In a marketing move for the main title, Capcom will be releasing Dark Void: Zero, an 8-bit interpretation of the game similar to the recent Mega Man 9 "demake".

It'll hit the DSi Shop in January, and should cost 500 Points.

Dark Void Zero: First Look and Hands-On [GameSpot]

Fly around, collect weapons, and shoot at things. It doesn't get much more simple than that. Well, I suppose just standing and shooting, or simply standing, but that wouldn't be fun, now would it? If that's too simple for you, go ahead and create your own levels, placing enemies and power-ups on various bits of scenery. Once created you can share your levels on the Jetpack Attack website, or via many popular social networking dealie-o's.

As far as flash games go, it's certainly a way to waste many minutes of your time. Check it out by clicking on the link I've hidden cleverly in the text below.

Dark Void presents Jetpack Attack [Flash Site]

Thank goodness they released this trailer before the game came out, or I would have asked for my money back. That's a relatively light void if I've ever seen one.

Capcom's third-person shooter isn't out until January, but Pitt's production company seems to think it has potential at the box office. Plan B Entertainment now holds the rights to a theatrical version of the game under its Creative Partnership with Reliance BIG Entertainment. Said theatrical version would likely follow the story of game protagonist Will, who crash lands in the Bermuda Triangle and wakes up in the mysterious Void, where an ancient alien race plots to take over civilization.

According to the Capcom press release, the movie version is being developed with Brad Pitt himself in mind for the starring role.

"As a game, Dark Void was developed with a wide-screen mentality - a world full of adventure presented in cinematic scope and scale," said Germaine Gioia, senior vice president, licensing, Capcom Entertainment. "Plan B recognized the potential of our newest property and are as excited about bringing Dark Void to life in cinemas as Capcom is to bring the interactive experience to home theaters."

Sounds great! I've been waiting a long time for a sequel to The Rocketeer.

Nowhere is the realization of flight grander or more satisfying than in video games. When done right, flying in a game can leave a lasting impression on both players and developers that impacts every game they play or make going forward.

Telltale Games designer Mike Stemmle pointed this out while demoing Tales of Monkey Island Episode 3 for me in September. I asked what gameplay inspirations helped him develop for Monkey Island and after a moment's pause he said, "Kingdom Hearts."

"Oh, because it has pirates?" I asked.

"No," he said. "It's the flying." The way the game introduces flying the player -– about halfway through its storyline after you've been running and jumping on the ground the whole time -– was like a revelation in game design for him. "Because once you get [to fly in Never Land], it's like you knew it was coming. It just felt right."

There's a fantasy fulfillment that comes with flying in video games. And even if flying in a game is just another way to get from point A to point B, it's appealing to a part of your senses that you don't use very much in everyday gameplay.

"We live in a very X, Y world," Dark Void Senior Producer Morgan Gray said. A veteran of flight games like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance, he knows his Z axis and isn't afraid to build his games around it. "If you look at … shooters, when they first came out, everything was flat. [There was] a roof over your head and walls on all sides. It was only really when you got to games … where you had enemies [above or below you] where you had to start exploring the Z axis."

Like Doom players that had to learn to use the mouse to enjoy Quake, your average gamer has to put in effort to master flight. Instead of thinking in only one or two directions, he or she has to think in a 360 degree bubble where enemies can come from any angle. They have to be aware of their character's (or aircraft's) physics so that they don't get lost when trying to execute a turn. Some games make it easier for the player by limiting the range of flight to forward-only like Star Fox or Panzer Dragoon; other games like Dark Void layer on tutorial after tutorial to make absolutely sure you internalize the controls before cutting you loose in the wild blue yonder.

By that same token, developers without Gray's flight-filled background have to work a lot harder to implement flying. Whereas Gray can look back over both his career and his childhood and see Chuck Yeager's face mocking him after Gray had crashed and burned in Advanced Flight Training, some developers only have memories of Star Fox or Wing Commander as their flying inspiration. They don't realize that there's more to flight than getting off the ground.

"Don't get me wrong," says Gray. "[Wing Commander's] level design was great, the ship design was great, progression was great. The actual nuts and bolts of flight? All pretty arcade-y because [it didn't feel] like there was meat to the simulation."

Developers with traditional level-making experience on shooters or adventure games that have the walls on all sides and the roof overhead have new challenges when making an enjoyable flying sequence or full game. They have to relearn how to organize a level around enemy spawn points in spaces with no walls or roofs.

"You really need to use enemies not only as a way of making a challenge for the player, but as defining space because [players] have to have that frame of reference for ‘where am I in the terrain?'" said Gray. "If you get [the timing right], it really gives the [flight] meaning and puts a plot to the [enemy] encounters. It's different than ‘And now we walk you in this room and find the blue key,' because you don't get blue keys in the air."

He compared a perfect flight level to a map called De Dust in Counter-Strike. To him, it was obvious that some developer had sat down with a stopwatch and timed how long it would take enemies to reach players when spawning from two different points on the map. That developer knew exactly where the player would be and what they would be doing when the enemy got to them, and they build the level outward around the player from that point.

Flying levels, Gray said, should be built the exact same way.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the upcoming Avatar for the Wii. A flight level with a giant lizard bird was the centerpiece of a demo given to me by creative director Daniel Bisson and he wasn't shy about telling me it was the hardest level to design. In early efforts, the enemies spawned too fast and the Wii Balance Board was over-responsive to even the slightest shift in weight, causing the lizard bird to pitch wildly and slam into spawning enemies. As the level developed, they added more environmental boundaries like tunnels and trees to define the flying space and confined 360 degree movements to quick time events.

So what began as a flying level instead turned into an arcade-style on-rails experience. Sure, you're up in the sky on the back of a bird. But, there's not much fantasy fulfillment and no raw freedom in having your hand held.

The trick is keeping reality from ruining fantasy. Yes, it's a lot of work to pilot an X-Wing in the Star Wars: Battlefront games; but if you get to blow up a TIE Fighter as a reward for your patience, you don't mind sinking effort into learning how to be a pilot. Likewise, War in the upcoming Darksiders would look silly with a pair of wings sprouting from his burly back; but hijacking a gryphon from an angel for a quick joyride through a ruined city appeals to the fantasy of the character and doesn't last so long that the game needs to bog the player down with real physics.

Above: The lone flying level in Darksiders.

With Crimson Skies and flight sims on side of the spectrum and our Star Foxes and Panzer Dragoons on the other, there are so many ways gamers can fulfill the fantasy of flight. Each new game that introduces a flying segment or builds its entire experience around the thrill of strapping on a jetpack builds on the collective fantasy gamers and developers share of taking to the skies.

The ultimate dream of flight in games, says Gray, is this: "I don't know where I'm at, but I'm having fun."

Image Cred — Kingdom Hearts
Title Image: The Fall of Icarus, Peter Paul Rubens, 1636

To be honest, I was a little distracted this week because I was busy becoming a homeowner. And Crecente was in New York doing his thing. And... biggest speed bump of all, I was distracted by not being mentioned in Hulk Hogan's new autobiography, "My Life Outside The Ring."

Very sad.

I wound up with a few leftovers that I don't plan to turn into full posts.

Ears-On With Ghost Trick: Maybe "ears-on" would even be overstating my exposure to Capcom's 2010 DS game Ghost Trick. It was the one Capcom game I was hoping to see at the company's New York City gaming showcase this week that wasn't there. So I asked a public relations representative to tell me more about it. I knew the game was being made by Phoenix Wright developers. He fleshed things out. I'd be playing as a dead guy, a ghost who can inhabit inanimate objects and prevent people from being killed. And there's a talking lamp or something. That's about all I need to be told to want to play this game, but it's not enough for a post. I will predict right now that Capcom will return to New York, and that they will bring with them Ghost Trick.

Overhead HUDs: I got into a chat with Dark Void producer Morgan Gray about the placement of heads-up displays. His game, which stars a guy on a jetpack and was made by people who developed Crimson Skies games, puts its ammo counter and mini-map across the top of the screen. There's no HUD along the bottom. I asked why, and while he couldn't offer me any theories or share any rules about HUD placement, he said that Dark Void's was placed at the top because that's the tradition in flight games. Makes sense. Somehow these decisions do get made.

Dragon Age Has Been Shrinkwrapped And Unshrinkwraapped: Back when my gaming schedule was dictated by when games were on sale in stores, I never thought that games might be finished, sitting in boxes somewhere, days or weeks early. Well, sometimes they are. As I'm typing this, I have a boxed copy of early November's Dragon Age: Origins for the Xbox 360 on my desk. That's not post-worthy, because it'd seem like bragging. But it's kind of interesting, no? Shrinkwrapped Ratchet & Clank has been on my desk this week too.

A Plant That Eats Meat The always-gentlemanly PR man Rob Fleischer stopped by today at the Gawker Media (aka Kotaku parent company) offices where I work today. He was showing me two games that I can't write about yet. And, somehow, even though I started here in May, he was the first PR person to do a meeting with me here. Most of my meetings are at hotels and other demo venues. Classy guy that Rob is, he brought me a Pitcher Plant. It eats flies. ... Was he sending me a message?

That's enough Notebook Dumping. I need to go home and pack. And if you want to be mightily impressed, check out how amazingly high I rank on the Ratchet & Clank leaderboards. Thankfully, the game isn't out yet.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Capcom producer Morgan Gray said that he believes motion controls don't work well for flight games that include a lot of shooting in it.

His reasoning: Players tend to move their bodies a little when they're making tight turns in flying games — or even a racing games. If you map motion control to your flight game, then the controller will read those accidental body leans as inputs from the player. The result will be even more movement of the flying character or craft, a "false positive" input from a player who didn't intend that. That's bad news in a game that requires you to shoot while flying, he argued. It's even worse, he said, if you're being shot at while flying. A little flinching could ruin everything.

I pointed out to Gray that the PlayStation 3 game Flower did just fine with mapping its flight controls to the motion controls of the Sixaxis. But shooting wasn't required in that game.

Some players would surely like to have options, but as I watched Gray fly Dark Void's hero through canyons, precisely shooting at building struts and the joints of robots, I could see his point.

Well, now I've had my Dark Void filled in a bit by gameplay and an interview with Associate Producer Shana T. Bryant. Here's what I learned:

1) No, Dark Void is not part of any Capcom Jet Pack Heroes series
Bryant said the developer would've been silly not to make any references to other Capcom jet pack-themed games. However, nothing in the game is officially "part" of a larger overarching series to do with jet packs.

2) Yes, multiplayer would be cool — but it's not planned for the game or for downloadable content (yet)
Again, it's an obvious conclusion for the developer that multiplayer combat in Dark Void would be awesome. However, Bryant explained that it just didn't make it into the game. Nor is Capcom ready to announce any plans for DLC that would somehow introduce multiplayer. "But if it sells well," she said, it's highly likely that multiplayer would make it into Dark Void 2.

3) Nikola Tesla isn't the only real life person to make an appearance in the game
Bryant said it was almost like the developer was "cheating" by including so many real life characters. So far Tesla is the only one the developer has bragged about aloud, but I spotted journal entries in the menu screen for Amelia Earhart. There're also entries for "Akasha" and "Niall ó Loinsigh" — but I'm not sure if those are real people or not. Bryant did say that those who vanish into the Void come from all different time periods (Will and his lady friend Ava are from about 1938) — so keep an eye out for pretty much anybody on this list.

4) Hover Mode changes the nature of gameplay entirely
In the beginning, it sounds like there was only the jet pack. Then the developer decided to add the Hover ability — but nobody really made use of it. So, to entire gamers, the developer made it so that enemies lose accuracy while you're in Hover mode and there are "quite a few" Hover-based Achievements/Trophies, according to Bryant.

5) Basic need-to-knows as follows:
The game is about 10 hours long with three distinct episodes that span a total of 14 missions. The developer is relying on the game's unique air, ground and air-to-ground combat to give the game replayability. The developer isn't ready to announce DLC, but Bryant appeals your sense of economics to predict whether or not they'll go through with it. That's "If it sells, they'll release DLC — if the the DLC sells, expect sequel." Simple, right?

Tesla functions in Dark Void as a sort Q to main character Will's James Bond, building your weapons and upgrading your jet pack. Kinda makes you wonder whether they'll kill him off or somehow deprive you of him toward the end of the game to make you suffer.

At yesterday's Tesla Motors event, Capcom provided several forms of Dark Void expression – like developer interviews, a booklet, and a tournament where people raced to see who could get the farthest in a level in 15 minutes. The developer interviews and the tournament were decent ways to experience Dark Void. But the booklet, with choice lines like "The ultimate strap-on" and "Imitation is the sincerest form of ass-kicking," made the game seem like a generic hardcore shooter instead of the sweet jet pack sci-fi experience it is.

What Is It?
Dark Void is a science fiction adventure game where players take the role of William Agustus Grey, a delivery-boy-turned-jet-pack-man after he's sucked into an alternate dimension called The Void via the Bermuda Triangle. Gameplay emphasizes sky combat with Will jetting around open spaces and shooting at alien aircraft, but there's also a ground combat component that you can mix and match with your jet pack skills.

What We Saw
I got to play two separate levels on both Xbox 360 and PS3. The first was titled Chapter II: Breaking Camp and the second was a prisoner-rescue mission that seemed to be a little later in the game.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is out January 12.

What Needs Improvement?
Inconsistent Area Design: The ground areas in levels are bland while the sky areas are breathtaking. Some of this is visual: there's just so much to look at when you're up in the air like clouds, funky alien sky colors, rock formations, the abyss below, etc. Meanwhile, indoor areas mostly belong to aliens with no sense of interior decorating. But something else seems to be missing from ground areas in the way of gameplay. For example, while on the ground in Breaking Camp, the layout of boxes to take cover behind and ramps to run up seems generic and boring, while the towering rocket and door-flecked cliff face you're supposed to fly around later in the level present gameplay challenge and a lot of stuff to explore.

Ground AI Could Use Some Work: Alien robots would stay glued to cover even when you walked right up to them from behind, shooting them in the head. Your partner AI would stop shooting, come out of cover, turn his back to the alien robots and then reload his gun. Also, I unloaded about two clips into an alien from the air while he politely stared at me, waiting for me to touchdown before actually fighting back.

Separate Melee Button, Please: The B button (or Circle) is both the melee button and the pick-up-dropped-weapon button. This becomes a problem when you try to melee attack two aliens that are close together: the first one drops their weapon when punched and then, if you press B to keep on punching, Will stops and changes weapons instead of continuing his melee attacks. This got me killed a couple of times.

What Should Stay The Same?
Can Has UFO! I normally don't like gameplay segments that are one long quick time event, but UFO-jacking segments actually are fun. When flying around in jet pack mode, the B button or (or Circle) with appear near an alien spacecraft that's close enough to be jacked. Pressing the button automatically steers you to the craft and either you pop right into it (if it's a low-level flier), or you go into a QTE event where you're trying to yank a panel off a UFO while dodging its lasers and hanging on desperately during barrel rolls. Once you succeed in prying off the panel and killing the alien pilot, the UFO is all yours.

Falling With Style: The jet pack/hover mode takes some getting used to, but once you get it, it's a blast. I died more than a few times by hitting Y (or Triangle) instead of A (X) and then careening head-first into a wall in jet pack mode instead of activating the hover mode like I meant to. However, as soon as I figured out the buttons (including the crucial 180-degree flip and the barrel roll), I started opting out of ground combat for air-to-ground combat instead. For example, I'd rocket toward a cluster of aliens on the ground, firing. Then, I'd switch off the pack and freefall. The enemies would correct their aim for my trajectory and just when they'd start shooting, I'd go into hover mode – which decreases enemy accuracy. From there, I could usually pick off enemies I'd missed in the first round – but if they did manage to correct their aim to cover me in hover mode, I'd just go back to falling or rocket up higher to start the whole falling-with-style cycle again.

Change Difficulty On The Fly: Dark Void is a game where you might find yourself specializing in one type of combat over another (like air versus ground), so I'm glad the game lets you change difficulty settings mid-level. For me, it took the sting out of having to give up my jacked UFO to go down into some boring prison where I couldn't not fly head-first into a wall by accident.

Final Thoughts
There's still plenty of time for polish, so I'm sure the AI kinks will be massaged out and maybe there'll be a layer of gloss slapped onto the ground levels. Either way, nothing diminishes the awesome of the jet pack. Not event the Nolan North voiceover*

*Sorry, Mr. North, but I'm just so tired of hearing you play the Everyman.

I can't say too much about the Dark Void event held at a Tesla Motors dealership last night — but luckily I don't have to. The Dark Void community site's got it covered. Check out their video for info on how you could win an actual Tesla Roadster via Dark Void.

Full swag report: Dark Void figurine, Tesla Roadster Micro Machine Hot Wheels, promotional booklet (not pictured). The Polly Pocket and the Jawa are from my collection.

Swag cat is...

...disinterested. Maybe if I'd brought home a real Tesla Roadster, she'd give a damn.

ETA: Quite right, it's a Hot Wheels car. This is why blogging at night is bad for me.

Capcom is holding a Top Secret Dark Void event in San Francisco on Monday. So top secret that they won't tell anyone where it is, or what they are doing. For all we know they could be testing out vertical combat and you'll be the live guinea pig. All they will tell you is where to be picked up to be ferried to the event, and even then you need to apply.

In order to be eligible to enter you have to be 21 or older with a valid form of ID, and must be able to make it to the assembly point by 2PM, with the event lasting until 7:30PM. To submit yourself for consideration, click on the link below and follow the instructions there. Then get picked, attend, and let us know how that works out for you.

Join Us for a Top Secret Dark Void Event [Capcom Unity]

Members of the Dark Void site get access to the usually goodies — developer diaries, screenshots, production blogs — but it seems like they're really pushing the "missions" and recruit-a-friend stuff. Completing missions nets you points to spend on swag, prizes and "exclusive Dark Void swag you can't get anywhere else." Recruiting enough friends either wins you an Xbox 360, or just an Xbox 360 game — it depends which part of the site you read.

As far as swag goes, if it's they're giving away this jet pack, sweet. If it's just a bunch of t-shirts and keychains, I'd just as soon way for another PAX — although, hopefully the game will be out before then.

Check it out here.

And just like Cash4Gold, you get nothing for something with this offer, too! Well, not really. Something about unlimited boosts. And you can ... wait for it ... do a barrel roll! and other moves with impunity. Plus, you won't cry yourself to sleep anymore!

You know what would be great? If used game sales worked like this. Just put Bionic Commando in this insured (why?) pouch and - get even less on your trade-in!

Are ya wondering if Gold4Jetpack.com exists? Yeppers. Not much, but there's a page.

GOLD4JETPACK [site, thanks Alberto]

"The main reason we delayed Dark Void was because we really wanted to spend the extra time we needed to re-polish it and add a new feature," she said.

The feature? Hover up, something that was added into the game just a week ago.

Allowing the character's rocket-pack sporting hero to not only fly through scenes, but also hover up and around environments adds a new element of strategy to the game.

Now players can tap the Y button to rocket off in full-out flight or double jump to start hovering. Once in the air, holding the jump button allows you to boost higher into the air and depletes your boost meter. When you're not boosting you start slowly drifting down, but your meter also slowly refills. Done correctly and a character can almost hover indefinitely.

That means a player can decide to take the high road or the low road in almost every encounter. It also meant that the developers had to return to the drawing board to make sure the game remained engaging and not just something a gamer could float through.

"We are play testing it and balancing it now," she said. "We're kind of getting to that sweet spot for difficulty."

Another major change to come to the game was a tweak to the perhaps too realistic injuries that mid-air collisions caused. In previous versions of the game bouncing into a wall or any other solid object killed a player immediately: Something Kotaku's preview labeled Death By Touching.

Capcom said they took note of the issue.

"We read that article and printed it out and made a sign that said 'No more death by touching,'" Bryant said.

Now that game allows players to deflect two or three times off of a wall without dying.

"You do take damage if you hit the wall, but you can survive it," she said.

Taken together the adjustment to damage and the new hover mode iron out many of the issues I had with earlier builds of Dark Void.

Played today at Gamescom in Germany, I found the game felt more tactical, more controllable than previous versions. I was able to hop into the air, hovering around ground targets as I tried to take them out and then easily slipping into flight in mid-air, zipping around the map to turn a front-on assault into a flanking sneak attack.

The fact that bouncing off objects in flight only injured and didn't kill me, also made me more willing as a player to take chances and in the long run I tended to fly more. Flight is the point of Dark Void, that's much of what separates it from other shooters. Making it easier and more enjoyable is a huge step in the right direction.

"We've been talking about adding a hover feature mode for awhile," Bryant said. "I think it's been the best game design decision we've made."

The game will blast off on January 12, 2010 in North America and on January 15 in Europe on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. The game was originally slated for release late this year, but was shuffled to avoid a crowded holiday release onslaught.

Capcom is too, it sounds like, shooting off an email about all of the games that they'll have on hand for European gamers to check out.

Lost Planet 2, Monster Hunter Tri, MotoGP, Dark Void, Spyborgs and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Ultimate All-Stars will all be on the show floor this year round.

Because this is Germany's biggest gaming party as well, Capcom isn't just about the games. They've also decided to bring along a Dark Void machine that will let gamers take to the sky on a 180 kmh vertical airstream. I wonder if I've told McWhertor yet that he'll be the one doing that?

At this point, January through March of next year is going to be the biggest first quarter in gaming ever, as an increasing number of games originally slated for fall and holiday 2009 releases get shunted into next year. Capcom dropped us a line to explain the reasoning behind the delay.

Dark Void is moving into Capcom's fiscal Q4 in order to get the game out of the crowded fall game season and to allow the development team more time to polish and enhance the game experience.

One of those two excuses doesn't really hold up, but we'll take a more polished game at a later date over one rushed to market any day of this year or the next.

I remember being terrified of the Bermuda Triangle as a child, with documentaries on the subject with spooky music and deadly-serious voiceovers by the likes of Leonard Nimoy and Robert Hatch. The same sort of documentaries that made me terrified of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and Amelia Earhart, who I am sure was a lovely woman undeserving of such a terrified reaction. This was all before video games, of course, which completely desensitized me to violence, leaving me prepared to fight the alien hordes should I ever get sucked into a parallel dimension.

One of the themes of my day yesterday was the idea that gamers often ignore or under-utilize the abilities that games give them.

This is common. Or at least it seemed so yesterday.

My work day more or less began with a meeting with producers at Capcom. One of them, Shana Bryant, let me play some of the jetpack shooter Dark Void. Sometimes the game involves jacking UFOs and playing the game like it was like the Dark Void developers' previous work, Crimson Skies. Sometimes it plays like the a video game Rocketeer.

And sometimes it plays like Gears of War, as the player snaps their hero Will to cover and shoots through gun battles. That's when a bad habit kicks in among players testing the game. They're so used to navigating a firefight on foot from cover point to cover point like Gears' Marcus Fenix that they forget what's on Will's back. "We want to remind people that you have a hover pack," Bryant said. "Don't forget to use it."

That's the whole point, play-testers. Press the Y button to hover above your cover, then drift down behind the bad guys and shoot them in the back.

Bryant recognizes that the burden of jetpack encouragement is on the developers. They need to make players want to use that jetpack, maybe even need to use it instead of rolling and dashing from cover point to cover point. One of the reasons for players to put the hovering and flying options out of their mind was because of the problem our Brian Crecente discovered during a maverick play session in Monte Carlo — "Death by Touching." Will dies almost immediately if he even lightly brushes into walls and ceilings while jetpacking via the Y button. That problem is already being addressed so that players, in Bryant's words, no longer "associate the y button with the death button."

I left the Capcom demos unsure what to make of the Dark Void developers' conundrum. Yes, the game is early. Thankfully the team is aware of the issues. But isn't it a problem if play-testers are forgetting to use the differentiating maneuver in Dark Void's combat arsenal?

By the end of the day, however, I was reminded that players ignore or are unaware of elements of their games all the time. By midnight I had spoken to two friends who both had neglected to use the top-screen GPS feature in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a feature that had felt essential to my play-through.

One of those friends also confessed to realizing after watching a YouTube video of Valkyria Chronicles that there was a whole layer of strategic commands and control that he was neglecting in that game.

This reminded me of reporter Dean Takahashi's infamous Mass Effect review in which Dean, who is a superb reporter, somehow missed the ability to level up his character.

Gamers forget their options it seems. So here's a reminder: if you're playing Dark Void later this year and the going on the ground gets tough, use your jetpack.