Zero Punctuation: Star Fox Zero (Effort)

[midrange]

GoOnKid said:

midrange said:

We can compare starfox to kid Icarus uprising (another rail shooter by the same company).

kid Icarus was developed as a 3ds launch title (meaning the hardware is harder to work with) and has a campaign size of at least 10 hours in addition to its online multiplayer. For its time, it was a great looking 3ds game. It utilised a gimmick (touchscreen for melee) but the gimmick was not central to its gameplay, nor was it inhibitory. All for a price of $40.

Starfox zero on the other hand was made by platinum and miyamoto, has a significantly smaller campaign, looks horrendous for a non launch wii u game (let alone gen 8 home console game), does not have online multiplayer, and has a hit or miss forced gimmick central to the gameplay. All for a price of $50 ($60 if you want retail but that comes with starfox guard which also has mixed reception).

Yes I am ranting, but it's pretty clear Nintendo didn't even try with Starfox zero.

That's not fitting. Kid Icarus Uprising is a tps, look at some gameplay videos. It's more comparable to games like The Order, but not to games like Star Fox. It does have some shmup sequences though.

It also was no launch title, it released in 2012, one year after the 3DS. The price for 3DS games is usually lower as well. I won't start arguing about the graphics because they seem to be much more important to some people while others don't care, like me. We could bash each other about graphics all day and would never agree anyway, so let's just skip that.

Star Fox Zero should be compared to games like Gradius. Real rail shooters, you know. Like Panzer Dragoon. All rail shooters are short and point based. Their appeal comes from mastering them.

Kid Icarus is both a rail shooter and an on ground hack and slash, but for the sake of comparison, I'll say it's half and half. If we take just the rail shooting aspect, the campaign is still at least 5 hours (half of 10) and I'm being generous.

you dismiss graphics, but we all know that a game is the sum of its parts with graphics being one of the parts. There is no argument to be had, Starfox zero has some of the worst graphics this gen for a retail home console game. Whether you care about it has no bearing on any starfox review.

So in total, the game looks bad, is annoying to control (general consensus), is short (replayability is not an excuse when other rail shooters are much longer), and costs $60 retail and $50 digital