Dark Void

Of all the great franchises Microsoft has frustratingly sat on since the Xbox era began (High Heat Baseball, MechWarrior, Links, and so on), Crimson Skies is the one we remember most fondly. It’s been dormant since its 2003 Xbox Live–defining turn, and it doesn’t look like we’ll ever see another one. But thanks to Dark Void, we no longer care. The game’s being built just a couple of miles from Xbox headquarters in Redmond, and Dark Void’s development team includes over a dozen members of FASA Studio — creator of that beloved original-Xbox action-flight game. After spending a day at their office playing several levels, we can see that Void takes many of its cues from Crimson, upping the ante in nearly every conceivable way.

The one-upsmanship begins in the story department. While Crimson Skies kept us interested with an alternate-reality World War II tale, Dark Void gets exponentially crazier…and a lot more riveting. As a cargo pilot named Will, you’re on a routine flight that ends up with our hero flying into the Bermuda Triangle, where he’s somehow transported to another dimension called, naturally, the Dark Void. There he finds his ex-girlfriend, Ava, who seems to know more about what’s going on than he does, Airtight tells us. He also encounters famed electricityobsessed scientist Nikola Tesla.

As you explore the Void and attempt to find your way home, you’ll face foes that appear to be robots. A closer inspection, though, reveals that each inorganic body is actually a shell for a small, slug-like creature — the lowest evolutionary form of a race of creatures known as the Watchers. Naturally, they long to get to Earth and conquer it (it’s worth noting that Airtight kept phrasing it as their “return to” Earth…hmm…), but they’re opposed by the Survivors, a group of humans (some Void-born) who are reluctant to trust any outsiders. Winning their confidence will be a key story arc in the game.

Of course, Will, Ava, and Dr. Tesla all just want to get out — and stop the Watchers before they do — so it’s the button-bashing, thumbsticktwisting action that matters most. Here, Void separates itself from the rest of the action genre by mixing three control schemes simultaneously — on-foot, jetpack, and vehicle. That would be a challenge for any game, and it’s one that Void will live or die by. Fortunately, it’s well on its way to fruition, if our extensive hands-on time is anything to go by. While our first brief session with the gamepad earlier this year sent us repeatedly slamming into cliffsides and walls anytime we engaged our jetpack, the controls and flight mechanic have since been balanced so that we were much more comfortable while in Rocketeer mode. No wipeouts, even.

12NEXT