3 dark void zero - final level beaten

Dear Readers,

I played through the entire third level/final level of the game. Very similar in structure to the previous two levels. This time it was all about blowing up a central control thingy by obtaining keycards at the ends of mazes.

It was all very doable and there were replinishing hearts everywhere. They were badly needed because there were just as many enemies that had to be taken down with multiple hits.

The extra thing to find this time were these little monsters in incubation tanks. It was nice to destroy them

At the end of it all was the same boss again, though just that little bit harder. It had all the previous routines plus another one where it took turns shooting in different directions. I had a good gun so I blasted it handily.

The end cutscene was nice, being glorified as a hero and all. 

All in all this was a very simple game but it worked so well as a game and had some very nice fun presentation behind it. Playing as a little fella flying around enemy mazes with a jetpack and a gun is pretty cool.

2 dark void zero - zapping around the second level

Dear Readers,

I jumped back in to Dark Void Zero. I had to start from the beginning so I did that and beat the first level 100%. I had a bit of practice from before so I beat it handily. This time I used the jetpack a lot.

I got to the second level and there were more weapons and enemies and obstacles to be found. There were these scientists I had to shoot as well. They were very defenceless but they were on the enemy side so it was part of the mission to shoot them.

So far my favourite weapons are the regular shot and the pulveriser, which is slower but is very powerful and can break cracked wall obstacles.

This second level seemed to be out on some kind of base I had to do the usual maze navigation and backtracking. The way forward eventually led to outside where I could fly among the stars with some pretty 8-bit background there.

I eventually beat this second level. The boss was very similar to the first boss but it had more minions and an extra weapon to destroy at the end. There was one scientist I missed out on zapping though. Ah well.

I made sure the save didn't disappear so I'll be able to resume on the third and final level next time.

1 dark void zero - 8 bit style shooting with jetpack flying around mazes

Dear Readers,

Deep in my 3DS backlog is this DSiWare title. I wanna play it before it gets disappeared forever somehow.

This was made when Dark Void was around. That was a big title that spawned this little retro inspired title. What happened then was this got a better reception than its big budget equivalent. This kind of thing happens a lot.

There's a fun little reference to blowing in a cartridge which is nice. I blew into the microphone. I don't know if that functionality was there or if it was just a fun reference. I had to press a button eventually anyway. (I later found that blowing makes no difference, it's all button pressing)

The story seems ok, survivors on earth fighting against some weird invasion taking over the Earth. You play as a guy named Rusty, who has the same name as the character from SteamWorld Dig, which is cool. No relation of course.

I played a big chunk of the game. Lovely NES style colours and the fictional NES lore was pretty well written too. The promo photo for Jimmy Fallon was pretty funny.

The game itself is pretty challenging. Platforming, shooting, flying around with a jetpack, tricky to avoid enemy fire... very tricky after a while. There was this big map on the spare screen and I had to explore each corner in order to get key cards to explore the other corners. I died a few times and got the top score on the high score table, which made think that this was a very short game with one level. However, after I beat the first level I found that there were two more levels.

That's how the game is it seems. Three nice bite-sized metroidvania-ish challenges.

I got a few game overs and found the game to be pretty challenging. There is a save feature, but it somehow got lost and the next time I play I'll have to start from the beginning again. Not sure why that's happening but I'm okay with it. Looking forward to playing more and getting this off my backlog!