The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product. All opinions are my own.
I’ve had a long history of playing Flight Simulators. The games I have logged probably the most time in when I was a kid were the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and so on. It had been quite a while since anything has scratched the itch of flying a spaceship with full freedom of movement through a star field being chased by enemies.
Starlink, created by Ubisoft, does a pretty good job giving the player a fun flight sim experience. In addition, the game also has a “toy” element to it. A specialized controller comes packed with the game that allows you to mount a ship to it with a character. One of the cool things about this is that there is a tie in with the Star Fox fame franchise. I immediately popped the Starlink Fox McCloud figurine into the ship and started playing.
The game unfolded showing the main characters cut scenes however once you get into the gameplay, all the dialog is tailored to integrating the StarFox characters into the game.
Other than characters, the modular design of the toys allows you to swap weapons on the fly! As you connect the new components on the physical controller, you can see the changes reflected instantaneously in the game. As you encounter enemies out in the game you’ll find that different enemies of different weaknesses, like fire or ice. Once you figure out what they are weak to swap out your weapons. Your ship still fires a standard laser as well but the specialized weapons make taking down some tough baddies.
The game features an open world. It is guided in early stages though so you don’t get too turned around. But it is immense featuring plenty of gameplay with smooth controls.
Starlink is available now from Best Buy for the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One.