Dark Void

The Good
The gameplay is a mixed bag of tricks. It incorporates elements of hide-and gun ground combat as well as aerial dogfigthing action and both parts actually work well together which makes gameplay fun and varied. At it's best, It's an intense and actionpacked game with quite a few challenging battles. The dogfights though, are what really shines and is no doubt the game's strongest aspect. You have many choices here, you can shoot enemy aircrafts down with your rocketpack's inbuilt machineguns or man an allied antiaircraft gun to take the UFO's down. Or even more fun, you can chase after a UFO to hijack it and then fly it yourself.

The Bad
You aren't likely to appreciate this game for it's plot. I thought it was quite weak, mainly because it seems like a patchwork of several halfbaked ideas instead of a coherent well-defined story. Also, none of the characters have any real personalities and come across as shallow and dull stereotypes so it's hard to really care for any of them.

Searching for the collectibles in the game, techpoints and journal entries, is mostly a waste of time. The upgrades you can add to your weapons doesn't seem to make much difference and the journals which tells the stories of various other people within the void feels bland and uninteresting and adds nothing.

It is also too bad that the game's best aspect, using a rocketpack to battle UFO's at the same time feels so disappointingly underdeveloped. The rocketpack could have been far more useful and versatile, as it is it's little more than a regular plane in mini-size.It,s almost useless outside areas with wide, clear spaces. If you are in more cramped spaces you will barely be able to lift before you smack hard into a tree or crate. It is my opinion that when a game features a trademark tool such as a whip or a boomerang or jetboots or whatever, that tool shouldn't just have one purpose, it should be useful for various tasks. (Think of the bionic arm in Bionic Commando from 2009 and you should have a pretty good idea of what I mean) Also, there is hardly any difference between flying your rocketpack or a commandeered aircraft so the whole skyjacking-thing becomes little more than a fun gimmick.

Lastly, I encountered some annoying lockups of the game on more than one occasion so apparently the programmers haven't done their jobs as well as they should have.

The Bottom Line
I certainly had fun while playing this rather short adventure but when it was all over I didn't have any lasting impression of it. This game certainly had the potential to become a really great game which I think the developers could have achieved if they had incorporated a better story and focused more on the jetpack and dogfighting aspect. Still, it's certainly worth a playthrough if you can get hold of this game for a bargain-bin price.