Star Fox Assault - Every Gamer Review

So after that...game, I had high hopes for this game I'm reviewing today. Could this game be a better sequel to Star Fox 64?

Star Fox: Assault (スターフォックス アサルト Sutā Fokkusu Asaruto), developed by Namco and published by Nintendo, it was released in 2005 worldwide. Wait...Namco? Why Namco? Actually, considering the gameplay, it sort of makes sense, and I'll explain later.

Set one year after Star Fox Adventures (Oh God, its canon?), Andross's nephew, Andrew Oikonny, is taking leadership of his army and is attacking Cornerian Army. So the Star Fox team is ready for a dogfight. The team of course consist of Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi, Krystal, Slippy Toad. Peppy Hare is here but has since retired from piloting but instead is a guide for the team, along with a robot pal, ROB (Ey). They manage to defeat Oikonny but are suddenly attacked by the Aparoid, robot alien species that can destroy anything in their path, which leads to them finding out who they are, where they came from and make sure that the Aparoid invasion ends as soon as possible.

In terms of the story, it's not too bad; it gives me a vibe of a Saturday morning cartoon (Remember the Star Fox Zero cartoon? So good!) Surprisingly there were some dark moments but everything is all right, it's Nintendo after all.

So in terms of gameplay, it's Star Fox, you use your Arwing to shoot down enemies and use bombs and barrel rolls and all sorts of tricks with the GameCube C stick...Slippy still needs help though at least he gives you health so he's not entirely useless...when you save him that is. Now remember how I said that Namco developing this game made sense? Well this game kind of feels very arcadey, even more than the previous game (Adventures doesn't count). Though that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Heck, there was supposed to be an arcade game based on this game, though this was a rumour so this may or may not have been a thing at one point, but it makes sense. The flying sections are fun overall, it's the one thing I missed from Adventures...I mean there were there but not as good as Star Fox 64 or the original 2 Star Fox games.

And then...there are the third-person sections. DAMMIT NINTENDO, WE DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS...though compared to Adventures I would rather play these sections ten times in a row. Yep, once again, Fox can get out of his ship and walk around and shoot down enemies. He starts with a default Blaster, charge it up for massive damage. Fox can also collect other weapons like a machine gun, homing launcher, grenades, etc.

So what do I think of these levels? Clunky, not the most responsive controls ever at times they're not in your favour, especially when tougher enemies approach. Sure, there's strafing, but it's awkward, I have a variety of weapons but I always use either the blaster or grenade anyway and sometimes the machine gun to take down multiple weak enemies and the sniper rifle when I really need to use it.

Though the most annoying part, though it's in one level, is when a teammate in the air is attacked by flying enemies and they ask you for help and you're on the ground and your weapons can't do nothing to help, and the Arwing or the Landmaster is not available, so the pilot has to retreat, THAT MAKES NO SENSE! And there are times when you want to get in a vehicle but it lands on a higher surface that you can't reach. Thank goodness there's other ways. But that doesn't mean I entirely hate the ground levels, because at least there's stuff to do and it's fun despite the issues.

But hey, at least you get the Landmaster; it's not on-rails so you have more freedom in the ground. You can hover and shoot down enemies and for what I have to do in the game, I don't have too much of an issue with the Landmaster and it controls well.

So you have three types of gameplay and whilst 1 of them is flawed, I feel they gel well when experiencing this game, you don't get more of or less of, you get a good balance of three but my favourite is of course the Arwing levels. Actually, I almost forgot about the fourth gameplay style, the shooting galley moments, there are two throughout, where you shoot enemies on a plane that the other pilot is flying. It's fun but if I had a G-Con it would have been more fun.

I think the characters are OK, with Slippy Toad being annoying again, but Fox McCloud has an awesome voice...when it's just right. But the Wolf Team ARE AWESOME, I just love the Wolf O' Donnell character, as well as Panther Caroso...Leon's alright. The game world has that fun cheesy flair to it, once again bringing up that Saturday morning cartoon feel to it.

The graphics...surprisingly is a little worse than Adventures, not as detailed as that game but the level design is good...OK Adventures fans, the graphics and level design is much better in that game so you get a point for that and THAT'S IT! But hey, it still has the Star Fox feel to it and it feels like a Star Fox game and isn't trying to be anything else.

As for the music, it's fantastic, I love most of the tracks, the updated Star Fox theme from 64 is just so good to listen to, it has that Thunderbirds feel to it...and considering Miyamoto's inspirations, that makes a whole lot of sense. And then there's Star Wolf's theme, by far the best piece of music of the entire Star Fox, so epic, so memorable, and it was good enough to be in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Overall, Star Fox: Assault is a decent enough welcome back to form even if there are some differences to the original games (minus Adventures). I feel it had the potential to be best Star Fox game if it had a bit more polish, but what we have is satisfying at best. So I recommend this one, I deem this to be a truer sequel to Star Fox 64.

You can get it on the Nintendo GameCube.

Next time, we switch from console to handheld with Star Fox Command.