There is a school of thought, and one to which I subscribe, that states: do not name your video game after something that can mean something else. Be it a double entendre, a backhanded compliment, or an unwitting acronym, this is the same school of thought which states that if your surname is Head you do not name your first son Richard. Likewise, if you are making a first person shooter based on the trials and tribulations of the Eleventh Airborne in the Pacific theatre, you don’t call it Airborne Rifle Squad Eleven. Indeed, if you are compiling a CD of the greatest hits of the greatest hits of all time, you don’t call it, HITSHITS.



Which makes me wonder why this game is called Dark Void. A couple of things spring to mind, and the first is that the obvious meaning of void is ‘empty space’, a black hole, or an abyss. If something is truly comprised of nothing, then that includes light, which makes the prefix of ‘Dark’ completely superfluous. It’s like saying ATM Machine or sweet honey, or high mountain. Unfortunately, void has other meanings, which mostly revolve around lack of content, being vacant, useless, ineffectual and in vain. Problematically for the creators of this game, void also means to evacuate, as in, void one’s bowels. This voids (if I may) the above-mentioned school of thought that states, that one should not name one’s prized intellectual property upon which one will stake their very reputation, after the act of taking a shit.

The splash screen doesn’t give much of the game away. It’s reminiscent of Aliens, insofar that it has a glowing slit of light in the centre, which is hardly reflective of the ‘dark’ part of the title. The first words uttered in the opening cutscene, “aw, crap,” echo the alternative meaning of the word ‘void’, and the main character, who looks like a downed WWII bomber tinkers with something with a large wrench. The game gets going, and without much explanation the main dude is running along with a BFG and a jetpack. A voice in his ear explains how to use the jetpack, implying that he’s never used it before, and as you leap from a waterfall halfway up a cliff, you do wonder how he got up there to begin with if he hadn’t used the ‘pack.

I spent the first few seconds of flight bumping aimlessly down the face of the cliff, and no amount of input on the left or right stick would point me in any other direction than jagged rock. I finally managed to right myself and still have no idea what I’m supposed to me doing. Voice in ear says something like, take out a communication tower? I bounce into a glowing dome with some important looking stuff underneath it. Obviously, I’m not supposed to go that way yet.

I find out that by pressing A I am able to hover in one place and fire my normal weapon instead of the guns attached to the jetpack whilst in flight mode. The only problem with this is that the recoil on the BFG I’m hucking about is much that a perfectly aimed shot will not find its target on account of the gun bucking so far up, and the tracers illustrate this lack of accuracy by zipping over the top of the comms tower.

Flying is a bitch to control. The left stick controls the pitch and yaw (up down, left right), like an aeroplane, up is down and down is up, and the right stick controls the roll (spinning on the forward axis) with left and right. This is a monumental clustercuss for me to get to grips with. Not only that, but something in my house smells reminiscent of an exes’ perfume, and I’m pretty sure she’s not hiding anywhere. It’s distracting to say the least.

I somehow manage to destroy all the communication towers without flying into their mangled wreckage and I await further instructions. Unfortunately for me further instructions require pulling off ‘manoeuvres’ with the ‘pack and this involves pressing the right stick down and then pulling the left and the right stick in some combination and my guy does something. It doesn’t give you much more to go on than that, but I guess this is an Important Part of The Game, because I’m getting a mini tutorial on it.

Without much feedback on how I did, a cutscene arrives telling me that I have to take out an anti-aircraft gun. My understanding of AA guns is that they shoot down planes, so with that thought in mind, I fly my fleshy bag of blood and bones directly towards Instant Death with the rocketpack guns blazing. Clearly this Rocketeer wannabe is made of sterner stuff than the WWII plane he looks like he was shot out of, because he sucks up the high calibre rounds like they’re tapioca pudding.

I land on the platform where the AA once stood, and some UAVs turn up to shoot at me. Now clearly, standing upright and shooting them down is not what I’m supposed to do, because the unforgiving recoil of the ridiculous gun I’m carrying ineffectually pisses ammo into the air with a 100% miss-rate. I take to the skies to take these bastards out. Or at least, bounce off the cliffs for a bit. Even then it takes me a while to find the things to shoot at, because while the radar is helpful enough to tell you where these things are in relation to me on a 2D plane, it doesn’t give any indication of their third axis, i.e. their height, so I still have no idea where they are until they shoot at me, and even then it’s touch and go.

Inevitably my guy dies, and I wish I’d chosen to play this on casual setting so that the game plays itself and I might stand a chance. This is when I realise that pressing LB locks onto a target and then I get the difficult task of lining my guns up with it. Thanks for telling me I could do that, where was the tutorial for that one? I die again because even though I can now see the badguy, I can’t actually kill it cos I have no concept of how to control my guy in relation to it. If I get close enough, a large red B appears over the flying saucer, which if pressed launches my character into a quicktime event, presumably so I can take it out without shooting it down.

And that’s where I have to leave this demo. It would be unkind to call this an unplayable mess just because I can't get to grips with it, but a lack of intuitive control and little exposition or guidance as to how to do anything makes for a particularly jarring experience. I’ve said before that demos either allow you play a game that you’re giddy with hype about before you buy it, or to confirm that games you’ve never heard of aren’t worth your time or money, and this demo definitely falls into the latter category. My interest in this game is void, as in null and.