Star Fox Guard

tar Fox Guard's class of tower defense is an exemplary validation of its platform's unique hardware. Like Super Mario Maker and Splatoon, it proves the Wii U's gamepad isn't a superfluous novelty, but a prudent force against an entrenched position.

Star Fox Guard is a real-time tower defense, with the crazy Japanese touch that you can expect from a Nintendo product. The game proves to be very original, challenging and addictive; the level editor paves the road for infinite replayability, and the price is absolutely right.

Star Fox Guard is the perfect addition to the Star Fox Zero experience. Its great use of the gamepad's capabilities makes it a great tower defense game that everyone should check out.

Star Fox Guard is smart and funny. A clever way to set up a different kind of tower defense game, at a reasonable price.

It is what it is: a smaller game concept that served its purpose as an E3 tech demo well, and so was polished up to become a nice companion piece for a bigger game. [Issue #21 – May/June 2016, p.76]

Star Fox Guard has nothing to do with Star Fox, yet manages to be more fun than this year’s actual Star Fox. Nintendo’s take on tower defence entertains while it lasts. [May 2016]

Star Fox Guard offers a cleverly designed asymmetric gameplay concept on a tower defense game based on the Star Fox series. Its mechanics are simple but very effective and its content is large enough for a long and fun experience, whether solo or online.

Nintendo set out to build an experience centered around the GamePad with Star Fox Guard, and the result is a great little experiment — if a wee bit overwhelming.

Fun and frantic, it marks a unique take on a well known genre, which, with typical flair, Nintendo have made their own.

Star Fox Guard is really a pleasant surprise. It’s a simple concept that is well executed and makes perfect use of the Wii U’s unique control options. Hundreds of levels and the ability to create and share your own give this one some serious legs.

I’m glad Nintendo finally got around to letting Project Guard see the light of day. It’s a fun and unique gamepad experience that gets better the further you get into it.

Star Fox Guard is a simple concept done very well. It's a new takes on the tower defense genre that really adds a whole lot to the experience. And in contrast to its big brother, it uses the Wii U Gamepad very effectively. However, while there is a lot of content thanks to the massive amount of levels and challenges, the core gameplay never strays too far from the base experience.

A very nice little game, Star Fox Guard is a charming and addictive experience that shows some inevitable repetitiveness after a while.

Star Fox Guard is as unbearably tense, and frighteningly stressful as it is fun. It may look like a simple, throwaway digital game, but it could be better than the game its packaged with.

Star Fox Guard is a fun action-tower defense game about managing different perspectives to put out fires.

This is a great surprise, and we've really enjoyed our time with it. It is true, however, its formula gets old after a few hours, but considering its price, it's a good choice.

Star Fox Guard has a nice learning curve to get you up to speed about robots, CCTV and mazes. There is a huge variety of enemies and weapons, to keep guarding the Grippy installations fun. That really helps, but only for a while, after playing this game for a while, it does get repetitive.

It’s fully featured and has a nice long single player campaign. So what if it’s a little repetitive, you didn’t pay anything for it so what does it matter if you never finish it.

Star Fox Guard’s mechanically sound gameplay is frantic and fun, but its two-screen display adds to its chaos and brings down the experience.

Under normal circumstances a title like this wouldn’t have been worth a $60 price tag, but free is an entirely different story. It has a surprising amount of content, but ultimately suffers from lack of variety.

The graphics are basic and the controls can be tricky. Switching cameras is a nightmare when you can't remember the positions, making the business of stemming the tide of bots a little more stressful than it should be. Yet Starfox Guard turns out to be weirdly addictive.

Starfox Guard is a small game, well thought - especially in terms of progression - and with an online component that enriches the gaming experience. It has small expectations and gets straight to the point.

Star Fox Guard is a funny experiment from Nintendo: everything works well and some levels are even thrilling. It's not a revolution like Splatoon, but a fun re-invention of a genre.

The game perhaps could have done with more tower defence elements to extend the idea further, but as a standalone package it's a compelling little gem that does well in framing the GamePad's benefits and is worth a try.

Star Fox Guard is a nice additional game, but fails to stay interesting. The gameplay mechanics are quite original and remind us of a combination between a tower defense game and Five Nights At Freddy's. Unfortunately the levels get way too repetitive.

Star Fox Guard is a decent game, but exciting? Definitely not. It's hard to recommend because although it's not bad, it's hardly exciting when you're alone.

Star Fox Guard is a pretty standard tower defense game with a Star Fox theme, which does not make it a recommendation as a separate game. You'd rather buy the Star Fox Zero because the special edition comes with this concept too.

It’s like a free game, and not an awful one. But when you judge on its own, it’s novelty quickly becomes tedious.

It’s fun at the time, yet ultimately forgettable and the links to the Star Fox universe are tentative at best.

Star Fox Guard is a genuine and ingenious new take on tower defense. The asymmetric gameplay increases action with first person shooting, while the tactical side deploys on the GamePad, particularly through the edition of customized troops to battle online. But the progressive expansion of the arsenal, the changes of environment and the special missions don't create enough diversion from the genre's usual repetitiveness.

Ultimately, Star Fox Guard's relationship to the adventures of Fox McCloud is skin deep.