Starlink (NMS meets Starfox via Ubi)

[The Boston Crab]

This is honestly a great game. It's the (optional) toys-to-life thing with the spaceships you can buy and stick on your controller but frig all that and go digital.


On the Switch, it has a massive Starfox crossover which must be good if you like Starfox.


It's basically No Man's Sky at heart but much more focused and varied, with vastly better combat and flight controls and much more diverse planets. It feels really really good and probably feels closer to the original Starwing/Starfox than anything else I can think of. Space combat is tight and responsive and guns feel satisfying  In fact, the gunplay reminds me of Destiny which is fucking high praise.


Hyperdrive across the star system and zoom through the atmosphere of a nearby planet and go straight into low altitude flying and strafing and barrel rolling and boosting and then take to the skies and up and off back into space. Planetary flight and combat is pretty sensational, so snappy and smooth.


The actual main quest and characters feel very Saturday morning cartoon and it's all very cosy and comforting. It's a pretty challenging game, though. As you explore various areas and restore power to useful facilities in the traditional Ubisoft fashion, you're set upon by various baddies and mercenaries and outlaws and combat always feels satisfying. Swapping in various weapons and ship attachments also looks wicked and adds constant variety as you adapt your loadout to different enemies, some of whom are absolutely massive.


I'm only four hours or so into it but I've been very pleasantly surprised a dozen times so far and I'm loving being part of the world.


If you're interested, get it off the US eShop because it's about twenty quid cheaper.

[The Boston Crab]

I've got to be honest, it's likely DOA but this is another Total Switch Banger.

If this were the just the new Starfox game, people would be going properly apeshit about it.

[Kelvin]

I was tempted by the early trailers and footage, but the reviews are middling, and the price tag is absolutely insane. Or would be from any company that isn't Ubisoft.

As you say, that price tag means it's basically DOA, so maybe I'll be able to grab it in a sale in 2 years time.

[The Boston Crab]

I thought the reviews were quite decent, to be honest, and most seemed to conclude with my subconscious rip-off comment that this should be the blueprint for the next Starfox game. Actually, just checked and a 75 on Metacritic, for what it's worth, is way too low for what this game does.

Had they marketed it as Starfox takes on No Man's Sky, and dropped the whole TTL conceit, in think people would be raving about this. It's opening up more and more with layers of systems and some of the giant enemies are pretty awesome to fight. It has a fantastic sense of scale and where NMS even now labours its transition from surface to space and vice versa (because of the procedural generation), this has you coming out of hyperdrive, straight through the atmosphere and instantly launching ice lasers at some space imps and sweeping in at ground level to finish them off with a flamethrower before doing a barrel roll, flying through some giant dinosaur skeleton and boosting the fuck out of there and lifting off into the sky. That's literally something I did this morning. It's genuinely action packed and while the structure is your classic Ubi grind alongside the main story and the Starfox B story, everything feels fun at this point.

Where NMS gives you a great sense of isolation and atmosphere, at its best, this gives you very varied planets, biomes and weather and colours and stuff, and pretty much every area is chock full of stuff to destroy, and take over, some decent little puzzles, even some platforming, levelling up different outposts, large scale plate spinning strategy a la Hyrule Warriors and fucking massive space bastard battles.

I guess the physical shit with the toys basically dictates the digital price, as well, or nobody would buy the toys. It doesn't need the toys, at all. I'd see how it's looking around Christmas time given it's obviously not doing well. Fingers crossed it'll drop in price to tempt a few more people because it's a lot of fun and I can already sense it being a lost gem.