★★☆☆☆

11/07/2025

ZeroRanger - Another Shoot ‘em Up I Won’t Finish

From frame one, you know it’s good. The visual design is, if you’ve ever seen my website, basically my ideal: limited pixel palettes, chunky outlines, industrial UI. Skylines rendered in six colours and perfect tension. The menus alone deserve a thesis.

Then the game starts. And I remember I’m playing a shoot ’em up.

I want to love this. I really do. There’s a part of me that adores the idea of achieving that bullet-hell flow state where everything clicks and you dodge through muscle memory like a zen monk with a GameCube. But it never quite happens for me. I just can’t stand lives systems anymore. I hate that about myself, but here we are. Restarting the game over and over wears me down fast. I must admit that I am a forward progress addict, maybe admitting the problem is the first step to fixing it.

Everything about ZeroRanger looks and sounds perfect to my untrained eye. The pixel violence. The sadboi synths. The way the UI talks to you like it knows a secret. All of it. I love what it’s doing. I just don’t love doing it.