Review: Star Fox - Same Spacecraft, More Colorful

Star Fox is one of Nintendo's most iconic brands, so the announcement that we'd be getting a full remake of Star Fox 64 as an exclusive title for the Nintendo Switch 2 was absolutely reason to celebrate for me, especially as someone who didn't really get to play the original game all that much. So is this a good remake job that's worth your time? Here's everything I thought about Star Fox.

A History of Space

For those less familiar with the brand and unsure what this is about, Star Fox puts us in the shoes of Fox McCloud and his crew, who go by the name Star Fox, embarking on missions across space. The storyline of Star Fox was and remains quite charming, though in my view it's really not critical, especially when no substantial changes have been made to it. What is critical and central here is of course the gameplay, as Star Fox is essentially a classic rail-shooter where we need to complete various levels in which we pilot our spacecraft (or other aircraft) along an auto-advancing track until we finally reach the end of the level where a boss typically awaits. There are also levels that focus on a more open approach where you're given the ability to move around relatively freely within a defined area until completing some objective. The game will reward you greatly for proper and precise control, so if you're a player who appreciates a clear challenge that requires practice, there's no doubt you'll find yourself at home with this game pretty quickly.

Compared to the original, the Switch 2 version of Star Fox provides us with one major upgrade if you ask me, namely the graphics and overall visual presentation of this game: I know the internet has been fairly divided regarding everything related to the fact that the game underwent a comprehensive graphical overhaul that includes, among other things, new models for each of the different characters in the game, and I'm aware that there are people who loved the graphical direction this remake took and quite a few who connected with it less. Personally, I'm completely on the side that encourages this change, as Star Fox looks in my opinion nothing short of excellent: all the different character models look great, the animation feels smooth and high-quality, the various environments also received a noticeable upgrade in overall appearance and the immersiveness they provide us as a result of the drastic improvement in graphics, and even though I don't remember too much from the original because as mentioned I didn't get to play it that much, there were quite a few moments where I encountered some part of a level or some character and said "wow, this is exactly how I remember it, just prettier!". The soundtrack and voice acting also receive what I think is simply excellent execution, and regarding performance? A real treat as the Switch 2 knows how to handle this game wonderfully in both handheld and docked mode in a way that no longer really surprises me, as we got smooth performance throughout the entire game both during gameplay and at 4K resolution.

Do a Barrel Roll!

As I began to detail briefly in the previous part of the review, Star Fox's gameplay was and has remained very faithful to its source and to the fact that this is a classic rail-shooter, but in my opinion Nintendo missed slightly when it decided to provide us with exactly the same game in terms of gameplay: there are no new levels here, no new weapons or updated mechanics designed to refresh the game and make it more modern, this is a one-to-one copy of the original as far as how you actually play the game, and even though I think Star Fox's gameplay is great, I have to say I was disappointed to discover there are no nice or interesting upgrades beyond the original line the game leans on.

This feeling of disappointment intensifies when you realize that even regarding the actual content amount of the game, not too many changes were made: the game itself is built from 16 different levels we can play in, but in practice during actual gameplay we can play a maximum of 7 levels per playthrough, with the path to those levels achieved by flying and completing certain objectives or discovering various secrets within a particular level in a way that allows us to unlock another part of the level map and thereby change our route toward the game's final level. That's how it was in the original and that's how it is now, but the result here is that a full run of Star Fox will take you about an hour and a half at most, which while supposed to encourage the player to keep playing with the aspiration to unlock different routes and different levels as a result, in practice personally felt like a very outdated practice compared to more modern games, in a way that caused me to abandon this game relatively quickly. 

Another element that feels less polished here is the controls themselves: Nintendo as mentioned didn't make too many changes with this remake beyond the graphics, and this is also noticeable in everything related to controls, which while quite fun to operate overall still feel clunky, which directly affects the overall feel of this game and the level of enjoyment it will yield you. There were quite a few cases where I felt the game was literally "playing against me" regarding controls, and it's such a shame because these were problems that were also felt in the original on the Nintendo 64, and therefore this was a golden opportunity for Nintendo to fix them, which didn't happen here. Additionally, the game received full support for the mouse mode of the Joy-Con 2 controllers which was supposed on paper to provide a quite interesting experience regarding game controls, but in my opinion here too this is a major miss as this control mode simply feels uncomfortable and even more clunky compared to the regular control mode.

At the same time, the game did receive two major changes in the form of its accompanying game modes, as the game received among other things a completely new game mode called "Challenge Mode" that allows you to quickly jump to levels you've previously unlocked where you can perform various challenges in order to try and achieve the highest score - this is in complete contrast to Nintendo's insistence on preserving the original as much as possible over a new modern approach compared to the original, and in my view this is a substantial upgrade to the game experience since it allows you not to enter a full and continuous playthrough in order to try and reach some level. Alongside this mode we also got a slight technical improvement to the game's Co-Op mode, which now supports full online play and not just local split-screen play.

The Bottom Line

Star Fox is a very cute game and a sort of love letter to die-hard fans of the brand who can now enjoy it on a modern gaming platform, but in the same breath, this is a game that feels very dated compared to newer games, something that severely clouds the overall experience, sometimes in a way that directly hurts my ability to recommend it wholeheartedly. The game's length also raises questions regarding value for money, and even though it only costs $50 (for the digital version of the game), I'm very divided in my ability to decide whether this is an investment worth the return or not.