Growing up, the NES and Nintendo 64 were the consoles I remembered spending hours upon hours playing. While there were many classic titles I spent days playing – like Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire, Excitebike, Deja Vu, Goldeneye 007, and Aerofighters Assault – one title always stood out to me as I found myself playing more often than not: Star Fox 64. From the iconic characters to the fun levels to trying to get the high score on the leaderboards to learning how to get the max score of 999 on Solar, this was one of my favorite games and I was always interested in seeing what came next for the series. But, this is where my history with the series takes a decidedly different path then many and it’s similar to what happened with me and the Zelda franchise. When Star Fox Adventures was announced, I actually wasn’t that interested in it as it didn’t look like a Star Fox game at all (this was before I knew about the whole development history of the game). Then came Assault which was another I passed over, mostly because of the new “serious” story and because it was a follow-up to Dinosaur Planet. Afterwards, there was Command, the 3DS Remake, Zero, and Guard; other games I also passed by as they just weren’t what I wanted when it came to a new Star Fox entry. What I personally wanted was a sequel that took the concept of 64 but just improved on it and didn’t lose sight of what made that game special. So, fast forward to this year (2026 as of this review) and, after a decade of silence, we finally get a new entry in the form of another remake of Star Fox 64. But, instead of passing it over, I decided to actually give it a try and see if this is any good. After about a couple of days playing it, I can safely say that this was kinda disappointing.
“We need your help, Star Fox!”
Let’s get the very obvious part out of the way first: If you played the original 64 title or the 3DS remake, then you know what to expect when it comes to the story. If you haven’t, here’s a condensed version: An evil scientist named Andross, after being exiled from Corneria, launches a massive war against the entire system and only the Star Fox team, led by Fox McCloud, can stop him. It’s a story that would fit right at home on a Saturday morning cartoon and that’s what I enjoyed about it. While there are some brief moments of seriousness, the story never really takes itself too seriously as it’s basically animals flying ships and blowing each other up. If I were to compare it to anything, think the James Gunn ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ movie series, but if everyone was furry like the real star of the movie, Rocket, mixed with the late Gerry Anderson shows Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlett, the former being one of the inspirations behind the original Star Fox’s design.
With the remake, while the story’s still the same, the game does add new cutscenes that occur before, in-between, and after every mission and add to the world the game is set in and, to my surprise, expands on some elements of the original game as well as giving the game a more cinematic feel to it. Even the option of switching planets, depending on what route you take, is expanded on, which I have to give props to them for adding. For example, if you take the alternate path from Corneria, General Pepper will inform the team about their fleet’s struggle in Sector Y. But, afterwards, Slippy will mention strange readings from Meteos (which are those weird psychedelic warp areas that would look right at home on a Grateful Dead album) and suggest going there instead, leaving it up to the player which path they choose. I was also impressed with the endings, which actually changes depending on what path you take. If you take the easy path, it gives you Ending A, which is a basic ending. But, if you take the hard path, you get Ending B, which is the real ending and one that many 64 veterans will recognize. Don’t worry, they do still include the bill at the end of the game, along with General Pepper’s response to it, though I do miss the leaderboards. One minor aspect I liked was how the game made the training mode a part of the story and gave it some in-game lore as to its existence, rather than just being a random mode you play through once and that’s it. I gotta admit that the trainer’s voice is not as memorable as the 3DS ‘surprising smoothness, but that’s just a minor nitpick.
However, this leads us into the game’s biggest issue and, probably, the one aspect I’m, personally, not a fan of: The artstyle. Beginning with the characters, I do not like the new redesigns they all got. While a few of the redesigns look OK, like General Pepper who doesn’t look like that pitiful Droopy-esque version from Assault and Bill Grey who now more accurately looks like a dog and not a weird bunny, I’m not a fan of the rest of the characters’ new looks. They tried to go for this ‘semi-realistic’ look to them and they just don’t have that appeal that the past games entries had, with Zero probably having the best designs of the series. I understand wanting to go a new route with an artstyle, but you can still have a cartoon-esque design to the characters and still be realistic. Look at movies like GOAT or Zootopia or, in this case, the last entry Star Fox Zero; they had realistic designs for the animals but all of them still had these cartoon looks, so they could’ve easily done a mixture of the two styles, instead of what we ended up with. Speaking personally, I think the weirdest changes are to the legs; they just look too small and, honestly, a bit freaky looking. I mean, it’s better than the puppet legs of the SNES box art (Yes, those are just puppet legs to help the artists pose the puppets better, as confirmed by the creators…not whatever that weird theory was going on about), but they could’ve been just a tad bit bigger. But, to me, the worst redesign is Katt. Now, her design in previous games were OK and I was kinda hoping this game would’ve done something with her design to, maybe, pay homage to her past looks, at the very least. Instead, we got a design of Katt who looks as if T’Ana from Lower Decks drank all the skooma from Skyrim.
When it comes to the voice acting, this is another area where I’m the most mixed in. While there are some improvements to the voice acting, with a few characters getting a much needed improvement to their personalities, the rest of the cast all range in quality and, dare I say, lack any real depth. For example Fox sounds like a bad mixture of Han Solo and Star Lord; Meaning he goes from shockingly cocky at one moment and, at other times, sounding like “Hey, I’m just here for the money, nothing else”. There were a few moments where his new attitude did work and I got a bit of a chuckle, but those were few and far between. Slippy, on the other hand, I actually think was improved and is the best character of the squadron. Yes, he still has his moments where you have to rescue him, but they don’t feel quite as infamous as they were back in the original. Truthfully, I feel like he’s the best character in the whole game now as there are moments in the story that allow Slippy to show how smart he is and his skills with crafting gear for the team. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the team’s iconic rivals, Star Wolf. While I do like how the game expanded on Pigma’s betrayal with a new prologue cutscene and how the Star Fox team shows resentment towards him whenever he shows up in the game, the rest of the team is utterly forgettable now. Wolf lacks his charm from the previous entry and sounds like a dollar store Tank Dempsey, Andrew just exists (though, I don’t think he ever had a personality in the other entries), and Leon? I think Leon got the worst changes. Instead of a smooth, suave speech that gave him this gentlemanly-like personality, here he’s more of a wild-child and lost any personality that he may have had. It feels like what happens if you take Modo from the film GOAT and remove his personality and just make him “Crazy for crazy’s sake”. The rest of the villain updates are fine, to be fair, though again? The voice acting ranges in quality. Some of them I do like the changes to, like the Shogun Pilot boss in Sector Y having a more honorable Samurai-like personality to them, the rest are a bit too over-the-top and lacking what made them unique. I understand that this is a remake so some changes are to be expected, but you’d think they’d at least keep some of the personality quarks from the previous game, you know? Out of curiosity, I looked up the Japanese voices for the game to see if there was any difference and I was actually surprised. Not only is there a clear difference here, but the Japanese language actually fixes the issues I had with the English voice acting. Everyone sounds amazing, even the Star Wolf team, so why the English dub has this issue, I’ve no idea.
The same can be said about the worlds and overall the soundtrack. Now while I like some of the added details on some of the planets, like showing just how war-torn Cornerila is and I love Sector X’s redesign (despite it still being easy to get a cheap hit), a lot of the planets are now pretty much ugly and just not that memorable anymore. Macbeth, the train level, for instance, is now this grungy dark planet with no sign of green anywhere, which I will give the game props for including an in-game explanation as to why it looks like this but I’m still not a fan of the redesign. Even my favorite level Katina looks bad, though I’m thankful it still kept its Independence Day inspiration intact. Instead of a desert planet with the pyramid structure and a cool Arrakis-like skybox? Now, it’s a basic marsh planet with “generic futuristic military building No. 5150” replacing that pyramid. Does the new building make sense for the game? Yeah and I do understand the change as it fits better with the new look and design they were going for. But the pyramid did make the planet stand out just a bit more and gave the planet a rather unique look, so maybe they could’ve tweaked the pyramid to make it fit better? Going back to Macbeth, remember that iconic explosion after you send the train into the weapons depot? That scene with the monster of all explosions that really shook your Rumble Pack and was probably the inspiration for the opening for Expendables 3 (Seriously, look up the intro for that movie and tell me the film makers weren’t inspired by Star Fox)? Yeah, that’s completely gone, instead replaced with a rather disappointing ‘boom’ and that’s it. To tell the truth, the whole Macbeth level feels like a downgrade, with defeating the train if you don’t divert the tracks feeling like a hollow victory, as the scene seems to imply that all you did was just stop the train and not actually destroy it. I mean, for all we know, the train could easily be back up and running the moment they leave the planet. On the opposite end, Solar got a well-deserved upgrade from the original games and feels a bit more fun and challenging to play through, even though you can’t rack up a score of 999 on the planet anymore as they changed the boss’s one attack. I am happy they fixed the solar prominences to be more easily avoided then they were in the 64 original, though I’m bummed you can’t bomb them anymore. Easy Path Venom also got the best upgrade as the amount of enemies on screen is downright insane and feels a lot like a Dynasty Warriors game here. This also means it’s still easy to lose your wings and most of your health before facing the first boss AND also get your tail handed to you on a silver platter by said boss. Brief tangent ahead, this boss was always the most annoying one for me, even as a kid. Despite Venom 1 being my favorite version of Venom, thanks to the opening sections, the boss can kiss my tail: A very narrow hallway that’s way too easy to bump into combined with the boss’s ability to form pillars from all sides as well as the statues that can knock your wings off, makes this my least favorite boss of the whole game.
As for the soundtrack as a whole? While I do love the new orchestrated versions of many of the game’s iconic songs, there’s a slight issue: I could barely hear the music at times. I don’t know why but the soundtrack, as well as the audio on a whole sans the voice acting, sounded just too quiet at times. Now, at first, I chalked this up to playing in handheld mode but, even listening to the officially released tracks with better speakers, I noticed they, too, were slightly muffled. Still, I did enjoy most of the tracks, though a few felt less than stellar. Easy Path Venom (or Venom 1) sounds very bland, for example, and lacked that ‘Let’s Do It!’ mentality the original had. I also want to add that I’m not a fan of the newly added choir to the boss themes as they make them feel like a poor copy of Final Fantasy music. Also, I could be wrong, but one of the boss themes sounded too similar to the combat theme from Quest 64 and I don’t know if that was intentional or not.
“Check Your G-Diffuser Systems”
But how’s the actual gameplay? Is it improved or still the same? In short, it’s fine. It plays just like the previous versions with the same on-rail segments, the same All-Range mode segments, and the same branching pathways. But there are some changes here that I do like. For starters, your Arwings/Blue-Marine’s lasers can now be fired in a burst mode with one tap of the fire button, with Hyper Laser (blue) firing a faster burst fire. The charged-up shot also seems to have a bit more power behind it, though it does seem like the splash damage’s power is lowered. I also liked how easy it is to avoid enemy fire via either just moving about or doing a barrel roll as it feels like the vehicles are much faster now. This does mean trying to aim at enemies is a bit harder – which I, at first, thought was due to the controls feeling off – but it’s still doable. Heck, even the cockpit mode feels better to fly in than past entries and I’m happy they got rid of that weird Fox face from the dashboard. What I didn’t care for was the new Mouse Control option for the game. Originally, when I heard the game had this, I was thinking that means only the one JoyCon 2 was needed, which would’ve been neat. Instead, the left JoyCon 2 are your flight/tank/Blue-Marine controls while the right one controls the reticle and actual firing. I get that it was probably trying to mimic a PC’s keyboard and mouse setup, but this control scheme just felt too awkward to use and never felt right to me, so I moved back to using the standard JoyCon 2s as regular controllers. On a side note, I want to mention that I’m actually impressed with the JoyCon 2 Controllers. Compared to the ones on the Switch, the JoyCon 2s actually feel better to use and nicer in my hands and I was able to play the game longer with them instead of switching over to the Pro Controller like I did with the original Switch.
Now, outside of the Campaign, you also get Multiplayer and a new Challenge mode, with the later just being little challenges you can do in each planet for unlockables like unlockable lore for the game and avatars for the AR Camera, including the villains which was a nice surprise, which that I wasn’t able to test out as I don’t have a camera for the Switch 2. However, from the videos I did see, it looks cool and brings back memories of using FaceRig back in the day. Multiplayer, on the other paw, is a bit of a mixed bag. You only get one competitive mode and three maps, but each map offers a unique objective to complete. For example on the Corneria map, during the dogfights, you get tasked to capture and hold an area for a set amount of time and the team that holds it the longest gets supplies and help. I do also like how, unlike in the 64 game, you can actually choose what pilot from either team Star Fox or team Star Wolf to control, though none of them have any real advantage to them. There’s also new power ups to find like rocket barrages and a repair bot and these can turn the tide of a match in one’s favor and these are a welcomed edition. But, I dunno, the mode really didn’t hold my attention for long (though I LOVE that it has proper bot matches) and I ended up going back to the campaign after a few matches. The same can be said about the Challenges, which are just replaying the planets from the campaign and trying to complete various challenges: They’re a fun addition but didn’t hold my attention. I do also wish there were some more unlockables outside of basic customization options. Like, imagine unlocking a mode where you play as Bill in a horde-style level of the Katina battle or an alternate campaign where you play as Star Wolf instead of Star Fox. Heck, imagine unlocking a mode that replaces all the cutscenes with Gerry Anderson-style puppetry and miniatures. THAT’d be an awesome mode and I’m surprised they never thought of that, seeing as the first game was heavily inspired by Thunderbirds, right down to the puppets on the original game’s box art and the mouth movements in the 64 game.
“Looks like we win today, Star Fox”
If I had to describe this game with one word, it’d be “Alright”. While it’s awesome that we finally got a new Star Fox game after so long and some of the new additions are nice, the rest of the game really does fail to live up to the series legacy and what made it special for gamers like me who grew up with the series. I can see new players maybe enjoying it and some lifelong fans having a blast (I know because I chatted to a few and they all are enjoying the heck out of this game, with a few saying it’s better than the 64 original). Hey, more power to them! At the same time, it’s cool that younger players can finally experience this series for the first time without having to pay an arm and, possibly, both legs for a used copy of the previous games! But, for me? While I enjoyed some bits and pieces of the game and I’m happy we got a new Star Fox, I can’t help but walk away disappointed from this remake. It’s not a bad remake, but it could’ve been so much better. Still, at least they didn’t pull a Dinosaur Planet on us and take an already in-development game and change it into a Star Fox entry.
