I haven't seriously played any of the other Starfox games, though years ago I played the SNES version on a kiosk in a store.
The obvious thing to comment on is how short the game is. I don't mind a short game in principle, but it is exaggerated by the varied levels- a good half of the missions are on foot/in the tank, and a couple of the levels are rail shooters with Fox standing on the wing of a ship, and half of the rest are Arwing missions that allow the player to move freely, and then the remaing are what I think is the classic play where the levels are on rails but the player ship can move a limited amount up/down or left/right. So each component doesn't really get fleshed out, and there aren't enough of the good parts of the game to be very satisfying. The whole game feels like an episode rather than a full game.
I only really like the more classic feeling rail shooting levels. For the ground missions, the tank controls are awful, strafe prevents the tank from rotating and vice versa. The 3rd person foot portions are okay, but not that great- is this supposed to be like Jak & Daxter or one of those PS2 games? It's hard to switch weapons quickly and without interrupting other actions. The free motion Arwing levels are okay, but the controls aren't that great. The standing-on-the-wing levels are a little too limited to be very fun.
The free motion Arwing level with the stargate under attack is the best level of that type, it feels a little like Rogue Squadron. But the same problem I have with Rogue Squadron is here- I really want to be able to fly all over the battlespace and eradicate every last remaining enemy, taking as long as I want, but the levels usually force their objectives and abruptly end when complete.
The voice acting in this game was occasionally irritating, the chirpiness of the frog character and the repetitive instructions given by other characters to try to help the player out. All the characters are underdeveloped, though I suppose the designers imagine that the player knows them all from earlier games and they need little introduction or development.
I'd like to play the older Starfox games to see how they compare, perhaps on the Wii when I get one or track down the N64 version (I don't have a SNES).
