Hey all, and yes you read that right. I actually like Star Fox Zero for the Wii U and have logged a good number of hours into it across several repeat playthroughs. I see the great aspects of this game shining through after putting the time into it.
That said, I know a lot of people don’t like the game, mainly on account of its [unusually unintuitive control scheme](https://youtu.be/s6PEecNY0Sc). And that’s totally fine, preferences be like that a lot of the time. This game is an oddity in Nintendo’s vast library, as it forces players to play with the Wii U’s primary controller, the GamePad, regardless of how they play. And keep in mind most of Wii U’s highest rated games like Tropical Freeze hardly if ever utilized it in an essential way.
I’m not gonna try to sugarcoat anything here or defend this game from the hate it gets. I want to try to better inform the viewpoints of those who aren’t fans of it. So let’s jump into it. When people say they don’t like the controls of Star Fox Zero, they tend not explain why it feels so off to them. They know something is off, they just can’t explain what, and that’s where I want to help.
Review outlets and retrospectives have touched on each of these elements, but haven’t really organized them like I’m going to do here. So here’s the 411. Star Fox Zero’s control scheme can be neatly summarized into 3 main components: Motion Controls, Button Mapping, and Dual Screen Gameplay. And each of these components offer their own challenges to prospective new players.
**Motion Controls:** Star Fox Zero utilizes a gyroscopic aiming system not too dissimilar to what you’d see in Breath of the Wild or Splatoon. You just use subtle wrist movements to fine tune your aiming, and that’s really all there is to it. It’s the part of the control setup I see the fewest complaints about, and those that do tend to either conflate motion controls with the other components or have a diehard opposition to motion controls in general. So yeah, the motion controls aren’t as bad as people are making them out to be, especially in a time when both Splatoon 3 and Tears of the Kingdom have sold millions of people on them.
**Button Mapping:** This is where the game becomes slightly forgivable with regards to the controls. You move and shoot with your vehicle as one would expect, but the biggest issue that I and many others have with the button mapping is that so many functions are crammed to the right analog stick. Boosting, breaking, firing bombs, somersaults, U-turns, and barrel rolls are all done with the right stick. This is an issue for two reasons. One because it left so many other buttons on the controller unused, like the shoulder buttons for barrel rolling, and two because you’ll find yourself accidentally somersaulting or dropping bombs when you don’t want to. The game itself doesn’t do any favors in this regard, as you’ll find yourself frequently switching between different vehicles, each with their unique button mapping quirks to try to acclimate towards. And in true Nintendo fashion, you cannot rebind any of these button inputs either.
**Dual Screen Gameplay:** This is the big one. The biggest barrier to entry for so many potential players. In Star Fox Zero, the action is shown from two perspectives both at the same time. As such, the game encourages you to tactically switch between the TV and GamePad screens for movement and aiming. This is done because the aiming reticle on the TV screen is deliberately inaccurate to goad players to use the first-person cockpit view on the GamePad to shoot at stuff. It comes across as deliberately broken just to give the Wii U GamePad a purpose. It’s undoubtedly frustrating, disorienting, and introduces a steep learning curve only compounded by the other two components. But there is one way to flatten that learning curve somewhat that largely gets overlooked in discussion: you can swap the screen displays with the minus button. Just push the button and boom, cockpit view is now displayed on the TV. This means you’ll never have to look down at the GamePad and you’ll have a much easier time linking the two perspectives in your head.
by Asad_Farooqui
11 Comments
Everything about this game was great except for the controls. Maybe the worst and most disorienting control setup of any game I’ve ever played. It never felt natural and actually felt worse near the endgame especially with the final boss. I have no idea what the fuck they were thinking forcing this game to use this, I feel bad for the team working on it considering how hard this got shit on (and rightfully so) because of the god awful controls.
Meh, I like it. I go back to it every now and then and enjoy the novelty of dual screen gameplay.
I really tried to give the game a chance because I was such a big Star Fox fan. I sort of adapted to the Arwing controls, but I could never get used to the Walker or the Gyro.
Star Fox Zero is the best multiplayer Star Fox game ever.
I enjoyed the game. I just hated constantly switching between screens. Either you aim and then crash into something, or you fly and can’t aim.
I played the game as similar as I could to StarFox 64, meaning I positioned the gamepad in a comfortable position and then hit the recalibrate button so that the cursor was at the center. Then I did my best not to move my hands. the cursor still moved with the ship, so it was similar to the older games.
For the most part, it worked. The only time I didn’t do this was when they did the cinematic cams that followed something else.
I hope it gets ported to the switch, I want to play it but not enough to buy a Wii U
I gave this game a chance because I love Star Fox and it was the newest in the series, but the controls were awful and they relied on too many gimmicks in and out of the game. I appreciate you analyzing the game from a positive perspective, but releasing this game on new platforms would do wonders for this title.
The difference on the motion controls is that most games with gyro treat it as a fine-tuning option. You don’t use gyro to look around, you use the stick for that and the gyro to nudge your crosshair onto your target. Star Fox Zero maps the left stick to movement and the right stick to miscellaneous actions, so you’re left using gyro for all aiming. This would be bad enough with a regular gamepad, but having to wave around the bulky Wii U gamepad at the speeds required in a rail shooter gets annoying fast (as does the frequent calibration loss that comes from making sweeping motions like that, and not having the IR pointer as a an absolute reference like the Wii did).
Ironically, in that sense, Star Fox Zero would have made a better Wii game than a Wii U game, as the IR pointer easily beats gyro in terms of full screen aiming.
You have to hand it to Nintendo, when they are in on a gimmick, they are all in. They love their shitty control idea, and god damnit, you WILL love it too. Would have been easy to give players option of standard controls. Nope. Fvck you. You’ll play it like us and like it.
Before launch I defended it, I thought it was perfect and made a lot of sense. On launch, however, I realised it’s incredibly difficult to use. Even as someone who learns control schemes quickly, including motion controls, I just never managed to get it to work.
I loved my Wii U, still have it. But this game quite literally almost had me breaking the gamepad over my knee, I was so frustrated.