"Star Fox returns to some of it's roots"

The Star Fox series has been around for 13 years now, but there are only 4 games in total. Assault is the fourth game in the series and comes off the heels of the not so great Adventures game. Assault returns to mainly flying the Arwing and blasting enemies, as opposed to hitting dinosaurs with a magical staff. The return to the Star Fox roots was a good move, but the addition of new game modes and not being able to select different paths hinders the progress of the game.

Fun Factor - 7/10

After being treated to a short intro video that shows off the beautiful graphics of the game, you get to jump right into some great old school Arwing action that will take you back to the good ol' days of Star Fox 64 and the original SNES game. Right off the bat you'll have to save Slippy from some enemies. Sadly friendly fire is turned off, so no matter how many times you shoot him, he won't go down. Before the end of the first level, you get treated to the first plot twist of the game. Sadly this is where the game slowly starts to decline. The second level is exclusively Landmaster and Pilot mode. It's also an all-range level (as all are with the Landmaster and Pilot levels). The Landmaster can be a bit hard to control sometimes and the Pilot mode, while having a bunch of different weapons, can get just plain annoying. Instead of dying in the Landmaster and starting a new life, you just jump out and have to find another Landmaster, usually placed somewhere near your current location. Dying in the game can also get annoying quickly. There are no marked checkpoints in the game and several times you'll find yourself at the very beginning after working on a level for about 15 minutes. Some of the levels are so huge that it takes a while to cross them or to find your objectives. While the big levels are good for massive multiplayer, the game only supports up to four people at a time. In mission 9 you'll find yourself going up several ramps only to blow up an objective, than have to run back down all of them, cross a huge walkway and find the next tower than has several more ramps to run up and back down again.

The game is set up into ten different missions, all in chronological order. Many of the levels have more than one part to them. One second you may be running around shooting enemies with your rocket launcher and Landmaster, the next one on the wing of a teammate shooting as many enemies as possible and than finally in your Arwing launching bombs into the boss. While the multi-part missions do give you a little break during your mission to rest a short bit with a cut scene, there's no real point to them. It makes some of the levels too long. If you're a slow player one level may take you up to half an hour to complete. There is no variety is the flight plan, so you'll be playing the same ten missions over and over again.

Controls and Gameplay - 8/10

The controls work well with the game. The Arwing controls are basically the same as Star Fox 64, but the loops have been simplified to simply hitting the C-stick. These are the best controls (as they should be) out of the three modes. The Landmaster controls can become a bit tricky at times. The hover function on the tank can be a bit hard to control and it's next to impossible to hit an enemy with the canon if it's right next to it. The tank is slower than it should be, but the body can be used to destroy enemies by doing a barrel roll into them. The Pilot controls work similar to the Landmaster's controls. The jump function serves almost no purpose other than to jump on boxes. There's always a ramp up or down to follow. The variety of weapons is great, but one you find one that works for you, you'll stick to it always. The grenades are hard to make them land where you want and there's a greater chance that you'll step on your own mine instead of the enemy. The blaster takes forever to charge up, and some enemies require you to charge it all the way up to damage them. The transitions from one mode of transport to another works well for being the first attempt at it. Simply press a button and you're in a vehicle or on foot. There are also a few times where you get to ride the wing of a teammate. The only controls are point and shoot. You also have unlimited bullets, so all you really have to do is point. While this is fun the first couple times, it gets old fast. You have to point behind the craft to blow up incoming missiles then quickly turn and shoot down an enemy craft. The problem is Fox doesn't like to turn fast. It takes forever to turn and after destroying a wave you'll only have a few seconds to look at the radar and figure out where the next enemies are. You can also aim at your teammate and get a few funny words, but you can't take them down.

Many of the missions require you to go on foot or in the Landmaster and blow up several different objectives in different places. This gets repetitive fast. You'll find yourself searching high and low trying to find the next objective. If it's your first time through it's near impossible to find where some of them are. If it's your second time around it's simple and boring. While you're crossing ground to get to the next objective you'll find several enemies will just appear out of thin air to attack you. You might see a clear path to where you're going, look at the radar to figure out where in the next objective is and look back to find yourself surrounded by enemies. The bosses of the missions are much better than the levels themselves. You're not supposed to fight one boss while on foot, which is a plus. The final level goes back to the straight flying and shooting of the older Star Fox games. This was a great move ending the game with an Arwing exclusive, straight flight level. Sadly though Assault breaks the tradition of making Andross the final battle. A downside to the Arwing levels however is the lack of power-ups. You'll find only three laser upgrades (if you're lucky) in the whole level. If you take too much damage and lose a wing, you probably will not find a ship repair and have to fly crocked the rest of the level. You'll also find if you die to a boss after getting beat down all level that you'll have to fight it with the basic single-laser. There is also a lack of silver rings and what feels like only one gold ring per level.

The way you score your hits have been revamped too. Instead of getting extra points for defeating the most enemies as possible in one blast, you get extra hits for defeating a whole wave of enemies, regardless of the number of shots fired. This makes the charged shot almost useless because you can just hammer away at the A button and get the bonus points. There is also only one way to complete a mission. Instead of completing a mission and going one way or accomplishing a mission and going another way, you can only complete a mission. There are also no more warps, because there are no more selectable flight paths.

Storyline - 8/10

While there is a better attempt at a storyline than past Star Fox shooters, it lacks in a few places. The game starts with a great plot twist and continues with a few more. There are no more plot twists until mission 9, and that's the last one. Assault also adds many cut scenes during the missions as well, instead of just before each one. Each mission starts with a briefing telling you your objectives and motivation for each level. In between the different parts of each mission level is a short cut scene to transition to a boss fight or the next part of the level. This makes the storyline flow better during the game.

The story itself consists of parasitic alien mechanical bugs, the Aparoids, that are attempting to take over the world. Each level you search for a way to defeat them or liberate a planet from their control. As you continue with your search you'll run into Star Wolf several times, sometimes fighting them and sometimes working with them. While there's still hostilities between Falco and Leon, Fox and Wolf seem to come to some understanding about each other and it almost feels Wolf is supposed to be the father figure for Fox. You continue until you reach the Aparoid home world. Here is the final showdown between team Star Fox and the Aparoid Queen.

Graphics - 9/10

The graphics are by far the best in the series. There are many times that you could just sit back and look at what's going on around you instead of completing your mission. The snow level is supposed to be hard to see because of all the snow, and it is. The raging snow storm can make it hard to see where you're going, and you may have to look at your radar more than the screen itself. The Sauria, Corneria and Aparoid Home World are so huge that you can explore and look around for a few hours. The better graphics can make it a little difficult to determine where the weak spots are. The cut scenes all look great, but there are not nearly enough action scenes.

The Arwings and Landmasters are the best looking crafts in the series. They look crisp and not just polygons. In Corneria there are many locations that look burned and the smoke looks 3D. A broken bridge reveals its structural support sticking out where the concrete has been blown off. Buildings have chunks missing out of them that expose burned and shinged insides. A few downsides include not being able to damage the environment. No mater how many times you shoot at a wall, there will be no dents.

Sound - 10/10

The soundtrack is one of the best for a GameCube game. All ten missions are fully orchestrated and fit right in with what is going on in the level. If you prefer a more techno sound and hate orchestra than multi-player mode is what you want. Each multi-player level has its own techno music to expand the soundtrack. Assault also has the best arrangement of Wolf's Theme ever made. You might find yourself hitting pause just so you can listen to some of the great music.

The sound effects in Assault are also great. Each weapon sounds different and sounds like it's supposed to. Explosions sound much better than the high pitched whistle in Star Fox 64. The voice acting is bad in few places and most the time it's rather good. There are not however any sound effects that stand out. Many of them are, while different, are on the same sound level. The rocket launcher is just as loud as the blaster. The default sound has the music louder than the sound effects. You may have to adjust your levels to bring out the sound, but if you enjoy music you might be content the way they have it set up.

Replay Ability - 9/10

Star Fox: Assault has a few bonuses for doing certain things. Obtaining all the silver medals on each level (which will take several attempts in the first place) will allow you to play Xevious, an old game from 1990 on the NES by Namco. Obtaining all the Bronze level medals rewards you with nothing at all. They are rather easy to get and possible to obtain on the first play through. Mastering the levels and obtaining all the gold medals, a near impossible task, nets you the reward of a job well done. That's right, you get nothing for beating all the levels with a gold medal, but get all the silver medals and get an unlockable game. You can not get all three medals in one try either. You must complete at least 3 run throughs to get all 30 medals, without screwing up. Beating all the levels without letting a teamate die results in being able to use Wolf in multi-player. Getting all the S-Flags in each level unlocks the Demon Sniper mode in multi-player. This is basically a super sniper gun that allows for one hit kills. All the other multi-player unlockables are obtained simply by playing multi-player matches. Similar to Super Smash Bros.: Melee, you must play hundreds of matches to unlock everything, exactly 260 matches to unlock everything.

If you're looking to go back through the whole game after beating everything, you'll probably only play a few levels. Out of the ten missions only about 3 or 4 of them are worth playing through again. The three medal levels do add some replay value to the game, but not being able to collect all three at in the same run hurts. You'll find however that the bosses and enemies get harder in silver and gold level. The most noticeable differences are in the gold level during the final battle. The Aparoid Queen will use different and harder to dodge attacks than in the silver and bronze level. You may not notice that much of a difference in the bronze and silver levels, but the gold levels are much harder to beat.

One of the bad things about the replay ability is the long mission levels and no real need to play through the story mode more than once. Once you beat the story mode you can play any mission on any level and get the medal. While it's nice to be able to just play that one level you can't get that one medal on, it takes away from the overall experience. Being able to pick your path and always being able to go a different way allowed players to play through the same levels over and over again, without really tiring of them. If you're missing your medal on Sector Z you can take several routes to it until you get its medal. In Assault you just play the same tiring level over and over again you get it or you quit. The story mode will take only about 3 hours to get through, but once you beat it on silver mode you have no real incentive to continue playing it.

The multi-player is the best in the Star Fox series. Unlike Star Fox 64 the Landmaster and Pilot modes stand a chance against the Arwing. The best fighting is still done in the Arwing exclusive levels, but mixing it up with the other modes keeps it fresh. The music is also vastly different from the story mode. A techno soundtrack takes over for the orchestra in multi-player. The more multi-player matches you play, the more you unlock, so the more matches the better.

Closing Statements

Star Fox: Assault takes what the previous Star Fox games did for the Arwing levels and graphically make them better looking. It takes the Landmaster levels and destroys the old ways to make way for the mission, objective based levels. These levels stray from the Star Fox tradition and follow a more Adventures approach. While the addition of a more extensive storyline is nice, it does not focus on Andross and his domination of the Lylat system. The removal of the different paths was a horrible move, but is still somewhat bearable. While the addition of the mission parts is a plus, it make the mission too long and near impossible to play through all the levels in one sitting. It does have the best multi-player out of the game, but for story mode Star Fox 64 still reigns supreme.

Score Recap:

Fun Factor - 7/10
Controls and Gameplay - 8/10
Storyline - 8/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 10/10
Replay Ability - 9/10

Final Score - 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/24/06