It simply smells of too little effort.

User Rating: 4.5 | Dark Void Zero DS
I was a bit intrigued when I first discover DVZ's existence. While many old and successful franchises have gone retro and started delivering 2D games again, Dark Void Zero is the first I have seen that "goes retro" even though it is a new franchise. It even has a "blow dust off the cartridge" screen just for the novelty (you aren't actually supposed to blow at the screen). I wasn't quite sure what to expect though, because from the looks of it, it could at best be Metroid with a jetpack – which is beyond awesome – and at worst be a cheap cashgrab to get extra money from the new fans they made with Dark Void. Frankly, it seems to be more of the latter.

Dark Void Zero has a fairly simple story told through text and pictures. It hardly extends beyond "these are the bad guys, this is how they try to take over our world, go stop them". That doesn't matter though because the game is supposed to rely on its gameplay. You select a difficulty and are dropped in a level which you unlock part by part by finding keycards. You jump and shoot and kill enemies and all that.

The big thing gameplaywise is the jetpack. It is used in one out of two ways. You either hold down the jump button to go up and fall when you don't hold it or you double tap the jump button to start floating and then move around with the + pad. The controls are not quite perfect. They are a bit slow and it often becomes a problem. Particularly because you always shoot and move in the same direction, so if you are chased by an enemy, then you will move towards it before you shoot, and considering how little space there often is that will lead to the enemy getting you. So it is a typical case of a problem that makes the game hard for all the wrong reasons.

What I dislike particularly about this is that the game relies on the old-school highscore system rather than saving along the way. Even when you complete a level and the following boss, if you want to advance farther into the game after you die then you have to do the first level all over again. This would be less of a problem is the first level was amazing like the Green Hill Zone in Sonic, but it really isn't. The result is that I got very, very sick of the first level, which doesn't have that interesting level design in the first place. If dying for the wrong reason wasn't enough, I also experienced the game occasionally crashing, which at times was really frustrating.

The problem with Dark Void Zero is that is has flaws, but it simply doesn't have any redeeming features. The AI is neither complex nor original, the level design is nothing special, the graphic quality is low and the design is uninteresting. The music is alright, but gets old very quickly and as previously mentioned the story is nothing special either. The game simply feel half assed and it isn't very enjoyable. Not even the jetpack added as much as I'd hoped. The only good thing I can say about it is that the map works well and with transmissions that tell you what stuff does it is very easy to find out where to go and what to do. Still, that doesn't save the game from being a mediocre title, possibly caused by too little effort being put into it.

It is supposed to be retro and nostalgic to fans of the SNES era, but it ends up just being worse than most SNES games I have played.