Wild Blue Skies

Nintendo doesn’t need anyone to defend them, I’m not defending Nintendo. I’m not trashing this game because it’s not my nostalgia trip. But the first level is super duper the first level from StarFox, what the characters say, the level obstacle layout, even the bad guy placement. If I want to play that I’ll play StarFox. Nintendo doesn’t own the concept of a flight control railshooter with a quirky 4 animal pilot team as the main characters. (That’s why I was interested.) People should be able to make their own take on it, but it should be their own vision. I have literally played other original games in that genre, the devs had original ideas and explored them. My issue is here they ripped off someone else’s game. Honestly. If the first mission was literally a different scenario, anything original, I’d be praising it instead. It’s baffling! Did they have so little confidence in what they were doing that they couldn’t make something new? Ugh. Also some controller rebinding would go a long way.

So I'll start by saying, the demo drew me in. The boss battles seemed interesting and it's pretty much a star fox clone. In saying that, the gripes. There is no pov toggle button. The breaks don't last long enough for shooting stationary objects. After check points there is a lack of power up items and health. Provided health rings don't give enough health, because you lose it faster than you get it back A game over starts you all the way back to the beginning. You can't skip prologue sceens when you have to start over. Levels and objectives seem too generic and boring. Some mobs are a little too tanky on easy There is a separation between the charged up fire and regular shooting (thank you for adding "hold for continuous shooting" in the options, it was a life saver) I wouldn't mind seeing this remade and imagined into an open world space exploration game with more objectives, more freedom, a nonlinear progression, better writing / story telling and environments that is more alive. There is a whole lot of nothing going on in the background aside from the mob enemies and their predictable patterns.

Currently cannot recommend this game. First of all, in the beginning controls seem smooth. But you'll notice when the game actually asks for smooth flying that the controls are rather clunky. The brake is the worst of it all... If think you can do that flying part or get that one item by using the brake? Think again. The brake will do everything in it's power to prevent it if you even so much as think about using it. Next is artificial difficulty. Some enemies take way too much damage even with full upgraded laser. Enemies seem to have hitscan and can and WILL hit you from anywhere, even if you just went past them by boosting. Aiming for enemies yourself though is a nightmare. And for some reason the normal laser and charged one are on two different buttons? In terms of graphics I do think there is some nice scenery if you don't mind the rather simple celshading style. Some stages seem way too short though. Kind of feels like you're always on edge not to miss a single thing on screen. And there's always a lot of things popping up, either already shooting at you before you even notice they're there or some collectible ready to miss. No downtime, no chill flying for a few seconds ever. To top it all off... if you finish a run and start again you'll have to watch the intro scene all over again, there's no skipping it even though you can skip pretty much anything else in game... Needs a lot of work, so far they're only trying to milk Starfox fans with nostalgia.

Overall, I have been enjoying my time with the game so far and recommend it. However, while the game has very good bones to build on, this game would have benefited significantly from Early access and feedback as part of development. While controls are generally solid, auto-fire and max sensitivity should have been the default since a lot of the level design requires quicker reactions times that the default sensitivity for movement will allow for. Difficulty while fine often feels like its working more against the player than it should with the damage of the default level 1 lasers making special objective elements/enemies near impossible to destroy. Level design is good with obvious call backs to star fox 64, however levels often feel too short and would have benefited from additional length to flesh them out. Maybe there should be a major expansion to add more meat to the game at some point to add more levels and multiple campaigns to the story mode for more depth. BUT! this is also the type of game where a custom level editor and steam workshop would shine for creating custom level campaigns and bosses. Story wise.....it exists but characters aren't providing a lot of depth or exploration of their interpersonal relationships to others. Longer more complex levels and multiple campaign areas would have been a good fix for this allowing for more banter and story elements between the characters to be fleshed out and explored.

Runs at a locked 30fps on Steam Deck with no option to unlock the framerate, despite the devs claiming they were targeting 60fps "on all platforms": https://youtu.be/ePAV09rUIEM?t=2042 (at 34:02) This is a cartoony cel-shaded game, trying to emulate the gameplay of a Nintendo 64 game, and has a Switch 1 port in the works. Not to mention Nintendo just put out their Star Fox remake a month or two ago with far more detailed visuals, on Switch 2 hardware that's roughly equivalent spec to Steam Deck, and that's a locked 60fps despite the graphics bump. Wild Blue Skies should not, for ANY reason, not be a solid 60fps on Steam Deck. Optimize your game better, please. Or at the very least give me an option to disable your frame cap, because I don't appreciate having that *forced* on me. And yeah, the controls feel clunkier than Star Fox even on max sensitivity, health pickups are scarce (the mid-level checkpoint does not heal you either), regular shot and charge shot are on two separate buttons, teammates will die if you don't save them from an enemy within 0.3 seconds of them declaring they need help (which they don't do when in all-range mode), this game feels like it's shooting itself in the foot just to make sure it's not 1:1 with Star Fox in terms of physics, when we basically want you to rip off Star Fox's physics wholesale. I REALLY wanted to like this game (I bought copies for me and a friend day one) and I'm just kinda let down. I'm hoping that these issues get addressed in future updates, but I'm pretty disappointed in the game at launch. I'm gonna go back to playing Ex-Zodiac now.

Ill be honest, i went into this knowing it was going to be like starfox. I mostly bought it for that reason. It had a really nice look to it and felt like something that would be a decent alternative for folks that cant afford a switch 2 and the latest release And then you start playing it. Oh boy i sure hope that general ~~pepper~~ chudling is okay while ~~andross~~ Grimclaw is attacking not Corneria, and i sure hope im ok while traversing Not Meteo, and oh boy here comes Not Starwolf on Not Fichina. To make a homage to something you have to actually MAKE it a homage. You cant just slap a coat of paint over it and change some words around. Everything about this game tries to be star fox but it cant understand what made the original games work. The ships feel clunky and like im piloting a flying campervan. Turning feels sluggish and strange, even the dogfighting between you and "The Prowlers" feels like im moving x500 times slower. i can hit every single member and feel zero intensity, zero need to do that. they dont even so much as fight back. they just fly around to try and justify their inclusion. and your teammates seemingly die from not being on screen too long. Even just general combat feels like the game is meant to punish you for playing it. Why does the SHIP OBSTRUCT THE RETICLE? WHY CANT I MAP ANYTHING? and God help you if you lose a single upgrade because you took some poorly telegraphed damage, youre never clearing the level again unless you restart from scratch. In every starfox map if *i* screw up *i* at least know what i did to fix it, i at least feel a sense of understanding and want to get back in the fight. After dying to a boss in Wild Blue Skies im just praying i havent gone over my 2 hours of play time. Boss fights are nearly 1:1 scraped from starfox, quotes scraped from starfox, theres not a single bit of originality. I never once saw where i was going and not thought "hey this is exactly like starfox 64" You're better off booting up an n64 emulator and saving 20 bucks. Also your team is called the Blue Bombers and your ships are red. but thats just me being nitpicky.

Wildblue is an EXCELLENT title in a genre that's been stuck in place since SF64. Don't expect a $10 game to achieve what Nintendo failed to do for 30 years (especially with yet another SF64 remake was just released). It's entertaining, straightforward, and wears its 64 inspiration right on its sleeve. — A real Star Fox Fan