Nintendo is still gamely puttering along and releasing a game every couple of months for Wii U, the latest being Star Fox Zero, available Friday. The latest in a line of space-dogfight games starring a cast of battle-hardened, no-nonsense fuzzy animals, Zero is built around a weird gimmick, one that in my experience I never got comfortable enough with to start really having fun.
Here's the twist: On your television screen, you see a full third-person view of the action: Your ship, the terrain, the enemies, their bullets. On the screen that's built in to the Wii U's GamePad controller, you can see a first-person view from the cockpit of ace pilot Fox McCloud. So you've got to split your attention between the television and the controller, avoiding collisions and enemy fire by controlling your ship with the joystick while simultaneously using the pad's motion control to aim your cursor and fire, constantly looking between both screens.
It sounds confusing. It is confusing. It's also not optional. This is how you play Star Fox Zero. It's the shooter equivalent of rubbing your stomach while patting your head and also keeping a hacky-sack in the air with your foot.
