Nintendo is a weird company. Sometimes it does weird things like going to the E3 Expo and barely announcing any games for its home game console, which didn't have many games to begin with, and then acting surprised when Wii U owners are upset about it.
At its booth, it ended up with a lot more new games to show on Nintendo 3DS than on Wii U, which at this point is mostly finally getting a slate of games we've been hearing about for years, in some cases. This is not to say that these games are not fun, of course! Nintendo's competition may have announced some huge games for the far-off future, but Nintendo is poised to have a better 2015---from a first-party perspective, anyway. Here's what I played when I headed to Nintendo at E3 this week.
Star Fox Zero (above): Named after the number of times Slippy the Toad has ever successfully shot something, Star Fox Zero is another reboot of the classic Miyamoto outer-space fur-pals shooter, this time in HD and with the Wii U's GamePad to change things up a bit. In the E3 demo, your targeting reticle moves as you fly your ship in different directions, but you can give it minor adjustments and really zoom in on enemies by using the GamePad's motion controls.
Additionally, your first-person view from inside the cockpit is always visible on GamePad's screen, so you can look down at it and really adjust your aiming with fine precision if necessary.
It's not so necessary in the demo I played, especially because you can lock on to enemies and fire homing shots as well. But towards the end, fighting against a final boss, the view on the screen changed to sort of a side-on view as my ship circled around the boss, so I really had to look at the GamePad in order to make sure my shots were going, well, anywhere useful.
Otherwise, it doesn't seem like this game wants to depart too far from the good ol' Star Fox formula. Help me, Fox!
