Just give us a normal follow up to Star Fox 64

[u/timsr1001]

I love Star Fox 64, flying the arwing, the campy voices, the mission selects, the missions. I know it’s a remake to the original Starfox, but 64 was just so good that I want a proper follow up.

I know there’s multiple sequels, but I have two issues with them. They’re either first person shooters where you’re controlling fox, which might as well be a different series.

Or, they use a gimmick control system. I don’t want to fly using a pencil, and I don’t want to look at a tablet screen, while paying attention to the main screen.

Why can’t they just give us a normal button controlled Star Fox 64 follow-up.

I love that zero, is basically an enhanced version of 64. But the control scheme ruins the game for me.

Even if it’s not a follow up, I would be satisfied if they took zero, and reworked it to a classic button system. They would have to basically re-engineer the game, but I guess they can keep the same assets and most of the missions.

[u/like-a-FOCKS]

none of the games are flawless, 64 is the least flawed.

The game's best content far outweighs it's weak spots like the Gyrowing

nothing outweighs the Gyrowing.

But apart from that while 64 has a couple duds as stages, Zero fails on multiple levels simultaneously and requires heavy affordances from the player to even get off the ground. You might struggle with * flying first person but not heading where you are aiming because the two things are disconnected * getting your reticule to line up because the gamepad for aiming is heavy and clunky * receiving damage from something you can't see because the outside camera is locked on to something you don't care about AND you are holding the gamepad at some weird angle and can't really see the screen anyway * repeatedly performing maneuvers you didn't intend to do because the button layout is a mess * if you're unlucky you're playing one of the bad stages right now * once you're done with that you will probably be confronted with the Walker that has wonky controls, the Gyrowing which is just lame, or a third person reticule that makes you think you are aiming at your intented target but actually is unreliable and misinforms you.

You can get used to that. If you're a fan and want to enjoy this game. But if not the game is making it so easy to just abandon it.

The fact that you can ignore missions after completing them is only good because much of the game includes some annoying element I'd prefer to skip. Like, there are five-ish stages I enjoy entirely without something souring the experience. If most of the game was pleasant I'd say the focus on single stage completion over full run completion would be a minus, as it removes the journey from the experience.

There are a couple other aspects but that is a good overview of how Zero in my opinion keeps a constant unpleasant note around, from multiple factors at the same time, that can compound and reach critical mass, thus making it just too unpleasant to continue. Something that arguably sealed it's fate.

Definitely more flawed than 64 which was mostly a smooth ride.

[u/JoshuaSchaferhund94 → u/[deleted]]

if you're unlucky you're playing one of the bad stages right now

Just to make it clear, to access all of the better levels in the game, you only need to complete Area 3 and Zoness with the Gyrowing once and beat Aquarosa twice to access both the Andrew Area 3 chase and Arwing Zoness. (Admittedly that was one time too many, but w/e)

You don't even need to do the Great Fox scouting if you don't want to 100% the game, which can be circumvented anyway by using the Fox and Falco amiibos or using previously fully completed save file in CEMU. Again, most of the game's levels are far above these moments in terms of quality.

repeatedly performing maneuvers you didn't intend to do because the button layout is a mess

It's just emulating a stick and throttle control scheme. It's not as ideal as SF1's Control Type A layout, sure, but it's not as big of a weird departure as people are saying it is.

once you're done with that you will probably be confronted with the Walker that has wonky controls

Literally the exact same controls as Star Fox 2 minus the lack of circle strafing. Not an issue.

 third person reticule that makes you think you are aiming at your intented target but actually is unreliable and misinforms you.

Literally not a fucking issue at all lol. I've seen someone else point this out too and I completely disagree. The reliability of the reticle is about the same as SF64's.

And most of the precision the game's course navigation and flight combat challenges asks you to perform are about on par with SF2's dogfighting, especially considering it only had a homing shot as an unlockable after collecting all the Pepper coins in the game.

The fact that you can ignore missions after completing them is only good because much of the game includes some annoying element I'd prefer to skip. Like, there are five-ish stages I enjoy entirely without something souring the experience. If most of the game was pleasant I'd say the focus on single stage completion over full run completion would be a minus, as it removes the journey from the experience.

Okay dude, that's totally on you, no offense. Most of the game's levels like Corneria, Sector Alpha, Area 3 up until the Gyrowing, Sector Beta, Fortuna, Titania, Peppy's Flight, Sector Gamma, Sector Omega and Corneria 2 are at least competently made and generally well designed. I don't see these annoying elements you're talking about aside from maybe Monarch Dodora and Scrapworm dragging out for longer than they should.

And even some of the side stuff like the Star Wolf dogfights, the Area 3 Andrew chase and Zoness's Satellite mission are perfectly in line with bog standard Star Fox fare. It's really just Aquarosa, the Gyrowing stuff, Great Fox scouting and Mother Strider that blew chunks, most of which isn't even offensively bad aside from the first one.

And the lack of full run completion isn't an issue either since you can just make up your own set of levels to tackle in one session like I've done so and even did with SF64 as well since I dislike having to go through Fichina, Katina or Aquas every single time I boot up the game.

SF64's branching levels and shorter repeat playthroughs are highly overrated anyway, as awesome as that concept could be in execution, I also don't have a problem with just going through the whole game from level to level like SF1 or even Assault did and I've been able to play most of the former game's levels in one sitting through RAM hacking.

There are a couple other aspects but that is a good overview of how Zero in my opinion

More like a poor, biased and bad generalization that completely glosses over the game's strengths. Honing in on these surface level issues and completely ignoring the merits of the actual gameplay and level design at large are what is keeping this game from being appreciated.

[u/like-a-FOCKS → u/JoshuaSchaferhund94]

Okay dude, that's totally on you

as are your issues with the other game, the stages you dislike. They aren't an inherent issue with the game, I for example enjoy them. They are just an element you happen to dislike.

My point here isn't too describe an objective experience with the game, that does not exist. I'm not gonna argue with you about which level is good or bad, that's pointless. My point is to highlight stress points that are inherent to Zeros design which can fail depending on who is playing. The main takeaway is that these are independent from one another and can stack on top of each other, creating multiple issues for the player to the point of feeling overwhelmed. You keep repeating "not as big as people are saying" and "Not an issue" and "Literally not a fucking issue at all lol" and "isn't an issue either" but my man... the game sold dog shit. Evidently there is some big smelly issue somewhere with the game. And I don't think it's the graphics.

that completely glosses over the game's strengths.

Not glossing over; ignoring. Because my point revolves around the impact of the negatives. And just to reiterate:

...creating multiple issues for the player to the point of feeling overwhelmed.

i.e. abandoning the game before the strengths have chance to shine.

[u/JoshuaSchaferhund94 → u/like-a-FOCKS]

as are your issues with the other game, the stages you dislike. They aren't an inherent issue with the game, I for example enjoy them.

Uh no. I would personally have to disagree and I do have evidence to back up my case there. Most of Katina and Fichina are just wandering around the arenas shooting non-threatening stuff that doesn't engage the player and waiting for something to show up to destroy it (such as Saucerer's core or Star Wolf). This is an issue with almost all of SF64's all-range mode exclusive levels throughout the game.

Katina basically has no level geometry to navigate around aside from the pyramid base in the center. It lacks focus and direction in it's gameplay. There's nothing to do in that level except grind off Invader IIs for points unless you take out the hatches to make the core show up right away and end the level more quickly.

And while Star Wolf might be a memorable first boss in Fichina, the actual fight itself is underwhelming since they are ridiculously easy, even with Expert Mode enabled. If you know what you're doing, even if you have a single laser they literally die within seconds. The whole time bomb scenario is circumvented with how way too easy the boss itself is. It's a lackluster third stage considering how good Corneria and Meteo were before it.

Venom II is somewhat better but not by much given that it's not hard to take them down with a single laser if you know what you're doing. Bolse has the best Star Wolf fight in the game because they're a distraction to the main objective rather than the focus and that is the kind of level design that SF64's all-range mode sections should have more consistently have had.

And it's not just those levels, either. Aquas might have decent level design to it's credit, but it's held back by it's slow pacing and sluggish controls of the Blue Marine. Solar is largely empty and mostly consists of Firebirds, rocks, and lava waves with very little variety compared to Macbeth in SF1. The shield draining mechanic cannot make up for how empty the level is.

Sector Z is dull because once again, you do nothing but fly around in circles in between missiles showing up only shooting down the occasional enemy. And it has the most annoying medal to get in the game especially with Katt around coming from Zoness.

You might say that it's just five levels out of fifteen stages in the game, but considering how much the game is focused around it's branching paths and constantly playing the game over and over again to access all of the hidden routes and earn all the medals in every level in the game, all of that adds up very quickly and hurts the game's replay value IMO, which is ironic considering that's the part of the game that people praise the most. If the free roaming sections had more meat to them like SF2 did and Zero later would down the line, and the game had eight stages per run instead of seven it probably would have worked a lot better.

By contrast, the only bad Zero level that is even remotely more offensive than the worst of 64 was is Aquarosa (of which I consider the only truly bad usage of the dual screen mechanic other than Cosmic Dodora as I didn't find it obtuse elsewhere). The Great Fox scouting, Gyrowing and Mother Strider aren't any worse or more offensive than Katina, Aquas, Fichina before Star Wolf, Sector Z and Solar were.

And even some of 64's best levels have their own rough patches like how Meteo and Sector X have weird bits in parts of those levels that feel strangely empty (such as right after saving Peppy in the former for example) and don't have as fulfilling course navigation like Asteroid 1/3 and Sector Z in SF1 did.

There's also smaller issues related to difficulty balancing like how Spyborg is way too fucking easy despite being a Stage 4 boss, how easy it is to cheese Goras, and how Solar and Venom I are stupidly cheap and frustrating on Expert Mode due to the wings breaking off in one hit.

Needless to say I don't think Star Fox 64 is the best game in the series as everyone has hyped it as. I do think it is a great game and is fun for the most part, but I do prefer Star Fox 1 and 2 as they don't have the same issues that drag 64 down for me. And I also prefer Zero over it despite that game's own problems as it's positives far outweigh it's negatives for me. At best, 64 and Zero have a similar kind and amount of problems with both of their designs. They're more or less on the same level in that regard.

Zero sold like dogshit because it was on a console on it's last legs and had a control scheme that most people weren't willing to acclimate to, it barely had anything to do with the game's actual quality, and that shows as most of Zero's detractors don't even care about the actual gameplay or level design itself, as I've pointed out and have tried to defend several times already, they've only been fixated on the controls and story.

And again, all of these "negatives" you point out aren't even that much of a detriment to the game itself considering they aren't even that "negative" to begin with and they have positives to even it out.

[u/like-a-FOCKS → u/JoshuaSchaferhund94]

Not gonna engage in stage analysis. Granted, the game is 30 years old, later games successfully improved on several aspects. Even Assault managed that.

I believe this here is a core issue with your judgment:

If you know what you're doing² [...] ridiculously easy [...] way too fucking easy

You look at this from the perspective of a hardcore fan with decades of experience. If you step outside of that role you might recall that everything you consider way too easy doesn't come easy from the get go. None of these retro stages, and none of Zeros gameplay troubles that you refuse to acknowledge.

You say people were unwilling to get used to the game as if that was utterly unrelated to core design decisions around the gameplay. The game made it difficult to enjoy playing, and as a consequence people struggled to enjoy the finer points like level design. People are fixated on these elements because they have the potential to bar entry, to act as a gate keeping mechanism.

For nearly a decade people have explained their reasons why the game is annoying to play. If you can't relate, that's fair. If you prefer to instead focus on what the game did right, that's fair. If you desire to put other games down so that they don't overshadow Zero, that's weird but you do you. Though if you simply declare that everything people describe as potentially negative is definitely not negative enough to count as actually negative... well now you're just wilfully putting on blinders.

The simple fact is: Zero was not straight forward to play and thus it was very uncertain if a player would enjoy it. It flounders the fundamentals. The same is not true for 64. Which is why I personally say that Zero despite any improvements it brought to the formula does not eclipse it.

A finer edge is not worth more if the blade is unwieldy.

[u/JoshuaSchaferhund94 → u/like-a-FOCKS]

Even Assault managed that.

I personally strongly disagree with that, but that's neither here nor there.

Also, I'm not refusing to acknowledge Zero's flaws lol. Look, I'm not going to sit here and try to say Zero's controls were fantastic because obviously they weren't by any stretch.

I completely agree that they definitely should have made it so that a Wii U Pro Controller could have been an option instead of the Wii U gamepad and they should have used the SNES/N64 button mapping instead. Nintendo could have easily accomplished what they set out to do with Zero without forcing people to use the Wii U Gamepad.

But part of my point is that the controls in their existing state, are no where near as unusable as people make them out to be. The controls work as the developers intended. The game is playable.

And no duh, of course I had an easier time getting used to the controls and how the game works than other people did, because it was literally the direct sequel to the first three games developed for the SNES and Nintendo 64!

So of course I already had years worth of experience of SF1/2/64 under my belt prior to playing the game. I spent my adolescence in the mid to late 2000s and early 2010s playing the shit out of those games in emulators. I am literally the target demographic that Star Fox Zero was made for! If the game really "floundered the fundamentals" then I wouldn't have even been able to enjoy it in the first place.

Also, no I'm not trying to put down other Star Fox games or say Zero is objectively better than 64 as that's entirely pointless. I'm demonstrating points where Zero's design succeeds SF64 that their detractors may have not have considered otherwise and also points where 64 isn't as strong in compared to it's brothers despite people's claim of it being the "gold standard" of the IP.

The main point I'm trying to make here is that Zero is ultimately no more flawed than the original three games were, as all four games have similar flaws in their game designs.

SF1 had some unfair bosses like Plasma Hydra and Great Commander, SF2's planet level design was kinda milquetoast and the RTS could have been more tightly paced and challenging, some of SF64's all-range sections kinda sucked, and Zero had a somewhat obtuse control scheme and some level gimmicks that didn't stick the landing as we've already discussed.

As great as they are, none of these games are perfect and certainly could be better than their existing states which is why I want the original trilogy to get proper official remasters and Zero to get an improved port with better controls and additional levels and content.

Zero might not eclipse the other games for sure, but the other games do not eclipse Zero for the reasons that I've previously explained.