FUR Squadron

So I'm pretty mixed on this game, but I would say I overall enjoyed it but there are certainly some faults with it. The game is obviously very inspired by Starfox games, particularly 64 which is totally fine, I love those games. But how well does this game compare. I'll start with the things I enjoyed. Firstly the controls felt very fluid, it never felt like I was against the game which is great. Like if you are wanting a more modern Starfox Game, then controls wise this has gotten a good feel. There are also a lot of set pieces within this game that are really cool. Some of these have spoilers so I will tag them [spoiler] But I love the part where you are running away from the big boss and your teammate Kiro beats the boss. And the flip on the controls in the one boss was fun, I also love the glitchy asthetic of the levels once it gets into that. [/spoiler] A really fun twist on a classic formula. And also visually I enjoyed it, very Snythwave and simplistic but it works well But let's talk about the negatives. The biggest one for me is the cast and there is a couple issues with it. The first one is I don't like the lack of voice acting. In the options there is an option for voices, which is genuinely a great option to have, but I was disappointed to learn that the "voices" in question are akin to that of Animalese from Animal Crossing and not actually Voice Acting. I think this is especially a problem because the visuals in this game are so vidid and arguably a lot, that I can't read what the characters are saying most of the time. The other issue I have is just writing wise they come off as a bit bland unfortunately. They are clearly inspired by Fox, Falco and Slippy respectively but they lack the charm that the originals come with. Which is a shame because reading the character descriptions below on this very steam page, it shows that these characters actually have a lot more going on than being bland versions of already beloved characters, but at least in this game, they don't go into any of this sadly. For example, I only just learnt reading that Kiro has a broken wing and has used this medium to continue his dream. That's genuinely a cool character concept but I should be able to see this within the game itself, not the store page. I also wasn't a fan of the fact that it would automatically jump between the levels with no pause (apart from a loading screen) or confirmation to continue. Although this could be because the game is sadly pretty short. To be fair Starfox itself isn't exactly long and this is an indie game so I won't badger on. But a playthrough with no fails is only about 30 mins if that is an important point for yall (personally I think it's fine for a fun indie game) I was also excited once I beat the game [spoiler] To find out that you played as Kiro, maybe getting to do the boss that he fought and a few new lines of dialogue, but sadly it is only visual, you are still Blaze [/spoiler] I'm not gonna mark any points down because of this but I would love to see this actually be a true feature in the sequel For other things I would love to see in a sequel, I would appreciate it if there were an option to hold down the regular beam to spam it. I know this isn't how Starfox works but it was cramping my hand a bit to spam (can make the charge shot on another button, only X and A were in use, still has Y and B free) Overall I still very much enjoyed the game even if it were short, I will definitely try to beat the game on the higher difficulties to get the achievements. This is showing to be a great building block for the sequel which I am excited for. I would recommend this to anyone wanting a short classic on rails game