honestly probably the wii u's magnum opus, for better or for worse lol

i think its a must-play if you own the console. not to say its the best game on it, but boy does this game really represent where nintendo was at the time and what this console was all about.

there's no getting around the awkward control scheme, but i don't think that necessarily ruins the game. adds a bit of challenge to overcoming stuff, much like star fox 64 which ppl love lol.

the game looks and sounds gorgeous, especially with headphones, which does it some favors i think. a lot of the actual level designs and bosses can be really fun too.

ultimately there's no getting around fundamental bad design choices but its still pretty fun and cool for what it is

It's more playable than people act like, but despite that it's one of the most disappointing games I've played. Especially since it cements that Nintendo don't actually care about Star Fox, happy to hand it off to Miyamoto for his wacky Wii U Gamepad shenagins.

Theming wise it's basically a reboot of Star Fox 64, which is not only boring as sin but it also understands none of what made the original exciting in its presentation. The notion that Platinum came within 50 feet of this game almost insulting. Missions play out at least somewhat competently but with zero flair or ambition. The 'best' parts of this game are just stuff pulled from the older games. At least Assualt, for all its flaws, actually tried to push the series into new territory and actually feels like a follow-up. Don't even get me started on the Gyrocopter, which is so boring it legitimately feels like one of those training simulation games used to train people at their jobs.

Overall, it feels like the people in charge of this game barely cared. And the worst part is, Nintendo likely saw the sales of this game and assumed it's because Star Fox doesn't sell, and not, you know, because it's a trash game even a Star Fox simp like me dislikes.

It's wild this game ever made it past prototyping. You would have thought they would've made the prototype, realized how bad an idea the control scheme was, and immediately ditched the idea. But no. They had to make a game that "justified" the Gamepad's existence, and that game had to be a Star Fox game for some reason.

In this game, the tv screen will typically give you the normal view you remember from Star Fox 64, while on the Gamepad you have the cockpit view. The TV view is mostly for navigation, and the Gamepad view is for aiming. This means that no matter what screen you look at, you are unhappy, because either your view is awkwardly limited to the cockpit, or you just can't aim properly. You might think, "Why can't I just aim on the TV", and you can.... kind of. You see, they purposefully made the aiming reticle on the TV inaccurate so as to justify this control scheme. So you can use the TV for aiming (which I did unless I really needed precision), but it's going to feel bad. Making the aiming reticle inaccurate is one of the worse design decisions I have ever seen. Can't believe this game was made by Miyamoto.

I should also mention that sometimes the game makes the TV screen view practically unusable by locking it to a cinematic view, making it stupidly hard to navigate with it. This forces you to awkwardly move around with the cockpit view, which just sucks every time.

The game isn't all bad. It's great seeing a Star Fox game in HD, and the transforming Arwing is super cool. Also when the game isn't super hard, it can occasionally feel like Star Fox 64.... which made me just want to play Star Fox 64, so as to not put up this game's bs.

But honestly perhaps even worse than the controls.... they put a frickin' stealth mission in this game?!?! It's not even good stealth mission! You just VERY slowly fly a helicopter around and drop a small (also very slow) robot in order to hack computers. It is absurdly boring. It's wild that that level actually made it to the final game.

Nowhere near the level of previous Star Fox games. Unfortunately, Nintendo once again was stuck in their ways and tried to shove Wii U controller specifics like gyroscope and motions into a game that didn't really need that.

New gameplay features are added such as using the Walker but end up being more annoying than anything else in terms of controls and overall gameplay. Unsurprinngly, the 'classic' type of levels where you control the Arwing and fly around are the most fun levels and where the game truly shines. It's almost as if, they should try to stick with the classic formula since it's the best and most fun way to play these games.

I feel like I've aged out of my prime Star Fox years. There aren't any aesthetic or narrative choices that would prohibit a thirty-three year old from enjoying the game, but Star Fox, in general, demands a lot from its players (more so this time due to the onerous control scheme), and it's just doesn't fit with my current lifestyle. I first thought of this revisiting SF64 with the 3D remaster; I really enjoyed my breezy 1-hour run, but realized I was not going to fully appreciate the arcadey aspects of the game, playing for high scores, or finding the secrets. The individuals levels are more of a commitment than a platformer's, and being stuck on rails really disincentivizes exploration on the first go. When I first played the Snes Star Fox a couple months ago, I recognized that would like this game a lot more if it was one of just a handful to which I had access.

As I imagine the case in 1993--and experienced in 1997--feels like it holds true today: I would probably love this game if it was all I had to play. There is a high skill ceiling with so much to see and do, but, dang, this was frustrating to play through. The controls are very difficult, especially in all-range mode, and the additional vehicles are just throw-away challenges that disrupt the flow of the game. I think the length of the campaign was imposing and detracts from the games arcade nature. I'll be less likely to revisit it (in its current form) because of it, which is disappointing because it wasn't until the Gigarilla fight and parts of Venom where I started to feel comfortable and enjoy the game.

Another observation, I think you could sleep walk through the game and get silver medals, which seems unbalanced and a crass and ineffective way to encourage poor players (like me). I had some pretty good levels and some very bad levels, all silvers, so what's the point in bronze?

- One run, defeated Andross in 4:35 on Nintendo Wii U. Good: ★★☆☆☆