I want people to buy this game.
I will say upfront that I am deeply and personally biased towards this game due to it's accidental competitor, Star Fox 2026, being everything I never wanted Star Fox to ever be.
Wild Blue Skies captures the feel I desire from Star Fox and, yes, homages Star Fox 64 in particular quite a bit. That being said, I do feel the game's takes on most levels are distinct enough to justify the game's existence, to say nothing of how the actual gameplay mechanics make it stand out from Star Fox.
Braking will cause you to lose altitude. Barrel Dodge Rolls shift you to the side a bit. The charged shot and the rapidfire are separate buttons for some reason. You can't adjust camera distance or go into first-person. You don't fully heal between levels.
This is all on purpose. It's not bad game design. It's different from Star Fox, deliberately. Braking causes you to lose altitude, but lets you aim at a target without flying into it, meaning you can use the brake to dodge enemy attacks and fire back. You can roll to move left or right a bit to properly dodge attacks while still braking so you don't have to stop braking and wait for the meter to refill.
You can't mash faster than the hold fire toggle, (or at least I can't, and I like to think I'm pretty good at mashing), and not having to mash means less pain for you and less damage to your controller. Additionally, bombs can't home in on enemies even if you lock on with a charged shot, forcing you to manually aim your bombs just like how you're asked to manually detonate your bombs. You don't have somersaults and U-Turns, but you don't need them thanks to how Dodge Rolls and Braking work. Everything is just as in-your-control as it is with Star Fox, but differently.
If you go in expecting it to PLAY just like Star Fox 64, it won't live up to what's in your head. You have to come into this game willing to engage with its GAMEPLAY on its own terms even as the game welcomes you in with it's old-school cartoon aesthetic and silly, familiar character archetypes.
On which note the English voice acting is a little goofy, yes, but that's part of the charm. I do feel the Blue Bombers lack a little bit of the camaraderie and depth that Star Fox 64's version of the Star Fox team had, but they are definitely more fleshed out than the SNES version of the team is in my opinion, at least looking at just the games. Also Thorne is adorable and I love him and anything that harms him gets bombed. He seems to be a better flier than Slippy, better at navigation. Roe is less abrasive than Falco, a bit more serious and less of a show-off. Chuck is significantly more cheerful and energetic than Peppy while still clearly being the oldest and most experienced team member.
Like Star Fox 64, the game has branching paths. Outside of the first level, the game doesn't usually outright tell you what you need to do, instead choosing to imply it through level design and sometimes character dialogue. Activating alternate paths sadly doesn't open new routes through the levels or lead you to different bosses, which can make successfully accomplishing these sub-objectives less intuitive, BUT, the game DOES give you an indication of what to do. There's a sound cue that plays when you perform an action that progresses your sub-objective, with a different sound cue playing when you fully accomplish your sub-objective. You can hear this clearly in the first level if/when you follow Thorne through the waterfalls. If you miss an objective, the sound cues for making progress will still play, but the final "point" for an objective will not have the sound cue, cluing you in to the fact you missed something. This sound cue can be hard to hear, though, and some levels have sub-objectives like clearing before a time limit runs out or preventing enemies from reaching something that won't play the sound cue-- though aside from Hurricane's "get a high enough score" requirement, I feel these non-sound cue objectives are fairly obvious to see.
My only real complaints are that the Blue Bombers as a whole feel way too fragile. Your wingmates will just inexplicably get shredded in Free-Flight levels even if you're babysitting them, except ironically when you're fighting Not-Star Wolf? But Bowie also just feels so much more fragile than Fox ever was. The game is definitely much harder than most Star Fox games, but I don't know if it's harder because it's just more difficult and Bowie is just as sturdy, or if Bowie genuinely has less health, takes more damage, or what. Not fully healing between levels doesn't help. Also, the default single laser is WAY too weak, and dying seems to either strip you of any Bombs you had stocked, or leave your bomb count where it was. I have always been low on Bombs when I die, so retrying from death feels like I tripped on a pebble and had both of my legs shot off for it. Not cool, team. It would help a lot if basic enemies just weren't so tanky against the basic laser, or at the very least if it was a little harder to lose your blaster upgrades altogether.
It seems to be inspired by Star Fox Zero of all games, funny enough my favorite in the series, but Zero only takes away your HYPER Lasers, and it does so after two hits, but once you get Double Lasers you keep those until you finish the level or die. I think the default laser's weakness would be more justified if this was also the case in Wild Blue Skies, or at the very least you only lost one blaster level at a time rather than both at once. It's deeply frustrating to get a boss down to their last sliver of health but take one bit of damage and lose your blasters at the very last moment.
That all being said, while the WILD medals can be annoying to find at times, I love them as a mechanic, and I appreciate the game giving you bonuses for not getting hit and for killing bosses quickly while not requiring you to get all bonuses to hit the high-score threshold.
I've hit 100% in this game, and that's ironically more than I can say for any Star Fox game I've played. Part of that is because there are fewer levels than 64, but we're only missing about 3 levels. I felt driven to collect those medals and ribbons, and while getting there was frustrating, my skill issues tick me off with every game. The cosmetic reward is very pretty, and I love what it changes the title screen to.
Ultimately I really like this game. I think $15 is totally worth it, and I deeply, truly hope the devs have the passion and make enough money to give us a sequel, one that can truly stand entirely on its own without Star Fox's shadow hanging over it. I really like these characters, and want to see more of them, and I'd love to see Free-Flight get refined; those levels are the only ones in the game I find disappointing, but they're not terrible, just kind of underwhelming, which is kinda how it goes in most Star Fox games too.
