Dark Void Review: The Jetpack Gimmick That Never Finds Its Own World

Dark Void is a shooter that never quite figures out what it wants to be. It offers a jetpack, a hover pack, a jetpack, and a world called the Void. It wants to be a grounded shooter and a flying shooter at once. Mostly, it picks the wrong thing at the wrong moment.

Trailer, via FirstPlays HD.

The World of the Void

The setting is a good hook. William Augustus Grey, voiced by Nolan North, is a cargo pilot who passes through the Bermuda Triangle and wakes up in the Void, a parallel dimension between worlds. He meets the Watchers, an alien race, and the Survivors, a human community locked in a desperate fight against them. The story wants Grey to feel desperate to get home, and it mostly does.

The problem is the way the game explains the Void. It’s a middle ground between the Watchers’ homeworld and Earth. The Watchers are supplying the Axis with wartime provisions. So Grey teams up with Nikola Tesla to fight back, using retrofitted Watcher tech. It’s a strange premise, and the game does little to make it feel strange.

The Jetpack Problem

The jetpack is the game’s biggest gimmick. It lets Grey rise above the ground and move through the air with a vertical cover system, a standard cover system, and a quick transition between both. In practice, the jetpack works fine on its own. The transition between flying and grounded play is where the game loses its footing.

Here’s the order of operations that never quite sits right:

1. A fight breaks out.
2. Grey moves to cover.
3. The game asks him to fly.
4. The game asks him to move back to the ground.
5. The game forgets which mode it’s actually in.

The system is built to handle both modes, but the game rarely commits to either fully. It keeps switching between them, and the middle ground never feels stable.

Upgrades and Shop

Tech points are the currency of Dark Void. Players buy upgrades using them through a shop at the start of every level, before the level begins. Enemies drop them, and they’re hidden throughout each stage. The system works, but it’s a small comfort when the pacing suffers.

The shop is a solid idea. The jetpack and the hover pack are upgrades worth unlocking. But the shop also means players spend time at the start of levels choosing upgrades, which means the game isn’t always moving forward at the pace it needs to.

The Fight Against the Watchers

The Watchers are the enemy of the Void, and the game tries to make them feel like a real threat. They’re not. The Survivors are a better hook, but the game leans on Grey’s desire to get home more than it builds the Watchers as a compelling foe. The Axis subplot is mentioned, but it’s never developed enough to carry the weight of the story.

The gameplay itself is solid. Cover systems work. Tech points work. The jetpack works. None of it adds up to a large-scale sense of threat.

Where It Falls Short

Dark Void never commits to its own idea of scale. It’s a shooter that should be big, and it’s a shooter that should be grounded. It can’t hold both at once. The jetpack is the game’s clearest strength, and the game spends more time fighting it than it does building around it.

The review score reflects that tension. Dark Void scores 5.9 out of 10, a mixed verdict from critics. The game can’t decide if it wants to be a grounded shooter or a flying shooter, and that indecision shows in almost every level.

The premise is a strong one. Grey’s desire to get home, the Void, the Watchers, the Survivors, the Axis subplot with Tesla — all of it has the pieces of a great story. Dark Void never quite puts them together.

The jetpack is the one thing worth praising. Everything else fights it.

Dark Void · game review · jetpack shooter · Nolan North · shooter games