Dark Void starts off like many other shooter games, but very quickly draws you into a very interesting premise. The very first time that you're perspective shifts, and you begin fighting your way down a vertical shaft, the platforms now acting as cover, letting gravity pull you down to your next cover/platform is a cool moment.
Eventually you get the flight capable jetpack, allowing you to quickly go from simplistic cover based shooter to aerial dogfight mode. In aerial mode you get unlimited machine guns (and upgrading the jet pack unlocks missiles as well), which is very handy when you are down to your last clip and a bunch more enemies just dropped down the wall next to you.
The weapon upgrade system is simple and effective. Collect dropped tech points from enemies to buy add ons for the weaponry. The first machine gun has a lot of ammo to begin with, but takes 1 clip to kill each enemy, so was ineffective. But when upgraded to shoot exploding rounds, it suddenly was killing 3–4 enemies each clip (on normal mode anyway).
While the flight controls are difficult to begin with, you will soon pick it up, and then actually be able to destroy the enemy craft (rather than shooting the sky like I did during the intro sequence). The one downside to the control scheme, is that normally the Y button has to be pressed twice to activate the flight mode, but when jumping, only one button press is needed. I am used to Y being weapon swap, and in the middle of a jump and wanting to swap to another weapon, I instead rapidly smear myself all over the narrow corridor im fighting through…
However the main issue is the length of the game, being a little over 6 hours without any online play to explain this lapse. It begins to build up towards this epic showdown, and then suddenly you just get to fight the final boss, without having to fight through the enemy horde first
Despite that, the excellent aerial mode, great upgrade system and additional difficulty level and collectibles will add to the length of the game. It is just a pity that it stops short of becoming something epic.