Star Fox (2026)

Switch 2 review 

Star Fox (2026) is an on rail space shooter game that sees players take on the role of Fox McCloud, as he leads his team of mercenaries on a contact to defend the Lylat system from space emperor Andross.

This game is a remake of the N64 game Star Fox 64 by Velan Studios, the team behind Mario Kart Live and Knockout City. It serves as a reboot for the franchise as it features the same story, characters and gameplay.

Pro:

Graphics.

Star Fox 2026 is in my opinion the best-looking game currently available on Switch 2, using the new Viper engine by Velan Studios.

Each planet has been lovingly recreated from its original N64 designs while not changing too much from the original, so fans easily recognised the designs.

Even when the game features 2D objects in backgrounds of this 3D game, the player rarely notices due to the speed of the Arwing and level design.

The level with the biggest glow up has to be Sector X, which now actually looks like a destroyed space installation in comparison to the original of floating space debris with terrible draw distance.

Frame rate.

A huge improvement for this game releasing nearly 30 years after the N64 version, is that in addition to the graphics, there is a big increase to frame rate as now the game is in 60 FPS.

This helps the gameplay feel buttery smooth even on very graphically intensive levels with a lot of enemies and particle effects like Area 6 or Venom 1.

Challenge mode.

A great feature to help with the replayability of the various planets is this mode where players are given various objectives to do in both their Normal version but also Expert versions to increase the difficulty.

Since the game is on Switch 2, I would recommend players try out the challenge mode as it’s the perfect 3-5 minute pick up and play style that the Switch is great at.

Music.

The soundtrack Star Fox 2026 has been changed to a full orchestral score now and all rerecorded faithfully.

Stephan Barton was the lead composer whose prior work consisted of the Star Wars Jedi games as well as both Titanfall games.

Star Wolf’s theme song is one of the best of the new renditions, and given that the player can encounter them twice per campaign, players are able to hear it more than once unlike other songs on the soundtrack.

Holoviewer.

An underrated new edition to this game is the new Holoviewer that serves to act as a glossary of the characters and planets.

Players unlock new additions to it by finishing levels and medals across the regular and expert campaigns that adds a lot of new fun lore that wasn’t in the original.

The one that has had the biggest impact on the community is that James McCloud had saddled his son with an 80 year loan for the Great Fox, which most players hadn’t heard about from the original N64 website, but it’s one of the funniest plot points.

Multiplayer.

With a new game there comes new versions of the multiplayer modes and in Star Fox 2026 there are three modes on offer with the ability for play against others online.

Each mission is only available on one map each with:

Corneria – Serving as this game’s King of the Hill where each team has to fight over control of satellite towers to deploy extra air support.

Finchina – This mode has players collecting meteorite fragments after they fall to the ground for extra points.

Sector Y – The only space map features both teams trying to capture a piece of cargo from a 3^rd faction being space pirates, and then delivering it to the team’s home base as a capture the flag mode.

While these modes are fun, especially with online support, unfortunately they removed all of the original verses modes from the N64 games like the death match mode and time attack modes that haven’t returned, and the ability to choose from two maps for each mode.

New Prologue and cutscenes.

It was a nice addition but needed to be expanded upon as it’s only a few minutes long to add more to the narrative or let players play as James before he gets shot down as a last stand effort.

This would have helped the short game length and help flesh out the characters more as they are all surface level until you unlock more about each of them in the Holoviewer.

For example, the new cut scenes to explain story help, since in 64 Fox just randomly says we are going to Aquas randomly after Sector Y if you score over 100 hits. Only after we go on the sector map and select to start the mission does General Pepper say we need to destroy a bio-weapon on Aquas.

Whereas now General Pepper contacts the team immediately in the cutscene to explain why the team are going there in the first place and these new cutscenes exist before every planet on each of the paths.

If anything, I think extending these out or having some from the villain’s point of view would also really help flesh out the characters and story.

First person mode.

A fun gimmick is the ability to enter First person mode by pressing the Minus button, which puts the point of view inside the cockpit of the Arwing, Blue-Marine and Landmaster.

While it can induce motion sickness with all-range mode with the Arwing, it is still an entertaining edition when playing the traditional Arwing missions and it did help with certain sections of Aquas in the dark.

Con:

Campaign length.

Star Fox is a game based on replayability, with its almost infinite paths to get to Venom by way of the other 15 prior planets in the campaign.

However, the game still only has two endings, either the good or bad ending depending on whether the player gets the Venom by way of Area 6 or by the Bolse defence satellite.

The overall length of a single campaign run to credits is only an hour and a half, for my review I finished the three main paths to unlock all 16 planets for challenge mode and that only took me 5 hours with all the new cutscenes, as each mission is only under 10 minutes long.

Titania.

The planet Titania can now only be reached by failing to save Slippy in the Spyborg boss fight compared to the N64 version when the player could still go there after saving Slippy.

However now the players have to fail and play badly in order to reach the planet, including sacrificing the hit medal to get to Titania, just adding extra bloat to it which is what happened on my playthrough.

Hit detection.

This caught me off guard when playing this game as in comparison to the original, the bosses no longer flash when hit in their weak spots.

Now when bosses are hit, there’s barely any feedback and unless the player knows how to damage the boss they might struggle on how to damage the bosses, dragging the fights out longer.

New character designs.

While the character designs as a whole are mostly great with the glow ups for Bill and Katt among the main cast, the exception is Fox and Falco who go into the uncanny valley of designs.

I much prefer the redesign of Fox in the new Super Mario Galaxy film, as that felt like a great modern take on the old design that would have fit a new game perfectly.

Falco himself is the biggest departure from any prior appearance in the mainline games or spin-offs like Smash Bros, that while harkening back to the original puppet design, just doesn’t look good in this art style in my opinion.

Voice acting.

Another noticeable step down in quality is the voice acting from the N64 version as now apart from the changed dialogue being unnecessary in a lot of situations but also the performances for several of the side cast too.

This is mostly seen with the bosses of each planet, with those of Andross’s army sounding very monotone and flat in comparison to how much emotion they conveyer in the N64 version.

Score: 8.5

Conclusion:

A great remake that improves on the original 1997 version of Star Fox 64 but doesn’t provide enough new content to justify the price in today’s market without a heavier discount.

As with how short the campaign is, with being able to do all 3 paths in ~5 hours and only 3 maps for Battle Mode with each map being tied to a specific PvP mode that players quickly get through, it is hard to say it’s good value for money.

If a person is new to the franchise, then this is a good place to start but if players have already played Star Fox 64, then this is the same game with a new coat of paint with new multiplayer modes.