When a nostalgia music act hits the road on tour, long-time fans have certain tempered expectations. You want to hear the hits that take you back and you don't necessarly expect the lead singer to hit all the high notes. But what a grizzled old music act lacks in freshness, it can make up for with professionalism and a sense of what its audience wants. That's what an audience can hope for.
Nintendo is often masterful at trotting out old standbys and making them feel fresh again. For its struggling Nintendo Wii U, it has published a great "Mario Kart" game, a very good "Super Smash Bros." revival and a spot-on "Super Mario 3D World." But almost as often, it's put out disappointing new editions of old games, such as this year's subpar "Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash."
The new "Star Fox Zero," the first new "Star Fox" game in 10 years, falls somewhere in the middle. It does a nice job bringing back the frenetic space combat, but it doesn't do a great job of selling its iconic characters for a new generation of players, creating an exciting new story, or avoiding some baffling design and control choices that take away from a game that should have been a slam dunk.
It also comes bundled in its retail version with an entirely separate game, "Star Fox Guard," a tower-defense game (available as a download for people who buy "Star Fox Zero" online), which is new and fun but has so little to do with the main game that you wonder why it even exists.
As for the main game, Fox McCloud is still trying to live up to his famous space pilot dad's legacy, blasting evil aliens away with his cohorts Falco (a bird), Peppy (a rabbit) and Slippy (a frog). There are space-combat stages, stages that take place on planets requiring other vehicles to be piloted (a tank, a copter, a Walker contraption that the main Arwing ship transforms into). The stages initially are dazzling with great animation and lively cutscenes, but once you're in an actual battle, you begin to notice the paucity of visual flair in a lot of the gameplay.
But it takes a while to notice because a player's eyes are challenged to either watch the TV screen, watch the screen on the Wii U Gamepad, or both. "Star Fox Zero" asks players to use the Gamepad to aim shots as a motion controller, which takes a lot of patience and coordination to master and which ultimately doesn't add as much to the gameplay as it frustrates.
Especially in open space combat, it can be completely disorienting and Nintendo hasn't solved the common space-sim problem of making it intuitive to understand where you are in relation to your enemies, even with the use of a target-lock mode. Mostly, it just made me nauseous.
Learning to master the controls may be in service of a game that's pretty short overall; most expert players will finish the whole game in five to 10 hours, even if they go back and perfect their scores on previously played levels. "Star Fox Guard" is an interesting diversion, but also a quick play. It involves using surveillance cameras and weapons to stop invading evil robots.
"Star Fox Zero" is not a bad game, but it doesn't recapture the magic of earlier games in the series or make a good case for such a long absence.
$50-60, includes "Star Fox Guard" in retail version. "Guard" sold separately for $15 in digital-only version.
Rated E-10+ for Everyone 10 and Older
For Nintendo Wii U
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