Star Fox Is A New Beginning That Undermines Itself

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There’s a reason Nintendo keeps remaking Star Fox 64. The N64 iteration of the rail shooter–at the time, the second Star Fox release–remains the apex of the franchise: a genuinely fantastic game that still holds up and stands the test of time. Subsequent sequels that have attempted to recapture the magic have floundered by comparison. This latest iteration, simply titled “Star Fox” for what I can only assume is meant to be a soft reboot, plays just as great as you remember and looks even better. But if you’ve already played Star Fox 64 in any iteration, it will be hard to shake the feeling of deja vu. 

For the uninitiated, or perhaps those who just learned about ultra-cool guy Fox McCloud from his spotlight-stealing cameo in the Mario Galaxy movie, Star Fox takes place in a galaxy called the Lylat system, composed of anthropomorphic animals with futuristic space-travel technology. Star Fox is a group of well-funded fighter-jock mercenaries who are regularly called upon by a military general, a dog named Pepper, to assist their space-combat operations. 

As established in an opening cutscene, some years ago Fox’s father, James McCloud, was en route to investigate questionable activity on a planet named Venom, when his wingmate Pigma betrayed him to the mad scientist Andross. James was lost, his trusty wingman Peppy escaped, and Andross kept quietly assembling his army for an invasion of the rest of the Lylat system. 

That sequence establishes one of the major new features of this remake: fully animated cutscenes. And to their credit, these are very well-made sequences. The aerial stunts look cool while staying true to the original spirit where needed, and the voice acting has been updated to facilitate the expanded scope. The more realistic character designs were divisive when shown off earlier this year, but I felt fine with them from the beginning, and after spending some time seeing them animated in cutscenes, I’ve come to really appreciate the look. Their faces are nicely expressive and textures like fur give them a sense of realism, while still staying in the fantastical world of space animals. The vast majority of the cutscenes take place aboard their docking ship, the Great Fox, as they discuss strategy, but the characters are still given lots of characterization in their movements and gestures to express their perspectives and personalities. For example, Falco rolls his eyes a lot, because he is above all kind of a jerk.

A similarly heightened level of visual fidelity is present in the stages themselves, which look recognizable to their N64 counterparts without feeling too beholden to their jagged edges and geometry. While all of the stages look great, the upgraded style is most impressive when it shows off new flourishes that weren’t available in the original, like the lighting effects of your lasers reflecting off of surfaces and illuminating dark caves. Star Fox 64 always excelled at stage variety, but this remake accentuates it by making each stage appear vastly different than the rest. I especially loved revisiting the stages that are major departures from the others, like the water world Aquas, the surface of the sun on Solar, or the wacky and kaleidoscopic Meteos wormhole. 

Revisiting all the areas takes at least a few runs because of how the stage layout has worked since the original. One of the coolest aspects of Star Fox 64, and again here, is the ability to carve your way from one side of the galaxy to another in a relatively freeform fashion, completing optional objectives. In broad terms, you can see the three paths as Easy, Medium, and Hard, but you aren’t limited to one track. If you know how to find your way, you can easily hop between paths throughout, so you aren’t committed to only staying on one difficulty track. Completing a hidden objective that opens the harder path will always let you switch to the easier one, but if you only complete the easier objective, you can’t switch to the harder path.

In the original Star Fox 64, this was presented rather plainly, with a blue, yellow, or red line showing where you can go. In this version, it’s given a good deal more panache, thanks again to the new extended cutscenes. Rather than simply present you with a choice of locations for your next mission, each mission starts with General Pepper debriefing from the last mission and explaining the strategic importance of both next possible locations. One might have a suspected bioweapon while the other is an outpost under attack. In each case Pepper outlines why Star Fox is the best or perhaps only available force to complete this mission. And since there’s some overlap, as you could approach a planet from different directions, it’s particularly impressive how these cutscenes stitch different pieces together without feeling noticeably disjointed. 

These all lead to the same outcome, of course. You’re ultimately headed toward Venom no matter what, and it doesn’t make a difference in the end whether you went to Sector X or Solar, but it does a good job of tying the journey together and giving each mission an appropriate amount of weight. Sometimes I even felt bad abandoning one planet in need for another, even knowing that it doesn’t have any impact.

The extended cutscenes also help define the characters’ relationships with each other and with General Pepper. Falco has always been portrayed as a cocky hotshot, but here we get to see him slowly warming to Fox’s leadership. Peppy is the assured veteran who trusts Fox will come into his own as a leader. We even get some insight about why the team keeps Slippy around, as the cutscenes sell him as a machinist wunderkind who’s always two steps ahead in anticipating their equipment needs. And Fox, for his part, is played as the cool Han Solo type–a mercenary needling General Pepper to pay for their valuable services, even if he’s obviously going to do the heroic thing regardless. 

Wayfinding to new paths is a little easier this time around too. Dialogue will drop hints about what to do to open new paths, without being overly on the nose or spelling it out for you. If you miss an optional objective, it’s easier to restart a stage from the beginning or from your most recent checkpoint, and doing so doesn’t even cost you a life or eliminate your laser upgrades or bombs. You can even entirely complete a stage, see where it leads, and then go back and do it again immediately to try for another way. 

That said, I was surprised that each run through the Lylat system is treated as its own distinct game progression, just like the original. That means that once you finish the game, you’ll need to start anew on Corneria and cut your path through from the beginning. This is true to the original, and I don’t mind the faithfulness, to a point. But for returning fans who already know their way around, it would have been nice to have the option to track which paths you’ve already opened and let you jump back to planets, eventually creating a fully filled-out star map.

And while the updated visuals are often gorgeous, they do come with some trade-offs that take getting used to. For one thing, your targets are a lot less obvious with much more happening on-screen, visually, so it’s easier to miss a flyer who gets away. In boss battles, weak points are less obvious than the glowing vulnerabilities of the original, and they don’t flash as brightly when you land a successful hit to let you know that you’re doing damage. And with the higher fidelity making everything look much more like it has weight and bulk, it’s a little strange when a capital warship in Area 6 explodes like an empty cardboard box.

The other marquee feature of this release is multiplayer, which adds online play, and GameChat camera integration for animalistic avatars. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try any of the pre-release online multiplayer sessions, so I’ll have to reserve my judgments on that aspect until I can try it in a live environment. We’ll update this review once we’ve been able to sufficiently test it out.

Star Fox is a remake, but it also appears to be an attempt at a reset. The franchise has never really found its footing, despite clearly having a lot of love from Nintendo. This story has always felt like a starting point, establishing the characters and hinting at their backstory. So altogether, this remake may be the best possible way to give the series a fresh start. At the same time, the original still holds up very well, and if you have Switch Online with the Expansion Pass, you can already play it. That makes this hard to recommend, which is a shame. If Nintendo means this to be a new beginning for Star Fox, retreading familiar ground undermines the effort.

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