Dark Void had a demo hit Xbox Live Marketplace yesterday so I took some time to check it out.  The think that sets Dark Void apart from other third person shooter is that you have a jet pack. The demo starts with a cut scene of how you get your jet pack. The graphics in the cut scene were remarkably nice looking.  Not the best ever or anything but I was impressed with how nice it looked.  After the cut scene ends you have your jet pack and you start off with a brief tutorial of how to fly around.  Switching from standing to flying the jet pack is a little disorienting at first, but by the end of the demo I had it figured out.  It just is odd at first how you go from a standing perspective to have the camera swivel around to a flying one. Combine this with the controls switched from normal to inverted when flying (which is how planes controls generally are) and the first time I about crashed strait into the ground.

After going through the basics of controlling the jet pack it then has you learn to use its weapons first on some static targets and then with some ships. The ships took me a little while to get shot down because they move quite quickly, but once I figured out their flight pattern it was pretty quick to actually down them.

From there you learn to hover and land.  Once you are back on foot you fight through a small building to destroy a control console and then fight back out to escape.  You start with a generic machine gun and then can pick up a few other weapons throughout the level.  The first one was a machine gun style shot but with plasma/energy bullets.  The second one I found shot slowly but had large plasma/energy balls that it fired.  That one was pretty fun to use. There is also a melee button that seemed to be context sensitive when enemies got close.  Sometimes if enemies were low to the ground it would kick and then other times it would hit with my gun.

After escaping the building there was another quick cut scene showing a very large boss like robotic enemy that I’m assuming you will have to take out in the full game.  The total demo length was not more than 15 minutes, but it did give a pretty good feel for the game.  It lets you see how you can combine flying and the use of cover which is a big part of Dark Void.  I’m planning to play Dark Void for sure now.  The demo was really nice looking graphically and the story seemed fairly unique.  Plus, I like how the cover system, flying, and vertical elements of the game combined. I doubt it will be game of the year or anything, but it does seem like a fun, polished shooter.