Dark Void

Enemies are Terminator-style exoskeletal warriors to begin with, and give up fairly easily - you can even run up to them for a quickie melee execution, before retreating to take advantage of the regenerative health system. Just as well too, as some of them self-detonate into an expanding blue bubble of damage. As you head inside though, you encounter one of the game's heavies, the Knight (they all have chess names, apparently - one of Tesla's quirks), a broad-chested mechanical brute who flies around firing lasers and rockets and swishing the tentacle he has in place of legs. He takes a good bit of ammo to go down.

Then you drop further in, hovering through claustrophobic shafts and corridors until you reach the prison's core, a central pillar encircled by rotating blades and other protrusions, which you ascend by leaping to them with help from the cover button. Airtight says that vertical cover is meant to bridge the gap between aerial combat and standard cover gameplay, and is optional - you could just fly up to the top if you're skilled enough to dodge everything - and the Captivate demo is an evolution of the prototype shown last year. The way the platforms rotate around the central pillar changes the cover dynamic, moving Will and his enemies around and in theory forcing you to readjust regularly to avoid being flanked.

Although we're only shown one level, Airtight also says only a little about other areas and systems. Beginning with a basic jetpack that lacks full flight capacity, you will be able to unlock upgrades for this and other equipment throughout the game by harvesting what are currently called tech points - energy drops from downed Watchers - and there are a trio of difficulty settings. The developer says that the flight combat skews easier while cover shooting is more intense, which they reckon reflects the gradient of skill across the target audience's experience of the conflicting genres.

Actually playing the demo raises some concerns though. The UFO hijack attacks quickly fall into a mundane routine, while the bridge between hovering and full jetpack acceleration is quite pronounced, and a poorly measured transition can be suicidal. The third-person shooter sections are also rather cold and lacking in drama, and while it's difficult to get a handle on the AI, the lack of hit-response is rather jarring and vertical cover is less tactical than it probably sounds.

All the same, Dark Void continues to look interesting, and both of the last two years' reveals have spoken to more gameplay diversity than either the flight combat or shooter genres are used to individually, which is a good thing, because while flight combat may be wide open, Gears of War 2's single-player campaign raised the bar significantly in scenario design, and the one-player-only Dark Void is pinning its hopes to the campaign alone. We'll find out whether Mark Beaumont is right to be cautiously optimistic closer to the end of the year.