Hey. This is Game Maker's Toolkit. I'm Mark Brown
Star Fox Zero is a game that was made to prove a point.
In a briefing with investors in 2014, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that while the Wii U Gamepad
was great for local multiplayer games, Nintendo hadn't yet "been able to offer a decisive
software title that enriches the user’s gameplay experience when playing alone with
the GamePad".
Which is to say they hadn't made a singleplayer game that could only work on a system with
two, distinct screens - the TV, and the Gamepad. A game that would be awesome precisely because
of this unique set-up.
Shigeru Miyamoto's department was tasked with coming up with this decisive game, and so we ended
up with Star Fox Zero. A game that completely revolves around the gamepad. You cannot play
without it.
And so the question is... did it work? Did Star Fox Zero prove that the Gamepad could
give us an essential game - and one that could only work on the Wii U?
It's fair to say that reviewers weren't convinced. There's no shortage of articles that call
the game's control scheme confusing, terrible, tricky, unusually unintuitive, and a multi-screen mess.
But I want to take a closer look. Figure out exactly what developers Nintendo and Platinum
were trying to pull off, see where they succeeded and, yes, look at where they failed.
So Star Fox Zero's unorthodox controls can largely be grouped into two aspects. One of
which is, I think, fine. The other of which is, a bit of a trash fire.
The thing that's largely fine is the motion controls.
First, some background. Every Star Fox game from the Super Nintendo original to Star Fox
Command on DS has you exclusively steering the Arwing, and so your gunfire is always
just shooting out in front of the ship, out from the Arwing's nose.
And that's fine. It works great on a system with just a d-pad or an analogue stick.
And it gives the games an accessible and arcadey feel. More like Space Harrier
than a combat simulator. But it does have some limitations: because you must essentially
put yourself in the enemy's line of fire to shoot at them, the games have a funky back-and-forth
pace where you jump in front of foes, fire off a few laser beams, and then barrel roll
away when the enemy fires back.
This also gives the games a heavy focus on your charge shot as you can charge up a missile
in safety, flick the arwing over to an enemy for a split second to lock on, and then let
it rip.
This is all important because Star Fox Zero is the first game that lets you independently
steer your ship and aim your guns. Sorry, first Star Fox game: we've seen on-rail shooters
do this already, like Kid Icarus Uprising, which uses the analogue stick and stylus on
the 3DS to move and aim. And Sin and Punishment 2 on the Wii which lets you move with the
nunchuck and aim with the Wii remote.
But what you don't see is a lot of space shooters that let you steer with one analogue stick
and aim with the other. Games like Ratchet and Clank ignore the right stick and use the
same system as classic Star Fox games.
Now we already know that analogue sticks aren't great for fine motor movement, and trying
to wrestle with one while also moving up and down and left and right in space is probably
about as much fun as rubbing your tummy and patting your head.
And that's likely why Nintendo opted to use the more fluid and accurate gyroscope in the
Wii U Gamepad for aiming in Star Fox. A very similar system to the one it used in Splatoon though,
this time, you can't turn the motion controls off and revert to more traditional twin-stick aiming.
And that's probably also because the right analogue stick is already being used for advanced
Arwing manuveres. You flick it up to boost, flick it down to brake, left and right give you
a tighter turning radius. And all that's great. But it's also used for somersaults and u-turns
and barrel rolls and firing off bombs, all of which I often do when I don't want to,
and can't pull off when I do.
Anyway. I think the motion controls are mostly fine. I prefer the Wii remote and
its pointer for faster access to every corner of the screen. And you don't need to recalibrate
the Wii remote every five seconds. Side note, but the fact that Star Fox Zero needs a dedicated
button to fix the controls doesn't bode well.
But there's one thing that the gyro can do that the Wii remote cannot: aim outside of the boundaries
of the TV. and that's how we come to... dual screen gameplay.
Okay, so here's the pitch. The TV shows something that looks like classic Star Fox. The camera
lingers behind the Arwing, giving you a complete overview of your surroundings. The Gamepad
shows inside Fox's cockpit. Not only does this give you more accurate aiming, but you
can also turn the Gamepad to the side, or above, or below you to see things that aren't
on the TV.
In theory this would allow for things like bombing runs where you fly your Arwing up
over an enemy base on the TV, and then look down using the Gamepad to fire laser beams
at weak spots.
And bits like that do crop up in Star Fox Zero. These strider enemies have weak points
on their underside so you can fly under them on the telly, and then aim up and shoot the
red bits on the Gamepad.
And some of the bosses make the best use of the two screens. Take mother strider: you
use the TV to drive around the outside of the massive monster, and then aim the Gamepad
off to the side to shoot at its leg joints. Then back to the TV to fly your Gravmaster
up and over the boss and then look back at the Gamepad to fire lasers down at the weak
points and, yeah, that's actually a lot of fun. When you're not dying over and over.
But this sort of thing so rarely pops up in the game. And there are so few times when you
make the conscious, tactical choice to look at one screen over the other.
Because, the best Wii U games. Or, the best singleplayer Wii U games that make full use
of the Gamepad, are those that offer different perspectives or different information on the two
screens, and you have to choose which one to look at, while knowing
that stuff is still going on on the other screen.
Like when you're rerouting power on the Gamepad in Affordable Space Adventures, while your
ship is changing and moving on the TV. Or the tense action of rummaging through your
backpack on the Gamepad in Zombi U, while nervously glancing back to the TV in case
a zombie is sneaking up on you.
But in Star Fox Zero, both screens often just show the exact same thing but in their own,
uniquely crap way. And not just because one is 6 inches big, low resolution, and covered
in dust.
So the Gamepad will warn you about enemies on your tail, but the TV won't. Then the TV
will show you that a big boss monster is about to squash you while the Gamepad says nothing.
Are you supposed to look at both screens at all times? how many eyes does Miyamoto have?
And then there's the reticule. Oh boy, the reticule. Okay, so get this: the reticule
on the TV screen is, for all intents and purposes, inaccurate. If you aim at this grid of lights
and fire, you will miss. See? Because if you look at the Gamepad while you do this you'll
notice that you're actually aiming over here.
Now this is something to do with perspective or whatever. But, you know, that's nonsense.
No other game does this. It's just deliberately broken to give the Gamepad a reason for existing.
And that's kinda messed up.
So, the two screens largely show the same thing, just one doesn't let you aim properly
and the other doesn't let you see properly.
And instead of making intentional choices, based on the situation, I found myself just
using one or the other.
Especially in the on-rails bits where everything is front of you so why bother looking off
the boundaries of the TV? You don't actually need to look at the Gamepad to kill those
striders because their weak points are so big, and your charge shot can lock onto them anyway.
But then there's target mode. This is when, during boss fights and other special sections,
the TV screen shows a mad, zoomed out, skew-whiff view of things.
The target mode is almost a good idea - it can work quite well in the dog fights
against Star Wolf where you keep track of the enemy on the TV, then somersault around,
and peer into the Gamepad to let loose a flurry of laser beams - but the camera's so zoomed
out, and the sparse starfields you fight on offer so little in the way of orientation,
that by the time you've mentally linked up the geography of the TV with your gamepad
display you're already dead.
And so the question is: why does target mode look like this?
"I wanted see something really cool," says Miyamoto.
Which is like: What? But yes, he's being serious. "You're able to use things like u-turns and
somersaults to create some really cool visuals on the TV while doing all of the fighting
through the Gamepad screen," he says. "It also lets anyone who’s watching you play
enjoy really cool scenes".
He likens it to how replays in racing games, with their cinematic angles, look better
than the in-car stuff. Which is true, I guess. But how he got from that to "let's do the
important driving bits on a tiny, low-res Fisher Price iPad" is anyone's guess.
Platinum is well known for ostentatious boss fights that are as stunning to look at as
they are to play, but rarely at the expense of actual playability.
Couldn't it just have been a map like in Star Fox Command on DS? Or is that too boring for
the hypothetical person who might be watching you play?
So, Star Fox Zero puts visual spectacle before gameplay. And the game, level and enemy design
rarely encourage you to interact with the unique controls in an interesting way. But
beyond all that, the game's just tough to get to grips with.
It's hard enough that Zero expects you to keep track of two things - the ship and the
reticule - for the first time in Star Fox history. One of which is done with a potentially
unfamiliar gyroscopic control scheme. But also keep track of two screens, each with
unique information and, sometimes, camera angle.
And Nintendo and Platinum know this four-piece juggling act is hard to understand. Read any
interview with the developers and you'll see it.
"Early in the game’s development, we’d kind of assumed that we wouldn’t need to
explain how to fly the ships – players would just be able to get the hang of it," says
Miyamoto. They later added a training mode.
The training mode also covers the other ships that pop up, that are perhaps even stranger
to control, like a chicken walker that inexplicably uses tank controls from the mid 90s.
Those training levels exist, according to Nintendo's Yugo Hayashi, so that the first
time the Gyrowing or the Gravmaster or the chicken walker show up in the game, players
are "not just completely confused". Completely confused! That sounds more like Polygon's
review than a developer's quote.
Complaints from long time Star Fox fans "did concern us," says Yusuke Hashimoto of Platinum,
"but we felt strongly enough to ask people to get used to it."
GRANGA: My emperor! I've failed you!
Well. Players can get used to it. I've gotten used to it. And so have expert Platinum players
who are starting to uncover the game's clever scoring system which has you doing critical
charged shots and charged unlocked shots, and shooting at enemy corpses that have already
been blown up to get bonus points.
zallard1, the world record holder for a 100% speed run in Star Fox 64, is posting videos
of his crazy high score runs on YouTube but, guess what? "I really wish they had given
more control options", he says, admitting that he's had to abandon lots of record runs
because he accidentally dropped a bomb or did a somersault.
"I just find myself not in complete control of any vehicle 100% of the time," and "it's
just a shame that the controls are confusing for no reason". If this guy doesn't get it,
no one will.
But anyway, "getting used to controls" is not really something I'd expect from Nintendo.
It's games are incredibly accessible, sometimes to a fault, and to hear them say you'll get
the controls after 30 minutes, or an hour, or on your second playthrough is weird. Even
Platinum, who make incredibly rich and complex games, makes sure that first time players
have a good experience. Bayonetta 2 has a mode where you can play with one hand.
And here's the kicker. "I do think that we can take this control style and still find
ways to apply it to, for example, a single screen experience by switching back and forth
between different view styles," says Miyamoto.
Because Star Fox Zero ultimately tries to fix a problem that already has a solution.
We've been zooming in for a better look in shooters for years, and we haven't needed
to look at a different screen. you just... zoom in. Even Star Fox 64 had a cockpit view.
And how about moving the camera to look at things off to the side, or above or below
the player. For an example of how to do this without a second screen, let's look at a game
called, what? Star Fox Zero? Oh yeah, when you're descending down these laser shafts
or dropping a robot onto a platform you look down by holding a button.
So did Star Fox Zero complete its mission? Did it prove that the Wii U Gamepad can lead
to essential games? I don't think so.
The controls are so complicated that you need training modes and an hour of playing to understand
them, and even the world's best players are still struggling.
But even if you do get to grips with them, the game design so rarely rewards or encourages
you to dart back and forth between the two screens, outside of some good boss fights
and these weird robot-dropping bits that don't fit the arcade speed of the game at all.
Ultimately I think Star Fox Zero would not only work okay on other input devices with
minimal tweaking, it would probably be better for 90% of the game.
There are games that prove the Wii U Gamepad's worth as interesting, singleplayer controller
but - for whatever reason - they're just not made by Nintendo. And, as a long time Nintendo
fan, I'm not sure if I should be worried.
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