Topic: Star Fox Zero - OT

Someone over at Gamefaqs claims he's working for Nintendo in Germany and has inside info. Claims they'll announce in the next Direct this December that SFZ will be out in July 2016. Check the board post yourself if you don't believe.

As an aside, I think it's the new President of Nintendo who ordered Miyamoto to delay SFZ. Makes perfect sense when you consider this:

Super Mario Maker thread — 100K views
Xenoblade Chronicles X thread — 150K views
StarFox Zero thread — 30K views

XCX isn't even released yet and already 150K views >> Super Mario Maker and 5x greater than SFZ. It seems to me XCX would be the bigger X-Mas game "blockbluster" and hence why they pushed SFZ back to give XCX the limelight this holiday season!

December seems right for a Direct. So that sounds at least plausible. I'm guessing they'll also announce their mobile game and Twilight Princess HD.

Doubt they delayed the game for that reason though. 2 games is hardly too much for the holiday season. There's a lot of variety in people's tastes (and a lot of people will buy 2 games as well)

You should also keep in mind that the post-count doesn't necessarily represent popularity because some of those threads have just been a few really fanatical fans posting hundreds of times.
I think probably 70% of my activity on this forum has been between the Zelda U and XCX thread. It's cos I'm a LOT more excited about those than anything else. But I'm only 1 person and will only be buying 1 copy.

So, I went back and played StarFox 2 for the first time waiting on SFZ. My opinion has completely changed about SFZ.

But first, let's talk about YWW. Know why IGN gave it a low score? It's almost the same game as SMW2 that was made about 20 years ago. The only new thing I saw was the ability to fill up windmill blades with wool. And it's missing the one thing that made SMW2 great: Baby Mario! IMHO YWW seemed like the inferior, less fun game with fancy HD graphics that didn't impress IgN reviewers.

Now, onto SFZ. It seems like a lazy clone SF2. Almost everything I saw had already been done before in SF2. In SF2 the Walker can jump. This one rises into the air slowly. My opinion now is that just like YWW, SFZ will be the inferior game compared to SF2 with fancy updated HD graphics that didn't even impress Youtubers so far. In short, I won't be getting SFZ ever seeing it's just SF2 with SF64 elements recycled for a new gen of gamers...

@hirobo2: I think you're forgetting something here: Starfox 2 was never released. Meaning that it never officially happened. It's okay to use an element from a game that was never released.

IMHO, XCX is everything SF U could have been and then some: Foot missions, vehicle mode, Pacific-Rim mode (aka gigantic walking robot mode), airborne mode, an actual story thread, wide-open world exploration, and stunningly gorgeous graphics. I felt a little letdown by SFZ when I watched some of the XCX stuff on Youtube! SFZ looked really bad next to XCX, like it didn't even try!

@hirobo2: Keep the on foot missions out of Star Fox. There are plenty of other third person shooters if you want to play one. I don't know what Xenoblade game you've been looking at, but something like this doesn't look too pretty either:
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/xenoblade/images/5/57/Xen...

You literally just took one "weird" look of a cutscene of Lynlee and saying XCX isn't a pretty game?!?! XCX is pretty. Star Fox: Zero looks good but not impressive, in my opinion. It needs that Mario Kart 8 polish in graphics.

This is the kind of graphics and gameplay SFZ should have had to begin with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqY2zCo-0mQ

Anyone who watched that video and isn't feeling envious (from the perspective of SFZ) isn't a normal human being...

Exactly. And since Star Fox Zero doesn't even have that much going on via the screen then it should look amazing.... at least And Star Fox Zero isn't garbage. It just needs help.

@Blast: @hirobo2: There's a lot going on on screen in Xenoblade X, which isn't always the case in Star Fox Zero, and sure, the world is bigger than anything in Star Fox Zero. But visually? Star Fox Zero can use some polish, but so could Xenoblade X. Gameplay-wise the game is probably going to be great, but I'm absolutely not impressed by its visuals. Characters look terrible, like they did in the original, and in motion, the animations look off as well.

On second thought, after having watched this video, I'm liking SFZ again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoOhlqbSsts

The first one I watched with the soundtrack from the actual game. All I can say is, WOW!! Whoever composed that training area in Earth's orbit soundtrack, genius!! He emulated Hajime Hirasawa's style (StarFox SNES) perfectly!! IMHO the only real StarFox score that was ever composed was made by Hirasawa for SF SNES. And it seemed the music composer for SFZ preferred to walk in that great man's shoes, literally!

The way I would describe Hirasawa's SF music is a sort of "alien"/mysterious UFO mixed with Star Wars, and the soundtrack I heard in the above video had both of these elements, something Hirasawa would have done [again] had he composed for SFZ!!

IHMO soundtack >>>>> graphics!! It's what made Star Wars the iconic phenomenon that it was!! Star Wars (the Original Trilogy) could have had cinematography from the early 1900's AND John Williams' score, and it would still have been as popular as it is today!!

EDIT: My bad, did I just say 'Earth"? I meant Corneria...

I don't find any problem with the graphics, they look good.The things that need more work is the textures and the terrain.

rolls eyes I never complain about graphics in a JRPG.

Monolith has never been great with character faces, that I can say for certain. The rest of Xenoblade looks great, but that's one area they still need to improve on.

And to say that Star Fox Zero won't have a lot happening on screen, I present the Titania level:

Maybe I'm way off base, but that is mild for a Platinum developed game and outside having more polygons and better resolution, it doesn't look like much of an improvement of the Landmaster levels I remember from SF64.

I don't disagree. I don't consider that inherently a bad thing (particularly if this has harder difficulty modes like 64 did). Platinum makes excellent games but like a lot of modern games that try to up the ante in their genres, sometimes their games can be overwhelming. Actually their games are almost always overwhelming in some way, but sometimes that includes keeping track of what's on screen. Quick paced games are cool but there are times where I felt like I got screwed just because I blinked.

I love the new Rayman games but they also have that problem at points.

I'm not saying that there's no way this game will disappoint, but honestly much of this game is still ultimately a Star Fox 64-like game made by Platinum, but without the issues I have with Platinum's games. If you were to ask me 1 year ago what I wanted the new Star Fox to be, it would mostly be the game they have been showing.

Yeah... No. Say what you will about Platinum Games storytelling skills... But its far better than what we're gonna get in Star Fox Zero. Unless Star Fox Zero is hiding an incredible and exciting story despite it being just a retread.

This actually makes a lot of sense to me as I didn't know what I was doing 75% of time when playing W101 and that would be terrible in an on-rails shooter. That said, the last thing I wanted from the franchise was another 64-type game as I was irrationally hoping for a full-on space adventure instead.

@Blast Disagree entirely. I'm frequently a big story guy, but Star Fox 64 did exactly what it needed to do in terms of story and didn't waste time. And regardless of where the new game goes, it has the advantage of consistent dialogue during gameplay, which is also why 64 worked so well (and why KI:U is above the norm for a Nintendo game as well). I mean, it's actually a decent comparison considering Star Fox 64 is unintentionally hilarious while Platinum games are intentionally hilarious disguised as unintentionally hilarious.

That being said, there have been stories like Bayonetta and the like (including Wonderful 101's story, which I do like) that I've enjoyed for basically the same reason, so fair enough. But Star Fox 64's speed and simplicity is what made it so likable. I don't need to know what happened to those ocean planets, I don't need further information about Star Wolf, it gives me exactly what I need and anything else is communicated while playing. Sometimes it's just nice to not have explanations about crazy lore and complications.

While there are times Miyamoto has been overly interested in minimizing story, I don't feel Star Fox 64 was it. Honestly for an N64 game, it probably had way more story than most. Like stuff constantly happens with the story and it's one of the only N64 games I believe that has full voice acting. And the story of all the stuff that does or doesn't happen while on the initial mission in Corneria or Slippy's thing on Titania or the whole epic battle in Area 6 is much more interesting than what would've happened in a cutscene. Honestly while in 64 it frequently limited them to being a parody of themselves, the constant dialogue in that game is actually some of the best ideas for characterization in a game.