// THE VERGE — GAMING
Star Fox is the Switch 2’s most impressive visual showcase yet
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Nintendo’s latest remake retains the classic N64 shooter action, but with a cinematic makeover.
Nintendo’s latest remake retains the classic N64 shooter action, but with a cinematic makeover.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
The biggest Switch 2 exclusives so far have largely been about scale. Mario Kart World introduced a wide open continent to race across, Donkey Kong Bananza let you smash basically everything around you, and Pokopia brought an expansive Minecraft-style creative experience to the Pokémon universe. Star Fox is different. A remake of a Nintendo 64 game, Star Fox is an on-rails shooter, with tightly choreographed action and spectacular set-pieces. This more linear structure has let the game’s designers craft what is perhaps the best-looking game yet for the Switch 2. Considering that Star Fox is at its best when it makes you feel like you’re right in the middle of a gorgeous sci-fi movie, those visual flourishes make a big difference.
Star Fox follows the same basic blueprint of the game it’s based on, Star Fox 64. The game has you taking control of an anthropomorphic fox pilot named Fox McCloud (fresh off a surprise appearance in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie), who leads a squadron of mercenaries that fight for good, but also money. The story is pretty barebones, but it has Fox and friends taking on a series of missions across the galaxy in an attempt to defeat an evil scientist named Andross. The general storyline, the overall structure of the game, and even the layout of the levels remain largely unchanged from the N64 version.
But even if you’ve played the original, the differences between the two are apparent right away. Star Fox’s missions are all accompanied by voiced cutscenes that flesh out the story and give you better reasons for why you’re heading out on a particular mission. They also let you spend a lot more time with the characters outside of their ships. I never knew I wanted to see Fox sipping an energy drink in between battles, but it turns out I do.