A Deep Dive into Star Fox Zero's Controls

Hey. This is Game Maker's Toolkit. I'm Mark Brown Star Fox Zero is a game that was made to prove a point. In a briefing with investors in 2014, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that while the Wii U Gamepad was great for local multiplayer games, Nintendo hadn't yet "been able to offer a decisive software title that enriches the user’s gameplay experience when playing alone with the GamePad". Which is to say they hadn't made a singleplayer game that could only work on a system with two, distinct screens - the TV, and the Gamepad. A game that would be awesome precisely because of this unique set-up.

Shigeru Miyamoto's department was tasked with coming up with this decisive game, and so we ended up with Star Fox Zero. A game that completely revolves around the gamepad. You cannot play without it. And so the question is... did it work? Did Star Fox Zero prove that the Gamepad could give us an essential game - and one that could only work on the Wii U? It's fair to say that reviewers weren't convinced. There's no shortage of articles that call the game's control scheme confusing, terrible, tricky, unusually unintuitive, and a multi-screen mess.

But I want to take a closer look. Figure out exactly what developers Nintendo and Platinum were trying to pull off, see where they succeeded and, yes, look at where they failed. So Star Fox Zero's unorthodox controls can largely be grouped into two aspects. One of which is, I think, fine. The other of which is, a bit of a trash fire. The thing that's largely fine is the motion controls. First, some background. Every Star Fox game from the Super Nintendo original to Star Fox Command on DS has you exclusively steering the Arwing, and so your gunfire is always just shooting out in front of the ship, out from the Arwing's nose.

And that's fine. It works great on a system with just a d-pad or an analogue stick. And it gives the games an accessible and arcadey feel. More like Space Harrier than a combat simulator. But it does have some limitations: because you must essentially put yourself in the enemy's line of fire to shoot at them, the games have a funky back-and-forth pace where you jump in front of foes, fire off a few laser beams, and then barrel roll away when the enemy fires back.

This also gives the games a heavy focus on your charge shot as you can charge up a missile in safety, flick the arwing over to an enemy for a split second to lock on, and then let it rip. This is all important because Star Fox Zero is the first game that lets you independently steer your ship and aim your guns. Sorry, first Star Fox game: we've seen on-rail shooters do this already, like Kid Icarus Uprising, which uses the analogue stick and stylus on the 3DS to move and aim. And Sin and Punishment 2 on the Wii which lets you move with the nunchuck and aim with the Wii remote.

But what you don't see is a lot of space shooters that let you steer with one analogue stick and aim with the other. Games like Ratchet and Clank ignore the right stick and use the same system as classic Star Fox games. Now we already know that analogue sticks aren't great for fine motor movement, and trying to wrestle with one while also moving up and down and left and right in space is probably about as much fun as rubbing your tummy and patting your head.

And that's likely why Nintendo opted to use the more fluid and accurate gyroscope in the Wii U Gamepad for aiming in Star Fox. A very similar system to the one it used in Splatoon though, this time, you can't turn the motion controls off and revert to more traditional twin-stick aiming. And that's probably also because the right analogue stick is already being used for advanced Arwing manuveres. You flick it up to boost, flick it down to brake, left and right give you a tighter turning radius. And all that's great. But it's also used for somersaults and u-turns and barrel rolls and firing off bombs, all of which I often do when I don't want to, and can't pull off when I do.

Anyway. I think the motion controls are mostly fine. I prefer the Wii remote and its pointer for faster access to every corner of the screen. And you don't need to recalibrate the Wii remote every five seconds. Side note, but the fact that Star Fox Zero needs a dedicated button to fix the controls doesn't bode well. But there's one thing that the gyro can do that the Wii remote cannot: aim outside of the boundaries of the TV. and that's how we come to... dual screen gameplay.

Okay, so here's the pitch. The TV shows something that looks like classic Star Fox. The camera lingers behind the Arwing, giving you a complete overview of your surroundings. The Gamepad shows inside Fox's cockpit. Not only does this give you more accurate aiming, but you can also turn the Gamepad to the side, or above, or below you to see things that aren't on the TV. In theory this would allow for things like bombing runs where you fly your Arwing up over an enemy base on the TV, and then look down using the Gamepad to fire laser beams at weak spots.

And bits like that do crop up in Star Fox Zero. These strider enemies have weak points on their underside so you can fly under them on the telly, and then aim up and shoot the red bits on the Gamepad. And some of the bosses make the best use of the two screens. Take mother strider: you use the TV to drive around the outside of the massive monster, and then aim the Gamepad off to the side to shoot at its leg joints. Then back to the TV to fly your Gravmaster up and over the boss and then look back at the Gamepad to fire lasers down at the weak points and, yeah, that's actually a lot of fun. When you're not dying over and over.

But this sort of thing so rarely pops up in the game. And there are so few times when you make the conscious, tactical choice to look at one screen over the other. Because, the best Wii U games. Or, the best singleplayer Wii U games that make full use of the Gamepad, are those that offer different perspectives or different information on the two screens, and you have to choose which one to look at, while knowing that stuff is still going on on the other screen.

Like when you're rerouting power on the Gamepad in Affordable Space Adventures, while your ship is changing and moving on the TV. Or the tense action of rummaging through your backpack on the Gamepad in Zombi U, while nervously glancing back to the TV in case a zombie is sneaking up on you. But in Star Fox Zero, both screens often just show the exact same thing but in their own, uniquely crap way. And not just because one is 6 inches big, low resolution, and covered in dust.

So the Gamepad will warn you about enemies on your tail, but the TV won't. Then the TV will show you that a big boss monster is about to squash you while the Gamepad says nothing. Are you supposed to look at both screens at all times? how many eyes does Miyamoto have? And then there's the reticule. Oh boy, the reticule. Okay, so get this: the reticule on the TV screen is, for all intents and purposes, inaccurate. If you aim at this grid of lights and fire, you will miss. See? Because if you look at the Gamepad while you do this you'll notice that you're actually aiming over here.

Now this is something to do with perspective or whatever. But, you know, that's nonsense. No other game does this. It's just deliberately broken to give the Gamepad a reason for existing. And that's kinda messed up. So, the two screens largely show the same thing, just one doesn't let you aim properly and the other doesn't let you see properly. And instead of making intentional choices, based on the situation, I found myself just using one or the other.

Especially in the on-rails bits where everything is front of you so why bother looking off the boundaries of the TV? You don't actually need to look at the Gamepad to kill those striders because their weak points are so big, and your charge shot can lock onto them anyway. But then there's target mode. This is when, during boss fights and other special sections, the TV screen shows a mad, zoomed out, skew-whiff view of things.

The target mode is almost a good idea - it can work quite well in the dog fights against Star Wolf where you keep track of the enemy on the TV, then somersault around, and peer into the Gamepad to let loose a flurry of laser beams - but the camera's so zoomed out, and the sparse starfields you fight on offer so little in the way of orientation, that by the time you've mentally linked up the geography of the TV with your gamepad display you're already dead.

And so the question is: why does target mode look like this? "I wanted see something really cool," says Miyamoto. Which is like: What? But yes, he's being serious. "You're able to use things like u-turns and somersaults to create some really cool visuals on the TV while doing all of the fighting through the Gamepad screen," he says. "It also lets anyone who’s watching you play enjoy really cool scenes". He likens it to how replays in racing games, with their cinematic angles, look better than the in-car stuff. Which is true, I guess. But how he got from that to "let's do the important driving bits on a tiny, low-res Fisher Price iPad" is anyone's guess.

Platinum is well known for ostentatious boss fights that are as stunning to look at as they are to play, but rarely at the expense of actual playability. Couldn't it just have been a map like in Star Fox Command on DS? Or is that too boring for the hypothetical person who might be watching you play? So, Star Fox Zero puts visual spectacle before gameplay. And the game, level and enemy design rarely encourage you to interact with the unique controls in an interesting way. But beyond all that, the game's just tough to get to grips with.

It's hard enough that Zero expects you to keep track of two things - the ship and the reticule - for the first time in Star Fox history. One of which is done with a potentially unfamiliar gyroscopic control scheme. But also keep track of two screens, each with unique information and, sometimes, camera angle. And Nintendo and Platinum know this four-piece juggling act is hard to understand. Read any interview with the developers and you'll see it.

"Early in the game’s development, we’d kind of assumed that we wouldn’t need to explain how to fly the ships – players would just be able to get the hang of it," says Miyamoto. They later added a training mode. The training mode also covers the other ships that pop up, that are perhaps even stranger to control, like a chicken walker that inexplicably uses tank controls from the mid 90s. Those training levels exist, according to Nintendo's Yugo Hayashi, so that the first time the Gyrowing or the Gravmaster or the chicken walker show up in the game, players are "not just completely confused". Completely confused! That sounds more like Polygon's review than a developer's quote.

Complaints from long time Star Fox fans "did concern us," says Yusuke Hashimoto of Platinum, "but we felt strongly enough to ask people to get used to it." GRANGA: My emperor! I've failed you! Well. Players can get used to it. I've gotten used to it. And so have expert Platinum players who are starting to uncover the game's clever scoring system which has you doing critical charged shots and charged unlocked shots, and shooting at enemy corpses that have already been blown up to get bonus points.

zallard1, the world record holder for a 100% speed run in Star Fox 64, is posting videos of his crazy high score runs on YouTube but, guess what? "I really wish they had given more control options", he says, admitting that he's had to abandon lots of record runs because he accidentally dropped a bomb or did a somersault. "I just find myself not in complete control of any vehicle 100% of the time," and "it's just a shame that the controls are confusing for no reason". If this guy doesn't get it, no one will.

But anyway, "getting used to controls" is not really something I'd expect from Nintendo. It's games are incredibly accessible, sometimes to a fault, and to hear them say you'll get the controls after 30 minutes, or an hour, or on your second playthrough is weird. Even Platinum, who make incredibly rich and complex games, makes sure that first time players have a good experience. Bayonetta 2 has a mode where you can play with one hand.

And here's the kicker. "I do think that we can take this control style and still find ways to apply it to, for example, a single screen experience by switching back and forth between different view styles," says Miyamoto. Because Star Fox Zero ultimately tries to fix a problem that already has a solution. We've been zooming in for a better look in shooters for years, and we haven't needed to look at a different screen. you just... zoom in. Even Star Fox 64 had a cockpit view.

And how about moving the camera to look at things off to the side, or above or below the player. For an example of how to do this without a second screen, let's look at a game called, what? Star Fox Zero? Oh yeah, when you're descending down these laser shafts or dropping a robot onto a platform you look down by holding a button. So did Star Fox Zero complete its mission? Did it prove that the Wii U Gamepad can lead to essential games? I don't think so.

The controls are so complicated that you need training modes and an hour of playing to understand them, and even the world's best players are still struggling. But even if you do get to grips with them, the game design so rarely rewards or encourages you to dart back and forth between the two screens, outside of some good boss fights and these weird robot-dropping bits that don't fit the arcade speed of the game at all.

Ultimately I think Star Fox Zero would not only work okay on other input devices with minimal tweaking, it would probably be better for 90% of the game. There are games that prove the Wii U Gamepad's worth as interesting, singleplayer controller but - for whatever reason - they're just not made by Nintendo. And, as a long time Nintendo fan, I'm not sure if I should be worried. Thanks so much for watching! Videos like this simply wouldn't be possible without the time and resources afforded to me by my Patreon people. Join them at Patreon.com/gamemakerstoolkit and you could see your name alongside these cool cat $5 donators.