8 Video Games That Tragically Wasted Their Genius Premise

7. Dark Void

Ever wondered what it would be like if Gears of War had jet packs? Instead of just sliding into cover, you could also fly to cover and shoot enemies above or below you. Genius, right? The added dimension seemed intriguing to try in a cover based shooter, which is exactly what Airtight Games tried to execute in their sci-fi shooter, Dark Void. As a human resistance fighter armed with a weaponised jetpack while battling aliens on another world, the player was afforded both the tactics of standard cover system for terra firma and the vertical cover system when resorting to ariel battles via a jetpack. Sounds cool, doesn't it. Too bad it's anything but that. The cover system seemed fairly incompetent, whereas sliding or flying into cover with the press of a button felt sticky. Even run-and-gunning wasn't spared from flaws, courtesy of an odd, counter-intuitive move where enemies could be floored easier with just one punch compared to bullets. The only saving grace was the dogfighting, but that doesn't last long since the campaign is pretty short. Oh, and there's no multiplayer, so you can't bring this admittedly lunatic formula into a server and smash your mates around. Shame, really. Dark Void could have been so much more if the developer had flown further.