The Nintendo Switch 2 has just had its first anniversary, and as someone who had the system from day one, I’ve been waiting for that Nintendo exclusive game to show my friends what the Switch 2 can do. That day arrived on the 25th June 2026 with Star Fox.
The game is a full remake of the 1997 Star Fox 64 game. This version, however, has had a massive overhaul in every aspect and been given some modern-day bells and whistles to boot.
The game quickly gets you into the action and visually stuns you from the get-go. Although there are many good Nintendo games, none of them really go for detailed graphics. If the game has “Mario”, “Donkey Kong”, “Pokemon” or “Zelda” in the title, it will be a great game just based around simple character designs.
Not so here with Star Fox. The character models and the cutscenes are of the HIGHEST quality. The artistic and fabulous level designs also have some amazing backdrops and gorgeous visuals. As I type this, I’m looking at the title screen menu with a glorious space scene of a detailed looking planet below.
Each cutscene is well directed and acted, and they are exciting. It really is almost like a film with regards to its presentation. This film aesthetic is highlighted even more with the dialogue and musical score that is so reminiscent of scenes from Star Wars that I had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t. Heck, I’m sure I caught the classic “It’s a trap” quote in there somewhere!
The story is a very basic bad animal (all the characters are animals) that needs finishing off; otherwise, it will ruin the star system, etc., etc. Superfluous as it is, it was still an enjoyable romp despite only taking around two and a half hours to complete. I’ll come back to this point later in the review.
Star Fox is actually a paramilitary group of pilots for hire, with Fox McCloud, the animal you control, as their leader. For most of the time, you’ll be piloting the Arwing. The team of 4 then descend to planets to fly to and shoot objectives, with a tougher boss fight at the end of each level. There are also land and sea vehicles to unlock and use for other levels too.
Some levels are linear, some more open. The main difference being in the open levels is that you have much more freedom to move around the area rather than the just going forward like in the linear ones.
Each level though has you blasting away with your space cannons at anything unfortunate enough to get in your sights. Destroying some items will give you objects to collect to heal or upgrade the ship. It’s a very simple “just shoot everything” type of arcade game.
What makes this game stand out, though, are the stunning gameplay visuals. First of all, they are silky smooth, and I suspect they maintain a constant 60 fps in docked mode, even when there is a tremendous amount of action all happening at once on the screen. The graphics are also very nicely detailed and lacked any sharp outlines, so objects looked authentic.
With plenty of explosions going off, there are many opportunities to marvel at the excellent particle effects too. Environments are always bright, colourful, detailed and interesting to look at.
When flying though a mission with set piece explosions going off, the banter of your team mid-fight, glorious cutscenes with outstanding overall presentation, and the excitement of the action, it’s hard not to get utterly drawn into the experience in a big way.
However, there were two main areas that drew me not only out of the experience in a flash but also, even on the easiest difficulty, had me swearing in frustration at the screen. The targeting system is hideous and constantly moves around. That isn’t the main issue with it as you do get used to it. The problem is when you are occasionally tasked with hitting a small, sometimes moving target multiple times with accurate fire. With both the reticule and the target dancing around, it became HIGHLY frustrating and annoying to get one hit in, let alone a few.
This was exacerbated even more when the game also failed to give the player much feedback as to what you were supposed to be aiming at to blow it up. The most egregious moment was when a flying thing was attached to the back of a train.
Your buddies are telling you to hit the back of the train, but the actual thing that needed to be hit was the thing in the air attached to it. The back of the train raised part of its armour to give the impression that was what you should have been aiming at, but it wasn’t. The same thing happens in the final boss fight in an even more frustrating way.
After dying multiple times and then looking up YouTube videos to see what I should have been aiming at, it made it clear that the game DOESN’T make it obvious at all. Once you know what to shoot at, it does become much easier and enjoyable.
However, one of the other issues I had was that you don’t have an automatic weapon. My thumb got exhausted so much from pressing A that I had to pause quite a lot between levels before carrying on. I am lucky enough to own a Nintendo Switch 2 pro controller, so I learnt how to reprogram the A button to the ZR trigger. This is a more natural button to press in order to shoot weapons, but even then, my finger got tired quickly after repeated use. The boss level stats came up after I had finished it, and despite the level only taking around five minutes to complete, including with cutscenes, I’d pressed the trigger button 1,582 times!
(I bet anyone reading this is now pretending to fire a trigger in mid-air, wondering what that feels like after 1,582 times)
You might think that a game with a campaign of just over two hours would also be a negative. If you buy the game with the idea of playing through the story just once, then at around £42 to buy, this isn’t the game for you. Star Fox has quite obviously been specifically designed for multiple playthroughs. There are 16 locations (levels) in all, but you can complete each playthrough by just visiting 7 of them.
You can choose your route per playthrough as well. Additionally, each level, even ones you have completed, have secret routes and places to go that don’t open up the first time through.
To encourage even more replayability, there is a challenge mode that takes you back to completed levels so you can achieve certain tasks within them. After completing the level, you are scored and then graded so you can compare scores online.
A good way to think of the game, really, is as an arcade in real life kind of game. You and your friends try and get the high scores on the same levels over and over.
If you do have friends, and if all of you have the Nintendo camera and voice chat, then online multiplayer will be an incredible experience. First of all, each online match I played was technically fantastic. Super smooth, no connection or in-game lagging issues at all. It didn’t take long to find matches, and there are also different tasks to complete in matches other than just to shoot the enemy team.
The camera and voice chat come into play in that the camera uses your face movement with the in-game avatars of the characters to then make them animated during matches. So yes, one of you will look like Fox McCloud and be talking and moving like him, but with your voice and movements. It’s the one time I wish I had the camera to use myself.
The other reason it would be useful for online matches is that, without team chat, the matches can be brutally one-sided without team coordination. I have to be honest that I got hammered a lot with random players, and it has put me off going back online. That’s a shame as it does look like something you could play with friends for a while and have a real blast with. I know I would be quoting Star Wars lines all the time, such as “This is Red Five, I’m going in,” or “I can’t shake him!”. In short, at times, this game is more “Star Wars” than some actual Star Wars games are!
It was in the week leading up to getting this game to review that I had been discussing and bemoaning to my editor. We were starting to think the Switch 2 wasn’t quite the capable machine that we had hoped it would be. Star Fox has blown those doubts away in an instant.
With an amazing presentation and excellent, albeit sometimes very frustrating gameplay mechanics, it really does show off the power of the Nintendo hardware, as well as the skill of the development team Velan Studios.
Star Fox isn’t perfect and isn’t designed to be a long campaign, more of a pick-up and play to beat your high score situation. Online does give the game more life, so all in all, with the right mindset, the asking price of just over £42 at launch is actually a pretty fair deal.
It’s an absolutely fantastic game that really surprised me with its quality. I don’t know if there are any plans to extend the online function or add new levels post launch, but I do know I’m going back to the game to find out more and beat what I’ve already played.
This is Biggles, a.k.a., Fox McCloud, signing out.
Developer: Velan Studio
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2
Release Date: 25th June 2026
