Star Fox (2026)
This was a fun remake to play and go down memory lane with. Most of it was a one to one remake of Star Fox 64 but with more character development and some of the best visuals Nintendo has ever produced. Another thing I absolutely love is the music from 64 being brought to life with orchestral renditions of all the original songs which adds an extra layer of epicness to the game. I love how the story plays to make sense of making the choices of where to go for the next mission. It kind of makes me wish I was playing the series for the first time so I'd be tempted to make choices based on the story rather than knowing the path to go for the true ending.
Aquas was so great to play again with the modern graphics and artwork. I looked forward to it so much and it only had me even more in awe than I anticipated. With that I also liked Zoness more than I remembered. My first playthrough was the easy planet path so I went for the hard path and I really like how the hard path rewards you with what I'd say are the best story beats like protecting the Great Fox from the missiles, connecting more with Katt, as I feel her dynamic with Falco is the most interesting of all the side characters and having the face off against Star Wolf as a final test before pursuing Andross. Of course with that, the true ending with Fox being helped by James to escape Venom was done lightyears better in this version than the original.
The overall character depth added just feels so much more meaningful. I remember when playing Star Fox 64 as a kid, everyone clowned on Slippy but now Slippy has more depth and serves what feels like a better purpose in the overall story. Falco is the only character that at first I didn't like how he was made to be more arrogant to the point where he just gets annoying but I see their purpose in doing that was to give him a character arc where by the end of the story he's respecting Fox. I just wish more backstory was given for what got Falco to join Star Fox because sometimes his attitude just had me question that. I would by default assume like any mercenary it was because of the pay but he complains about that too at one point so it just baffles me as to why he wouldn't just go look for other jobs that would pay more. But I like to think that because of his arrogance, no other teams want to work with him and so he's not able to get contracted for good paying jobs so this is the best he can get as he is shown respect from the team like from Peppy in the Corneria mission where he advises that the team trusts Falco's instincts.
I would definitely recommend this one to any fan of the series but for people wanting to try it out and not sure if you're into the arcade on rails flight simulator, you might want to wait for it to go on sale since it is a pretty short game but a lot of fun to revisit from time to time.