2288: Star Fox Zero Isn't Too Hard, We've Just Grown Complacent

A much-mocked Polygon non-review of Nintendo's new Wii U title Star Fox Zero criticised the game for being a "miserable experience" on the grounds that it was too difficult. The article's author Arthur Gies cited the game's controls as a sticking point for him, and indeed the most vocal critics of the new game — most of whom, it has to be said, haven't actually played it — constantly point to the control scheme as the reason the game is somehow "bad".

Well, having cleared the main game three times now (with my last run unlocking a bunch of hidden levels) I can confirm my initial impressions of the game: the controls are really not a big deal, and in fact, for my money, are better than the inherent limitations of the fixed aiming reticle from the previous installments, allowing you to shoot in one direction while flying in another.

I don't want to get hung up on the controls, though. I do, however, want to address the question of it being "too hard" because, having hurled a number of choice swear words both at Andross the first time I reached the final boss and at the optional hidden boss on Corneria when I first came across it, I realised I was encountering something that has become quite unfamiliar in a lot of modern games: the game putting up a bit of resistance to the player and challenging them to get better at it, rather than just brute-forcing their way through.

(That said, Star Fox Zero does have Nintendo's "pity powerup" system that they introduced in the Mario games a while back, in that if you fail a mission repeatedly, you have the option to collect a powerup at the start of the mission that makes you completely indestructible in exchange for your score not being recorded. Gies did not mention this in his not-review, but it's surely pretty plain to see that this option would allow even the most incompetent moron to clear the game without too much difficulty.)

So no. Star Fox Zero isn't too hard; we've just become accustomed to console games — particularly high-profile, big budget and/or first party productions — holding the player by the hand and going out of their way to make sure the player gets to see everything without giving up in frustration. The difference between a Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master (who wants the players to see their adventure through, albeit with a few obstacles in their way) and an actual adversarial player in a role-playing or board game situation (who wants to defeat their opponent and claim victory), if you will. Star Fox Zero takes the latter approach; most other games of today take the former. (Which is fair enough, when you think about it — given the astronomical budgets of modern triple-A games, it's not at all surprising that developers want to make sure that players get to see all the stuff they've spent time, effort and money creating.)

There are exceptions to this rule, of course, the most well-known being From Software's Souls series, which is legendarily unforgiving and demands that players practice each and every encounter until they can complete it perfectly. Many independently developed games, too, err on the side of punishing difficulty, particularly if they're going for an old-school feel to their gameplay as well as old-school visuals, as is (still) currently fashionable in that particular part of the games biz. But for the most part, a game on the scale of Star Fox Zero — that is to say, a high-profile, potential system-seller from a first-party publisher — is more likely to err on the side of giving the player a theme park ride: it seems dangerous and challenging at first, but in actual fact, the player is a lot more safe (and constrained) than it might initially seem. Star Fox Zero, meanwhile, gleefully allows the player to fail, and continues to hide things from the player even once you've beaten the final boss.

Take the hidden levels, for example — a wonderfully old-school nod to the previous games in the series. You are never given an explicit warning that a trigger point for one of these is coming up — you're expected to notice the cues for yourself and act accordingly, and if you miss them, well, you miss them; no awesome secret level where you get to play as Peppy taking down a this-totally-isn't-a-Super Star Destroyer-honest for you. (Delightfully, Peppy joyfully shouts "Barrel roll!" every time you do a roll while you're playing as him.)

On top of that, clearing the game for the first time unlocks Arcade Mode, which challenges you to play from the start of the game to the end with no continues and the ability to only stock one spare life if you successfully manage to collect three gold rings. This mode isn't actually any harder than the main game (in which you can freely select any level you've previously cleared) but the added pressure of having to do it without fucking up (well, without fucking up too much) makes it feel like it's slapping you around a bit, though the satisfaction of seeing a mounting high score makes it eminently worthwhile. And, in a pleasant homage to classic arcade games such as Out Run, this mode records an independent high score for each and every possible route through the game you can take, and there are quite a few different alternative routes throughout.

So no; Star Fox Zero isn't too hard. But it is a game that you can fail at, or be bad at. And it's kind of telling that we've reached a point where, outside of the Souls series and a few other exceptions here and there, this has become unusual to some people.