Poor controls and camera angles
Whilst playing as a robot you’ll be able to use a boost charge, fire missiles and bombs, and jump higher than your two team-mates. Playing as a Robot adds a certain degree of variety, but the situations where you’ll be forced into this scenario are no different than the other repetitive levels. You’re basically playing the same levels over and over again, with occasional changes in character.
The poor controls and camera angles ensure that the controlling of these characters, and their subsequent interaction with the environment and their enemies, is frustrating. The controls cannot be changed at any point during the game, meaning you’ll have to put up with the left and right analogue sticks being inverted from traditional game controllers. Although you’ll soon get used to this minor, yet totally avoidable, annoyance, the lock-on function for targeting enemies is another poorly executed function.
Click for larger imageBy a click of your left button you’ll be able lock-on to an enemy for a ranged attack. Locking-on isn’t always as simple as it seems. Often you’ll lock onto the wrong enemy or find yourself stuck at a camera angle where you can’t make head nor tail of your surroundings. Only by releasing the lock and starting again will you be able to re-attempt this somewhat tricky manoeuvre.
The camera problems don’t stop there. Drop down from a box or a crate and you could find your field of vision totally obscured, it’s an age old problem which we shouldn’t be seeing in 21st century gaming.
Early on in the game you’ll experience a platforming section. This is platforming at its worst. The distances between platforms and the poor camera perspectives ensure that you’ll often be plummeting to your death. This poorly designed section took me 12 attempts to complete. Have no fear though, Zathura offers unlimited re-spawns, so there is no chance of dying for good – great!
On top of this, characters will often merge with scenery or float on air; it truly is a poor excuse for a game. It’s no surprise that Zathura is aimed at young kids. They are the only people who might put up with the annoying camera angles, the rushed graphics, the mind-numbingly linear gameplay, and awkward controls. Hey, but have no fear kids, the game does include some cut-sequences featuring actual dialogue from the film –great!
