By Zhya Colon

This was my first experience ever playing a Star Fox game, and might I say, I was heavily disappointed. I am aware that this game is a remake of a Star Fox game made back in 1997, so perhaps this is most likely targeted to older Star Fox enjoyers. But I am also someone who has played many remakes and thoroughly enjoyed them. 

Star Fox for Switch 2 is supposed to be very challenging. Now I am all for an overly challenging game. In fact, all games should have some level of difficulty to them, so I won’t go on to say that Star Fox was “Too hard.” But there’s a difference between games that are challenging and fun, and games that are challenging but make you want to rip your hair out. Star Fox: Switch 2 Edition just so happens to be the latter. 

But I’d like to start with what’s good. I found the graphics to be incredible. I will not hate the amazing atmosphere this game is able to transport players into. The art is absolutely breathtaking. 

That’s because I traveled to different planets, and each one is so incredibly unique because each has its own style. Aquas is the water planet and as I progressed throughout it, the world gets darker as you get deeper and it makes the whole creepy ocean vibe even more present. One of my favorite planets is Macbeth where I chased a freight train around in a grungy atmosphere. I adore an industrially rustic feel in games so I enjoyed it. 

Now the bad. The story is lackluster at best. The game starts with James McCloud who’s the main character’s dad. James then gets shot down and is said to have died. We then meet Fox Mcloud who is the leader of his dad’s old team called “Star Fox.” The team includes Falco Lombardi, Slippy Toad, and Peppy Hare and they all want to keep the galaxy safe. The story truly commences when the team gets insight into a character called Emperor Andros, who was a past scientist on the planet Corneria, which is the planet the main group live on. 

Andros has been going to different planets and taking control of them for resources. I thought that was pretty interesting. The issue is that’s pretty much all the story there is, and it takes around 45 minutes to complete. When I first finished the game, I had to sit and process it for an hour, because I kept thinking, is that all there is to this story? Now there’s small side things you witness if you end up taking a different path, but they end up meaning very little in the end because they are never mentioned in any other future dialogue. The story is, go to different planets, kill Andros, rinse and repeat, over and over again. 

Within the main menu you can look at files for each character. I got so excited because in James McCloud’s file, the words said, “Presumably dead.” I had thought this meant he might be alive, but no. From what I can understand, he has expired. Which sucks because I was really excited for a maybe side story of having to save James. More could have happened, but I never unlocked the “Expert” difficulty which, in theory, could have unlocked a brand-new story. But I did all of the easy and normal tasks, and to unlock Expert, I’d have to get every medal for every planet. That’s gameplay I’m not willing to put myself through. 

Speaking of gameplay, the movement is so janky, most times I’ll believe I’m dodging an object just to lose half of my health because I still hit it. The depth perception of bosses is absolutely terrible. I am one to love hard boss fights. Difficult challenges put your brain to work. Having to memorize patterns and understand boss mechanics is one of my favorite parts of most games, but this game is so incredibly weird with patterns. A boss could swing their arm, and I would dodge one way and get hit, then dodge the same way the next time and be able to get out of the way. It never made any sense how I was supposed to dodge certain bosses. Most of the time, I hoped and prayed I’d kill them before they killed me. 

I’ll give credit where credit is due, the game marks where you have to hit bosses, normally with a bright yellow indicator. It’s really helpful. The issue is that hitting these targets is so annoying. The movement is incredibly difficult. Moving, hitting, and dodging 200 mini attacks gets really hard. Now this can come down to me being bad, but I’ve now played over 20 hours. I’ve replayed the final boss Andros five times and I still can barely tell you precisely how I’ve defeated that boss. I just hit the enemy and hope for the best. 

There’s one more aspect of the gameplay that I have issues with: the other characters. I play as Fox, but there are the three other characters on the Star Fox team. I wish these characters did anything else besides cry for my help in battle. The game would be better if the characters did anything slightly of relevance to help the move the story or the game play along. 

I don’t normally mute games, but the characters have these upsetting pieces of dialogue when they need help in battle. See, when fighting a boss, a team character will yell “over here, Fox” or, “Fox, help” or “Fox, need some back up.” I don’t know if they’re actually supposed to be helping, but if they are they don’t do very well. And on top of not doing anything, they then beg for me to help them. There will be moments where five enemies are on me and I’m one hit from death and in the far right I’ll hear, “FOX HELP!” as I’m getting absolutely destroyed myself. Sometimes I don’t help them and let the team collapse because, frankly, I’m doing more than them anyway. 

Continuing with the characters, the personalities are all pretty one-sided. Fox is the stubborn fearless leader. Falco is the sarcastic one-liner guy who claims he hates the leader. But he doesn’t. Slippy is the smart one. Peppy is the oldest and wisest one. It’s all based on very generic personality traits. There’s no depth or underlying character quirk that appears as the story progresses. As someone who gets emotionally attached to video game characters faster then I’d love to admit, these characters just didn’t stick. Even while playing, there were times where a character would say something and I would get so upset and want to mute the game all together. 

I know I just bashed heavily, but it wasn’t really meant for me. It was meant for those who are already fans of Star Fox. I am not, but I still have constructive criticism, such as, I wish this game had an upgrade feature. It mimics game play of Roguelikes heavily already, so having upgrades would be nice. The game already gives a fake currency when you finish a run, so why not implement that and let me buy upgrades for my ship? It would make gameplay and replaying so much more rewarding. I also wish the characters interacted more with each other. For all I know, they all hate each other’s guts.

I hope future Star Fox offerings can do better, not just for me – but for past fans who hope for true joy when they play games in this long-running series. 

Zhya Colon, our newest intern, recently graduated from The Lab School for Finance and Technology, where Zhya was the editor of the school newspaper.

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