Iron Sights
Reviewer - Iron SightsDark Void is a story about discovery, betrayal and mystery, well maybe not but at least the last one still stands true. I say mystery, as there seems to be a dark void in my head as to what the hell this story is all about. Don’t get me wrong the story wasn’t exactly the kind of complicated twisty-turny plot you would expect to find in the bowels of Hideo Kojima but, I just never got into it. Put it this way, if you find that you learn more about the story from the load screen messages than the actual cut scenes then you know you’re running into a sack of….....poo.
This is partly due to the characters being bland and uninteresting. Take one of the early cut scenes for example… Nathan Drake …er… Will and Ava escape from a plane crash, unscathed, no scratches, while showing little care about his “good” friend who is probably dead. It’s only later that Will expresses his sadness about his loss. PLEASE…. come on, (sigh), don’t try and have a moment now you’re about an hour in the game now.
As for the game play, it seems to have borrowed a lot of things from other games, the run and gun sequences as well as the cover system are very similar what we have already seen which isn’t a bad thing but brings nothing new to the table.
However later on things get interesting with the jet pack. Flying at first was annoying and difficult, but I seemed to adapt to the rubbish aiming system. Another thing I noticed was how stupidly easy the game was, I honestly stopped using my guns after I discovered the melee attack and cleared room after room of bad guys in no time. As for the bosses, a mere well placed fart in their face would have probably done the trick.
Click for larger imageWhat I Liked:
-Melee Attack- I found this mildly amusing
-Booting the lizards in the head- very satisfying
-Flying through the air with the jet pack
-Graphics were pretty decent
What I Didn’t Like:
-Difficult to play on keyboard and mouse
-Game was too easy- The bosses were a joke ("yoo hoo, hey dumb ass, I have giant glowing target that you musn't shoot") – the only challenge was trying to defeat 3 archon “scorpion” bosses whilst protecting your ship
-Dodgy AI- the flying saucers occasionally crashed into rocks and the ground enemies would sometimes stand still
-Activating the jet pack indoors = instant death
-Journals- never bothered reading them
-Melee attack and pick up weapon button is the same- this one really annoyed me. (When trying to bash people over the head I would pick up dropped weapons instead.)
-Guns and upgrade selection was poor
-Ending- see below for details
-No replay value, no multiplayer
-The levels felt samey and boring
-Very little variety of enemies
As I have mentioned before I have completed the game and saw the ending and that’s exactly what happened I only SAW the ending.
Let me explain… midway through the final boss battle the sound started cutting out and then it was stuck on a continuous loop, which meant that the final cut scenes had no sound, all except some annoying loop. I tried everything but the only thing that would have probably fixed it was if I turned it off and restarted the game, but I didn’t want to do the entire level all over again. Which, oh dear, brings me onto the saving system. Sure you will reach check points dotted throughout the level but the game forces you to play till the end of the chapter. If you were to quit after passing the check point you would still have to continue from the start.
Conclusion
I know I might come across as being very critical but it’s just my honest thoughts on this game. I don’t know but I have a feeling that the game didn’t know what it wanted to be and so it tried to do everything and in doing so shot itself in the foot. Somewhere in this game is something half decent but it’s shrouded in a weak story and hampered with dodgy controls, not to mention a few bugs too. Would I recommend this to anyone? Well Harold Bishop’s chin would shudder in disbelief if anyone paid hard earned cash to play this game.