Just behind me, sitting in a cupboard that displays some of the many specials I’ve collected over the years, is a Super NES Classic Edition. Now I’m not exactly known for my penchant for retro games or emulators, even though I’d dabbled a lot with them in the past, but that particular retro console got my attention for one thing: StarFox 2. As a kid I lost many, many hours to the original and so my heart swelled with nostalgia at the thought of being able to transport myself in some way via a game from that era that never saw the light of day. Whilst I did play it I felt the way I seemingly always do with titles like this: I appreciate them for what they are but also feel the weight of how far we’ve come.
Seeing Wild Blue Skies then stirred that nostalgia in me once again, this time tempered by the hope that the many decades between the original and today would see a game that honored the past whilst brought the idea into the future. What we got though is more of a remaster than a remake, the same core game coming back to life through enhanced visuals (although without any rights to the IP). I tried to stick with it, I really did, but the same things that had me putting down Star Fox 2 came roaring back for Wild Blue Skies. It’s my fault for setting my own expectations too high, honestly.
Firstly what works, and what got me hooked initially, was the visuals. They’ve managed to take the original, blocky-because-it-had-to-be aesthetic of the original SNES/N64 era and translate it well into the modern world. The high end cel-shading is done extremely well which is amplified by the lighting and environmental effects. The cinematics they developed were also brimming with style which definitely hooked me even more than the premise already did. This is probably where my expectations got set high as the game, on the surface, appears to have an incredible amount of polish that unfortunately falls down when you actually dig your teeth in and, you know, play the game.
It’s a rails shooter, as you’d expect, and given it’s likely been a hot minute since you played one of those it’ll take some time to get used to the controls. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if you could remap the controls but that feature is strangely absent from the game (although you can remap them via Steam that feels like a workaround that shouldn’t need to exist). But the core game loop is as simple as you’d expect: kill the bad guys, protect your team and try to get all the secrets along the way to get a better score. Given the levels are pretty short it’s all these ancillary objectives which are supposed to keep you coming back, hoping to one day complete the ultimate run where you do all of them for…reasons.
Fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with what I’ve mentioned so far. Where Wild Blue Skies falls down though is the fact that a large chunk of the game, from the levels, to the various in-game systems to even the story beats are directly lifted from previous StarFox titles. I’m all for a good spiritual successor or homage to the games that have inspired devs to create something but there’s limits to how far that should go. Wild Blue Skies, as it stands today, has too much of a “legally distinct” vibe to it for it to be judged on its own merits. Instead now I have to think about how much the devs simply looked to StarFox anytime a design decision had to be made rather than trying to put their own spin on it.
What could’ve truly made Wild Blue Skies great was if they took the foundations of the StarFox franchise and then reworked them to modern standards, rather than just reskinning it. There are plenty of things that, as a 40-something gamer, would’ve greatly appreciated to see in a title that I’m probably only going to spend a handful of hours on. But no, nothing of the sort was there and instead we’re left with something that has the constraints of the platforms of the past in a world where they ceased to exist decades ago.
I truly went into Wild Blue Skies with the hope that I’d like it. I wasn’t expecting a world shattering, game of the year contender. No what I was after was something that had the spirit of StarFox that was reimagined for the modern era which is what the trailer promised. The experience though turned out to be the ghost of the past wearing a mask of the present. I got excited, built up an idea and was let down by reality which is totally on me. What’s on the devs those is their inability to create something original and instead simply copying the past’s homework and hoping that they can still get a passing grade 30 years later.
Rating: 5.0/10
Wild Blue Skies is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $20.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 1.4 hours playtime and 18% of the achievements unlocked.
