FUR Squadron

Genre: On-Rails Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

FUR Squadron is an On-Rails Shooter released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, with players flying a high-tech aircraft piloted by an anthropomorphic animal character who… yeah, this game is doing a Star Fox thing. It’s clearly a love letter to the Star Fox franchise, with its main character clearly designed to evoke Fox McCloud, and there are even little references to Star Fox throughout the game. And all of that is fine, but the thing is, when you design a game in a way that it’s clearly going to copy another, more popular game… you know people are going to compare them, right?

To argue devil’s advocate, this game does do one thing that’s distinctly different – its 3D visuals take place in a Tron-esque 80s-inspired, textureless wireframe virtual reality world. Which, again, is fine, but it does mean that everything looks samey and ultimately less visually-interesting. This is joined by indecipherable gibberish for the characters’ speaking voices, and backed by a decent but forgettable synthesized soundtrack.

For the most part, the gameplay is also pretty decent. The controls feel loose compared to Star Fox, and it’s lacking a lot of the depth of the Star Fox games, such as the ability to tilt your aircraft to get through tight spaces and manually speed up or slow down, but for the most part everything controls pretty much the same as Star Fox – you move down an on-rails corridor, where you can move around, which doubles as your aim. You fire with normal lasers (which you can upgrade via a power-up), or can hold down the button to “lock on”, and you also have a limited number of more powerful missiles you can use.

However, there are two very major problems here.

The first problem pertains to aiming. Everything is find for objects roughly in the center of the screen, but once anything reaches the edges you find that even moving to the farthest point in that direction, your ship cannot target the spot while you’re flying in a neutral direction. And if you continue to tilt your ship in that direction, your aim scrolls way past the point you need to be aiming at. As a result, the only way to target these spots is to repeatedly flick your aim up and release it to return it to neutral, firing as your aim passes over that spot. There are bosses whose weak spots are in these edge-of-screen locations! How did they not catch this in testing!?

The second major flaw is game length – this is a game that can be easily completed within a half hour. And while, yes, a typical Star Fox game generally isn’t a great deal longer than that, Star Fox also offers players multiple routes to give these games replay value so you can see new levels in subsequent play-throughs. Not so here – you only have a more difficult game mode that unlocks after completing the game. And again, you could argue that this game’s $7 price tag offsets that length somewhat, but I don’t think the price is nearly low enough to justify this length, and also, players who want to play Star Fox on Nintendo Switch can still play the first 2-3 games in the series via Nintendo Switch Online’s legacy apps, or if they want a longer and more open-ended experience there’s always play Starlink: Battle for Atlas. Yes, Starlink isn’t really a Star Fox game, but it’s close enough.

Look, I appreciate that FUR Squadron is aiming to deliver a budget experience inspired by Star Fox, and given that we technically don’t have a new Star Fox game on Nintendo Switch, I appreciate that this could even be seen as filling a hole in the Nintendo Switch’s game lineup. But given the game’s flawed aiming system and its incredibly short length, I still think it’s better for players eager for Star Fox action on Nintendo Switch to go back to playing one of the alternatives I named above. This game was a decent attempt, but it crashed in this initial flight test.

tl;dr – FUR Squadron is an On-Rails Shooter that was clearly inspired by the Star Fox Franchise, and for the most part, it succeeds in replicating that franchise’s gameplay. Unfortunately, the 80s-esque wireframe “Virtual Reality” visuals are too bland and samey, the controls for aiming near the edges of the screen are horrible, and the game can be completed within a half hour. Players looking for a new Star Fox substitute on Nintendo Switch should keep looking.

Grade: C

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