Star Fox 64 (Wii)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.6 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Alex Navarro
• Reviewed on: 04/04/2007
• Released on: 04/02/2007
• Originally published on GameSpot: Star Fox 64 (Wii) Review

If you're too young to have properly experienced the SNES or N64 eras, you might wonder why anyone would have any sort of fond memories of the Star Fox series. And that's understandable. If all anyone had to go on was Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox: Assault, it'd be pretty easy to dismiss this franchise altogether. However, now that Star Fox 64 is available for download on the Wii Virtual Console, you can now discover precisely why this series imbues people with such loving nostalgia. As tends to be the case with Virtual Console games, Star Fox 64 can't avoid feeling archaic, but as old as it is, it still provides a surprisingly good, albeit simplistic, aerial shoot-'em-up experience.

Star Fox 64 sees the titular hero and his band of animals--Falco, Peppy, and Slippy--in space fighters, taking on the vile armies of Andross, an evil ape harboring galactic takeover plans. Fighting on the side of the Cornerian military, your job is to hit a number of planets, asteroid fields, and defense grids, and take down Andross' fleet. The game itself is a simple on-rails shooter. You can fly anywhere you want around the screen, but the game is always carrying you forward in one direction or another in all the primary stages. Periodically the game breaks up this formula by putting you into arenalike stages against the enemy fighters of "Star Wolf" in something of a dogfighting scenario. In either situation, you'll find yourself flying around like a crazy person, doing barrel rolls and loop-de-loops while blasting bad guys into oblivion. The game isn't terribly difficult (save for a couple of tricky fights here and there), but the gameplay holds up surprisingly well.

The game moves at a quick pace, constantly tossing enemies at you to blast away. However, it's not all bang-bang. There are some secrets to be found here and there, if you give each stage a more careful look. The structure of the game is such that there are multiple paths to be taken through the story, so by fulfilling certain conditions within a stage, you'll get to move on to a different (and sometimes more challenging) next stage. For example, saving Falco from getting gunned down in the opening stage takes you to a different boss fight at the end of that stage, as well as a new planetary level on the next stage, as opposed to the asteroid field you'd travel through by default. This is what gave Star Fox 64 much of its replay value, as half the fun was going through and figuring out how to get to each stage. Of course, it's a pretty short game, so it won't take you more than a couple of hours on each try to beat it.

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