is a

tower defense Tower defense (TD) is a subgenre of strategy games where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers or by stopping enemies from reaching the exits, usually achieved by placing defensive struc ...

video game co-developed by

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

and

PlatinumGames PlatinumGames Inc. is a Japanese video game developer that was founded in October 2007 as result of a merger between two companies, Seeds Inc. and Odd Inc. Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba, and Hideki Kamiya founded Seeds Inc. after the closure of ...

for the

Wii U The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. The W ...

. The game was bundled as a separate disc for the first print edition of ''

Star Fox Zero is a 3D rail shooter video game developed by Nintendo and PlatinumGames for the Wii U. It is the sixth installment in the ''Star Fox'' series. Formally announced at E3 2015, the game was released in April 2016 to mixed critical reception, with ...

'' during its release in April 2016, and as a digital download code on the Wii U

eShop The Nintendo eShop is a digital distribution service powered by the Nintendo Network for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, and by a dedicated online infrastructure for the Nintendo Switch. Launched in June 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS, the eShop was ena ...

afterwards.

Gameplay

''Star Fox Guard'' is a 3D

game in which players must protect various bases, owned by

Slippy Toad is a fictional character from the ''Star Fox'' series of video games published by Nintendo. He was created by Shigeru Miyamoto along with Takaya Imamura, who also designed the character, and was based on the assistant director of the original ' ...

's uncle, Grippy, from oncoming attackers by monitoring security cameras. The television displays footage from all of the available security cameras while the

Wii U GamePad The Wii U GamePad is the standard game controller for Nintendo's Wii U home video game console. Incorporating traits from tablet computers, the GamePad has traditional input methods (such as buttons, dual analog sticks, and a D-pad), touchscreen ...

features an overhead view of the base. To defend the base's core, players must watch the monitors carefully for any oncoming attackers and switch control to one of the available cameras in order to fire its weapon. Enemies are divided into two classes; Combat robots, which must all be defeated in order to progress, and Chaos robots, which hinder the player by tampering with the cameras, such as obscuring the view or showing fake footage. The game features 100 missions and an editor mode that allows players to edit the behavior of enemies in levels and share them online.

Development

''Star Fox Guard'' was announced by series creator

Shigeru Miyamoto is a Japanese video game designer, producer and game director at Nintendo, where he serves as one of its representative directors. Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential designers in the history of video games, he is ...

E3 2014 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 (E3 2014) was the 20th E3 held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It began on June 10, 2014, and ended on June 12, 2014, with 48,900 total attendees. Ma ...

as ''Project Guard''. The game was rebranded and renamed as ''Star Fox Guard'' during a

Nintendo Direct Nintendo Direct is a series of online presentation or live shows produced by Nintendo, where information regarding the company's upcoming content or franchises is presented, such as information about games and consoles. The presentations began i ...

presentation in March 2016.

Reception

''Star Fox Guard'' received mixed to positive reviews, according to

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. Jose Otero from IGN praised its "clever enemies", controls, and extra missions, but criticized the "simple campaign" and "bland graphics". Jonathan Harrington from Nintendo Enthusiast praised its gameplay, variety, and online sharing, but criticized the lack of humor, low budget visuals, and music. Stephen Totilo from Kotaku stated that despite it having "just about nothing to do with the aerial shooting gameplay people associate with ''Star Fox''", it was "one of Nintendo's most distinct games in years".

Notes

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Video games, Japan 2016 video games Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development games Nintendo Network games PlatinumGames games Single-player video games Star Fox video games Tower defense video games Video game spin-offs Video games developed in Japan Video games produced by Shigeru Miyamoto Video games that use Amiibo figurines Wii U eShop games Wii U games Wii U-only games