LAIR

An obvious pick for a list such as this one, Lair is forever going to hold the dubious crown of being one of the most bitter disappointments in gaming. Factor 5’s excellent track record and promising pre-launch showings suggested that Lair was going to be a huge early PS3 hit, but upon its release, the game turned out to be sort of a broken mess, thanks in large part to its frustrating motion-heavy controls. Even now, close to two decades later, it’s hard to get over the disappointment that was Lair.

Another month down means yet another month for your various subscriptions to roll over into April. For those subscribed to the various game services out there, that usually means another new batch of titles to redeem for no extra charge. The longest one going at this point is Xbox Games with Gold, and now we know the slate for April.

For the entire month, you’ll be able to redeem Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, a top down action RPG set against the backdrop of Norse mythology. From the 1st of April to the 15th, you’ll be able to get Capcom’s Dark Void, a high flying adventure game, and from the 16th to the 30th, you can get Hard Corps: Uprising, an entry in the brutally hard Contra series. Finally, from April 16th to May 15th, you can get behind a big rig with Truck Racing Championship.

The games will be redeemable to all Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate users starting April 1st, and will be able to added on all Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, as well as 360 for the two compatible games.

April's Games with Gold kicks off with Vikings: Wolves of Midgard and Dark Void, followed by Truck Racing Championship and Hard Corps: Uprising. Full details here: https://t.co/8P3BPDkGez

— Xbox Wire (@XboxWire) March 30, 2021

The visuals are one of the low points of the game

You play the game as Will Grey, a wise-cracking cargo pilot in 1938 during the pre-World War II era. Will’s plane crashes in the Bermuda Triangle and somehow he gets transported to an alien parallel universe called “The Void”. There you meet Nikola Tesla who introduces you to a badass jetpack, helping you kill aliens while trying to find your way back home. There’s a lot to like about Dark Void. For starters, the core ground & hover-based combat is really fun. Like Gears of War, you’ll spend a lot of time hiding in cover, popping up briefly to shoot enemies. But since you’ve got a jet pack, you can fly up to the high ground and take them out from a better vantage point. Being able to look for cover horizontally and vertically provides a fresh take on your standard cover-based third-person shooter. The story itself is traditional sci-fi stuff, only with a 1930’s backdrop, and it lasts around 8 hours. I grew attached to the characters over the course of the game which is a success since I usually couldn’t care less.

Combat for most of the part is fun

Play Dark Void for 10 minutes and you’ll notice the epic soundtrack. While the rest of the game’s quality fluctuates throughout, the music is consistently strong. You always get the feeling that something important is happening. Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica) did the score and he earned his pay. The voice of the everyman, Nolan North, voices Will Grey and he does his usual great job. He really should to take a day off once in awhile though and let someone else get a paycheck. Here he’s doing the same Nathan Drake-style character as he did in Uncharted, but it works fine here so there’s nothing to complain about.

As good as the ground and hover based combat is, the air combat is equally terrible. You’d assume that “the guys behind Crimson Skies” would know how to do flight combat, but apparently they’ve forgotten. Transitioning between hover mode and full flight is awkward and disorienting. Even after finishing the game, I still don’t feel “good” at it. The levels based soley on flight combat felt like chores and I couldn’t wait for them to be over. Fortunately, the majority of the levels (about 80%) feature traditional third-person combat.

Graphically, the game lacks an overall polish that keeps it from feeling like a top-tier game. Some of the areas look like they’re from the copy & paste school of game design (“A tree over here, and now a tree over there!”). The visuals lie somewhere between average and not good. Let me put it this way, you won’t be using Dark Void to show off your new TV to your friends.

But the air combat is not!

I liked Dark Void, but I’ll admit that it’s an aquired taste. Once you get used to the flight mechanics, things pick up (sorry for the pun). Whether you’ll stick with it long enough to reach that point depends on you. While the concept behind Dark Void is great, the execution is lacking in places. I firmly believe one day a game with a guy and a jetpack will be released and it will be great. Maybe it will be called Dark Void 2. There’s certainly room for improvement and I’d love to see a sequel where it’s issues get addressed.

If you played the lousy demo (which was too short and only served to showcase the game’s flaws) then I suggest you reconsider skipping over this one. There’s some fun to be had despite a few niggling flaws. If you’re in the mood for a shooter with a twist then give Dark Void a try.

Many thanks to hugegamer.com and Dynamite_Jack for this amazing review.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.