Loafing at E3: the Capcom booth

Capcom had more playable titles at E3 than almost any other publisher, both on the floor and behind closed doors. The company’s highest-profile 2009 titles have already been released (Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5, Bionic Commando), and most of the games in its booth will probably come out in 2010. So it was a bit like stepping into the future, a future that was in almost every regard exactly like our present.

Dark Void

Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC

Release date and rating TBA

If it wasn’t for the jetpack, Dark Void would feel like a middling, bare bones third-person shooter. I took cover, I shot some dudes, I picked up new weapons and ammo, and I did this all over and over. Thankfully the encounters were spaced out with stretches of highly entertaining jetpackery. As with Capcom’s recent Bionic Commando, the fun of Dark Void isn’t the combat as much as the transportation. It was uniquely thrilling to fly around with Dark Void’s jetpack, once I got accustomed to the awkward controls.

The jetpack also opened up opportunities not available to most shooters. The part of the demo I played didn’t have any airborne shoot-outs, per se; I had to blow up some shield generators and then storm a couple of enemy installations, which is where the mediocre ground-based third-person shooter action factored in. The second installation illustrated how the game embraces the spatial possibilities opened up by a jetpack, though. I flew up a horizontal tower, jetting from platform to platform while taking out the bad guys. This open-ended attitude toward space, combined with the joys of jetpacking, made Dark Void one of the better action games on display at E3.