@kkslider5552000
here comes a long one. from the ramblings of a caffeinated turned mad man on a saucy lap top.
Sin & Punishment: SS back in 2010(was it?) is another must have on Wii, and may even play almost just as good with 9-Axis Gyro Split Joy-con 2(Better yet, Mobapad12S or maybe the Hyperion3's for the traditional sticks) controls on a TV, with a 4K resolution boost. Ended up finishing it years ago when it debuted, but i couldn't help shake away it's almost soulless vibe that it consistently carried throughtout. A lot of that had to do with the lifeless mono tone voice overs from the two lead characters, and maybe some of the music combined with it's choice of drearier colors. I don't know, don't expect House of the Dead 2 '90's' levels of charm, that's for sure. But it's a great time regardless. If only I could re-experience the underwater tunnel stage with a 3rd person PCVR Mod using the steam frame. Would be an absolute mind blowing trip.
Wii + it's Virtual Console(On the right TV. Think 2005 32" FullScreen Sony WEGA Trinitron SD CRT using component cables. I've mentioned this abizzilion' times already. but it's the perfect fit since Wii is technically the final SD Console, plus zero motion blur which is a game charger vs modern OLED displays and no latency, makes every gamae you play feel instantaneous.
And nope, still don't have the NS2 just yet. I'm not overly enthusiastic right now about getting it(DK Bananza & Kirby Air Riders are the two games i want most as of now, but Prime 4 looks a bit iffy. I wish i could experience it in VR), but i think that's because my excitement is more resserved for Valve's Steam Frame for PCVR. As for NS2's mouse controls, i did buy a pair of 3rd party Ulipex Blue & Green plastic mouse shell attachments to spruce up the ergonomics, but that's it for now haha. I'm not a fan of mouse controls, unless they're used in weirer whackier ways, potentially in a future NS2 WarioWare game, Mario paint 2, DK Bananza's Artist mode and even some of the mini games present in Welcome Tour.
But in terms of 3rd person or first person Aiming? No way. Can't do mouses controls. At this point, it's VR(Quest 3 or PSVR2), then Wii remote plus & nunchuck, then probably 9-Axis Gyro in the NS2 Pro Controller or split JCN2's depending on the title.
As for Golden Eye 007 Wii. Initially, back during E3 2010, i was super stoked about the announcement, along with Kirby's Epic Yarn & DKC Returns. Until i saw gameplay footage. It looked too Call of Duty and seemed to fail to bring over that N64 007 flavour we all knew and loved. But I'm sure the Wii pointer aiming was superb once properly tuned. I should of scooped that one up, and tried out it's multiplayer with friends. Instead, it was usually always Smash Bros. Brawl. Mario Kart Wii you say? Nah!
Speaking of Bioshock...I played Prime 3 on Wii(On my large CRT) befor it. I've said this again, but MP3 for me was like a religious Mario 64-like moment. Love that game so much. It was revolutionary thanks to the Wii remote & nunchuck controls for it's time(Setting them to advanced in the settings was a must)....After wrapping that incredible experience up, i bounced back to my XBOX360 after blowing the dust off it, and popped in Bioshock. Having to resort back to stick aiming felt ANCIENT. As if I were operating a tank nozzle, which also negatively effected your characters arm animation. Since you were no longer getting that 1:1 pointer three dimensional movment, which made Samus's arm cannon animations look life like, similar to what you get in VR.
I mean really, Prime 3 on Wii is one of the best examples of getting VR-like Controls yet on a TV screen.
Either way, couldn't get into bioshock. Stick aiming was a collosal step backwards, and i was unwilling to readapt regardless of HD next gen graphics, it didn't matter. The Wii may of been a maxed out original XBOX, but it excelled with next gen controls, and it's virtual console brought out the kid in me, harckening back to the golden age of 8-16 bit consoles.
Loved gaming duringt the 2000's and very early 2010's before the Wii U dropped. With DS Lite, Wii + Virtual Console and the first 2 years of 3DS knocked my socks off. It was a trio of innovation, boasting exclusive features that simply weren't possible on other consoles or even on a TV factoring in the DS Lite & 3DS. Heck, the NS1 stripped away a few of those innovations and went back to basics. Once the Wii U came out, i felt like i started to just drift out of gaming, as if my happy bubble bursted for whatever reasons. Although, I loved what i played of Pikmin 3 & Toad Treasure Tracker which are still more enjoyable on Wii U than NS1 imo.
@Megas75 Not your desired way forward then sir, and I don't think once on a handheld is enough. I would take a new game but I would want it to be 'on rails', and to include a achievement system for completing levels for high multipliers./combos/score. Make it more of a stylized shooter ( like pn.03), I wouldn't want it to be open world.
Sonic had a similar issue, most Sonic fans prefer linear, roller coaster-esque levels that you can blast through as quickly as possible. Didn't stop Frontiers from going open world (technically open zone, but close enough) and it was actually pretty well-received and commercially successful. I don't see that as a reason why Star Fox can't do something similar.
"Pretty well-received" is one way of putting it. It was a minor commercial success with mixed critical reception but Frontiers hasn't gone on to become the evergreen Sonic equivalent of Mario Odyssey or the game that really establishes a template for Sonic as a significant and important series going forwards. I'd suggest it's a minor footnote at this point.
The Sonic game that the fans actually love is Mania: a game that explicitly ignored everything that's happened in the series since the mid 90's.
Not familiar with Hollow Knight, but the recent Zelda games are definitely not Metroidvanias, only the ALttP/OoT style Zeldas are really Metroidvania-esque and the BotW/EoW style Zeldas removed most of what made Metroidvanias Metroidvanias. If you tried to make a BotW/EoW style Metroid game it wouldn't feel like Metroid.
The thing is that the lock-and-key style progression is a key defining element of a Metroidvania. This is what conflicts with open world, because open world wants few to no locks. At best maybe you could have soft obstacles that you could technically progress through but would be easier with requisite gear, think something like the outfits in BotW that protect you from heat/cold to visit extreme environments like deserts, volcanoes, and snow. But a Metroidvania would want at least a dozen obstacles like that and at that point it would make the design very complex, likely too complex to be feasible. So it may not be absolutely, 100% impossible, but it's close enough that it's highly unlikely anyone is actually going to pull it off well to satisfy both Metroidvania and open world fans properly.
I disagree entirely. Structurally they are loosely "Metroidvania". Yes they have relatively few locks and few keys and most (though not all) of those locks are "soft" environmental ones that can be "powered through" (just as many of the "locks" in Super Metroid could be overcome without ever getting the "key") but there's no minimum/maximum number of upgrades to qualify as a "Metroidvania".
I'd say that BoTW isn't a particularly satisfying example of Metroidvania design because it wasn't the priority of the developers but what is there is clearly proof of concept that the general structure of a Metroidvania can co-exist quite happily with a non-linear open world. Hollow Knight's non-linear "alternate locks" structure also does that in different ways (though it clearly feels much closer to a traditional Metroidvania)
If this assessment is accurate, it just sounds like the Star Fox fanbase is unpleasable. There's no way you can make a large number of on-rails levels without recycling in a way that comes off as "lazy". Procedural generation certainly won't do that, and I don't think a roguelite mode will either. These people are just not going to be happy regardless because their expectations are unrealistic.
To a certain point yes the fanbase is completely impossible to please. Or at least incredibly difficult to please. There's a lot of circles that need to be squared and I don't see how they can be whilst still aspiring to make a game that can be commercially successful.
I mean they could make a game structured just like Star Fox 64 just with a new plot/scenario and new levels. That's what the vast majority of people actually want but if they charge £50-70 for a game that can be beat for the first time in an hour (as Star Fox 64 can be) it's going to review very badly and be a commercial failure. Hence they try to find things to stretch the game out.
There's a logic that they should just do that as a loss leader for the Nintendo fans. Star Fox 64 is one of those games that people play over and over and over again once a year. That audience would take another and it would help lock them in to the Nintendo ecosystem.
I mean you don't want the flying to just be empty and uneventful, that would make it boring. But there's easy solutions to that, at a bare minimum they just need to pepper enemies in the overworld so you can have more dogfights as you're traveling, so you at least have a slightly comparable experience in between proper levels even if it's not quite the same. @Holdthepineapple had some good ideas as well with things like enemy outposts, distress beacons, asteroid fields, etc., those types of diversions in between main levels can keep the traveling from being too boring.
I love that kind of thing whilst sailing the Great Ocean in WW but it's not what I want in Star Fox. I want a tightly scripted, level based game where I try to get a higher score each time. I want it to feel like I'm in Star Wars in an urgent do or die suicide run against the Death Star - not like I'm idling away time between missions playing a series of (ultimately) optional and inconsequential "loading time" mini-games.
I'm sure they could make a very good game on that basis that could potentially find a grateful audience but I also think it would be (another) misstep for the series because I don't think it's what the majority of fans want... but then maybe that's just my bias showing through because it's not what I personally really want!
There's a logic that they should just do that as a loss leader for the Nintendo fans. Star Fox 64 is one of those games that people play over and over and over again once a year. That audience would take another and it would help lock them in to the Nintendo ecosystem.
The question is "Is that audience big enough?" I don't know. I think even under ideal situations, I would expect a new Star Fox to sell between 2 and 4 million in a year at best. So roughly between what the first Mario+Rabbids and Skyward Sword HD, so comparable with games like Pikmin 4, New Pokemon Snap and Metroid Dread (which is the franchise I feel Star Fox is closest to). Maybe I'm wrong, and it'll be an even bigger but I doubt it. It's telling that the only franchise that was represented in the original Smash bros with even a smaller presence on Reddit than Star Fox is F-Zero (even the Mother base is slightly larger and the best they can hope for is an official release for Mother 3).
I'm sure they could make a very good game on that basis that could potentially find a grateful audience but I also think it would be (another) misstep for the series because I don't think it's what the majority of fans want... but then maybe that's just my bias showing through because it's not what I personally really want!
I feel people know what they want, but they don't what they'll like. With exceptions, I find myself incredibly unpicky about what kind of a game a new Star Fox should be because I can see a lot of potential in many areas if it's done right (a vague and most useless term, I agree). I can take a rail shooter, I can take an open-world space game with on ground parts, I can take a rouglite space shooter, etc. Deep down inside I wouldn't oppose say another Star Fox Adventures as long as it was good (I'm not saying they should do that; the Star in Star Fox matters for a lot of people and I want to spend a lot of my time in a space ship cockpit). Maybe that's just me being desperate to see this franchise given another lease on life and I'm willing to let it be a little un-Star Fox just so it succeeds and survives in case Miyamoto drops dead.
And as far wants go, I've come to realize that I've got more specific do not wants than wants
Don't be a remake of 64
Don't retell the Lylat Wars
Don't be something you can complete in a weekend
Don't restrict the cast to just 64's
Don't try something gimmicky with the controls
Really the want only I have is I want to spend a lot of time in Arwing and take Wolf's other eye out.
@Holdthepineapple True. In absolute terms it's a series that's never sold too many copies but it's still a famous game and I'd guess that due to its short and accessible nature Star Fox 64 in particular has been played by a lot more people over the years than its sales would suggest. I think it's got a better chance of finding a large mainstream audience than a series like F-Zero.
I'd also argue that the "Star Fox audience" - whilst theoretically small has an outsized influence in taste setting. We on this type of forum are that audience and we are the ones who (for better or worse) have a big influence on the discourse and general "mood" around whether more casual buyers should get a Switch 2. If a "small" game like "Star Fox Switch 2" is what it takes for us to turn over from saying "Switch 2 is a decent upgrade if you've got the money" to "Switch 2 is essential - Nintendo's doing some of their best work" then it would potentially be money well spent.
I don't think they get that without it basically being a "Star Fox 64 clone" at it's core though. I'm sure that Nintendo could make an excellent open world space shooter or a cuddly third person 'on foot' shooter with vehicles and whilst either genre would be a bit more mainstream those genres come with baggage and would encourage comparisons that might not be very flattering or welcome. They're also both inherently more complex in controls and navigation.
I should also clarify when I say "Star Fox 64 clone" I don't mean the same storyline - I mean game structure, length and primarily on rails shooting. I think we're all ready for a new plot and story beats.
Something to note: part of why I suggest "space sim" isn't just because I think it fits the franchise. Its also that space sim is a genre that Nintendo does not otherwise have any presence in. Thus, even if it doesn't draw in a vast number of players, there's a good chance it would draw in players who are not already Nintendo fans. Add in that none of the major space sims are exactly "family friendly and accessible", and there's at least a chance a Star Fox Space Sim could be a relatively expansive hit.
Contrast that with genre suggestions where I sometimes see people ask for Nintendo to make a multiplayer FPS. Such being a bad idea since, while it doesn't have the "f"part, Nintendo absolutely already has a multiplayer competitive shooter: Splatoon. A new or genre-swapped game wouldn't open any new territory.
Length I can't agree with because I don't want this to be a weekend, let alone a single day, affair even just getting to the end (to say nothing of finding alternate routes, secrets, or post-game challenges). A short single player campaign (even if it wasn't a redo of 64) has limited appeal to me, and a straight-up multiplayer only battle royale version of Star Fox is probably one of the few things I disliked more than a Lylat War remake/retelling.
Kid Icarus Uprising is proof you could make a meaty experience through the arcade like on-rails game play(or at least a linear structure)
RE games are short if you know what you’re doing, but an average playthrough will usually net you 9-12 hours of gameplay, and they still encourage replayability by having different characters with unique experiences
I do agree with the logic that Nintendo can afford to do whatever with Star Fox and it would be the best to do SOMETHING for the sake of its fans. There are Nintendo fans points at myself that love Nintendo for its variety of franchises beyond just the main ones and buys Nintendo systems for them as much as the top tier ones (even if Mario and Zelda are peak, the slightly below peak of greatness from Splatoon/Pikmin/Metroid Prime (2/3)/Advance Wars/Rhythm Heaven/Mario RPGs etc are a higher quantity) and is good for the company to keep that type of good will. Like Sony is still doing really well with Ps5, but there is clearly a lot of disappointment and disinterest from long term fans for them abandoning most of their niche titles, and I think that type of disappointment would be much worse for Nintendo in the same vein. Disillusioning your fans, even if for understandable-ish reasons, often backfires.
Also considering Smash Bros Ultimate is literally the best selling fighting game of all time and they put Star Fox in the Mario movie (a movie that primarily exists to be like "remember this?!") despite that series last having a successful new game 20 years ago, Nintendo still focusing on its more niche titles is clearly what they're going for, so they can do whatever with it, especially they don't pointlessly make needlessly expensive games even in the context of making ambitious ones (BOTW only needing 2 million to be profitable). Unless they **** up, its a non-issue, especially if Nintendo has any dignity and doesn't whine about the possibility of at worst, losing .001% of its Switch era profits over one video game that will be vastly made up by Pokopia alone. :V
Or I could just say that Star Fox Zero and Starlink in 3 years didn't kill the franchise, so I just assume it will live on as long as Shigeru Miyamoto is still alive.
I'd also argue that unless Mario sales suddenly double (or maybe 1.5X) in Switch 2 generation, that the movie can only do so much and similar to Sonic(a series that should be as big as ever from those movies but isn't), I don't see a scenario where a particularly large audience would buy any type of Star Fox game without the series becoming known for being reliably great, nearly regardless of what direction they take. I think zero chance any Star Fox below a 90 on Metacritic or becoming viral with tons of streamers sells even as well as Metroid Dread, quite frankly. Which is fine as long as Nintendo is self-aware about those limitations, a game can sell 1.5 million and still succeed (especially if its sold at full price) if you're not run by morons.
I don’t see a new game selling as well SF64. SNES would be impressive but selling past Adventures(1.8 million) or at least 64 3D(1 million) should be doable if they stick the landing
I'm going to be blunt, they'd have to put some real effort into making so that a new Star Fox that would sell less than Adventures. The Switch 2 was already close to outselling the Cube by the end of last year (if it hasn't already), so you can't blame a small audience base here (which was the Cube's problem). At that point bad marketing, and easy to see bad game choices become at fault at that point.
"Pretty well-received" is one way of putting it. It was a minor commercial success with mixed critical reception but Frontiers hasn't gone on to become the evergreen Sonic equivalent of Mario Odyssey or the game that really establishes a template for Sonic as a significant and important series going forwards. I'd suggest it's a minor footnote at this point.
The Sonic game that the fans actually love is Mania: a game that explicitly ignored everything that's happened in the series since the mid 90's.
Mania didn't become a Mario Odyssey-esque evergreen success either, it only sold 2 million more than Frontiers. No Sonic game aside from the first game (which IIRC was a Genesis pack-in) ever did, sales have consistently hovered in the 2-6 million range.
At any rate, Frontiers is pretty much the minimum an open world game typically sells and already it's outsold SF64. And there's no other on-rails shooter, at least to my knowledge, that has surpassed SF64 numbers. So an open world game's floor is roughly equivalent to an on-rails shooter's ceiling. That speaks volumes about which genre is more worth doing.
I disagree entirely. Structurally they are loosely "Metroidvania". Yes they have relatively few locks and few keys and most (though not all) of those locks are "soft" environmental ones that can be "powered through" (just as many of the "locks" in Super Metroid could be overcome without ever getting the "key") but there's no minimum/maximum number of upgrades to qualify as a "Metroidvania".
I'd say that BoTW isn't a particularly satisfying example of Metroidvania design because it wasn't the priority of the developers but what is there is clearly proof of concept that the general structure of a Metroidvania can co-exist quite happily with a non-linear open world.
You need more than 3 upgrades to provide a comparable experience to linear Metroids. And yes, Super Metroid did that to a degree, but it's far easier to do that with a 2D map than a 3D open world. So neither BotW nor Super are particularly good examples of how this could work.
There's a logic that they should just do that as a loss leader for the Nintendo fans. Star Fox 64 is one of those games that people play over and over and over again once a year. That audience would take another and it would help lock them in to the Nintendo ecosystem.
This only makes sense if there's nothing they can do to grow the IP. But again, there's evidence that going open world would give them greater or equal sales than the traditional on-rails segment, so it's not in this situation.
I think its mostly annoying you think that open world would magically single handedly grow Star Fox, while I think there's genuinely no chance of that happening beyond being widely acclaimed or hitting a perfect sweet spot of viral internet success and content creators falling for it and feeling justified to regularly make videos/steams about it.
Which still makes me think Sony cinematic or indie rogue-like is the secret other ways to get there anyway, but that the likelihood of a single Star Fox game of any type suddenly making Star Fox a big deal or as popular as even the most popular Metroid is probably close to zero. I think the closest possible future for Star Fox being popular, or even being as popular as it was in the 90s, is just actual consistent high quality releases to establish it as actually reliable purchases, which they would obviously not be based on any of the games after it. And even then there's a strong, distinct possibility that Star Fox will just be niche forever and that is borderline unavoidable, unless...I dunno, Nintendo buys Hello Games or something.
It is a shame, but Metroid Dread did everything right but its only so much more successful than previous games, same with Pikmin 4. I'm not getting my hopes up for any version of Star Fox to be THAT popular, when I have so much more doubt it will hit the same heights as those games for most people.
Now if you tell me Nintendo has near infinite money to just refuse to give up and make an open world Star Fox game that does every possible thing correctly or could be updated by a team with years spent giving them money to keep working on it the same way No Man's Sky would, sure that is a possibility. Nintendo's not doing that, they could, they're not that generous. No one would be happier at every one of my favorite Nintendo franchises having a widely popular game I love than me, but even with the many positives of the Switch era, I can't fathom that happening. Unless you are Dr. Strange who found the one reality where this happens, I will never be convinced that will happen until the day it does. So instead, I will just hope I have strong positive opinions about the likely only Star Fox game we will get on this system and accept the series inevitable fate. It's fine, not everything I like needs to be super profitable or have endless sequels, oh well.
@Bolt_Strike Not sure where you're getting that Mania outsold Frontiers. It looks like SEGA hasn't provided a sales update for Mania beyond the 1 million mark meanwhile they provided sales updates for Superstars and Frontiers last year (2.43 million for Superstars, 4.57 million for Frontiers).
Forums
Topic: Ignore the Leaks: How Would You Like To See Star Fox Revived?
Nintendo Switch 2 is finally here, check out our guide: Nintendo Switch 2 Guide: Ultimate Resource.
Posts 81 to 96 of 96
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic