Shigeru Miyamoto was determined to make a game that took full advantage of the Wii U’s Gamepad. However, the end result is something that is a bit awkward. The gameplay feels dated, but is slightly more advanced than the Lylat Wars gameplay.
The main gameplay style is like an on-rail shooter. You can move horizontally and vertically, but with a limited range as you are moving down corridors. Then there’s “all range mode”, where you have full movement to fly around in a 3D space.
Your main ship is the Arwing, but you also control a Tank, or Gyrocopter on some missions. Sometimes you can press a button to transform, so the Arwing can turn into a Walker. The Gyrocopter are slow paced, and often have you drop down a tethered robot who can fit in small spaces to hack panels.
The story is a retelling of Star Fox 64 where you must defeat the evil scientist Andross; the disembodied ape head. There’s definitely an influence of Star Wars to the space-combat and ship design.
The game is displayed over the TV and Gamepad, and by default you have the Cockpit view on your Gamepad, but the main action camera on the TV. If you want to lock on an enemy, the camera pans out in a view that only really looks good for people watching you play. To actually track and shoot enemies you will have to look at the Cockpit view.
Basically you can't aim properly on TV, but can't see properly on the Gamepad. So it kinda works but kinda doesn't. You can switch the screens with one button press, but it still feels awkward.
There’s a “recalibrate” button which is always a bad sign. As you pan the Gamepad, you may find the reticule becomes off-center, so you have to press a button to recalibrate it.
There’s a Training mode to help you get used to the gameplay. The story mode has fairly short missions and it saves after each one. There’s an unlockable Arcade mode where you have 1 set of lives and no continues, so that is more like the classic Star Fox games.
There’s some voice acting but it's quite childish. Slippy is well known to be annoying, so it’s quite nostalgic that his personality remains here.
Overall, I think Star Fox Zero is okay. It’s a bit awkward to play and feels a bit dated.