Having played and been thoroughly underwhelmed on a number of levels by the release of Cyber Citizen Shockman about a year ago, I’ll admit to initially being unenthused to check out Zero. That said, it only took a few minutes with this version of the series to feel far more positive about it. 

While you can see similarities in their side-scrolling beat-em-up styles, the most vital difference between the two is that in this case the game’s controls are tolerable. I’m not quite sure what was going on with its predecessor, but it felt like merely mastering its controls at all was a task in itself with all of its quirks. That isn’t an issue here though, as you’ll quickly get on board with simply running around, moving between levels, and trying to beat up everything in sight while trying to take as little damage as possible yourself.

While it’s great that this iteration happens to be far more approachable and enjoyable than its aforementioned counterpart, that unfortunately doesn’t mean that it’s a dream by any means though. Quite simply, it just isn’t terribly complex or interesting, and if you altered the graphics a bit you could likely mistake it for any number of pretty generic platformers from yesteryear, where you’d also run around and knock out anyone or anything that got in your way. It is by no means great, but it absolutely has a classic look, plays responsively, and works well within the seemingly limited confines of its goals.