Starlink: Battle for Atlas - Star Fox, form up on me
Almost a month has gone by since I last wrote anything. That is really bad on my part so enough excuses. It is time to take a break from playing Smash Bros. and actually write something.
I picked up Starlink: Battle for Atlas for my birthday last month and then set about absolutely devouring it. Most reviews complained about the "Ubisoftness" of the game - it is an open world sandbox with many, many towers in it and a very repetitive mission structure. I absolutely agree. The game gets very same-y very quickly. Add to that a by-the-numbers plot, and you can totally see why most reviewers were lukewarm on the game. Yet all of that didn't really hamper my enjoyment of the game, largely because of one single mechanic. A mechanic that I have been calling: The Star Fox Button.
Starlink has a system where you can hit a button after a certain amount of time has passed and activate a special ability for each pilot. For the most part, these are fairly standard things like: 'gain unlimited boosts and better handling for a short period of time'. Useful, but not particularly exciting. If, however, you were like me (and around 80% of the buyers of the game apparently) and bought the game on Switch, that means that you got access to Fox McCloud. On the surface, Fox's ability doesn't sound too different from the other characters: you hit the button and a member of team Star Fox will come and join you as a wingman in battle for a short period of time. So far so standard. But the developers did one small thing that turned this from an ordinary mechanic into what has been one of the most satisfying things I have done in gaming this year. When you press that button, Fox calls down his wingman and this piece of music begins to play:
I have not had a bit of sound design so drastically change an experience in a long time. I found myself often seeking out the boring, repetitive combat encounters just so I could hit the Star Fox Button and begin happily blasting away. I had such a smile on my face every single time I triggered it, and I absolutely adored hearing some villain finish a monologue so I could give a musical response.
Something I have been noticing a lot in the games I have been playing this year has been the importance of detail in crafting a memorable experience. Whether that is the art design of Hollow Knight, or the movement system of Dead Cells, or even the flashiness of the combat in FFXV. What is interesting is that there does not seem to be any hard and fast rules about what details in particular serve to improve a game or not. Take Red Dead Redemption 2 for instance, a game that I have not played myself but which by all accounts is pretty good. One of the things that I remembered reading about the game was that it would contain "real horse testicle physics", that is some poor developer needed to go and do some research and then sit and code the balls of the horses in the game to make sure that they appropriately responded to weather conditions. In some ways that level of attention to detail is kind of commendable. Few studios would bother with something like that. But by the same token I think you'd also be hard pressed to argue that such a detail improved the overall experience of playing RDR2. My tentative thoughts on this are that your attention to detail has to contribute to making the game more satisfying for the player to play in order for it to be worthwhile. I suspect the more I end up playing and thinking about it, the clearer I will become on why and how to go about doing it better.
What I can say for certain at the moment is that small details can definitely add up to way more than the sum of their parts and the combination of satisfying space combat, tight controls, and a little bit of good music turned Starlink from another run of the mill Ubisoft sandbox into some of the most fun I had this year.
It saddens me deeply that so few people will get to experience this - both because of a lack of attachment to the Star Fox team, or because they simply skipped out on buying the game. It desperately hoped that the game would sell well enough to justify a sequel, or at least some DLC (I just want to play as Starlink Wolf very badly). But it seems as if the toys-to-life gamble that Ubisoft took with the game has not paid off. That is a shame because I think the team was genuinely onto something here. The crafted a fun set of core mechanics that just needed a little bit of creativity to shine. I mean, the Star Fox button is clear demonstration of this. I really hope that Nintendo is willing to give the team a chance to craft an actual Star Fox game that borrows these mechanics and art direction. With a more interesting mission structure, and a campy Saturday Morning Cartoon story about space furries, Ubisoft Toronto may be able to breathe new life into the Star Fox franchise and finally push the series forward in a positive direction.
That'd be pretty pawsome :3
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| Source: https://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/images/10_share_images/games_15/nintendo_switch_4/H2x1_NSwitch_StarlinkBattleForAtlas_image1600w.jpg |
I picked up Starlink: Battle for Atlas for my birthday last month and then set about absolutely devouring it. Most reviews complained about the "Ubisoftness" of the game - it is an open world sandbox with many, many towers in it and a very repetitive mission structure. I absolutely agree. The game gets very same-y very quickly. Add to that a by-the-numbers plot, and you can totally see why most reviewers were lukewarm on the game. Yet all of that didn't really hamper my enjoyment of the game, largely because of one single mechanic. A mechanic that I have been calling: The Star Fox Button.
Starlink has a system where you can hit a button after a certain amount of time has passed and activate a special ability for each pilot. For the most part, these are fairly standard things like: 'gain unlimited boosts and better handling for a short period of time'. Useful, but not particularly exciting. If, however, you were like me (and around 80% of the buyers of the game apparently) and bought the game on Switch, that means that you got access to Fox McCloud. On the surface, Fox's ability doesn't sound too different from the other characters: you hit the button and a member of team Star Fox will come and join you as a wingman in battle for a short period of time. So far so standard. But the developers did one small thing that turned this from an ordinary mechanic into what has been one of the most satisfying things I have done in gaming this year. When you press that button, Fox calls down his wingman and this piece of music begins to play:
I have not had a bit of sound design so drastically change an experience in a long time. I found myself often seeking out the boring, repetitive combat encounters just so I could hit the Star Fox Button and begin happily blasting away. I had such a smile on my face every single time I triggered it, and I absolutely adored hearing some villain finish a monologue so I could give a musical response.
Something I have been noticing a lot in the games I have been playing this year has been the importance of detail in crafting a memorable experience. Whether that is the art design of Hollow Knight, or the movement system of Dead Cells, or even the flashiness of the combat in FFXV. What is interesting is that there does not seem to be any hard and fast rules about what details in particular serve to improve a game or not. Take Red Dead Redemption 2 for instance, a game that I have not played myself but which by all accounts is pretty good. One of the things that I remembered reading about the game was that it would contain "real horse testicle physics", that is some poor developer needed to go and do some research and then sit and code the balls of the horses in the game to make sure that they appropriately responded to weather conditions. In some ways that level of attention to detail is kind of commendable. Few studios would bother with something like that. But by the same token I think you'd also be hard pressed to argue that such a detail improved the overall experience of playing RDR2. My tentative thoughts on this are that your attention to detail has to contribute to making the game more satisfying for the player to play in order for it to be worthwhile. I suspect the more I end up playing and thinking about it, the clearer I will become on why and how to go about doing it better.
What I can say for certain at the moment is that small details can definitely add up to way more than the sum of their parts and the combination of satisfying space combat, tight controls, and a little bit of good music turned Starlink from another run of the mill Ubisoft sandbox into some of the most fun I had this year.
It saddens me deeply that so few people will get to experience this - both because of a lack of attachment to the Star Fox team, or because they simply skipped out on buying the game. It desperately hoped that the game would sell well enough to justify a sequel, or at least some DLC (I just want to play as Starlink Wolf very badly). But it seems as if the toys-to-life gamble that Ubisoft took with the game has not paid off. That is a shame because I think the team was genuinely onto something here. The crafted a fun set of core mechanics that just needed a little bit of creativity to shine. I mean, the Star Fox button is clear demonstration of this. I really hope that Nintendo is willing to give the team a chance to craft an actual Star Fox game that borrows these mechanics and art direction. With a more interesting mission structure, and a campy Saturday Morning Cartoon story about space furries, Ubisoft Toronto may be able to breathe new life into the Star Fox franchise and finally push the series forward in a positive direction.
That'd be pretty pawsome :3
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