Star Fox Is A New Beginning That Undermines Itself
There's a reason Nintendo keeps remaking Star Fox 64. The N64 iteration of the rail shooter—once the second Star Fox release—remains the franchise’s high watermark: a genuinely fantastic game that still holds up and stands the test of time. Subsequent sequels have struggled to recapture that magic. This latest version, simply titled Star Fox, is meant to be a soft reboot, and it plays just as well as you remember, with even better visuals. But if you've already experienced Star Fox 64 in any form, it will be hard to shake the feeling of deja vu.
For the uninitiated, or those who recently learned about the ultra-cool guy Fox McCloud from his cameo in the Mario Galaxy movie, Star Fox takes place in the Lylat system, a galaxy populated by anthropomorphic animals with futuristic space travel technology. The Star Fox team is a group of well-funded mercenaries who are frequently called upon by General Pepper, a dog, to assist in space combat operations.
As established in an opening cutscene, Fox’s father, James McCloud, was investigating suspicious activity on Venom when he was betrayed by Pigma, his wingmate, to the mad scientist Andross. James was lost, Peppy escaped, and Andross quietly began assembling an army for an invasion of the rest of the Lylat system.
That sequence introduces one of the major new features in this remake: fully animated cutscenes. These are well-crafted and stay true to the original spirit, with cool aerial stunts and updated voice acting that helps expand the game’s scope. The more realistic character designs were divisive when first shown, but I found them acceptable from the start. After seeing them animated, I’ve grown to appreciate their expressive faces and realistic textures, which still fit the fantastical world of space animals. Most cutscenes take place aboard the Great Fox, their docking ship, as they strategize, but the characters are still given a lot of personality through their movements and gestures. For example, Falco rolls his eyes a lot, reflecting his jerkish personality.
A similar level of visual fidelity is present in the stages themselves. They look familiar to their N64 counterparts without feeling too constrained by the original’s jagged edges and geometry. The upgraded style shines when showcasing new features not available in the original, like laser lighting effects reflecting off surfaces and illuminating dark caves. Star Fox 64 always had a great variety of stages, and this remake enhances that by making each stage feel distinct. I especially loved revisiting areas like the water world of Aquas, the surface of the sun on Solar, or the wacky, kaleidoscopic Meteos wormhole.
Revisiting All the Areas
Revisiting all the areas takes at least a few runs because of how the stage layout has worked since the original. One of the coolest aspects of Star Fox 64, and again here, is the ability to carve your way from one side of the galaxy to another in a relatively freeform fashion, completing optional objectives. Broadly, you can see the three paths as Easy, Medium, and Hard, but you aren't limited to one track. If you know how to find your way, you can easily hop between paths throughout, so you aren't committed to only staying on one difficulty track. Completing a hidden objective that opens the harder path will always let you switch to the easier one, but if you only complete the easier objective, you can't switch to the harder path.
In the original Star Fox 64, this was presented plainly, with a blue, yellow, or red line showing where you could go. In this version, it's given more flair, thanks to the new extended cutscenes. Rather than simply presenting you with a choice of locations for your next mission, each mission starts with General Pepper debriefing from the last mission and explaining the strategic importance of both next possible locations. One might involve a suspected bioweapon, while the other is an outpost under attack. In each case, Pepper outlines why Star Fox is the best or only available force to complete the mission. And since there's some overlap—since you could approach a planet from different directions—it's impressive how the cutscenes stitch different pieces together without feeling disjointed.
The Characters and Their Relationships
These cutscenes also help define the characters' relationships with each other and with General Pepper. Falco has always been portrayed as a cocky hotshot, but here we see him slowly warming to Fox’s leadership. Peppy is the assured veteran who trusts Fox will come into his own as a leader. We even get some insight into why the team keeps Slippy around, as the cutscenes present him as a machinist wunderkind who’s always two steps ahead in anticipating their equipment needs. And Fox, for his part, is played as the cool, Han Solo-type mercenary—needling General Pepper to pay for their valuable services, even though he’s obviously going to do the heroic thing regardless.
Wayfinding to new areas is made more engaging by the game’s narrative depth, which adds emotional weight to each mission. The journey is ultimately headed toward Venom, and it doesn’t make a difference in the end whether you went to Sector X or Solar. But the game does a good job of tying the journey together and giving each mission an appropriate amount of weight. Sometimes I even felt bad abandoning one planet in need for another, even knowing that it doesn’t have any impact on the final outcome.
