The 5 Most Dangerous Games of 2009

Dark Void

Key Innovations In Dark Void

  • 1. Vertical Cover: You may be sick and tired of having your muscle-bound hero peeking over barriers and around corners to find that perfect shot, but Dark Void is taking the concept in a new direction?literally. Peeking out from above or beneath a platform to pick off opponents brings back the exhilaration you had the first time you tucked behind cover in Gears of War.
  • 2. Fight and Flight: There's no one way to tackle and enemy or puzzle in Dark Void. Whether running and gunning old school style, taking evasive action by floating around, or making a tactical strike from the air, you've got options, each with their own pros and cons depending on the enemies and environments.

Like the bastard child of Gears of War and Disney's The Rocketeer, Dark Void has surfaced from the shadowy depths of gaming improbability. Its world is half steam punk, half science fiction, as though an art deco artist saw a glimpse of the future, went mad, and painted a dream where Nicola Tesla creates jetpacks and leads revolutions. In short, this game looks utterly sweet.

Super fly

If you've never heard of it before, you can be forgiven because Dark Void is developer Airtight Games' first title. The company, however, is filled with folks who know flight, as many of its members worked on Xbox flight sim Crimson Skies: High Road to revenge. It turns out, however, that they may just know a thing or two about shooters as well.



Yet here we are getting ahead of ourselves, so let's back up. Dark Void is the story of a man named Will: a cargo pilot who, after crashing in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, finds himself transported through realities to a parallel dimension. There, technologically armored beings called Watchers rule the planet with electric fists, and it's only through the engineering skills of infamous inventor Nikola Tesla that a resistance movement could arise. The Survivors -- humans who, like Will, passed through the Bermuda Triangle -- are struggling for their lives, but with jetpacks strapped to their backs, they've managed to even the proverbial odds.

Yeah, it's pretty campy, but given that it's basically The Rocketeer with guns (right down to the streamlined bucket-helmet), that's forgivable. And since you can throw yourself into a speed-demon's flying fantasy whenever you like, it's actually downright entertaining.



Verta-kill

You don't start out with the ability to fly, of course. Initially, all Will can do is hover for a few seconds, which is where the game's other mechanic comes in: vertical cover. Take all the glorious devilry of Gears of War or Killzone, from blind-shooting and grenade hurling to round-the-corner melee grabs, and then flip it on its side, and you've got the idea. Interactively, it feels very much like normal cover as Will leaps from cliff edge to cliff edge, but in Dark Void you can lose your grip or yank enemies over the side and watch them plummet to the ground.

And when you finally get the ability to take to the air, you don't just fly, you dominate. Will can reverse his thrust in microseconds, sideslip out of enemy fire, boost to phenomenal speeds, and even board ships Colossus-style, take out their pilots, and turn their guns on their friends. Campy? Sure. Fun? Oh, how we hope so.



Dark Talk: 200 mph with Dark Void's developer

As one of the most innovative games we've seen in years, we've become quite curious about Airtight Games' Dark Void. We chatted with lead developer Jose Perez about some of the game's coolest concepts.

How does vertical cover differ from horizontal in terms of gameplay?

At first glance both vertical and horizontal cover share the same basic principles. But when you dig a little deeper through our vertical system you can really start to see the difference.

For starters, you get an incredible feeling of vertigo the first couple of times you use vertical cover. Then we add in the ability to melee enemies when they are above or below you. We have some mini-games where you start to lose your grip and have to mash the buttons like crazy to stay on the ledge. You can also leap forward from cover to cover ascending or descending the sides of cliffs. In fact, I would be really interested to see somebody take our vertical cover system and apply it to a horizontal surface. That would make for a pretty unique experience in and of itself!

How do you balance enemies and bosses in particular, so that one form of combat (on foot, hover, flight, or in a ship) is not more dominant than the others?

Some of this is balanced in the way we pace out the campaign. The first time you fight one of our mini-bosses, you simply don't have access to a ship, leaving only your rocket pack, guns, and handheld weapons to defend yourself. Some of this balance is done from an environmental perspective. It's really easy to use a UFO and destroy a bunch of ground troops when they have no cover, but as soon as they run indoors you are probably going to want to pursue them on foot.

In the end, it comes down to what decisions the player has made leading up to a specific encounter and what tools they have left that determines victory or failure.

How does the ability to steal ships in midair change air combat?

Simply put, commandeering an enemy vehicle in midair gives you more options in a dogfight.

You are very nimble when using the rocket pack but you don't have the safety net of being surrounded by a Watcher UFO. Plus the Watcher ship not only gives you more armor, they give you more fire power. There are also very few places to repair your air vehicles so you will often find yourself ditching UFO's or Survivor aircraft to find a more healthy option.

I'm pretty sure Dark Void is the only game where you can fly a rocket pack, land on a UFO, and shoot robotic exoskeletons in the face!

What sort of combat innovations are you bringing to each method of combat?

We have a number of innovations in both on foot and in-flight combat. The vertical cover system opens up new dimensions of combat in bizarre and exciting ways that force the player to think about combat in true 3D. From an aerial perspective, we're bringing a more intimate experience to flight games. With the rocket pack, you are not a plane, you are a living breathing character. This alone makes it feel like a new experience, even before you mention anything about hijacking UFO's.

Yet, I think the true innovation in Dark Void is the fusion of these two elements together. We don't separate the flight from the on foot experience -- they are one. The thrill of dive bombing an enemy at 200 mph, cutting your engines to make a dramatic landing, punching an alien in the face, and diving for cover before being hit with a rocket from a flying robotic snake monster is stupid amounts of fun!

Comments [21]

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Mr_ChickenWings

These all seem pretty great especially want to play M.A.G. and Dark Void. Well i want to play all of them. I hope i hear more about these games and can't wait for them to come out.

autarch_77

um...where is bioshock 2? and what is Bakugon again?
"The most...dangerous...games..." yeah that's what it says alright.

BlackMidget8

Dark Void looks great. But lets not pretend this kind of combat hasnt been done before. I hate to break this to everybody. But Tribes has been doing the kind of similar combat for like ten years now.

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