Star Fox: Assault

THE BAD:
Shallow gameplay.

Lackluster story.

Painful voice acting.

Clunky controls.

Short, SHORT length.

Lame graphics.

SUMMARY:
The Star Fox series is old, but it hasn't seen many incarnations over the years. With only one game on the SNES, one game on the N64, and now two games on the GC, it doesn't feel like this franchise has lived up to its potential yet.

Star Fox Assault could have been something great. It SHOULD have been something great. But it’s not.


Don’t worry about any back-story here. All you need to know is that you have a spaceship and you need to blow up other spaceships.

The game opens up with a neat battle sequence, but it’s soon ruined with amateur directing and horrendous voice acting. Meet your team mates. They’ll be talking to you during your missions. By that I mean they’ll be talking NONSTOP throughout the entire game. They never shut up. It doesn’t help that the voice acting in this game is worse than what you’ll find in Saturday morning cartoons on kids WB. Replacing the excellent voice actors from Star Fox Adventures are no-name nobodies that seem to have been pulled off the stage of a local highschool Romeo and Juliet play.

Before each mission you have to suffer through a briefing screen where two characters appear and disappear to be replaced with other characters so they can say their bit and disappear to be replaced by yet another character. Watch and be amazed as your ear cries from the rampant over and under acting and the wild hand gestures thrown out by the poorly rendered characters on the screen.

Speaking of graphics, this game looks like poop. No longer are we graced with absolutely stunning visuals of Star Fox Adventures. In its stead, we have these sub-par graphics that seem to have been excreted by an early PS2 game. Characters are poorly detailed, as are the bland and boring environments.

Environments, as bland as they are, can now be explored on foot. In certain levels you run around on foot and blast enemies up close with some less-than-exciting weapons. Or you can hop into a slow Landmaster tank and shoot up enemies with a very slow cannon.

These foot levels are chaotic and clunky as you furiously attempt to figure out where you are, what you’re supposed to do, and what the hell is shooting at you. Fox is slow and maneuvers more like a tank at times instead of a fox. Jumping is practically useless, and the claustrophobic camera can make it difficult to make sense of the action a lot of the time. This is no Devil May Cry.

Weapons are in short supply. There aren’t that many weapons to make use of, and some of them are just useless, like the grenade or land mine. The ones that are useful are limited with short supplies of ammo. Your standard blaster has unlimited ammo, but it fires very slowly and really only serves as a fallback when you run out of ammo for the better weapons.

Despite the series being all about flying and shooting, the on foot missions make up nearly half of the game. But that’s okay because the Arwing bits aren’t all the great either. Enemies are basically brain dead and don’t do much except move, shoot at you, then move again. Fast and furious dogfighting action!? Look elsewhere. In this game you’ll spend most of your time just flying around and tapping the A button faster than humanly possible to blow up countless laser-fodder.

And yeah, that’s pretty much the entire game.


Gameplay: 3. There is some oldschool shooting action here but there’s also a lot of crap. The strictly flying levels are the best part of the game but there’s so little of it. The on foot missions are slow, boring, and repetitive and the brain-dead enemies don’t put up much challenge; their main tactic is overwhelm you with numbers and hopefully the poor graphics and camera will distract you while their attacks pile up. There is some variety here, but all forms of gameplay are boring. I would have been more satisfied with JUST flying and shooting.

Control: 2. Whether flying or on foot, the controls are always clunky and slow. There’s not much for you to do aside from tapping the A button more than you really want to.

Story: 1. It’s in there somewhere, but don’t bother looking for it. Cutscenes are better when skipped and the same goes for the atrocious dialog sequences.

Graphics: 2. Not nearly as good as Star Fox Adventures, nor is it on par with any other decent GC games on the market. It would be nice if there was some style here to make up for the lack of substance, but there’s not.

Sound: 1. I mentioned the appalling voice acting, right? In addition to the VA’s that are constantly in your ear, the game’s sound effects are a mixed up menagerie of generic blasting sounds and explosions. The voice acting, bad enough already, is always highly compressed and muffled. It sounds like the characters are talking with blankets on their faces.

Lifespan: 1. I beat all of the missions in under 3 hours. There are other difficulties to play through, medals to earn, and some unlockables, but, why bother? This game barely qualifies as a rental.

FunFactor: 2. Lame controls, boring missions, useless story, practically no length, and no real replay value.


Star Fox Assault could have been the Star Fox game for the next generation. Instead it falls flat on its face and underwhelms in every imaginable category. Namco has pumped out MUCH better flying experiences than this. You should look into them.

1.7 out of 5.

THE BAD:
The new on-foot all range mode missions drag the game down with a control scheme that may be too much for some.

It's pretty short, with only 10 missions, about half of them are Arwing missions only. Sure you can fly the Arwings in some of the on foot missions, but only for a little while. Then it's back on foot.

Voices aren't that good. The character's personalities seem to change often, so nothing's really "balanced".

SUMMARY:
After about 2 years, the classic action of Starfox and Starfox 64 returns to the Nintendo GameCube with more shooting than there is fetch questing and exploring dungeons. Starfox Assault, developed by Namco using the Triforce arcade board, originally began as a multiplayer arcade game but was soon to be the next installment of the Starfox franchise. With the evil emperor Andross defeated, his destined heir, whom is also his nephew, Andrew Oikonny, wants to continue what his Uncle started. Starfox arrives on the scene and this is where the game begins. The first mission has you in classic Starfox 64 style, with a fleet (more like armada actually) of enemies coming your way. Your teammates come in handy to drop power-ups such as bombs and shield restoration pickups, that is when you save them from Oikonny’s drones however. The space section eventually leads toward the lush jungle planet, Fortuna, and let me tell you, even though this isn’t the GameCube’s best looking game, it sure is pretty to look at. Moving at 60 frames per second in high resolution, the frame-rate rarely drops and that makes the action fast and fluid. As in Starfox fashion, you eventually meet up with Oikonny for a “boss battle” that’s oddly reminiscent to the big ape himself, Andross. Once you “ironically” defeat him, that’s when the Starfox team meets the real main enemy, these alien beings from another universe on the alternate plane called the Aparoids. They’re just really big robotic bugs. And this is where Starfox’s mission begins. To defeat all Aparoids at all costs and maintain the universe’s peace.

Starfox Assault is mainly built off of 2 game structure modes. An on rails shooter and an all range mode where a variety of weapons and vehicles are available for your disposal. The on-rails shooter levels are the most fun to play, reminiscent of Starfox 64 as you constantly blast your way through hordes of enemies to reach the boss and rack up high points and uncover hidden secrets. The second structure mode, All Range Mode, takes the Starfox 64’s all range mode to a whole new level. Fox now runs around on foot armed with a multitude of weapons, including a chargeable blaster, machine gun, sniper rifle and (!!!) rocket launcher. For those of you who remember Rare’s Nintendo 64 title Jet Force Gemini, it will seem familiar, since all you’re doing is killing enemies to achieve high scores and rack up on combos. Fox can also pilot his Arwing for aerial combat and ride in the newly designed Landmaster tank for when you feel like you’re overwhelmed with enemies. The controls for the on-foot missions are pretty loose, as I use the dual-stick option for it’s more first person shooter-like controls. Usually the main objectives for the foot missions are to just destroy a certain amount of targets and usually the occasional boss battle at the end. The all range mode missions are fun in their own right, but I’m sure everyone just wanted to fly instead of going around blasting things. Ironically, there are more all range mode missions than flying on-rail missions, which makes Starfox Assault a bit less replayable than it’s predecessor. Sure, going around blasting enemies with a gatling gun maybe fun, but I’d rather fly than to run any day.

The game’s main mode is the Story mode, where those who wanted the branching path mode that was favored in Starfox 64 will be highly disappointed. The story moves along pretty smoothly, with random plot twists and something what I like to call, “all of a sudden” scenarios that don’t really make sense with the actual story itself. The characters each have their distinctive personality, and while the voices aren’t bad, they just aren’t really that involving. Fox is the usual heroric type, Slippy the annoying one, Falco the cocky badass who doesn’t care about anything, and Krystal the psychic telepath girl. But who really needs telepathy when you’re in a spaceship? Your teammates are essentially useless in some missions, leaving themselves “defenseless” and you risking your ass to save them. There were times where I am on foot blasting away at enemies, only to have one of my teammates cry for help in the air. That means I have to stop what I’m doing, haul ass to the Arwing and hope to save them in time. It’s annoying. Real annoying.

The graphics are indeed great, however I don’t see how flying missions can be 60 frames and foot missions cut down to 30. It really hurts the eyes at times, but there’s always a lot going on during the missions, and it really makes you feel like you’re part of some big battle. The music is also great as well, with epic orchestral tracks fitting the nature of the scenario. Like said earlier, voices are on par, they’re not great, but they do their justice. The characters say some things that seem forced, while others are just babbles about nothing. Either way it’s still enjoyable to hear them talk amongst themselves.

Once you complete a mission, you can go back to it in the Mission mode, where you can set high scores to get medals and search for hidden stuff to unlock. The game also has a less than stellar Survival mode once you complete the game. There’s no saving between levels, making it a straight forward sit-down arcade game. It may sound like a good idea on paper, but when you try to do it, you’d better have a lot of free time on your hands.

Assault also has a multiplayer mode filled with a multitude of options and goodies. While it’s not deep, it appears to be a fun experience with a multitude of arenas, weapons and characters each with their own statistics. I haven’t tried it for myself yet, but I’m sure it’s just something fun to pick up and play when friends are around.

Overall, Starfox Assault is a good game in it’s own right. But if Namco would’ve taken the Starfox 64 approach with more flying missions and less on foot missions, and the option to choose your own path, this game would’ve been stellar. It’s just too bad a forgettable story, unnecessary plot twists and on-foot missions hold this game back from being as fun as Starfox 64. At least Slippy’s voice isn’t that much annoying this time around.

THE BAD:
They say that the voices Suck-well, they kinda do, but if you put up with it you should get used to it in time and they also said their would be a co-op mode, well their isn't, which was kinda disappointing, but not all that bad, also the game is kinda short, but it is still a great game nonetheless

SUMMARY:
This game just plain Rocks, I could probably sit here typing all day and still not mention all the good things about this game, how else could it get a best seller award (at least mine says it is), Although I would like to mention how awesome the storyline is and then there is the highly strategic vs. mode and then there's the wide variety of weapons and...

THE BAD:
There's almost nothing wrong with the game that's worth mentioning, except the fact that you can't change the options >.<

SUMMARY:
Overall, this game is worth the money. If you're a fan of Halo, and James Bond games, you'll love this. It's really great, so buy it...today.

THE BAD:
Well....uhh...the voices and the game length it is only 10 missions long (but the levels are kinda confusing at points if your not a quick reader. and the graphics on the characters are not the greatest but not horrible
Too many main characters die in this game it was sorta disappointing

SUMMARY:
Well i think its the best starfox game yet and the multiplayer is great you can unlock new characters like Wolf O'Donnel (leaader of star wolf)
and there is a classic game on it that you can unlock by getting 10 silver medals
(get a silver on each level)
its called XEVIOUS
THe graphics on the levels and details are great but as i mentioned the characters leave alot to be desired
and you can register it at my nintendo at nintendo.com
but you have to be a registered member to to do so they usually give you stuff if you register enuff games
well uhh yeah thats about as much as im gonna tell you because well i've only beaten it once and i just only got it after skool

THE BAD:
the voices are terrible, the scripts are acompanied with bad acting, too damn childish. only 2 vehicles??

SUMMARY:
Starfox 64 came out maybe when i was 12/13. i`m 19 and got this game cause SF64 is STILL an awesome game to pick up and play...but this, voices SUCK, everyone`s helpless, it`s too damn hard to control fox on the ground, and it`s overall...childishly scripted. SF64 really came out as more of a game for teens to enjoy as well as kids alike...this one...i might as well grab a bottle of baby formula when i`m playing...

The arwing flies nicely BUT where are my double blue, rapid fire lasers? The landmaster sucks cause it only fires a missle type shot. no repeated fire like in 64. they got rid of the submarine from SF64 and this thime i was hoping for MORE vehicles. fox has a nice weapon scheme of the ground. i counted maybe 6 total in the second level? pertty cool but a little hard to control. overall not bad ground battles...

The bad guys voice sounds like a pre-pubesent schoolboy. peppy sounds like he`s 35 instead of 60 like he looks, i`m pretty sure slippy is gay, and fox...his voice is ok, but the scripts for the voices are terrible and topped off with bad acting.."let`s GO team." please....

The graphics are crisp and polished. i WAS impressed by that. the levels are very expansive and each one seems to have a boss battle so far.

I miss SF64. i cant call this a true sequel. i think that this one is too kid-oriented....but offers some cool things in it`s own. i think with a better cast, more weapons for the landmaster and arwing, more vehicles all together....this game COULD have been an instant hit..

Not a $50 worthy game...but $29-39 yes...just rent it first before you commit...