Star Fox

Genre: On-Rails Shooter

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), 2-8 Team Competitive (Online); GameShare Support

.

Review:

Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!

The Star Fox series has long been tethered to its past like an achor, and anyone familiar with the series knows it. The original 1993 Star Fox game on Super Nintendo Entertainment System was groundbreaking in its ability to render 3D visuals on a console that wasn’t designed to support 3D, and its 1997 sequel on Nintendo 64, titled Star Fox 64 (in some regions going by the title Lylat Wars), is still often seen as the pinnacle of the On-Rails Shooter genre, with its exceptional gameplay, brilliant level design, and fantastic evolution of the formula presented in the first game. But then, after that, the series sorta’ stalled.

It can’t help that every later title in the series was compared to Star Fox 64, a comparison that never helped the new game. It seemed that either games in this series were odd experimental games like Star Fox Command on Nintendo DS and spin-off projects like Star Fox Adventures on GameCube, or they were retreads of Star Fox 64, with a remake of that game on Nintendo 3DS in 2011’s Star Fox 64 3D, and an ill-conceived reimagining of the game in the form of 2016’s Star Fox Zero on Wii U.

So when Nintendo revealed that the first new Star Fox game since Star Fox 64 3D and Star Fox Zero, a 2026 Nintendo Switch 2 release simply titled Star Fox, would be yet another remake of Star Fox 64, many series fans groaned in disappointment. Then they got a better look at the game and many silenced their complaining.

Simply put, Star Fox on Nintendo Switch 2 is absolutely gorgeous, a showpiece for the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware. Absolutely stunning locales with great textures, detailed architecture, amazing lighting and shadows, reflections, great water effects, excellent atmospheric effects, beautiful character designs with wonderful fur effects, all rendered at a good resolution with smooth framerates. I’ll note that while the revamped character designs of the series’ anthropomorphic characters has been a topic of debate since the game was announced, I felt it didn’t take long at all for these new character designs to feel perfectly natural.

Speaking of the characters, all of the characters in the game have received new voicework that I think is generally excellent, with a reworked script that expands on the story of the original with a new prologue and new mission briefing scenes that are more than pure exposition, they’re used as an opportunity to explore the game’s characters and their interactions. Despite the greater focus on story, this is still pretty faithful to the original game, without any great departures from the original game’s story.

Backing up these excellent visuals and revamped story and voicework is a remade soundtrack that takes the music of the original release and gives it an epic, cinematic overhaul with orchestral and choral versions of those themes that truly makes this game feel like an event.

Turning our attention to the gameplay, a number of smart changes have been made to the controls here, such as assigning the U-turn and somersault moves to D-Pad buttons, though players who prefer the original controls can still opt to use the original game’s button combinations if they want by selecting an option in the settings menus. You also have new optional Mouse Mode controls, gyroscopic motion controls, and 2-player co-op controls that split the controller’s functions between two players, though apart from the motion controls I didn’t have much use for any of these.

When it comes to the level design and gameplay, Star Fox aims to be an extremely faithful remake, and any changes here are subtle to the point where I didn’t notice them. I think it’s a clever touch to have large spaceships teleport in ahead of you to retain the pacing of the original game’s gameplay without sacrificing the much more extensive draw distance the Nintendo Switch 2 makes possible. Personally, I feel like this is a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, as the original game’s excellent level design, boss design, and core gameplay have withstood the test of time extraordinarily well and don’t really need a lot of revision.

That’s not to say that there can’t be more added on top of the original game, with new achievement-style missions to take on and medals to earn by performing well, a challenge mode to let you jump straight to a level to tackle its goals, and a revamped tutorial. It only takes a few hours to complete one run through the game, but Star Fox 64 was designed to be played through multiple times, with numerous routes to play through, and these smart changes to the game in this remake make it a bit easier to jump in and tackle challenges in a level later in the game rather than having to replay the game from the beginning.

This game also features a completely reworked multiplayer mode, and while this seems like a bit of an afterthought without a huge amount of content, what’s here is excellent, with players competing in teams to complete goals on a small handful of maps. Players can seek out friends or foes online, and this game even supports GameShare to make it easier to play with friends locally. Plus, this game makes some amusing, impressive use of the Nintendo Switch 2 camera and a “Snapchat-style” filter that maps one of the game’s character models to your face in a way that’s truly delightful.

When it comes to complaints, what I have is minimal. This is a faithful remake, so there’s not much content that’s completely new here, as wonderful as everything looks and sounds in this version. Also, it’s a tad frustrating that enemies now give less of a visual indication when they’re being damaged, making it hard to determine if you’re making progress in some boss fights. And I suppose the missed opportunity present in the lack of battle mode content is a real shame. But overall… it’s really difficult to be upset when this remake gets so much so very right.

Is it disappointing that the first “new” Star Fox game in a decade is yet another remake of Star Fox 64? Sure. But it’s hard to complain too much when the improvements are this drastic, this impressive, and when we now have what is by far the best version of a truly great game, and one of the most impressive-looking games so far to release on Nintendo Switch 2. Unless you disliked the original Star Fox 64 or absolutely refuse to play a remake of it, consider this a must-have game, and a high watermark for future remakes to use as an example of how to do it right.

tl;dr – Star Fox is a faithful family-friendly remake of Star Fox 64 that gets pretty much everything right. It preserves the excellent gameplay of the original game while giving it an absolutely stunning makeover, adding in a bunch of new features, expanding on the original game’s story, revamping the multiplayer mode, and overall setting a standard for others to look to when anyone wants to see how to do a truly phenomenal remake of an absolute classic. This is a must-have game, and a showpiece for the Nintendo Switch 2.

Grade: A+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, Seth Christenfeld, and Vince Verrinoldi. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}