There’s nothing more disappointing than a game that oozes potential, but fails to hit the mark and instead leaving you to dwell on where it went wrong. In that regard, Capcom’s Dark Void, ultimately leaves me with a feeling of disappointment, because what it does well it does very well, but where it misfires, it leaves me disappointed over what could have been.

In a nutshell, Dark Void seems to aspire to be the Rocketeer mixed with a healthy dose of Uncharted, with gameplay featuring jetpacks, levels broken into exploration and shooting set pieces, ample use of game-engine cinematics, and of course, lead character voice acting by Nolan North. In Dark Void, you fill the laser-proof leather jacket of Will Grey, a washout military pilot who now wastes his potential flying transports in the Caribbean. A chance encounter with a woman from his past sets the wheels in motion for a fateful trip to the Bermuda Triangle, and ultimately into the mysterious world-between-worlds known as the Void.

Within the Void lurk the game’s enemies, The Watchers. Lizard-like humanoids who once ruled Earth, they were exiled into the Void by an uprising by their primitive human slaves. Trapped there for centuries, they have waited and plotted for their return to Earth. Opposing the Watchers in the Void are the Survivors, humans who have crossed into the Bermuda Triangle, led by the enigmatic Atem. Using parts salvaged from Watcher and human craft a like, the Survivors aren’t as technically advanced, but their scrappy determination helps them keep the in-every-way-superior Watchers at bay.

There’s a third faction of sorts as well, primitive villagers who live within the Void and worship the Watchers as gods, but they get short-shrift in the game.

After an initially odd tutorial that seems to exist to say “the rocketpack is awesome, but you won’t get to use it for a while”, the game features a strong build-up as Will explores the Void and meets up with the villagers, the Watchers and the Survivors, starting you off on foot with heavy third-person shooting levels, then introducing a hovering jetpack before finally loading you up with the rocketpack and opening up the real fun.

Because once you get your rocketpack, that’s where the game really comes alive. Some of the folks behind developer Airtight Games are alumni of the fantastic XBox title Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and that same feeling of speed and jet-propelled freedom are on display here. The controls are beautifully handled as well, providing a good arcady feel to the flying, while also being loose enough to replicate what it would feel like to have two rocket boosters strapped to your back.

While the flying missions are thrilling, too many are bogged down by escort duties, which to me seems like the ideal way to kill the fun in any game. But when you are allowed to fly freely, to engage in frantic combat with swarms of enemies, to engage a massive enemy battlecruiser, its pure joy.

On a side note, seeing what Airtight has done with the flight sequences in Dark Void, a Crimson Skies sequel on the XBox 360 and the PS3 is an absolute must.

Unfortunately, while the flying levels are outstanding, the third person shooter levels aren’t nearly as satisfying. Many of them drag on excessively (odd, since the game is actually fairly short), and the level design doesn’t seem to understand the difference between progressing the plot and the challenge, and merely being repetitious. With the game mixing exhilarating flying levels and plodding shooting levels, there’s simply not enough consistency in the experience.

The game’s best innovation, which is used to great effect early in the game, then somewhat abandoned, is the vertical cover system. While cover systems are all the rage in shooters, they have all been based on flat-land. Dark Void endeavours to let you take cover from enemies coming at your from every direction, including from above and below.

The first few times you are climbing up or down down a cliff face, using the ledges for cover while shooting Watcher robots as they climb up at you, its almost a vertigo-inducing sensation, and I really felt like I was enjoying something truly innovative.

When you are ground-based, the game features six different weapons, utilizing Survivor and Watcher technology. As you kill enemies and collect tech points, you can upgrade each weapon twice, adding new features, damage or range. I played through using the basic human machine gun and the Watcher equivalent, and managed just fine, so I’m not sure where the incentive is to work with the other weapons, but they are there and have distinct functions. Should you run out of ammo, you can also take down enemies with melee attacks.

Will is also blessed with the world’s most incredible leather jacket, capable of protecting him from laser and particle blasts, slamming into stone pillars at high speeds, and countless other dangers than a typical leather jacket provides no defence against.

Another standout feature in Dark Void is the soundtrack, scored by Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary. Fans of that show will recognize his work here as it features many familiar sounds, including the driving percussion that propelled BSG’s best action sequences. Its a soundtrack that doesn’t into the background, a fate that unfortunately befalls some of the lines of dialogue, which invariable change in volume in mid-conversation, to the point that some characters simply can’t be heard in a regular conversation.

As I said in the opening, Dark Void is a game that hits tremendous highs, but it’s also a game that leaves a lot of disappointment as well.

Being a single player game with no multiplayer, the campaign mode in Dark Void is way too short. Even if you die and restart a lot, there’s really only about 10 hours of gameplay in normal mode. If you’re a parent with a limited gaming budget, unfortunately Dark Void doesn’t come close to giving you your money’s worth, and will leave you wanting a whole lot more. Other than trophies/achievements, there’s very little incentive to replay the game, though newly added trophies hint at the future existence of DLC that will add some kind of score-based challenges.

While there are plenty of cinematics in the game, giving it a movie-like feel, it still feels like the story is only half told, and could have been fleshed out much more effectively. Early on in the game you are introduced to Nickola Tesla, but for a real-life person that’s made a character of great significance in the game, he doesn’t really have a lot to do in the early going, which feels like a definite short coming. The main characters often feel like the same cardboard archetypes we’ve seen many times before, and we don’t get the strong character moments that would elevate the game into the kind of rollicking action-adventure experience that Uncharted has made the new genre standard.

While The Watchers are a lizard-like humanoids, the enemies you will actually face are slug-like lesser evolved forms inside robots. So, basically, get used to wave after wave after wave of generic, faceless robots/cannon fodder. And while there are a variety of foot soldiers, when you’re shooting at them from a distance, there doesn’t really feel like a variety, just that some take more bullets to kill than others. And the AI is fairly weak, with jetpack-enabled enemies preferring to hover in place and let you hammer away at them, while others that use cover will generally leave themselves quite exposed to your weaponry.

Heres one odd thing that stood out, and is firmly rooted in the game’s pre-World War 2 setting. Throughout the game, as the Watchers plot to invade Earth is unveiled, there are consistent references to the Fascists, and what the Fascists are up to in Europe and around the world. While history does show us that Nazi Germany was not the only aggressor in World War 2 (sorry that you usually get left out Italy), its unusual to hear the references made to Fascists, and not Nazis. Maybe its trying to escape the glut of Nazis-as-enemies-game, maybe its trying some kind of odd non-offensiveness, but it just sounded odd.

Long story short, Dark Void is fun, but not fun enough. Good, but not good enough. It is, however, obviously designed to be a multi-game franchise (including the brilliantly conceived DSi 8-bit “prequel” title that Capcom “unearthed”), which will hopefully see the shooter-based sections of the game, and the innovative vertical cover system, better match the thrill of the flying sequences.

A review copy was provided to GamerPops.