Genre: Action
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft

Targeted for the contemporary Nickelodeon and Disney channel-watching children's audience, Starlink's smoothly rounded pre-rendered CGI character designs are tacky. The bolted-on "Starfox" crew are faithfully reproduced however, and the surrealistic "No Man's Sky"-influenced planet surface aesthetics are effectively alien. It's too bad that the overall art direction is so dependent on flooding the screen with gratuitous "god rays" and other exaggerated superficialities.

The writing and consequent voice acting is out of countless, utterly cliched modern-day kid's movies, and is best left forgotten. The soundtrack is composed by some guy named Trevor Yuile, who apparently does music for commercials and television shows. His work is predictably awful. The game's aural department does have a saving throw though: combat sound effects, especially in outer space-- humorously, where there shouldn't be any noise-- are pleasantly echoey.

As a dime-a-dozen Ubisoft open world game, Starlink involves traversing between map icons, and repeating one of about five tasks over and over. Fortunately, the player's ship can toggled between hover and flying modes, the latter of which is reminiscent of games like the 3DO's "Star Fighter"! It's initially odd to be operating a spacecraft with third-person shooter controls, but in the end it proves itself. Optional plastic toys, attachable to the joy-cons, can be used for ship and weapon swapping, adding an extra "real life" dimension to the proceedings.

Starlink is an Ubisoft title with a space vehicle wallpaper on it. Its mileage will vary, depending on how much the player enjoys space. As someone whose childhood was reared on games like "Wing Commander", this reviewer found raiding pirate frigates and storming planet-side bastions to be a refreshing departure from other entries in this genre-- enough to partially overcome the rather obnoxiously feminized production values, storyline, and character designs. There is also split-screen co-op support-- noble, but claustrophobic, as the players are tethered to a tight proximity.