In Dark Void, players take on the role of Will Grey, a pilot who crashes in the Bermuda Triangle and wakes up to find himself in a strange new world in a parallel universe where he joins a band of struggling humans in a rebellion against the Watchers – a race of aliens intent on destroying all life on planet Earth.

Dark Void has been on Game.ie’s radar for over a year now, as it inched towards release with a number of last minute delays and a slow but steady stream of impressive videos showing off its unique vertical cover system and death-defying aerial combat. It looked like it had great promise, throwing off the ground-based shackles of the myriad third-person shooters which have clogged up consoles since the success of the first Gears of War back in 2006.

And for the first few hours, Dark Void really does deliver. The introduction to the world beyond our own is suitably mysterious, the central character is fun and energetically performed (by the ubiquitous Nolan North of Uncharted and Assassins Creed fame) and the levels are expansive and well designed.  The controls initially feel quite loose, with accuracy not quite what you would expect and the graphics are quite plain at times but both of these elements exist for a reason and that becomes immediately apparent when you don your jetpack for the first time – courtesy of Nikola Tesla no less. Even the fun vertical cover mechanic has nothing on this, the levels are absolutely massive and any lack of detail is soon forgotten as you zoom from one end of the map to the other.

These early levels are genuinely thrilling as you launch yourself precariously into the air and towards your objective. You could go toe to toe with the Watcher soldiers on the ground or you could scream into the stratosphere and strafe them from afar before using thrust to power to your destination and finally landing to obliterate the enemy. The mixture of play styles is consistently engaging and moving up a surface in the vertical cover system while plugging metallic foes in the head before rocketing away again is an incomparable gaming experience. The extremely light upgrade system, which makes weapons and your rocket packs guns more powerful, is a welcome addition and the boss fights are fun, though we wonder if developers will ever be able to make one without QTE’s in the future.

Then, quite suddenly, Dark Void changes its personality – becoming almost exclusively an aerial combat game with endless levels of flying in circles taking out UFO’s and defending incredibly slow moving friendly craft from a never-ending barrage of enemies. The mix of gameplay types which made the experience so compelling all but disappears and, more significantly for the player, those moments which made you feel like an aerodynamic God become increasingly few and far between.