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"Star Fox Zero has a bizarre control scheme, seemingly made to justify the Wii U gamepad. In this deep dive critique, I look at what Nintendo and Platinum were trying to pull off and see where they succeeded - and where they failed."

A nice, chunky long one - only possible because of you guys. Thanks so much! All reward-y stuff coming this weekend.

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A Deep Dive into Star Fox Zero's Controls | Game Maker's Toolkit

Star Fox Zero has a bizarre control scheme, seemingly made to justify the Wii U gamepad. In this deep dive critique, I look at what Nintendo and Platinum were trying to pull off and see where they succeeded - and where they failed.

Comments

Anonymous

Nice! :D

Matthew Hanlon

Wow, that's really quite something. I'd heard the controls were bad but hadn't been paying enough to find out exactly what they'd done. As you say it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist, outside of the fact they need to justify the second screen. This is almost the opposite of your video about controllers where you seemed to lament the fact that designers play it safe with control schemes/controllers encourage us to play it safe - and that's true. Every console game I've worked on since the mid 2000s has sought to build its control scheme on an established and understood paradigm. It means we don't have to teach new controls and players don't have to learn a new set, which experience says there isn't a lot of patience for. There's more scope for innovation on PC & touch devices, but even there we can see the standards. Controls should be simple to pick up, they can be hard to master but they really can't be hard to pick up. And those quotes about how they know it might be an issue, that just comes across as the worse sort of development head in the sand thinking. Surprised to see it with a Nintendo game.

Anonymous

Hey Mark! Do you have a Steam curator's page or anything like that? I'd be interested in getting some games recommendations from you but don't want to just badger you with questions y'know.

GameMakersToolkit

Hey Euan - a steam recommendation thingy is something I've been meaning to do. I'll put one together soon :)