I played up through the gyrowing level last night. I played the first level five times, the second level three times, and the third and fourth levels once each. I also played the walker training twice (the second time I doubled my score!) and the Arwing training twice (just because I enjoy the controls so much).
I want to apologize to Miyamoto for having my doubts. This is awesome. This is a paradigm shift for the series of the magnitude represented by Super Mario 64, speaking in purely gameplay terms. Everything works so well.
And that includes the gyrowing. The gyrowing provides a nice change of pace where you're given a semi-open level and you can tackle it in a variety of ways, i.e. avoiding spotlights or hacking them or dragging bombs into them or dropping girders on them, etc. My favorite parts are where you use ZL to move the camera overhead and you descend down shafts avoiding obstacles and collecting items. I also love sinking the gunships lined with ROB-like robots.
In general, this game reminds me of Steel Diver, in the sense your mind is micromanaging all of these different control elements. I find that sort of task mastery to be very satisfying, especially when all of the in-game feedback is so good. The way your lasers lance across the screen and strike down targets like a hot knife through butter is just beautiful, especially now that you can still shoot down enemies that in SF64 would've already passed out of your range.
I think that's why I'm enjoying this so much more than I ever did SF64. SF64 was frustrating for me because I wanted to shoot many enemies but simply couldn't because I was trying to avoid obstacles. In Zero, I feel like I have the potential to do that, sharpshooting enemies that have already flown past me or under me while still steering the craft around falling skyscrapers and through gates.
In Zero, it feels like there's 10 times as much gameplay as SF64 (which might be true -- there are something like 20 stages with multiple phases, and each phase is the size of a course from SF64!). And these levels feel much more engaging and exhilarating, with multiple moments in the first few levels alone where I felt like Luke in the X-Wing at the end of the first Star Wars, tracking an enemy in my sights.
It's a twin-stick twin-screen motion-controlled shooter. And it works wonderfully.
Picked up Zero amd Guard anyway.
