Star Fox Zero

Developed in cooperation between Nintendo and Platinum Games, Star Fox Zero is an on-rails action game that aims to bring something new to the genre with a unique control scheme. However, with a problematic tutorial and an uneven level design, the game ends up not living up to its potential.

The plot of Star Fox Zero is simple and direct: the scientist Andross wants to dominate the galaxy using portals and it’s up to the squad led by Fox McCloud to avenge the death of his father, James McCloud, and defeat the villain. The story’s charm comes from the fact that the characters are anthropomorphic animals that will often speak the bizarre, but classic lines from the series (“Do a barrel roll”), and follow a certain logic in their characterization: while the villain Andross is a monkey, for example, Fox’s commander, General Pepper, is a dog – animals considered rivals in Japanese culture.

Although the story is considerably irrelevant – the briefings that precede the missions last no more than twenty seconds, and rightly so – there is still a visible character arc for the protagonist. Right at the first mission, for example, Fox’s companions are comparing him to his father, who died a hero’s death in battle, which establishes the protagonist’s need to match him. At the climax, then, Fox’s journey is completed when a certain figure recognizes his accomplishments.

The strength of this moment is reinforced by the developers’ choice to make the audio of the character’s conversations come out only through the Wii U’s gamepad during battles. This serves to simulate a radio, increasing immersion, but it is subverted during this climactic moment, when a certain sentence is uttered and the sound comes out both from the TV and from the gamepad: the breaking of the pattern reinforces the importance of the scene while suggesting the strange nature of the character in question.

Nevertheless, Star Fox Zero is a game that values its gameplay much more than its story. During the stages, the protagonist’s ship, the Arwing, follows a predetermined path, but it’s possible to move around the screen to escape the enemy fire and better aim your shots.

What makes this more interesting is the scoring system, in which the player receives bonus points for eliminating groups of enemies with a single charged shot. The challenge, then, comes from the formation and the speed of enemy ships and creatures, which encourage the player to find the best moment to fire their charged shots, since we are only rewarded if we are able to detect enemy patterns and wait for the precise moment when they group together.

This classic structure is improved here thanks to the implementation of motion controls. While we move the ship with the left analog stick, we aim using the gamepad’s gyro sensor. This means that if in previous Star Fox games it was only allowed to aim in the direction the ship was facing, here you can fly and fire in opposite directions. Such freedom allows a more complex pattern of enemies, where ships and robots appear very quickly at various points of the screen, expecting us to be able to shot them all down. In Star Fox Zero the greater the freedom, the greater the difficulty.

It’s no wonder that the developers constantly remove movement restrictions in the so-called “All Range-Mode”. In these parts of the game, we take full control of the Arwing in an enclosed space, no longer being in an on-rails shooter. In Star Fox Zero, these spaces are usually immense, having gigantic spaceships on the horizon shooting lasers that, even far away, can still hit you. The scope of the battles, in some stages, definitely surpasses that of the other Star Fox titles.

However, the development team has also introduced here an infamous dual-screen control scheme: the television screen has the game in its usual third-person perspective while the gamepad screen contains a first-person view from inside the cockpit.

Here, the gameplay becomes problematic due to the wrong focus that is given to the controls. First of all, the levels do not require both screens most of the time. In fact, it is not only possible to ignore the existence of the second screen during most of the game, but it’s actually better to do so: as the gamepad’s motion sensor is already fast enough to reach faraway enemy formations in time, the change of perspective is an unnecessary complication. Only during certain boss fights that it’s important to switch our attention between the screens, since the camera centers on the enemy and no longer on the Arwing’s field of view.

We don’t even have to keep looking up and down from the TV to the gamepad, as we can change the image on the TV to that of the gamepad at the touch of a button. This is where the other problems of this control system lie: changing screens, for example, is more practical than looking from one to the other, because this way we don’t lose a single second of control over the action. However, during the tutorial, the recommended option is to observe both screens at the same time. Also, as both screens are available at all times, we are pushed to try to use both of them during the levels, although we have nothing to gain by doing this. In other words, the problem with the Star Fox Zero’s dual-screen system lies in the great focus that is given to it, when it is only a gimmick to use during boss fights and nowhere else.

To make matters worse, the game also has its stages structured in a way to regularly offer unique vehicles to pilot, and each one has its own control scheme. That is, the player will still be trying to figure out how to handle both screens at the same time when Fox’s Arwing is switched to a bizarre robot chicken or a helicopter in a needless stealth level. The developers try to present new things at a brisk pace, but the initial focus on the needless dual-screen scheme can make things confusing.

The quality of the stages is also uneven. Some certainly manage to impress us with a great variety of goals, while others with their art direction. In Sector Y, for example, we must prevent three missiles from reaching a portal – which requires three steps  – while protecting a spacecraft from drone attacks and also trying to destroy whole groups of enemy ships with a single shot to achieve a good score. In Fortuna, we are surprised by a striking art direction, with giant snakes and birds flying over a terrain formed by vines and covered in mist. On the other hand, there are also some tedious levels, such as the Asteroid Field, where Fox must only break… asteroids, destroying a batch of drones at the end, and others which are artistically bland, such as the ice planet Fichina, whose battle occurs on an icy plain devoid of any landmark.

Also present in the game is a system of medals that encourages some exploration, rewarding the player who tests new ways to address certain challenges. Some medals are ingenious (one rewards the player that realizes it is possible to use an upgrade to skip half a stage), while others are just challenging (“do not take damage”), but there are some that are simply counterintuitive (“let a certain enemy live, although there is absolutely nothing special about them to make you think that is even an option”).

Another design error is the absence of a map in the “All-Range Mode”. As these parts have invisible barriers limiting the movement space, so the absence of a sensor to indicate them can frustrate anyone who hits an invisible wall without any warning. In 2016, it’s also unforgivable the absence of an online leaderboard in a game designed around increasing your own score, since such a feature could encourage the player to continue improving their own.

Star Fox Zero is still a good on-rail shooter, offering some interesting stages and motion controls, which allow for more intricate and complex enemy patterns. However, it is also an unnecessarily confusing experience until the player realizes its greatly advertised gimmick is mostly irrelevant.

January 08, 2020.

Review originally published in Portuguese on May 15, 2016.