One of the games that I wanted to check out going into E3 was Airtight`s Dark Void. The early trailers had shown some stomach churning vertical combat and given that Airtight is composed of a lot of people who worked on the Crimson Skies games there was a lot of potential in the game. After talking to Jose Perez III (audio below) I think Dark Void is another game to keep on your radar.

You play Will, your typical everyman who`s sucked into the Void while traveling through the Bermuda Triangle. Now you have to find a way to escape and defeat the Watchers, an alien race trying to destroy mankind. The best way to think about the vertical combat is to take the cover based gameplay from Gears of War and turn it 90 degrees upward. Throw in a little acrophobia and now you`re talking Dark Void`s core gameplay mechanic (which makes sense given that the game is using the Unreal Engine 3). You`ll only be climbing up rock surfaces for part of the game as eventually you`ll build a fully functional jet pack and that`s where the Crimson Skies influences really start to show. With the fully upgraded jetpack you can zoom around levels without any worries or restrictions and the game opens up to accomplish that.

I only got to play the game for about five minutes but zooming around the with the jetpack was a lot of fun as you got to try and take out a series of flying saucers. The real key is that you need to board one of the flying saucers and then use it to take out the others in the area. Once you get close to one of them you press the B button and then that kicks off a small mini-game where you circle around the edge of the saucer trying to work your way in. Thankfully it`s not a quicktime event but once you have control you can then zoom around and take down the rest of the aircraft with ease. Controls are very tight and responsive. I will admit that flying in the jetpack is a bit like flying in WarHawk as you have the option of hovering as well as flying forward.

From what I saw the game looks like it`s coming along well. I do worry that the vertical combat part of the game is going to take some getting used to as you do have to climb your way along a linear path but I don`t think a lot of people will mind it. I guess we`ll find out when the game ships. Here`s our interview with Jose Perez III that explains more about the backstory of the game and more about the vertical combat gameplay.


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