I wish ZeroRanger wasn't sold to me as the best thing mankind has ever created. I appreciate the game for what it is and the ambition it has-- everything people say about that aspect of the game is true. What it has to say as a story and as a meta-commentary of arcade games and shoot 'em ups particularly is awesome. I even like the funny gimmick at the end because it's not really a big deal; this game is short and not all that hard. Even without the story at play the presentation still carries. The music is excellent, and while the green/orange gimmick can cause issues for some it has the foresight to feature a colorblind mode, which is appreciated. I really liked a section of the game where iconography you know is reused yet altered, creating a feeling of "this isn't quite right." There's even some nice little touches like the B and C ship models having different flavor texts.

But I can't really get down with much else. The gameplay in this game is woefully uninteresting, and when you're making game that encourages high scoring that's not really a good thing. In some ways it makes ZeroRanger feel like it's a "shump for people who don't like shumps," due to its heavily reliance on its story, which is not dissimilar to some other popular things with a similar deal going on. I know it isn't that pretentious: this game is clearly inspired by a lot of things, shumps most definitely included... but it rubs me the wrong way.

I didn't beat the true final boss, and I guess you could call me "filtered" for that but if this game was enjoyable during instances that weren't the normal final boss fights I would jump right back on that shit... but as it stands, ZeroRanger is a far better concept than it is as a game.