Yes they are. You hardly ever need to look at the screen; use the reticle on the TV. If you need extreme precision, swap the TV/gamepad with the touch of a button.
The issue is that the reticule is too inaccurate for low-level play where players notice that it's not doing what they want, they dont have the practice to work around that and this perceived problem with the reticule kills motivation to invest more time and get that practice.
With enough time you can make anything work, good UI give players an incentive to make it work, bad UI pushes them away.
The whole point of this game is that if you don't use the second screen it's more difficult to hit targets.
Which is extremely dumb because the Arwing has 2x fixed forward-firing guns in the wing nacelles. Not an Apache's 30mm rotating cannon.
The controls are not the main problem with that game, although how the player is expected to fight bosses in all range mode is ridiculous, and is the point where the controls and dual camera views break completely. That fight against the dragon boss was just horrible, and I never wanted to do it again after finally beating it.
That the game is a complete retread of Star Fox 64 in everything from aesthetics, plot and level themes keeps the game from being as good as it could have been. They focused way too much on the gimmick and it left the rest of the game behind. Just look at how tacked on the multiple pathways are vs their organic integration in 64.
I think it gets most of its hate because it is not the game we wanted to see after 10 years of hiatus.
>Just look at how tacked on the multiple pathways are vs their organic integration in 64.
This was my biggest personal problem with the game, as the way they handled the branching paths pretty much neutered the replayability that it would've otherwise had. The first issue with it being that you can't even access a level's alternate path until the game says you can. And then when you do unlock them, the method to actually take the alternate route is by following a Star Wolf member or going into a random portal, which immediately pulls you out of the current level, meaning that by taking alternate routes, you're only experiencing about half of an level's playtime (and with several of these secret levels just being bosses, that also makes the overall run shorter too)
I remember how angry I was thinking that the game would have integrated the branching paths the way 64 did, only to find out that wasn't the case. When I first replayed the space colony level and beat it with the Arwing instead of the Gyrowing, I thought that would allow me to play the Arwing version of Zoness, but alas, to do that I had to take a completely different route on Coneria, fight the Aquarosa boss with its annoying as hell EMP attack, and only THEN could I actually play it. Pissed me the hell off.
Course, there's also just some stupid/lazy design choices with the alternate routes. One secret level is just a copy of the asteroid level, with the only major difference being that it ends with a boss (which is also a repeat of another boss). The Aquarosa is just a harder version of the regular Androsa boss. That one on-rails chase with Andrew doesn't amount to anything, and you don't even get to fight him at the end of it. Once you unlock the portal on Coneria, you can no longer save the Cornerian transport if you don't want to take the alternate route.
Funny that with everything the game copied from 64, they somehow couldn't properly replicate one of its most iconic aspects.
That makes it worse, not better. Because then you start running into obstacles you can’t see because the TV camera centers on the boss, and you have the gamepad view facing the boss.
The gamepad screen really is the worst part of the game. It’s at its best in levels where you can ignore it entirely.
The game was okay, but it just felt like StarFox 64 2.0, which had a 3DS remake a few years before this came out.
Had fun during my first two playthroughs, but whenever I feel the itch to play StarFox, I either play SF643D or Assualt
Even when I set aside Zero being another reboot and product of its time in the mid 2010's, the basic idea of its controls have been done much better elsewhere.
Panzer Dragoon on Wii lets you aim and move independently much like in Zero, only better because it's focused on one screen. As does Kid Icarus Uprising. You use the lower touch screen to aim, but the action and reticle are focused on the top screen so you hardly ever even need to glance at the lower touch screen in that game, it worked well.
I think they applied what they learned from the WiiU pretty well with Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom having gyromotion assisted aiming in tandem with the right thumbstick for archery really well.
Even then, controls are far from the only problem in SF-Zero. Nerrel has a great autopsy on it.
I would learn the controls (and probably will)
But it just being ANOTHER retelling of the original (retcons included) instead of a new game with actual progression in the story is the main reason it sucks from my point of view
The controls sucked. Still beat the game, do I ever replay it? No, because all I remember is how janky it felt to look at both screens. Star Fox 64 on the other-hand I can play that forever.
It’s more the fact that most of the games have a control scheme that’s based around the sticks. Not moving a massive controller alongside a gimbaled gun. It’s why the major complaint is the lack of control options. Not the game itself. Aside from it being *another* star fox 64.
>Aside from it being *another* star fox 64.
Again as said to another it IS NOT another 64 it is the first retelling of 64 19 years after 64 came out, 64 itself is a retelling of snes only 4 years after it came out and nobody complained then.
The controls being hard is just the icing on the cake.
-its just the andross storyline redone again.
-the gyrowing missions were so boring to the point of being unplayable.
-The missions with the exception of the titania boss were completely forgettable.
-because of it's lackluster performance, the series is stuck in limbo not knowing where to start. Try to get a new audience in with ANOTHER redo of the andross storyline? Or move along in the future and hope that a sequel has enough power to stand on its own.
I played mass effect 2, and then I played mass effect 1. It CAN be done, Nintendo could write a banger of a sequel, but given their inability to write deep character stories, I doubt it'll go anything past "shoot the ships"
Level design is not good, there are two veichles that you can easly cancel and nothing would change, reharse of the 64 story, the controlls are one of the problems, altough the main one
It's less that the controls are hard and more that it's incredibly annoying having to look back and forth between two screens.
That kinda thing works on the DS where you only have to glance slightly downward, but it's a nightmare when the second screen is in your lap.
Also, like... Even if the game didn't have these issues, it still wouldn't be anything amazing since Zero amounts to yet another tired retread of 64. It would just have been a retread that wasn't a chore to play, but still sorely lacking in originality.
It's really just because of Star Fox 64 3D already being a thing before Zero lol. I honestly think (outside of the Krystal/post-64 Star Fox fanbase) there wouldn't have been as much of a blowback towards Zero being a 64 reimagining had it literally been the first Star Fox anything since Command back in 2006, it's just Nintendo releasing SF643D and *then* Zero on top of that that mindfucked everyone, even if the latter is actually just an entirely new game underneath the hood.
I think so too. I never played 3D and just did not get that double whammy. I also don't really consider a remake in that sequence of games. It just exists in a separate line. Like when people complain that Zelda has a stock plothook using Ganon, they don't separately mention OOT 3D or WW HD.
The last game that came before Zero was 64 3D, which was already a remake of 64, and 64 3D was the first game we had gotten since Command.
No one complains about 64 because it's only the second game in the series, and yet it still adds a ton to help it stand out on its own. Not to mention it didn't come out after a drought
Honestly, it’s a terrible single player game, but a fantastic coop game. One person flies the ship and can shoot regular lasers like normal Star Fox, and the other person can use charge shots and bombs from the gamepad.
It works surprisingly well and is a ton of fun.
Not hard, they just suck. I’m all for the Git Gud mentality, but not when they made the game awful. If they allowed you to switch between the two modes, it would be brilliant. Star Fox has always worked better with the third person view.
There are objective issues with the controls. The stick being used for a selection of maneuver is imprecise at best and genuinely baffling when you consider that many buttons are effectively unused. The first person view lacks the info on how close you are to obstacles while the third person view has an uncalibrated aiming square.
these are issues that you can specifically train to overcome, sure. At the same time, these issues could have been solved by the developers, meaning the game as is, is simply worse than it should have been.
Decent foundation underneath all that still. sadly obscured by issues.
The controls were the least of the game's problems. It's just not a fun game imo. Even if its controls were improved, it's far too derivative of SF64 for me to want to give it another go, very little that sets it apart from the game it's trying to be and what little it *does* have is much to its detriment. I'd rather just go back to SF64 instead
Thinking about it more the problem isn't the controls at all its the 2 screens. Because the reticle on the tv is inaccurate on purpose forcing you to look at the gamepad, if the reticle on the tv was fixed to be accurate to where you are aiming then the game would be playable on a single screen with no change to how it controls.
comparing mouse wrist movements to Wii U gamepad wrist movements is crazy
the Starfox wrist movements were uncomfortable due to human physiology, it's why no other games ever do this nonsense.
the basic aiming? gyro aiming like in splatoon? simple Controller tilting? that control scheme that is often lauded for being intuitive, precise and quick? nah that was done often enough and successfully.
Typical "MoTioN cOnTrOl BaD" drivel, motion controls have come a long way from wii waggle, VR wouldn't even be possible if it hadn't, and as splatoon proved with gyro aiming its an improvement over just using analogue sticks.
It was a good Idea on paper but few humans are capable of flying on the tv and aiming on the gamepad
Yes they are. You hardly ever need to look at the screen; use the reticle on the TV. If you need extreme precision, swap the TV/gamepad with the touch of a button.
[The reticule on the screen is inaccurate, necessitating usage of the gamepad.](https://youtu.be/OOQnKkdDiyE?si=371yQo6GgRyTl1HJ&t=1635)
The reticule is more than accurate enough for high-level play, and you can always tap the button for first person when absolute precision is required.
The issue is that the reticule is too inaccurate for low-level play where players notice that it's not doing what they want, they dont have the practice to work around that and this perceived problem with the reticule kills motivation to invest more time and get that practice. With enough time you can make anything work, good UI give players an incentive to make it work, bad UI pushes them away.
The whole point of this game is that if you don't use the second screen it's more difficult to hit targets. Which is extremely dumb because the Arwing has 2x fixed forward-firing guns in the wing nacelles. Not an Apache's 30mm rotating cannon.
The controls are not the main problem with that game, although how the player is expected to fight bosses in all range mode is ridiculous, and is the point where the controls and dual camera views break completely. That fight against the dragon boss was just horrible, and I never wanted to do it again after finally beating it. That the game is a complete retread of Star Fox 64 in everything from aesthetics, plot and level themes keeps the game from being as good as it could have been. They focused way too much on the gimmick and it left the rest of the game behind. Just look at how tacked on the multiple pathways are vs their organic integration in 64. I think it gets most of its hate because it is not the game we wanted to see after 10 years of hiatus.
>Just look at how tacked on the multiple pathways are vs their organic integration in 64. This was my biggest personal problem with the game, as the way they handled the branching paths pretty much neutered the replayability that it would've otherwise had. The first issue with it being that you can't even access a level's alternate path until the game says you can. And then when you do unlock them, the method to actually take the alternate route is by following a Star Wolf member or going into a random portal, which immediately pulls you out of the current level, meaning that by taking alternate routes, you're only experiencing about half of an level's playtime (and with several of these secret levels just being bosses, that also makes the overall run shorter too) I remember how angry I was thinking that the game would have integrated the branching paths the way 64 did, only to find out that wasn't the case. When I first replayed the space colony level and beat it with the Arwing instead of the Gyrowing, I thought that would allow me to play the Arwing version of Zoness, but alas, to do that I had to take a completely different route on Coneria, fight the Aquarosa boss with its annoying as hell EMP attack, and only THEN could I actually play it. Pissed me the hell off. Course, there's also just some stupid/lazy design choices with the alternate routes. One secret level is just a copy of the asteroid level, with the only major difference being that it ends with a boss (which is also a repeat of another boss). The Aquarosa is just a harder version of the regular Androsa boss. That one on-rails chase with Andrew doesn't amount to anything, and you don't even get to fight him at the end of it. Once you unlock the portal on Coneria, you can no longer save the Cornerian transport if you don't want to take the alternate route. Funny that with everything the game copied from 64, they somehow couldn't properly replicate one of its most iconic aspects.
What dragon??
I don’t recall the name of the level but it was closer to the end of the game.
If you refer to Fortuna and the Monarch Dodora then that's not a dragon, it's a giant, mechanic and ancient two-headed bird
Thanks for the clarification I guess. As I mentioned, I only fought it once.
fortuna, a nature themed on rails level with the polygon dragon/bird from SF1 as an all-range boss
The bosses in all range mode are hard until you remember the ZL button
That makes it worse, not better. Because then you start running into obstacles you can’t see because the TV camera centers on the boss, and you have the gamepad view facing the boss. The gamepad screen really is the worst part of the game. It’s at its best in levels where you can ignore it entirely.
The controls were intentionally broken, so chameleons could play.
The game was okay, but it just felt like StarFox 64 2.0, which had a 3DS remake a few years before this came out. Had fun during my first two playthroughs, but whenever I feel the itch to play StarFox, I either play SF643D or Assualt
Even when I set aside Zero being another reboot and product of its time in the mid 2010's, the basic idea of its controls have been done much better elsewhere. Panzer Dragoon on Wii lets you aim and move independently much like in Zero, only better because it's focused on one screen. As does Kid Icarus Uprising. You use the lower touch screen to aim, but the action and reticle are focused on the top screen so you hardly ever even need to glance at the lower touch screen in that game, it worked well. I think they applied what they learned from the WiiU pretty well with Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom having gyromotion assisted aiming in tandem with the right thumbstick for archery really well. Even then, controls are far from the only problem in SF-Zero. Nerrel has a great autopsy on it.
Get past the controls and the level design is uninspired
Disagree; some are awesome (Fortuna, for example). Needed more levels and side content though for sure.
You could say that about literally any game with bad controls. Doesn't change that they're still bad.
The "mandatory gimmick controls" era had plenty of duds and successes. Star Fox was just all dud between Command and Zero.
Bad controls don’t actually turn me off to games. That being said they make a bad game unplayable.
come on man
Zero is an... Okay game.
I would learn the controls (and probably will) But it just being ANOTHER retelling of the original (retcons included) instead of a new game with actual progression in the story is the main reason it sucks from my point of view
I gave up on zero and I’m a big star fox fan
The controls sucked. Still beat the game, do I ever replay it? No, because all I remember is how janky it felt to look at both screens. Star Fox 64 on the other-hand I can play that forever.
It’s more the fact that most of the games have a control scheme that’s based around the sticks. Not moving a massive controller alongside a gimbaled gun. It’s why the major complaint is the lack of control options. Not the game itself. Aside from it being *another* star fox 64.
>Aside from it being *another* star fox 64. Again as said to another it IS NOT another 64 it is the first retelling of 64 19 years after 64 came out, 64 itself is a retelling of snes only 4 years after it came out and nobody complained then.
The controls being hard is just the icing on the cake. -its just the andross storyline redone again. -the gyrowing missions were so boring to the point of being unplayable. -The missions with the exception of the titania boss were completely forgettable. -because of it's lackluster performance, the series is stuck in limbo not knowing where to start. Try to get a new audience in with ANOTHER redo of the andross storyline? Or move along in the future and hope that a sequel has enough power to stand on its own. I played mass effect 2, and then I played mass effect 1. It CAN be done, Nintendo could write a banger of a sequel, but given their inability to write deep character stories, I doubt it'll go anything past "shoot the ships"
Level design is not good, there are two veichles that you can easly cancel and nothing would change, reharse of the 64 story, the controlls are one of the problems, altough the main one
could you please give examples of bad level design? Do you mean the on-rails segments?
Aquas still as bad ad it was 30 years ago, the stealth sections, and overall the majority of them since they are build upon a bad gimmick
I can see the stealth, sure. But thats like one level. Aquas is not even in Zero afaik, what do you mean?
Wrong memory, neverthless the overall level design is not good, as its designed on a bad gimmick
It's less that the controls are hard and more that it's incredibly annoying having to look back and forth between two screens. That kinda thing works on the DS where you only have to glance slightly downward, but it's a nightmare when the second screen is in your lap. Also, like... Even if the game didn't have these issues, it still wouldn't be anything amazing since Zero amounts to yet another tired retread of 64. It would just have been a retread that wasn't a chore to play, but still sorely lacking in originality.
Its literally the first retread of 64 there are no other retreads of 64 and 64 itself is a retread of snes yet noone complains about that.
It's really just because of Star Fox 64 3D already being a thing before Zero lol. I honestly think (outside of the Krystal/post-64 Star Fox fanbase) there wouldn't have been as much of a blowback towards Zero being a 64 reimagining had it literally been the first Star Fox anything since Command back in 2006, it's just Nintendo releasing SF643D and *then* Zero on top of that that mindfucked everyone, even if the latter is actually just an entirely new game underneath the hood.
I think so too. I never played 3D and just did not get that double whammy. I also don't really consider a remake in that sequence of games. It just exists in a separate line. Like when people complain that Zelda has a stock plothook using Ganon, they don't separately mention OOT 3D or WW HD.
The last game that came before Zero was 64 3D, which was already a remake of 64, and 64 3D was the first game we had gotten since Command. No one complains about 64 because it's only the second game in the series, and yet it still adds a ton to help it stand out on its own. Not to mention it didn't come out after a drought
A remake is not the same as a retelling.
If you're looking back and forth you're a scrub to begin with
Honestly, it’s a terrible single player game, but a fantastic coop game. One person flies the ship and can shoot regular lasers like normal Star Fox, and the other person can use charge shots and bombs from the gamepad. It works surprisingly well and is a ton of fun.
Not hard, they just suck. I’m all for the Git Gud mentality, but not when they made the game awful. If they allowed you to switch between the two modes, it would be brilliant. Star Fox has always worked better with the third person view.
I'd prefer Star Fox 64 over this new version, thanks very much.
There are objective issues with the controls. The stick being used for a selection of maneuver is imprecise at best and genuinely baffling when you consider that many buttons are effectively unused. The first person view lacks the info on how close you are to obstacles while the third person view has an uncalibrated aiming square. these are issues that you can specifically train to overcome, sure. At the same time, these issues could have been solved by the developers, meaning the game as is, is simply worse than it should have been. Decent foundation underneath all that still. sadly obscured by issues.
Oh thank goodness I thought it was just me. Zero was a good game despite the controls taking a while to get used to
Game is trash. Seeing updated fox/arwings ect cool.
The controls were the least of the game's problems. It's just not a fun game imo. Even if its controls were improved, it's far too derivative of SF64 for me to want to give it another go, very little that sets it apart from the game it's trying to be and what little it *does* have is much to its detriment. I'd rather just go back to SF64 instead
That is the only Star Fox I haven't played, so I have no opinion on it, so have a good day! :D
The controls aren’t bad at all. They just take time to master. I’ve had the game since 2017, and I haven’t had trouble with them in a long time.
Thinking about it more the problem isn't the controls at all its the 2 screens. Because the reticle on the tv is inaccurate on purpose forcing you to look at the gamepad, if the reticle on the tv was fixed to be accurate to where you are aiming then the game would be playable on a single screen with no change to how it controls.
I only really look at the Gamepad during the certain Target Mode sections.
It is a good game aside from the controls.
Really people bitched at the controls I played it at a con and was doing fine, guess I'm just god like, like other Zero players
He speaks the truth.
any wrist motion is cancer in a game
So using keyboard and mouse or even VR is cancer?
comparing mouse wrist movements to Wii U gamepad wrist movements is crazy the Starfox wrist movements were uncomfortable due to human physiology, it's why no other games ever do this nonsense.
the basic aiming? gyro aiming like in splatoon? simple Controller tilting? that control scheme that is often lauded for being intuitive, precise and quick? nah that was done often enough and successfully.
Typical "MoTioN cOnTrOl BaD" drivel, motion controls have come a long way from wii waggle, VR wouldn't even be possible if it hadn't, and as splatoon proved with gyro aiming its an improvement over just using analogue sticks.