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Star Fox Zero & Guard - Review Thread

BorkBork

The Legend of BorkBork: BorkBorkity Borking
Just watched the GameXplain review. Wow how could they mess up the branching path stuff? That's a huge part of the fun for 64, secret stuff you find on your own. That's kind of unforgivable there.
 

McNum

Member
Just watched the GameXplain review. Wow how could they mess up the branching path stuff? That's a huge part of the fun for 64, secret stuff you find on your own. That's kind of unforgivable there.
It's kind of weird to have a mission select screen in Star Fox, but the split path thing works fairly well for me, at least for the ones I've found. The game does tell you that you have split paths available, but it doesn't say how to access them. You'll have to play the levels and figure that out yourself.

For instance, Corneria. To access the split path you must:

1. Unlock Walker Mode
2. Follow the Cornerian Battleship flying towards the coast by stepping on a button.
3. Defend it from enemy attacks
4. The game must have told you that a teleporter has been spotted in Corneria

Fail either of those and you go to the normal boss and ending for the stage. Complete all of it and it's
Aquarosa
time!
 

Tevious

Member
FFS, it's NOT 3.hours unless you deliberately want to not play through it multiple times as intended.

From what I understand, you don't need to replay the whole game to unlock extra levels, you can just replay a level after you completed it and then unlock stuff. I'm just going off what I heard earlier, but if it's 3 hours to finish the base game, then maybe it's what, 1 or 2 hours more to complete all the extra levels? Maybe more if you really want to do all the collectable medals.

For a current gen Star Fox game, I would expect them to have multiple paths you could take and at least a hidden final boss for replayability. The major issue I have with this game though, is the lack of online multiplayer. This game would have been perfect for not just competitive dogfights, but cooperative missions, cooperative battles against some giant ship or robot, and a survival mode. But Nintendo is in general still too afraid to go online (it's why I passed on Hyrule Warriors), which also makes me have doubts the NX will be much different.
 
It's kind of weird to have a mission select screen in Star Fox, but the split path thing works fairly well for me, at least for the ones I've found. The game does tell you that you have split paths available, but it doesn't say how to access them. You'll have to play the levels and figure that out yourself.

For instance, Corneria. To access the split path you must:

1. Unlock Walker Mode
2. Follow the Cornerian Battleship flying towards the coast by stepping on a button.
3. Defend it from enemy attacks
4. The game must have told you that a teleporter has been spotted in Corneria

Fail either of those and you go to the normal boss and ending for the stage. Complete all of it and it's
Aquarosa
time!

Seems like Corneria's the exception as the others aren't nearly as exciting going by the reviews
 

KrawlMan

Member
Yeah, I botched that. OoT was definitely a long game when it came out, but shorter compared to more recent Zeldas.

The point was that sequels should have way more content as time goes on.

They definitely shouldn't, especially after all the bloat that Skyward Sword had. I put maybe 45 hours into that game, and I wished large portions just didn't exist (e.g. every Silent Realm retread of a zone). It was such a beautiful, inventive game, but by the end it'd left a bad taste in my mouth. I would have likely praised it as a favorite if they cut out at least 10-15 hours, since much of that was pointlessly retreading old zones.

Anyway, sequels having "way more content" is unreasonable and unsustainable. A developer shouldn't feel like the game needs to be longer or more content dense just because it's a sequel. It need only be enjoyable, and ideally follow the style and mechanics of the previous entry.
 

NaviLink

Member
I can't fucking believe that a big video game site would publish a post, which very much looks like a review, end with basically "I didn't like the game and didn't finish it, so this isn't a review". It's childish and unprofessional at a minimum, and to not have a review of a game hurts the site as a whole. Why not give the review to somebody else? This is pathetic.
 

KrawlMan

Member
I can't fucking believe that a big video game site would publish a post, which very much looks like a review, end with basically "I didn't like the game and didn't finish it, so this isn't a review". It's childish and unprofessional at a minimum, and to not have a review of a game hurts the site as a whole. Why not give the review to somebody else? This is pathetic.

I do wonder what the consensus is for that game across the other reviewers on the site. There's clearly people out there enjoying the hell out of it.
 
I can't fucking believe that a big video game site would publish a post, which very much looks like a review, end with basically "I didn't like the game and didn't finish it, so this isn't a review". It's childish and unprofessional at a minimum, and to not have a review of a game hurts the site as a whole. Why not give the review to somebody else? This is pathetic.
I'm inclined to agree. No matter how bad it is perceived to be, just finish the review.

Edit - I remembered wrong. Disregard this post.
 
There are plenty of words in Polygon's non-review to tell you what they thought. Why are you so fixated on the score? It's just a rubber stamp.
Well, I didn't say anything about a score. I actually got it mixed up. I remembered wrong and thought they didn't finish the review itself. It was that they didn't finish the game.

Even so, I still think it would have been better to just finish the game and end the review like any other review. I guess it does put an exclamation mark on just how much he didn't enjoy it though.
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
Just watched the GameXplain review. Wow how could they mess up the branching path stuff? That's a huge part of the fun for 64, secret stuff you find on your own. That's kind of unforgivable there.

The new roundtable discussion video with other youtubers gave a bit more insight, yet they still agreed the game felt lacking in overall content despite the sheer amount of time it takes to 'master' what is available.

Some of those hidden medals seem poorly thought out though for sure.

Ultimately the entire project felt from day 1 as being a poorly conceived, last-chance resort to drive justification for the gamepad. Despite nearly two years of development and delays, I never felt this was a project Nintendo was proud and pleased to be working on, just honoring a commitment Miyamoto made to give Wii U owners a gamepad experience based on his shoddy tech demos. It was a gamepad travesty first and a Starfox game second.

Mine is en route though...
 
Well, I didn't say anything about a score. I actually got it mixed up. I remembered wrong and thought they didn't finish the review itself. It was that they didn't finish the game.

Even so, I still think it would have been better to just finish the game and end the review like any other review. I guess it does put an exclamation mark on just how much he didn't enjoy it though.

Man I wish I had a job where I can just stop working on something because I didn't enjoy it.
 

K' Dash

Member
I can't fucking believe that a big video game site would publish a post, which very much looks like a review, end with basically "I didn't like the game and didn't finish it, so this isn't a review". It's childish and unprofessional at a minimum, and to not have a review of a game hurts the site as a whole. Why not give the review to somebody else? This is pathetic.

You're confunsing Polygon with some big site? cause they're nothing, Gies is a nobody, Kuchera is a bad joke and they together amount to zero.
 

RagnarokX

Member
They definitely shouldn't, especially after all the bloat that Skyward Sword had. I put maybe 45 hours into that game, and I wished large portions just didn't exist (e.g. every Silent Realm retread of a zone). It was such a beautiful, inventive game, but by the end it'd left a bad taste in my mouth. I would have likely praised it as a favorite if they cut out at least 10-15 hours, since much of that was pointlessly retreading old zones.

Anyway, sequels having "way more content" is unreasonable and unsustainable. A developer shouldn't feel like the game needs to be longer or more content dense just because it's a sequel. It need only be enjoyable, and ideally follow the style and mechanics of the previous entry.

The Silent Realms in Skyward Sword were a legit great addition for a Zelda game. Of all of the stealth segments Zelda has tried over the years they were actually fun and challenging for a change. Great test of your skills. Of all of the things you could remove they would be last on my list. Now backtracking to Skyview Temple and the tear segments in TP, on the other hand...
 
Sad to hear all the complaints about the motion and gamepad controls.

Is there a way to turn off all these motion controls and stick to SF64 like controls only?
 
The Silent Realms in Skyward Sword were a legit great addition for a Zelda game. Of all of the stealth segments Zelda has tried over the years they were actually fun and challenging for a change. Great test of your skills. Of all of the things you could remove they would be last on my list. Now backtracking to Skyview Temple and the tear segments in TP, on the other hand...
I absolutely hated the Silent Realm missions. They were nothing but mediocre attempts at a stealth mission with no other objective than padding the game.

I hated how they strip you down giving you very little options of how to tackle the mission. I hated how one fuck up and you're back to the beginning. I hated how try made me do that bullshit 4 separate times!
 
I think that motion controls are not that bad... It's just that it takes so much adjusting.

For me, it literally clicked at the last stage, where I had to fight under the most complicated circumstances and it was pretty much required for me to use the second screen to target the enemies.

...slightly after that, the game ended.
 
I think that motion controls are not that bad... It's just that it takes so much adjusting.

For me, it literally clicked at the last stage, where I had to fight under the most complicated circumstances and it was pretty much required for me to use the second screen to target the enemies.

...slightly after that, the game ended.
That's the point. You can now replay and find different routes, hidden medals and go for records. It's an action game, you mostly get the controls near the end.
 
That's the point. You can now replay and find different routes, hidden medals and go for records. It's an action game, you mostly get the controls near the end.

No, not really. I spent a large portion of the game not liking the controls. This didn't happen with previous starfox games. I understand the angle, but it won't work for all people, in fact, if not for the review, I'm not sure If I would have liked to continue playing.
 
No, not really. I spent a large portion of the game not liking the controls. This didn't happen with previous starfox games. I understand the angle, but it won't work for all people, in fact, if not for the review, I'm not sure If I would have liked to continue playing.

I was talking about mastering them, not liking them. I loved them since the beginning.
 

KJRS_1993

Member
You're confunsing Polygon with some big site? cause they're nothing, Gies is a nobody, Kuchera is a bad joke and they together amount to zero.

Says the random dude on NeoGAF.
Do you usually struggle this much when somebody has a different opinion to you?
 

Vice

Member
You're confunsing Polygon with some big site? cause they're nothing, Gies is a nobody, Kuchera is a bad joke and they together amount to zero.
I believe Polygon is one of the more popular NA gaming websites. It's no IGN but, it's pretty big.
 

Toxi

Banned
He's probably like this AtticGaming86 guy I'm watching stream the game. He's complaining nonstop about how he's being forced to use the gamepad and motion controls and how he has to fight against the motion controls to aim. He's not even trying to learn them. Makes me wonder what gaming would be like if people were as stubborn about analog sticks and 3D games. He's also simultaneously complaining about how Nintendo is just rehashing the same levels from previous games. Game's too different and too similar!
I am seriously sick of this shit popping up in this thread.

They don't fucking like the controls and feel like they hinder the experience. For any other game this would be a fairly acceptable complaint, especially when it's one of the most consistent critical complaints about the game.

That "was a bad idea," was my takeaway from that review, not a quote, and it wasn't even the gist of the review — you're addressing a comment that doesn't really exist. It was the GamesRadar review, and they seem to give the game a fair shake.

If that can be written off as "waaaa, I don't want leave the controls," then what's a fair, legitimate negative review? And I'm specifically asking the guy I was quoting before, who's a reviewer himself.
There is no legitimate negative review, because any complaint about the game will be addressed with "The critics just don't get it."

It's a frustrating and consistent pattern in review threads.
 

YN12

Banned
What game came out in 2002 that apparently changed the landscape forever?

I normally think that people say that in reference to GTA3. Like, after GTA3, we cannot accept arcade games anymore, and every game has to be a sprawling open world game. Because the big size of the world means there is more game, therefore, more bang for your bucks?

At least, that's how I interpret it.
 
I am seriously sick of this shit popping up in this thread.

They don't fucking like the controls and feel like they hinder the experience. For any other game this would be a fairly acceptable complaint, especially when it's one of the most consistent critical complaints about the game.


There is no legitimate negative review, because any complaint about the game will be addressed with "The critics just don't get it."

It's a frustrating and consistent pattern in review threads.

Those complaints about reviews sometimes have merit (sometimes). As someone who bought and played a lot of Wii games last generation it was really difficult to get an accurate idea of whether a game was any good or not from a lot of reviewers. A lot of reviewers never bothered learning how to use motion controls and were completely cynical about every implementation of them, which made their reviews useless for someone who adapted to them (and enjoyed them!) easily.

I have absolutely no opinion on whether Starfox is being fairly criticised or not as I haven't played it (I've only seen a bit of gameplay from last E3 and thought it looked a bit awkward), I'm just trying to shine some light on why people sometimes dismiss some reviewers' opinions on motion controls.
 
http://www.thejimquisition.com/star-fox-zero-review/

Star Fox Zero is a dumpster game for people who want to have a garbage time, and it belongs in the toilet.

Masquerading as an innovative and all-new experience, Nintendo and Platinum Games’ miserable adventure is actually a bare-bones space shooter utilizing a deliberately obtuse control scheme in order to mask the fact it’s nowhere near as interesting as it pretends to be.

Robbed of its “inventive” little control scheme, Star Fox Zero is an unchallenging and rather humdrum continuation of the Star Fox series. If it didn’t handle like a wingless pigeon in a falling elevator it would’ve been an inoffensive way to spend a handful of hours – not exactly a remarkable or memorable experience, but at least tolerable.

Unfortunately, Star Fox Zero doesn’t control like a proper game, intent on shoveling a bunch of Wii U tech demo features down our throat as if the existence of motion controls has been enough to sell a game since 2008.

2/10 from Jimquisition for the main game
 

Neff

Member
There is no legitimate negative review, because any complaint about the game will be addressed with "The critics just don't get it."

It's not that critics didn't get it, it's that most of them who marked the game down clearly weren't interested in getting it, since the controls prove to be absolutely workable and reliable with a little practice. And it's the controls which are arguably the main point of criticism in these reviews.

It's the obvious and active resistance to trying new things and embracing new interactive concepts which is causing friction, not any sense of frustration at critics' failure to comprehend, although there is plenty of that also thrown into the bargain.

Star Fox Zero has issues for sure, but the controls aren't one of them.

I was enjoying this review until he started smack talkin' Kid Icarus: Uprising

Sterling went too far this time

If Sterling dislikes SFZ, RE6, and Kid Icarus Uprising too, then his place on my shit list is wholly justified.
 
Why is this game so polarizing?
Because it's a genre that isn't actually that popular anymore, and people want to use it as a proxy to hate on motion controls. The majority of the people you see hating on the game haven't played it.

Remember that a bunch of these clowns also said the motion controls were bad in Splatoon. Note that all the best players use them, though. Why? Because they're superior to sticks. I seriously think that some of these guys are either extremely uncoordinated or they just refuse to try with something they're predisposed to hate.

Also because for some reason people wanted a AAA Star Fox when it literally has never been a top-tier series.
 

Pokemaniac

Member
It feels like a great game notably marred by an awkward control scheme. Simply having more controller options would have bumped this game's score by 2 points, easily.

With this game, there would be no "simply" about adding control options. The game is built around it's control scheme.
 
With this game, there would be no "simply" about adding control options. The game is built around it's control scheme.

Even if it wasn't simple to do, they probably should've found a way to make it optional, if the reception is anything to go by. Just because a game (or its control scheme )is good doesn't mean it will be met with universally good reviews, for legitimate reasons too.

A lot about Zero is great, but there's a few glaring things (not the controls, actually) that are worse than they were two decades ago — whether that's justified for some reason aside, it will weigh down the experience for many.
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
OP should be updated. Both Meta and Opencritic showing an average of 69 for SFZ.
 
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