Tech Olive

A demo for Capcom’s newest 3rd-person adventure, Dark Void, has finally made its way to the PC. The demo released on consoles earlier this month, but PC gamers have only just been given the chance to try it out. If you wanna give the game a test run then you can grab the 1GB demo here. While you wait for the download, follow the break for our first impressions.

The demo starts you a few chapters into the game without any setup or attempt to explain anything to you. This is excusable because the game’s centerpiece is the flying mechanic and this is the point in the game where it’s first introduced. The demo offers about 10-20 minutes of actual gameplay which gives you a nice broad scale of ground-based and air-based combat. Unfortunately, the demo does a terrible job of showing you what to expect from the characters, story, or even the setting of the game. Sure, it offers a great look at the gameplay and combat mechanics, but that’s just not enough.

Unfortunately, when it comes down to it, even the small amount of the game that is shown in the demo is still fairly generic and easily forgettable. The graphics are nice, although some textures seemed quite repetitive, resulting in a mostly dull, recycled feeling environment. If all that isn’t enough, the demo seems to be an almost direct port from consoles, even to the extent that the PC controls are quite bad. Especially in flight, which is the main gameplay mechanic. Unless the retail version of the game is dramatically improved, I’d suggest waiting for it to hit the bargain bin before picking it up.