Hands-on With Star Fox Zero - Preview
by Nick Pantazis , posted on 17 June 2015 / 4,853 Views
It’s pretty hard to be a Star Fox fan. The Wii didn’t even get a Star Fox game, and the GameCube’s outsourced Star Fox: Assault is less than stellar. Star Fox Zero wants to change that, and with a classic style and some fun new features it has a lot of potential.
Most of the demo of Star Fox Zero I played stuck closely to the standard formula of Star Fox 64 of on-rails levels opening up into miniature “all-range” sandbox encounters. Controls are familiar as well, with the right stick controlling boost and break and the left stick controlling movement and right trigger controlling attack.
The traditional controls are augmented by the ability to use the gamepad with a first person camera to make fine aim adjustments. This takes some getting used to, but ultimately grants far more precision than was available in 64. By the end of the demo I was used to the system and found it offered a surprising new depth to a game which I might otherwise find overly familiar.
You can transform into the chicken-looking walker at any time, which adds an interesting dimension to combat. Battlefields became completely different when approached from the ground, and the Walker’s abilities felt fresh and different. It was also just super cool to transform between the two forms on the fly mid-fight.
If you enjoy the quipy and silly dialog in past Star Fox titles you’ll be happy to know all the Saturday morning cartoon camp is still present. So are the cartoonish visuals, which are less than the Wii U is capable of, but decent enough. More importantly the game runs at a super strong 60 frames per second, which makes the intense action even smoother.
I had a great time with the Star Fox Zero demo and I’m looking forward to the full game when it releases this holiday.
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I am glad to hear that your impressions from the gameplay demo are mostly positive.
I am definitely looking forward to this title.
I was fairly annoyed with how -ugly- the game is, tbh.
I'm not really a Star Fox fan, but I'll think about picking this up at a discount if the reception is really good and if I have some time between other things.
They took a graphics hit so that it could run at 1080p and 60 fps. It's IMO a beneficial sacrifice.
I bet this game is going to be a blast to play.
Good impressions. I find it heartening that you enjoyed the game
love the art style and love the gameplay. Definitely going to pick this game up.
This is in stark contrast to the gamespot hands on article. Dude never got used to the controls and it ruined the experience for him. The comments section was filled with negativity. I'll get the game eventually because it looks like the gameplay will be good, but Mario Kart 8 was 60fps with much better graphics, so that's a big complaint for me.
60 fps > visuals. Yes.
