Dark Void Zero is a fantastic "remake" of Dark Void, even though it's not actually a remake. The music is fantastic, and graphics are retro-tastic. But let me tell you something before we continue, it's fucking hard. The player has 3 lives, and 100 health. When the player runs out of lives he has to start again from the beginning. With no proper easy mode to ease the player into the game, you're thrown in to a pool of Dark Void lava head first.
Graphically, Dark Void Zero is fantastic, it captures the retro 1980's feel perfectly and seems like it was made in the 1980's and ported over. The 8-bit sprites look fantastic and it genuinely feels like you are playing the arcade version. I don't really understand the system requirements though, as a laptop from 2000 should be able to run a game like this, yet with a Pentium D, the performance often drops from 31 FPS (which it is capped at) to 19-20 FPS. This isn't like a normal game either, it doesn't get all jumpy and horrible. It just slows down so you have to play the game in slow motion which isn't really all that fun.
The gameplay of Dark Void Zero is cool too. You run around like a standard platformer, occasionally finding a jet pack or two lying around on the ground. You can then hold down jump to activate it and fly upwards, or you can double tap jump to go into jetpack mode, giving you freedom to hover and move around wherever you want. The problem I've got with this is that your movement keys also define the direction in which you are shooting, which means if you are in jetpack mode and you are trying to shoot something, it gets really awkard at times. I know they are trying to capture the retro feeling but this IS the seventh generation of vidya gaming, so surely they could've made it so you can control movement with one set of keys/joystick and aiming with another?
Overall, Dark Void Zero is a fantastic retro experience and definately worth the pathetic sum of money they are asking you to pay for it, but it is brought down by some minor control issues and some bad optimization.
