I just got it this morning. Graphics are good, bright and engaging, voice acting's good. I haven't played through it all yet (keep getting my butt kicked at Titania), but the levels I've played have been alright. Nothing astonishing, but not bad either. I really dislike the control scheme, but you all knew I wouldn't dig the gyro controls anyway. It just feels clunky to me, like I'm spending more time fighting the controls then the enemies. I assume it will get better with practice, but I don't feel like the fights will be any more engaging for having them either. I'm too busy looking back and forth between the screens to notice much of anything else. The walker vehicle is obnoxious to control as well.
MINOR SPOILERS: (I dunno how to do a spoiler cut :/ ) So far the only level I've played so far I legitimately didn't like was the Gyro-Wing level on Zoness. It was disappointing to me to have it all take place inside the base- Zoness was one of my favorite levels in Star Fox 64. The giant toxic ocean, with a great sense of scale with the huge ships and massive serpent monsters leaping from the water you could fly around. The music was epic and really set the mood, especially when the characters talk about the ecological disaster that happened there. It was really different from the rest of the game, and exciting because of it, something I was looking forward to seeing in HD. Alas, instead we got a slow paced, stealth drone stage, where you fly the most uninteresting vehicle around, dropping an obnoxious little robot on a too short tether to mash it's face into security panels to interact with them. It's depressingly dull, and really doesn't do the planet any justice when coming from the previous game.
It's weird they changed Sector X, Y and Z to Sector A and B; didn't really seem to be a reason to arbitrarily change their names. Also a little annoyed with some of the dialogue changes, where they changed lines from the older games just for the sake of them being different. "All ships report." changed to "All ships check in." which just sounds weird because military-like peeps 'report' they don't 'check in' like children calling home? I dunno, it feels like they changed things up just so they'd be different, which to me isn't a good enough reason. Like I get that it's a new game and wasn't intended to be a straight remake/rehash, but if you're going to use dialogue lines that are nearly word for word like that, it's really bizarre to just tweak one word instead of leaving it as is.
END SPOILERS
So far, it's a good game. I personally feel like it would have been better if they'd spent more time making more engaging cut scenes, dialogue and story, with awesomely epic battles, rather then try to force a 'neat' control setup that would take a lot of extra planning and design around it. It seems like Nintendo just really wanted to show off the game pad, which I get, I just wish they would've chosen some other series's future to hang their awful gyro controlled hopes on. I just hope to god Nintendo doesn't balk from making future Star Fox games if this one doesn't do well- I've waited my whole life for HD Star Fox, it'll just kill me if I don't get more because of the lame gyro controls!
