Ten years after the last mainline Star Fox game, Star Fox Command on the DS, Nintendo finally released a sequel on Wii U called Star Fox Zero in 2016. Despite being the sixth mainline release in the series, Star Fox Zero does not advance the story much compared to where it has already gone. It is probably most well known for its unique control scheme.
Star Fox
Star Fox Zero does not deviate from the Star Fox formula much. As you would expect, there are parts where you are flying forward, parts where your ship transforms into something that goes on the ground, and parts where you freely explore an area with one of the transformations that your ship has. The level design is pretty good, but each individual level doesn’t do much to set itself above newer entries into the genre like Panzer Dragoon and Sin and Punishment. As a whole, though, Star Fox Zero does provide a lot more variety in this area than other games in this genre do.
Star Fox Zero is so close to an arcade game that it wouldn’t be surprising if they planned to make an arcade port of it at one point. Unlike what you usually see in console games, where one mechanic is used throughout and taken to its limits, this game changes it up with pretty much every stage. They are also all relatively short, as is the game overall. That is a good thing in some ways, but as an overall product this game could used more content.
Wii U GamePad
Apart from the variety of levels, this game is notable for its use of the Wii U GamePad. With the default settings, the TV will show where your ship is in space, while the GamePad will show where you are aiming. You use gyro controls to move the camera on the GamePad, while the controls mostly effect where you ship is on your TV. Together, this makes for a much more in depth game system than pretty much any other rail-shooter. This is another reason that this game feels a lot like an arcade game, since alternative control schemes have are often explored in the arcade.
Most of the levels in this game provide an experience that you pretty much can’t get in any other game. The levels themselves still aren’t that amazingly well designed, but they are good enough to make their mechanics interesting to use and worthwhile to go back to. Unfortunately the game is rather short, so none of the mechanics get to become particularly developed. The shortness is one of the biggest issues with the game, but it doesn’t invalidate what is here.
One issue with the use of the Wii U GamePad is that it takes some adjusting to get used to since pretty much no other game uses it in this way. This isn’t an issue for people who play video games somewhat regularly, as they will probably get used to it by the end of the first stage. If you don’t play video games often or are relatively new to them, this can be a lot to get used to. You are essentially playing two games at once a lot of the time, but you do get a lot of breathing room to make it manageable. This control scheme overall is definitely better than the alternative of just making a standard rail-shooter, even if it makes it less approachable for some players.
Graphics and sound
Star Fox Zero pretty much looks like every other 3D Wii U game. There isn’t much to complain about, but it isn’t that impressive either. One issue is that basically everything is a flat surface, so there isn’t much interesting geometry to look at. Apart from that everything looks pretty much good enough, but the flatness is quite noticeable. The game runs decently well at least, far above 30 FPS all of the time pretty much.
The sound in this game is better than the graphics. The music is quite good, but it probably won’t impress you much if you have played previous Star Fox games or Super Smash Bros. games. The voice acting is also pretty good, but it is probably familiar to anybody who would actually play this game. Overall the sound is better than the vast majority of other games, but it isn’t particularly noteworthy overall for reasons outside of this game’s control.
Should you play it?
At the price it is going for now it is definitely worth giving a try for people who are willing to try out unique games. If you are new to gaming or have a strong aversion to playing with more than one screen or with alternative control schemes then you should probably look for something else. The main issue is that even though it wasn’t a full price game at launch, there definitely should have been more content. The stuff that is here is good, but this game would have scored much higher as a budget eShop title, which is what this realistically should have been.
Overall the game is a 7.5 out of 10.
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