I can see Dark Void making are the sort that end up on resumes.