Finally we get a chance to check out the long anticipated action title from Capcom via a demo on the PSN and Xbox Live. I say Finally because this tittle has been in development it seems since the birth of the current gen consoles. After several run throughs of the demo here are our impressions.
Visuals:
As stated this title has been under development for some time now and maybe that is why the visuals seem quite antiquated compared to most recent releases. From the inital opening cutscene its apparent that the graphics dont hold up to the static screens shown up to this point. The characthers look bloated and the animations a bit sluggish and just not very life like. As to the in game graphics the environments are somewhat better when it comes to the montains that surround the valley the demo takes place in. On the other hand the enemy units and stuctures all looked a bit more cartoony. However in the action the animations of your characther, Will, do look very good as he attempts to gain control of the jet pack then flys around and later uses the cover system.
Gameplay:
At first run through no-one would blame you if you said the gameplay was hard or non-responsive but that is why we are here to tell you to give it a couple of run through before making any conclusions. If you have ever played a Z.O.E. game than you can easily understand this point. For Dark Void the first time you step out onto the cliff overlooking the Alien force-shield and try to take to the skies its quite possible that you will fly head first into the ground or the cliff side. Although a bit frustrating, with a second try you realize quickly what to do and level out. Once in the skies the ability to fly the jet pack is for the most part very intuitive and much like any other flying game. Up is down, down is up, left, right all with the left analog stick. Also the player has nice powerful machine cannons equipped during flight which dispatch enemies at a good distance and with little effort. My biggest complaint about the aerial combat portion of the demo is the fact that in order to perform barrel rolls and quick-turns in the air you have to press the R3 button which throws of the aim and just is not very intuitive.
For the ground portion of the demo you have to fly over to the Watcher base and attempt to disable the shield generator hidden within. There isn’t much new here you have a cover system similar to Dark Sector or G.O.W.. All and all the cover system works quite well and you should be able to dispatch most enemies with ease. The enemy AI is a little off as many times they just charge you and you can dispatch them with a melee attack using the O button. There was a bit of glitching in the camera when you are turning around fast in the corridors but hopefully this gets clean up before the game hits market next week. The biggest issue with ground combat I had, is the lack of power for the machine gun you start out with but once you get the alien weapons, firepower is no longer an issue.
Sound:
This is a demo and I can only say the sound sucked using Dolby 5.1. Although the majority of the sounds were fine I was completely unable to hear the characters speaking in the initial cut-scene. Like I said though its a demo so I am sure the final game sounds will be tuned properly.
Conclusion:
All in all not a bad Demo if the player takes some time and gets used to the flying mechanics. Considering the amount of time that has gone into the development of this title I expected a bit more graphically and there is still some minor clean up to be done with the camera and frame rate but not bad just the same. The biggest concern with this demo was the complete lack of the primary hype factor for this game, and that is the vertical cover system and battles. Its a bit worrisome that the one factor that has kept this game in the headlines was totally excluded from the demo.
