Tweet
In the 19 years since Star Fox 64 there have been a handful of new entries in the series, but full-on sequels? Not so much. Rare's Star Fox Adventures was a famously wayward appropriation of the universe, Q-Games' Command a noble and enjoyable experiment that put the series back on rails but shot a little past its station while Namco's Assault found itself grounded by miserable third-person shooter sections. Star Fox Zero, a new outing that has blossomed from a small sketch by Shigeru Miyamoto that was intended to reassert the possibilities of the Wii U's eccentric GamePad, sees developer Platinum Games sticking much closer to the original script. Zoom down to the surface of Corneria to see the Arwing's wing-tips throwing up plumes of ocean spray and you might be convinced you're not just playing a follow-up to the Nintendo 64 original. The purposefully flat textures, the innocence of its simplistic shooting and the overenthusiastic cries from your team-mates are all enough to make you wonder whether this is Star Fox 64, given the HD treatment and shuffled out the door with a slightly novel control scheme.
Platinum Games goes out of its way to convince you that's the case. This isn't a gritty reboot - you'll see no grim-dark backstory exploring the fan theory that Fox and co, through some godawful command from General Pepper, are all amputees - and it's not quite a reinvention either. The destinations on the star map that charts your six hour journey from start to finish as well as all those trademark detours carries plenty of familiar names; the same cast returns to voice Peppy, Slippy and Falco. Slippy's still a squeaking little turd of a toad. Falco is still a jerk.
Read more…
More...