Wild Blue Skies wears its inspirations from Star Fox on its sleeve. For the most part, that’s not a bad thing. The game has its own great visual style, largely controls well and offers a solid classic on rails challenge. It however perhaps may try to play it too familiar and does miss on some parts on what made the classic Star Fox titles as great as they are.

Story

Grimclaw, a once renowned engineer decides to turn against the world one day. He is defeated by the army of General Harding and the blue bombers. After years of exile however, Grimclaw launches an assault with a new robotic army. A new group of blue bombers, Bowie, Thorne, Chuck and Roe are called in to put a stop to him for good.

Pros

Wild Blue Skies visual style is sure to please a lot of people. It reminds me of a mix of older anime like robotech mixed with 90s cartoons such as SWAT Katz and Road Rovers. One thing it does to set itself apart from Star Fox is that the game isn’t set in deep space. Wild Blue takes place on a diverse archipelago with varying themes such as canyons, flying through a hurricane, or fighting around an ancient Mayan style pyramid.

I enjoyed the look and a lot of the set pieces of each level. My personal favorite was probably the canyon which features a section where you fly up a waterfall before battling through a river base taken over by Grimclaw.

Gameplay wise, the game largely controls very well. Unlike Star Fox, Wild Blue Skies features different buttons for the lasers and the charge shot and some sections of a level it’s better to use one over the other as some enemies will be cut through quickly with the lasers, especially if they’re upgraded it will go down in one hit from the charge shot. The game does a good job at letting you recognize when it’s better to go for one attack over the other and optimizing your overall score.

Much like Star Fox, Wild Blue’s replay value mostly comes getting as high a score as possible. On top of destroying enemies, you’ll also gain bonuses for not taking any damage, defeating the bosses quickly, finding 4 letters that spell WILD throughout each level and keeping your team alive. The game also features branching paths by competing certain objectives in a level. It’s worth it to find these as the levels on the harder path are the best in the game in my opinion.

Boss battles in Wild Blue are also great and might be the most enjoyable part of the game to me overall, for the most part. The bosses have over the top dialogue similar to Star Fox but their patterns were fun and each one had their own theme and many had multiple phases which provided a solid challenge.

Cons

So unfortunately, I do think Wild Blue Skies tries to play it too safe and feels too familiar to Star Fox for its own good. The game even follows the same story beats as Star Fox and let’s just say some things will look or feel very familiar as players get to them.

I also feel at times, certain sections of a level were perhaps a bit too narrow. For example, to find one of the branching paths, you have to fly through a series of waterfalls (a nod to flying through the stone arcs in Star Fox 64). Due to how narrow the section is however, it can be quite annoying to get through if you’re trying to go for a harder path run.

The game also features all range sections similar to Star Fox but, unfortunately they aren’t nearly as fun. The game feels much slower in these sections and I often found my teammates getting slaughtered because the game doesn’t do the best job or telling you they’re being attacked in these levels compared to others. There’s also not as much maneuverability as things like somersaults or u-turn don’t exist. The game also has rival fighter pilots similar to Star Wolf during these sections. Unfortunately these guys are kind of pushovers.

Lastly, while the gameplay is solid, it doesn’t set itself apart enough from Star Fox the way other recent games such as Rogue Flight or FUR Squadron did.

Final Thoughts

Wild Blue Skies is a solid homage to Star Fox 64 overall. It’s visuals are fantastic and it’s gameplay controls well and is fun overall. Unlike other recent rail shooters however, the game doesn’t do enough to step out of the shadow of Star Fox, nor does it really seem to try to. If you don’t have a Switch but want a Star Fox style experience, it’s still worth checking out however.

Wild Blue Skies was reviewed on PS5. Wild Blue Skies will launch on August 13th 2026 for PS5, PC and Xbox Series platforms. Thank you to Chulai Labs and Balor Games for providing a code for the game.