Dark Void (Feat. plenty o' drums, rocketeering and potential!)

[REmaster]

This new game from Capcom first got my attention a few years back when the "mediocre" trailer was shown. However, when I picked up the collector's edition of RE5, I rushed home with excitement and opened the case to find an ad for Dark Void. Ever since the game once again caught my attention I've been researching the game and I think it's shaping up to be a decent one. Apparently it's releasing next month, so I thought I'd go ahead and start up the discussion. One of the reasons I'm so attracted to this game is because for some of the "older folks" on here, it reminds me of a real gem from some of our childhoods, "rocketeer" .

Sure the story might be completely different, but the character is still an average guy with a cool jacket, hi-tech jet pack and a badass helmet
Here's a link to a short trailer for those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL8OB...eature=related

[Carnivol]

Rise from your grave, dear thread of the past!

Demo this week!

With the launch of Capcom’s sci-fi shooter, Dark Void, right around the corner, Capcom is giving gamers a chance to test drive the void for themselves this week with a downloadable demo coming to Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network.

The Dark Void demo will be available for download on Xbox LIVE on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 and PlayStation Network on January 7, 2010.

The demo will give gamers a chance to strap on their jet pack for the first time and explore the mysterious and miraculous world of Dark Void through a combination of thrilling aerial dog-fighting, unique vertical cover action and on-foot combat. The teaser level will be a nice introduction to gamers who plan to try out the full game when it ships on January 19, 2009.

MMMmmm...

[REmaster]

Finally Ha I forgot I even made this thing lol, I'm pretty excited about this demo though. The game itself is looking way more promising after all these months.

[Carnivol]

After playing the demo, I can confirm the following;

-There are drums indeed drums (so many, in fact, that people wanted me to turn down the volume)
-Demo seems to be close to start of the game (tutorial stuff)
-Controls are easy + full of neat features
-There's only an initial loading for the whole demo (which is pretty much your average loading screen of "Chapter bla bla bla" first and then "Did you know?"-tips)
-You can do stuff that's not really covered by the tutorial (yay)
-It seems to run okay (though, there's not a whole lot of action in the demo, so if there's much much more going on later in the game, I guess some mean frame drops could happen.)
-Some target shooting, some moving targets and a small on-ground section inside a floating base. Enough to get a taste of the basic gameplay, but wish they'd thrown in a boss fight too.
-Visuals are also actually kinda nice.
-Did I mention there were drums?

[Zombie Fred]

I like how the gameplay is open up to how fun it is. But man, the frame rate and other bugs in the demo put me off from buying this. I hope this was a old build of the game.

[Carnivol]

Frame rate issues?

The demo is by far the smoothest console U3 Engine game I've seen so far.


As for bugs... like what?
I've only encountered two very minor ones, one being that if you jump right before the jetpack tutorial starts, the main char's idle animation triggers mid-air for a while 0.2 seconds and if you hi-jack a saucer you'll auto-eject from it after the tiny cutscene where they tell you enter the floating base thingy (this might just be the demo cutting things short, as you respawn in a specific location rather than continue in the exact same spot you were in when the cutscene triggered)

[REmaster]

Damn it sounds pretty good, I can't wait for tommorow so I can check it out - except I have to

[Zombie Fred]

Frame rate issues?

The demo is by far the smoothest console U3 Engine game I've seen so far.)

Have you tried to hijack the watcher's ships when in mid flight? It easily dips down to 15/20 fps for a few seconds, depending where you are, and it's annoying when it happens. Try moving around to dodge the fire from the watcher inside and you should notice it. I wouldn't call this the smoothest U3 engine game yet, not by a margin. Also I had similar frame rate experience in the watcher tower, fighting two enemies (but it wasn't as bad compared to the first sight) but when I died and continued from a checkpoint it seemed fine. Also the cut scenes seem to have frame rate issues.

As for bugs... like what?
I've only encountered two very minor ones, one being that if you jump right before the jetpack tutorial starts, the main char's idle animation triggers mid-air for a while 0.2 seconds and if you hi-jack a saucer you'll auto-eject from it after the tiny cutscene where they tell you enter the floating base thingy (this might just be the demo cutting things short, as you respawn in a specific location rather than continue in the exact same spot you were in when the cutscene triggered)

At the watch tower enemies went into the wall down below (the alien esque creature and one of the red watchers), causing clipping between the two and had to take a few seconds before it being fixed. This is a bad bug in my opinion and if this game is going to have the feeling of lack of polish (from what I've looked at the cut scenes and some of the games presentation could of been much better, even with the time they had on the delay) I think could of had then I am going to give this a skip. A bad demo in my opinion. I think the only highlights I will praise is its excellent music composed by Bear (Battle star <3) and it's great use of sound in game. I can see this having disappointing sales like with Bionic Commando if they don't market it this right.

EDIT: Thinking about it, this game has had three years in development and this is the finished product. I remember when the first trailer was shown and looking very promising and it seems the game must of had a change of shift in development when I remember what the first trailer looked compared to now. I do hope that the final game is a turn around and I am wrong, this is the guys who did create Crimson skies after all. But damn Capcom needs to think on what they should do with published games from the West, and of course (saying it again) marketing and getting the name out. I am just finding it disappointing to be underwhelmed by a very average demo at best.

[Carnivol]

Still having a hard time finding those frequent framerate issues you're talking about.


Sure, there are some dips when you hi-jack the saucers (is there any other way than doing it mid-flight?), but those sequences don't rely on a whole lot of interactivity (you just fly close enough and press B to trigger the QTE-like scenes, where you hold B to tear open the vehicle and press left/right to switch between pre-defined spots in order to dodge the cannon fire... and every now and then the vehicle will turn, resulting in a TAP X/Y/B/A to "hang on" sequence)


Only way I found to produce the massive drops you're talking about is if I fly up close to the force field on the ground and get such an angle that I see through two transparancy layers of the force field and the animated water behind them... Which seriously is just looking for something to pick on.

Maybe someone here has a 360 that's about to display some nice artifacts on their screen?



Yet to see the clipping issues you're talking of, unless you mean how the alien creatures can crawl on top of eachother (into), which I hardly would call a problem (as I've yet to even see a game where that stuff doesn't frequently happen whenever stuff gets close to one another).


Anyway, anyone else had the chance to test drive the demo? (still wish there was a boss at the end or a bit more on-foot stuff inside the base. Like some vertical combat in the core area or something)

[Zombie Fred]

I would say my 360 and resolution display is fine, nothing would suggest otherwise on issues outside the demo that could affect it as a result. But I am sticking to what I have seen, even with the glitches, my opinion still stands with the demo flaws I encountered. I guess it's got to be a case of agree to disagree here

[Borman]

XBL Gold only of course :| Got a new Xbox anyway, ordered a card from Amazon as much as I hate paying for interwebz stuff. Guess Ill be able to check it out on my PS3 first.

[REmaster]

Is it fun flying?

[Zombie Fred]

I am going to give this another spin. Perhaps I am being too forward on first reactions so I am going to experiment on a few runs and see if those flaws I've mentioned above are just a one off.

UPDATE: Still heavy frame rate dips on the watcher discs, and I am not even exaggerating on the dip. I'm going to pass on this.

[The Dude]

If everyone passed on games with frame rate issues, im sure Mass Effect would have tanked, anyway, will try the demo tomorrow, but usually frame rate issues don't really effect my enjoyment of the game as long as the rest of the package it offers is relatively solid.

[REmaster]

So are demos released at midnight? I'll find out tonight, go Rocketeer!