Zack Zero

Whoever hid this little masterpiece from me owes me emotional compensation. At first glance it looks like one of those old-school side-scrolling platformers your childhood remembers with suspiciously perfect nostalgia. You know the type. Run. Jump. Punch things. Collect shiny nonsense. Question your life whenever spikes appear. Simple. Except... Zack Zero isn't pretending to be retro. It grabs the entire golden age of arcade platformers by the collar, gives it a gigantic bear hug, injects it with modern technology, and then politely says, "Watch this." And HOLY &#$%!, does it deliver. This isn't one of those games desperately screaming, "REMEMBER THE '90s? PLEASE VALIDATE ME!" No. It actually understands why those classics were fun. Then it builds on that foundation instead of living inside it like a nostalgia parasite. Every level feels alive. Every jump feels satisfying. Every enemy exists for one glorious purpose: To receive a professionally delivered fist to the face. And I happily volunteered for overtime. The controls? Crisper than fresh potato chips. The pacing? Smoother than butter on a hot pan. The gameplay loop? Dangerously addictive. This is one of those games where …

**Zack Zero (2013)** I restarted *Zack Zero* after a few hours because I had missed something important along the way, which caused me to get stuck. After restarting, I finally managed to get past that section. Before that, I had already put several hours into the game, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time with it. The core of the game is about collecting **orbs**: these let you upgrade your **suit**, become stronger, and unlock more options in combat. You have different powers at your disposal that you can cleverly chain into **combos** against enemies, which makes the fights surprisingly fun. It’s also definitely worth exploring every path and side route. You’ll regularly find **treasures**, although they’re mainly **collectibles**—they don’t really boost your stats, but they do give you that satisfying “found everything!” feeling. Another thing I’ve noticed is the nice **variety in the levels**, which keeps the game from feeling repetitive for too long. Genre-wise, I’d describe it so far as an **action platformer**. Visually, it’s fairly **simple**, but it still looks more than good enough for me. The **audio** is fine—nothing bad, but also not something particularly memorable…

Fun action title, that makes good use of multiple character modes to achieve goals. Easy to 100%, with a modest investment of time. Bosses are sometimes tough, but part of that is in figuring out how to deplete their health bar at all. Unlimited continues (it seems) though, so just stick with it. 7/10

When it works properly it's a pretty good 3D 2d platformer game. 2.5D? Is that what it is called? Basically yeah, the game's alright.

This game has nothing special and is kind of generic

Very buggy with unresponsive controls. Does not utilize the 3D environment well; there are many places where you're supposed to switch between planes on the Z axis but nothing happens because of how finnicky the controls are. Collision seems to hit through multiple planes meaning you can think you dodged something because it's in the background but the game doesn't see it that way.