Star Fox

[Pikman]

I've had a single play through (which embarrassingly, I didn't complete. Fuck that 4 vs 4 level!). It looks amazing, plays really nicely and I'll definitely go back to it.

 

Isaac and I had a go at the multiplayer last night using Gameshare, it works smoothly (although I was a bit disappointed with the graphical hit) and we had tons of fun! It is a super nice dog fighting game

We need more levels though, just the 3 aren't going to last us too long. You also can't mix and match game types with location so there are really just 3 options to choose from and that's it.

[Maryokutai]

I had my first playthrough of this earlier today, after only having played bits and pieces over the years. I thought this was excellent for the most part, still plays really well, huge amount of variety cramped into it. Some stuff I found a beat unclear but that's were the multiple playthroughs come in I suppose. The dogfight mission against Star Wolf was the most difficult for me as well, especially as I have a very subjective issue with the controls (I play railshooters with normal controls but free-roam flight combat games with an inverted Y axis – probably should have just switched in the options midway).

 

For me this also blows every new Switch 2 game they made out of the water, though whether this is due to them slowly angling their shots past my personal tastes or missing the mark more often, I can't really say. It might be a mix of both though, looking at stuff like Bananza and MK World specifically. In any case it made me more interested in Ocarina of Time, because I'd rather replay a game I enjoy than have another feature-creep sequel that misses the point.

 

Going back to Star Fox, an interesting part of this that it's also a look back at a time when Nintendo was still pushing visuals, because this looks absolutely stellar. I wouldn't have given it a second though if it had come out on PS5 instead of Switch 2, it's a really visually accomplished game. I'm of two minds about the cutscenes, because some of them are quite good (mostly the out-of-cockpit action sequence), but the dialogue scenes are very wooden and are trying to carry a script that was previously told in short tidbits during missions. It doesn't really work as a result and the pacing is completely at odds with the presentation – Andross comes and goes without much bravado, because the game was never supposed to have any. Or rather it was meant to be build in your mind, not by a cutscene director. But shove it in a cinematic corset, and there's an unavoidable clash of styles.

 

Anyway, this was my first endgame report card:

 

 

I thought 999 was an odd maximum if I could reach it on my first try, but it turns out I did indeed get exactly 999 hits

[Maryokutai]

Seen all the routes/stages now, this is a fantastic game. Solar is a bit boring but other than that this holds up exceptionally well. To an extent I can understand why Nintendo is so reluctant to make a proper sequel, as there's very little room for improvement here. I feel like both this game and PD2 perfected the rail shooter genre decades ago and there's nowhere else to go outside just making the same game over and over again with different looking stages. Everything you might add on top would just dilute what makes it good. It's the same issue that plagues F-Zero, in a way.

 

I'll mess around with some of the Challenges, too, but only on normal difficulty. Expert seems potentially frustrating and could sour the experience for me.

[Maf]

Glad to hear it holds up. I have the game and after I’ve played a few other things I plan on having a Switch 2 marathon and catching up. I have 10 games (including this) but only played 4 of them