Wild Blue Skies review – A disappointing on-rails shooter

If you’re a fan of the on-rails shooters of the ’90s, you’re the target market of Wild Blue Skies. Developed by Chuhai Labs, which was founded by someone who actually worked on Star Fox, Giles Goddard, this modern day take on the on-rails shooter similarly casts you as an anthropomorphic pilot fighting to save the world from a despicable villain. In this case, it’s the heinous Grimclaw.

Wild Blue Skies is extremely derivative of Star Fox, in fact, essentially being a carbon copy in some regards. It’s a shame, then, that we’ve recently had a remake of Star Fox 64, polished to the usual standard you’d expect of a Nintendo game – and in the few areas Wild Blue Skies differentiates itself from it, it’s generally for the worse.

You’ll be taking control of Bowie in Wild Blue Skies, the leader of a squadron called the Blue Bombers. Fighting to protect the world from Grimclaw and put an end to his evil deeds, you’ll engage in a string of missions, moving across a map via a route determined by your choices and actions. Along with collectibles to find in each stage and a scoring system, there’s plenty of scope for replayability, then.

Whether you will want to put much time into Wild Blue Skies will depend on how much patience and goodwill you have for it, though, as unfortunately it’s just not as much fun to play as it should be. One of the differences from Star Fox here, for example, is that your normal and charged shots now have their own buttons, which doesn’t do anything but make the gameplay more awkward. You’re also limited to just one point of view, which feels too close to your ship and limits your view as a result.

There are a multitude of other issues, too. The controls in general just don’t feel all that great, being a little floaty. Enemies often feel too spongey, especially if you haven’t been able to pick up a power-up or two. And during missions where you’re free to fly around at your leisure, you’ll also find that there simply aren’t enough pick-ups. Handy moves such as the u-turn and somersault are missing, too.

Add in the fact that Wild Blue Skies simply feels very rough around the edges – don’t be surprised if you see your squadron members or enemies flying through what should be solid objects from time to time – and you have a game that simply doesn’t fulfil its potential. If you don’t own a Switch 2 and are craving some Star Fox action you might get a kick out of it, but otherwise you should probably give Wild Blue Skies a wide berth. Maybe with an update or two it could be turned into something more fun, but as it is, it’s just a let-down.