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"The Jet Gamer" Game Review: Star Fox Zero + Star Fox Guard
9 years ago
Another new game for this year. Expect more currently released games to appear as the year goes on, and today it is another WiiU game.
Star Fox Zero + Star Fox Guard
Alright, a series that hasn’t been seen in a little while, and it is a series I’ve wanted to see a new entry in for quite some time. The Star Fox series has been a favorite of mine, but I know it is very hit and miss when it comes to some people out there. Some people like it a certain way, and others like it when this series takes some risk. You have to wonder if some time away from the lime light has affected this series at all. Shall we take a closer look at the Star Fox combo pack, and yes I said combo pack. There are two games I’m going to be talking about here as the two games do sort of come together with each other, and the secondary game should be talked about at the same time. I could split this review up maybe up into two reviews, but guess what, we are going to do something different here. We are going to do a double review. I’m going to talk about both of these games at the same time and give you two scores at the end. Let us see how these games look now shall we?
Gameplay
Star Fox Zero plays very much like its old school counterparts. You are controlling Fox McCloud as you go along for an on rails space shooter, which occasionally opens up into a free range mode where you can fly wherever you want in a large circular arena. You play each mission one after the other as you are heading for the final planet at the other end of the system. However, there is one big difference here compared to Star Fox 64 for example, you can stop and choose whatever mission you have previously played you want to see if you can go an alternative way. This means you aren’t locked into a single path to where you can’t play older missions over again. This is a nice system if you just want to play certain missions again and not want to play some other mission. Though if you do want to find some of the alternate paths you will have to wait until you finish the game to play them, as some of them require late game upgrades to get to or just require you to beat the game in general to take an alternate path to play new missions. The standard levels are just as you remember them though. You are going along rails as you try to reach the end of the mission where you either have a goal to complete or boss to beat. As I mentioned as well, the all range mode is where you aren’t stuck rails and get to actually fly your arwing in a more free manner. These missions usually involve dogfights or having to explore for objectives that need to be completed in order to progress the game. When it comes to the vehicles, you expect the Arwing to be there and also for the Landmaster as they are the two vehicles you have been familiar with for a very long time. However, there are new things to go along with you when you are completing your missions now. The arwing can actually transform now into a walker version of itself in case you need to get onto the ground or need to go inside places where flying is not an option. This can be transformed between at will, though it isn’t always a good idea to do it in many areas. The areas where it makes sense though to use it, it works well. There is also a vehicle that works more like a Helicopter where you hover in place and mode rather slowly at times. This vehicle is also equipped with its own little robot that can be dangled from the vehicle in order to hack compters in order to either turn off enemy defenses, or to help unlock areas for you to progress. This robot has an official name, but when you first look at him, you are pretty much just going to call him Rob the Robot for the majority of the game, as that’s who the robot is modeled after. So it is an interesting little easter egg in my opinion to use Rob in this way. Just be sure you don’t confuse him with Rob that drives the Great Fox. Giving him the other name in game is what helps you with that. Now, really, the only thing that I think affects this game greatly is the fact that it is very short. You are likely going to complete many of the things in the game in less than ten hours, and that’s even if you aren’t doing that well I would think. There are other modes you can unlock, but still, when your main mode is so short and honestly not that terribly difficult, I do have to say some people may feel ripped off by the length. Still, there are other modes that can be unlocked as you play that will extend that replayability a bit, which I will talk more about later, but the other modes, while nice, are sort of the same gameplay as every other mode, just with variations. The game just needs to be longer is all.
When it comes to Star Fox Guard now, this is something I’m sure most people weren’t expecting at all. This is basically a tower defense game. You are given a certain number of turret cameras and it is your job to defend a central point from robots that are trying to attack said middle point. That is the basic idea of the entire game. There are little added things here and there to make it not just that simple, but the basic idea of the game is just that, defend a central point. Each mission has you defeating the robots before they reach the middle. When you complete the mission, you are given metal that will raise your rank, which unlocks more missions and items as you go along. The extra missions are added in with the story missions, which are harder missions in general with differing gimmicks to change up the level. There are also many new cameras you can unlock as you play the game instead of just using the standard camera. For example, there is the lock on camera that is pretty slow, but lets you auto lock onto enemies for guaranteed hits. There is the freeze camera that freezes an enemy solid, either to hold them for another camera, or in the case of flying enemies, shatter them immediately from the fall down. There is even a flying camera that will hover above the area so you can see a larger area with just one camera. These are all best used in certain areas, and also you are limited on how many of them you can use as you play. Just be sure you use these cameras in the right circumstances or else they can actually hurt you. There are even a few bosses for you to fight here, and they aren’t easy and do require you to have good camera management to beat them. You need good camera management in general for normal levels as you have to monitor where the enemies are appearing from and watch the radar in case you can’t see stuff on your cameras. The bosses though are very large, and if you don’t defeat them fast, they will destroy your middle point very quickly. I do wish there was a bit more variety to the enemies though, even though there are a large number of them. You just see a lot of variety of the same type of enemies though. I just wanted to see a few more. Also, I wish you didn’t have to grind to be able to play all the levels either. You will unlock around half the levels on a first playthrough, but after that, you will need to replay levels over and over again to just grind metal in order to raise your rank to unlock even more things. Other than that though, the bulk of the game is pretty fun, though a bit stressing at times as well. Get used to that. These enemies will start to overwhelm you after a while and make you have to multitask big time. If you aren’t good at moving quick, you likely won’t get far in this game. Do well at that though, and you have a fun game here I think.
Story
Yeah, this is where I’m going to hit Star Fox Zero is with it Story. This is yet again, the same exact story you have played in Star Fox and Star Fox 64. Andross has attacked Corneria and it is your job as Star Fox, to stop him. I get it. People do enjoy this story, but if you are going to use the same story over and over again, people are going to start to get sick of it after a while. Yes, there are some side missions that expand on some dialogue a bit, but the main story does nothing new really. If you have played Star Fox 64 then you have played this game and know everything about the story already. There are no new twists either. It is the same twists and everything. Look Nintendo, expand on the story and give us more. While Assault was short as well, at least it was a different story for the Star Fox series. The story isn’t bad of course, it is still a good story, but when you do nothing original at all, other than just a few things here and there, I just can’t be that impressed with the story.
Star Fox Guard doesn’t have the best story in the world, but it is at least original. Pretty much you are working for Slippy’s uncle and his mining business, and it is your job to protect his mining operations from robots that want to end his operations. Slippy is there to help in a way in the form of advice and such as well. If this was it, I wouldn’t be that impressed with the story, but the story involving where the robots come from and why they are attacking you is actually interesting and has a nice twist to go along with it. That is a bit surprising for a tower defense game to have a somewhat decent story. I do wish it was a bit longer and had a bit more detail to go along with it, but hey, for this kind of game, I’m actually a bit impressed, but I could have been more impressed for sure.
Graphics
With Star Fox Zero’s look though, this game is pretty much eye candy when it comes to its looks. This game looks gorgeous and you can tell they took some real time to make this game look great. The areas are detailed, there are enemies everywhere, and you can really tell when you look at these areas you are flying through that people live here, and that there is a bad attack taking place all around you. I don’t think I saw any slow down at all, nor did I see any clipping issues at all. If you got too close to anything, you took damage from collision. That’s what you are supposed to expect and everywhere that I accidentally hit the surroundings I did take damage. I honestly have no complaints here at all. This game looks great and is a real showing to what a WiiU game can look like for sure.
Star Fox Guard looks pretty good as well, though it does lose a little bit due to this being a simple tower defense game and that the world does look a little less full of life and devastation in return. The robot designs though, both normal enemies and bosses, do look great though, and I do have to give them props. Even if the robots of certain types all look the same, they do look all unique in their own way, and you aren’t going to have a hard time figuring out what they are supposed to be at all. You are looking at the game through cameras, and the game does a good job of showing everything, even on the cameras you aren’t currently selecting. Even though it may appear as well that there is some slow down on other cameras, I get why they did it as well. When a camera is not active, the cameras are skipping a few frames and look like the stereotypical camera that is being recordered to where things stagger a little bit. The fact that so many different viewpoints are being shown at the same time and done so well, it is impressive to say the least. The game looks good for sure, I just wish there was a bit more detail in some areas was all, as many times the areas you are guarding all look similar, and all the backgrounds are very empty.
Sound
Star Fox Zero sounds wonderful as well. Just like it looks great, it sounds great as well. The character voices are perfect and it all sounds natural as they are talking to each other as you are flying or are under attack. The music sounds very good, and also has many redone tunes from the older games. You will recognize the tunes throughout the game and you will be glad to hear these old tunes redone to sound as good as they do. All the sound effects sound fine as well. Really, the only complaint I have and the only reason this doesn’t get another perfect score here is that sometimes the music and sound effects and talking can sort of drown other elements out as you are playing. It felt like music was getting drowned out by loud sound effects, and really there was a lot of noise sometimes that just seemed to be a bit too loud at times. I would have liked to hear the music a little more sometimes, but still, when you did hear it, it was great. I just wish sometimes it didn’t get drowned out was all from everything else that is taking place at the same time.
Star Fox Guard’s music is nice, though I don’t feel it is as memorable as the main games music though. There are some catchy tunes at times yes, but the majority of this game is just the sound effects of you shooting the robots and of them exploding. There is still the nice voice acting from the main game here as well. Really, when it comes to the sound here, I’m happy with it, but I’m not exactly as impressed as I am with the main game. I just wanted a little more here is all.
Control
I’m sure this is the section people wanted to see the most when it comes to Star Fox Zero. After all the complaints out there when it comes to the controls of this game, I have to say that the complaints are for the most part unwarranted, but I can see why some people could have some complaints to them as well. For the most part, this game plays similar to the old school games where you are watching from the third person perspective and you are shooting where the cursor is pointing on the screen. You can actually play a good amount of the game from this view. There is a new viewpoint though, and that is cockpit view, which is available on the gamepad. That means if you want to be a bit more accurate you can look on the gamepad to see what is exactly straight ahead of you. This is a neat feature, but it isn’t one that you need to use all the time. One thing though that is a bit of a complaint though is that your sight can get out of line very easily. This is due to the motion controls that are being used from the cockpit view, even if you aren’t using it at the moment. As you naturally move the controller around a bit just from natural movement, the cursor on the screen can slowly get out of whack to where pointing forward with your remote as the cursor way off to the side instead of straight ahead. This is easily fixed with a press of a button, but this will happen often, and it can throw you aim off a bit until you realize you need to reset your cursor again. I did find this a bit annoying, but I am glad it is easily fixed. There are some fights where the gamepad is best used to fight certain battles, but a large part of the game plays like the standard Star Fox and you don’t need to be staring at the gamepad all the time. Most of the complaints I hear about these controls just seems unwarranted and more involves people that are too lazy to learn how to use the controls. IT isn’t that hard at all. While I do have some complaints with them, they are not the disaster that some want to say at all.
The controls for Star Fox Guard aren’t that bad, but I can see some room for improvement as well. The main point of the game is you poke what camera you want to be looking through on the gamepad, and you shoot with any button on the controller. That’s simple enough. I found the way of holding the controller that works for me. Still, there are some complaints I did have. Turning your cameras is very slow, and the way of doing quick turns isn’t that accurate. To turn quickly, you need to use your pen to turn the camera on the gamepad, but you can easily pick up your camera this way as well, or end up taking your eyes away from the screen longer than you need to to do this. Also, I can see some people tempted to use their fingers a lot on the gamepad as well, as having to poke on the gamepad, then press a button to fire your gun can be a bit awkward using both the pen on the screen and at the same time. I used the back right Z button to fire with and that worked for me with this method, though it can seem odd as well to some people I’m sure. If you are going to use the gamepad, then that is fine, but using both in such a quick motion can get tricky sometimes trying to monitor both screen when action is happening so quickly.
Replay Value
Star Fox Zero has okay replay value despite how short it is. As I mentioned, there are alternate paths you can choose from, but most of them are only accessible after you have already beaten the game. That does sort of defeat the purpose of alternate paths when it comes to the main mode. There is a training mode in the game that teaches you about the vehicles, but most of them are just about score. However, there is Arcade mode that is unlocked after you beat the story mode after one time. This mode is pretty much how you used to play Star Fox. This is where all alternate paths are open, but you just have to get the objectives to unlock them. You play each and every mission in a row with no going back to old missions. Aka, this is how you went through the game when it was in Star Fox 64. You just play and your path is determined as you go and that is the path you have to stick to as you play. If you get a game over, its back to level one, there is no just restarting the level when you are out of lives like in story mode. This will raise some people’s replayability as this is basically classic mode. Still though, there is nothing new here that you didn’t already do in story mode. While it is nice to be able to play the game as it used to be played, it doesn’t exactly add all that much extra when it comes to replayability. It does add to it, but still, this game is short, a bit too short to be honest, especially for a $60 price tag these days.
Star Fox Guard is pretty replayable though as you have so many missions you need to complete and then there is quite a bit of replaying you have to do even to get all these missions as well. For the people that don’t enjoy grinding, this isn’t a good thing, but if you enjoy the game, the fact that you are encouraged to replay missions in order to get more missions and items, it can be seen a positive for people that like the game. Even though I didn’t play it really, there is an online mode as well. You can create your own waves of enemies on the stages and then send those stages out there for others to take on, and you can do the same thing of going online to play others custom missions. That is quite a nice boost if you want to play different types of waves of enemies in this game. If you take advantage of the online play, then you are almost going to have an infinite number of enemy combinations you can try to take on to keep the puzzles of how to protect the base coming at you. While I do see how this can get old after a while, and some people will not like the grinding aspect in the main single player mode, if you are willing to commit to this game and the online features and custom areas, then you will have long fun with this tower defense game.
Overall, I would say both of these games are pretty good and actually well worth playing. After not having a Star Fox game for so many years, it is good to see them bring this series back and in my opinion they did a good job. The games both look great, and they play rather well. The story in Zero is lacking due to them not being original at all, though Guard did make up for this a little bit, I wish the main game had tried to come up with something original, instead of using the same story for a third time. The controls are not as bad as people will make you believe. They have their problems yes with the cursor constantly getting out of focus, but most people seem to ignore that most of the game can be played just like the classic games do. I do wish it was a bit longer as well, as the game does have a shortness issue. What you do play though is very enjoyable and is very top quality entertainment. Still, I wish both of these games were just a bit longer, with Guard not having the grinding aspect is all. I would say anyone that has played the older games to come pick this up, as you should likely find it very enjoyable and reminiscent of the original games. Everyone I feel should at least try this game and also don’t come into it believing the nonsense that people are trying to spread about the controls. They are not as bad as people are trying to make you believe. People just need to try this game out for themselves. To me at least, they are both definitely worth a try, especially when it comes to Zero.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Star Fox Zero a seven point five out of ten.
Gameplay: 8
Story: 5
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Control: 7
Replay Value: 6
Overall: 7.5
Also, in my opinion at least, I give Star Fox Guard an eight out of ten.
Gameplay: 8
Story: 7
Graphics: 9
Sound: 8
Control: 7
Replay Value: 9
Overall: 8
Star Fox Zero + Star Fox Guard
Alright, a series that hasn’t been seen in a little while, and it is a series I’ve wanted to see a new entry in for quite some time. The Star Fox series has been a favorite of mine, but I know it is very hit and miss when it comes to some people out there. Some people like it a certain way, and others like it when this series takes some risk. You have to wonder if some time away from the lime light has affected this series at all. Shall we take a closer look at the Star Fox combo pack, and yes I said combo pack. There are two games I’m going to be talking about here as the two games do sort of come together with each other, and the secondary game should be talked about at the same time. I could split this review up maybe up into two reviews, but guess what, we are going to do something different here. We are going to do a double review. I’m going to talk about both of these games at the same time and give you two scores at the end. Let us see how these games look now shall we?
Gameplay
Star Fox Zero plays very much like its old school counterparts. You are controlling Fox McCloud as you go along for an on rails space shooter, which occasionally opens up into a free range mode where you can fly wherever you want in a large circular arena. You play each mission one after the other as you are heading for the final planet at the other end of the system. However, there is one big difference here compared to Star Fox 64 for example, you can stop and choose whatever mission you have previously played you want to see if you can go an alternative way. This means you aren’t locked into a single path to where you can’t play older missions over again. This is a nice system if you just want to play certain missions again and not want to play some other mission. Though if you do want to find some of the alternate paths you will have to wait until you finish the game to play them, as some of them require late game upgrades to get to or just require you to beat the game in general to take an alternate path to play new missions. The standard levels are just as you remember them though. You are going along rails as you try to reach the end of the mission where you either have a goal to complete or boss to beat. As I mentioned as well, the all range mode is where you aren’t stuck rails and get to actually fly your arwing in a more free manner. These missions usually involve dogfights or having to explore for objectives that need to be completed in order to progress the game. When it comes to the vehicles, you expect the Arwing to be there and also for the Landmaster as they are the two vehicles you have been familiar with for a very long time. However, there are new things to go along with you when you are completing your missions now. The arwing can actually transform now into a walker version of itself in case you need to get onto the ground or need to go inside places where flying is not an option. This can be transformed between at will, though it isn’t always a good idea to do it in many areas. The areas where it makes sense though to use it, it works well. There is also a vehicle that works more like a Helicopter where you hover in place and mode rather slowly at times. This vehicle is also equipped with its own little robot that can be dangled from the vehicle in order to hack compters in order to either turn off enemy defenses, or to help unlock areas for you to progress. This robot has an official name, but when you first look at him, you are pretty much just going to call him Rob the Robot for the majority of the game, as that’s who the robot is modeled after. So it is an interesting little easter egg in my opinion to use Rob in this way. Just be sure you don’t confuse him with Rob that drives the Great Fox. Giving him the other name in game is what helps you with that. Now, really, the only thing that I think affects this game greatly is the fact that it is very short. You are likely going to complete many of the things in the game in less than ten hours, and that’s even if you aren’t doing that well I would think. There are other modes you can unlock, but still, when your main mode is so short and honestly not that terribly difficult, I do have to say some people may feel ripped off by the length. Still, there are other modes that can be unlocked as you play that will extend that replayability a bit, which I will talk more about later, but the other modes, while nice, are sort of the same gameplay as every other mode, just with variations. The game just needs to be longer is all.
When it comes to Star Fox Guard now, this is something I’m sure most people weren’t expecting at all. This is basically a tower defense game. You are given a certain number of turret cameras and it is your job to defend a central point from robots that are trying to attack said middle point. That is the basic idea of the entire game. There are little added things here and there to make it not just that simple, but the basic idea of the game is just that, defend a central point. Each mission has you defeating the robots before they reach the middle. When you complete the mission, you are given metal that will raise your rank, which unlocks more missions and items as you go along. The extra missions are added in with the story missions, which are harder missions in general with differing gimmicks to change up the level. There are also many new cameras you can unlock as you play the game instead of just using the standard camera. For example, there is the lock on camera that is pretty slow, but lets you auto lock onto enemies for guaranteed hits. There is the freeze camera that freezes an enemy solid, either to hold them for another camera, or in the case of flying enemies, shatter them immediately from the fall down. There is even a flying camera that will hover above the area so you can see a larger area with just one camera. These are all best used in certain areas, and also you are limited on how many of them you can use as you play. Just be sure you use these cameras in the right circumstances or else they can actually hurt you. There are even a few bosses for you to fight here, and they aren’t easy and do require you to have good camera management to beat them. You need good camera management in general for normal levels as you have to monitor where the enemies are appearing from and watch the radar in case you can’t see stuff on your cameras. The bosses though are very large, and if you don’t defeat them fast, they will destroy your middle point very quickly. I do wish there was a bit more variety to the enemies though, even though there are a large number of them. You just see a lot of variety of the same type of enemies though. I just wanted to see a few more. Also, I wish you didn’t have to grind to be able to play all the levels either. You will unlock around half the levels on a first playthrough, but after that, you will need to replay levels over and over again to just grind metal in order to raise your rank to unlock even more things. Other than that though, the bulk of the game is pretty fun, though a bit stressing at times as well. Get used to that. These enemies will start to overwhelm you after a while and make you have to multitask big time. If you aren’t good at moving quick, you likely won’t get far in this game. Do well at that though, and you have a fun game here I think.
Story
Yeah, this is where I’m going to hit Star Fox Zero is with it Story. This is yet again, the same exact story you have played in Star Fox and Star Fox 64. Andross has attacked Corneria and it is your job as Star Fox, to stop him. I get it. People do enjoy this story, but if you are going to use the same story over and over again, people are going to start to get sick of it after a while. Yes, there are some side missions that expand on some dialogue a bit, but the main story does nothing new really. If you have played Star Fox 64 then you have played this game and know everything about the story already. There are no new twists either. It is the same twists and everything. Look Nintendo, expand on the story and give us more. While Assault was short as well, at least it was a different story for the Star Fox series. The story isn’t bad of course, it is still a good story, but when you do nothing original at all, other than just a few things here and there, I just can’t be that impressed with the story.
Star Fox Guard doesn’t have the best story in the world, but it is at least original. Pretty much you are working for Slippy’s uncle and his mining business, and it is your job to protect his mining operations from robots that want to end his operations. Slippy is there to help in a way in the form of advice and such as well. If this was it, I wouldn’t be that impressed with the story, but the story involving where the robots come from and why they are attacking you is actually interesting and has a nice twist to go along with it. That is a bit surprising for a tower defense game to have a somewhat decent story. I do wish it was a bit longer and had a bit more detail to go along with it, but hey, for this kind of game, I’m actually a bit impressed, but I could have been more impressed for sure.
Graphics
With Star Fox Zero’s look though, this game is pretty much eye candy when it comes to its looks. This game looks gorgeous and you can tell they took some real time to make this game look great. The areas are detailed, there are enemies everywhere, and you can really tell when you look at these areas you are flying through that people live here, and that there is a bad attack taking place all around you. I don’t think I saw any slow down at all, nor did I see any clipping issues at all. If you got too close to anything, you took damage from collision. That’s what you are supposed to expect and everywhere that I accidentally hit the surroundings I did take damage. I honestly have no complaints here at all. This game looks great and is a real showing to what a WiiU game can look like for sure.
Star Fox Guard looks pretty good as well, though it does lose a little bit due to this being a simple tower defense game and that the world does look a little less full of life and devastation in return. The robot designs though, both normal enemies and bosses, do look great though, and I do have to give them props. Even if the robots of certain types all look the same, they do look all unique in their own way, and you aren’t going to have a hard time figuring out what they are supposed to be at all. You are looking at the game through cameras, and the game does a good job of showing everything, even on the cameras you aren’t currently selecting. Even though it may appear as well that there is some slow down on other cameras, I get why they did it as well. When a camera is not active, the cameras are skipping a few frames and look like the stereotypical camera that is being recordered to where things stagger a little bit. The fact that so many different viewpoints are being shown at the same time and done so well, it is impressive to say the least. The game looks good for sure, I just wish there was a bit more detail in some areas was all, as many times the areas you are guarding all look similar, and all the backgrounds are very empty.
Sound
Star Fox Zero sounds wonderful as well. Just like it looks great, it sounds great as well. The character voices are perfect and it all sounds natural as they are talking to each other as you are flying or are under attack. The music sounds very good, and also has many redone tunes from the older games. You will recognize the tunes throughout the game and you will be glad to hear these old tunes redone to sound as good as they do. All the sound effects sound fine as well. Really, the only complaint I have and the only reason this doesn’t get another perfect score here is that sometimes the music and sound effects and talking can sort of drown other elements out as you are playing. It felt like music was getting drowned out by loud sound effects, and really there was a lot of noise sometimes that just seemed to be a bit too loud at times. I would have liked to hear the music a little more sometimes, but still, when you did hear it, it was great. I just wish sometimes it didn’t get drowned out was all from everything else that is taking place at the same time.
Star Fox Guard’s music is nice, though I don’t feel it is as memorable as the main games music though. There are some catchy tunes at times yes, but the majority of this game is just the sound effects of you shooting the robots and of them exploding. There is still the nice voice acting from the main game here as well. Really, when it comes to the sound here, I’m happy with it, but I’m not exactly as impressed as I am with the main game. I just wanted a little more here is all.
Control
I’m sure this is the section people wanted to see the most when it comes to Star Fox Zero. After all the complaints out there when it comes to the controls of this game, I have to say that the complaints are for the most part unwarranted, but I can see why some people could have some complaints to them as well. For the most part, this game plays similar to the old school games where you are watching from the third person perspective and you are shooting where the cursor is pointing on the screen. You can actually play a good amount of the game from this view. There is a new viewpoint though, and that is cockpit view, which is available on the gamepad. That means if you want to be a bit more accurate you can look on the gamepad to see what is exactly straight ahead of you. This is a neat feature, but it isn’t one that you need to use all the time. One thing though that is a bit of a complaint though is that your sight can get out of line very easily. This is due to the motion controls that are being used from the cockpit view, even if you aren’t using it at the moment. As you naturally move the controller around a bit just from natural movement, the cursor on the screen can slowly get out of whack to where pointing forward with your remote as the cursor way off to the side instead of straight ahead. This is easily fixed with a press of a button, but this will happen often, and it can throw you aim off a bit until you realize you need to reset your cursor again. I did find this a bit annoying, but I am glad it is easily fixed. There are some fights where the gamepad is best used to fight certain battles, but a large part of the game plays like the standard Star Fox and you don’t need to be staring at the gamepad all the time. Most of the complaints I hear about these controls just seems unwarranted and more involves people that are too lazy to learn how to use the controls. IT isn’t that hard at all. While I do have some complaints with them, they are not the disaster that some want to say at all.
The controls for Star Fox Guard aren’t that bad, but I can see some room for improvement as well. The main point of the game is you poke what camera you want to be looking through on the gamepad, and you shoot with any button on the controller. That’s simple enough. I found the way of holding the controller that works for me. Still, there are some complaints I did have. Turning your cameras is very slow, and the way of doing quick turns isn’t that accurate. To turn quickly, you need to use your pen to turn the camera on the gamepad, but you can easily pick up your camera this way as well, or end up taking your eyes away from the screen longer than you need to to do this. Also, I can see some people tempted to use their fingers a lot on the gamepad as well, as having to poke on the gamepad, then press a button to fire your gun can be a bit awkward using both the pen on the screen and at the same time. I used the back right Z button to fire with and that worked for me with this method, though it can seem odd as well to some people I’m sure. If you are going to use the gamepad, then that is fine, but using both in such a quick motion can get tricky sometimes trying to monitor both screen when action is happening so quickly.
Replay Value
Star Fox Zero has okay replay value despite how short it is. As I mentioned, there are alternate paths you can choose from, but most of them are only accessible after you have already beaten the game. That does sort of defeat the purpose of alternate paths when it comes to the main mode. There is a training mode in the game that teaches you about the vehicles, but most of them are just about score. However, there is Arcade mode that is unlocked after you beat the story mode after one time. This mode is pretty much how you used to play Star Fox. This is where all alternate paths are open, but you just have to get the objectives to unlock them. You play each and every mission in a row with no going back to old missions. Aka, this is how you went through the game when it was in Star Fox 64. You just play and your path is determined as you go and that is the path you have to stick to as you play. If you get a game over, its back to level one, there is no just restarting the level when you are out of lives like in story mode. This will raise some people’s replayability as this is basically classic mode. Still though, there is nothing new here that you didn’t already do in story mode. While it is nice to be able to play the game as it used to be played, it doesn’t exactly add all that much extra when it comes to replayability. It does add to it, but still, this game is short, a bit too short to be honest, especially for a $60 price tag these days.
Star Fox Guard is pretty replayable though as you have so many missions you need to complete and then there is quite a bit of replaying you have to do even to get all these missions as well. For the people that don’t enjoy grinding, this isn’t a good thing, but if you enjoy the game, the fact that you are encouraged to replay missions in order to get more missions and items, it can be seen a positive for people that like the game. Even though I didn’t play it really, there is an online mode as well. You can create your own waves of enemies on the stages and then send those stages out there for others to take on, and you can do the same thing of going online to play others custom missions. That is quite a nice boost if you want to play different types of waves of enemies in this game. If you take advantage of the online play, then you are almost going to have an infinite number of enemy combinations you can try to take on to keep the puzzles of how to protect the base coming at you. While I do see how this can get old after a while, and some people will not like the grinding aspect in the main single player mode, if you are willing to commit to this game and the online features and custom areas, then you will have long fun with this tower defense game.
Overall, I would say both of these games are pretty good and actually well worth playing. After not having a Star Fox game for so many years, it is good to see them bring this series back and in my opinion they did a good job. The games both look great, and they play rather well. The story in Zero is lacking due to them not being original at all, though Guard did make up for this a little bit, I wish the main game had tried to come up with something original, instead of using the same story for a third time. The controls are not as bad as people will make you believe. They have their problems yes with the cursor constantly getting out of focus, but most people seem to ignore that most of the game can be played just like the classic games do. I do wish it was a bit longer as well, as the game does have a shortness issue. What you do play though is very enjoyable and is very top quality entertainment. Still, I wish both of these games were just a bit longer, with Guard not having the grinding aspect is all. I would say anyone that has played the older games to come pick this up, as you should likely find it very enjoyable and reminiscent of the original games. Everyone I feel should at least try this game and also don’t come into it believing the nonsense that people are trying to spread about the controls. They are not as bad as people are trying to make you believe. People just need to try this game out for themselves. To me at least, they are both definitely worth a try, especially when it comes to Zero.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Star Fox Zero a seven point five out of ten.
Gameplay: 8
Story: 5
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Control: 7
Replay Value: 6
Overall: 7.5
Also, in my opinion at least, I give Star Fox Guard an eight out of ten.
Gameplay: 8
Story: 7
Graphics: 9
Sound: 8
Control: 7
Replay Value: 9
Overall: 8
