What would happen if the makers of Eastenders decided, at the very last minute, to direct an entire episode as an homage to Martin Scorsese?
You'd have a more interesting episode, no doubt. But you'd still be left with all the flaws of the format - the overwrought melodrama, questionable acting, and general drudgery of it all.
That's the what I thought of while I was playing Zuberion.
But it also tells you something of its peculiar balance of ingredients. It's a completely generic endless flier, but with an incongruous attempt at an artistic twist.
Your sole goal is to drag a little space craft around a vertically scrolling field of play, collecting dots and avoiding obstacles.
It's like a 2D shmup without the shooting part. It's a mup.
As it is, when your floaty craft explodes having clipped a crystalline formation for the dozenth time, your mind will likely have started wondering into other things...
Where was I? Oh yes, the arty part. Zuberion makes a superficial attempt at respectability with a sparse, dare I say beige art style and an elegiac piano score.
It's pretty ill-fitting. With such a simplistic, well worn game what you want are thrills and fireworks - anything to engage you as you go through the motions.
Zuberion attempts to bring together the well travelled endless flier genre with something a little more high minded, but it ends up in a bland no-mans-land.