"That's enough experimenting"

If it's one thing Nintendo is well known for it is their quality core franchises that have captured a nearly immeasurable amount of success and praise, for example: Mario, Zelda, and even Metroid has captured the hearts of millions. However there lie other franchises that haven't received as much notice due to a lesser amount of games or other reasons that kept them from reaching the demands of such a status. Starfox, the series that has possibly been the underdog for Nintendo longer than any other series and by the looks of the latest installment that may last a while longer yet due to this simple fact: The new game play style introduced to the series just didn't work out that well.

Game play

The fact of this game's game play is both what made it good and what made it not so good. Starting with the good, Starfox: Assault brings back its traditional rail shooting game play and does it well. These stages play very well and bring back what was so fun about the Starfox series. All of the classic elements are back too, the Arwing's lasers can be upgraded twice, your wingmen still need saving like always, and also you can score bonuses for destroying enemy groups and linking combos to heighten your score which if high enough will earn you a medal that will merit some of the game's unlockable secrets if obtained in every mission. But sadly these missions only make up 30% percent of the entire game; the rest involves the on foot missions which are plainly not as entertaining.

As soon as you get comfortable in the Arwing you're forced through the on foot that are lacking due to repeativeness, unrefined controls, and poor level designs. Beginning with the controls, Fox can perform pretty basic moves such as jumping, rolling to dodge attacks, and strafing. The problem is that the trigger for these moves can be somewhat unresponsive (particularly rolling) and turning around is a necessary but slow process that leaves you vulnerable to the many enemies that are constantly surrounding you. The same problems exist with the Land master which although is fun to cause chaos with is a little too hard to climb hills with and has an unnecessarily slow rate of fire. Level design doesn't help compensate for the control either, mainly for small high up paths that are easy to fall off of which can often force you into a dicey situation and forces you to climb all the way back up to where you fell from which gets old real quick. One thing that may have made these missions more tolerable is variety in the mission objectives, unfortunately that's not the case for all the missions involves destroying enemy spawn points.

While these levels can still be entertaining to some degree they'll most likely cause you to yearn for the rail shooting again. It does help that some of the on foot missions incorporate all range flying in which you have to go back and forth between combat zones, but it still doesn't stack up to the rail shooting. Then to add insult to the injury the AI of your wingmen is virtually worthless for whether they are on the ground or in the air you'll find them going around in circles shooting at nothing which may discourage some from protecting them. Also, there are no splitting paths, eliminating the motive to go through the game in different routes which was one of the series great sources of replay. Now to many people this game's saving grace is its multiplayer. The reason is a little difficult to say exactly, but it seems so entertaining to have all the myriad of weapons and vehicles available to you and your friends so you can blow each other up, and to give the multiplayer some depth all the characters have varied stats that determine what vehicle they can operate better and what levels may be better suited for them. Then to add to the already sufficient variety extra weapons, vehicles, characters, maps, and match rules can be unlocked to double what was already a fun multiplayer game. However some may complain that the characters are too small to be used on the huge maps, but the radar is very reliable and shouldn't be hard to get used to.

Visuals

For the most part the graphics are very nice and run at a flawless frame rate, and won't disappoint, save for some ugly texture of the earlier on foot missions, but regardless they look good enough that many probably won't notice. The actual problem is a lot of the character designs and special effects just seem poorly designed and fail to have any real awe about them, but at the same time the FMVs are very well done.

Audio

The soundtrack overall is very well composed and the sound effects are clear, although it seemed that some of the music was a little bit mellow for all the chaos taking place onscreen. Fortunately voice acting has actually been given decent treatment and only one character has an annoying voice… and no, it's not Slippy who now has a tolerable voice which was long since considered a feet that would be impossible to accomplish, but Namco pulled it off. Also, the briefing segments were nicely done with a miminal amount of stupid lines.

Overall

If you're a fan of the series you'll probably love it, if you're new to it it's recommended that you rent it first… providing you don't beat it in that time. What Starfox Assault does succeed in doing is providing a fun experience in small doses but fails to do anything more if you don't get into the multiplayer that is which seems odd considering all the time this game was under development, it really feels it was thrown together in a lot of aspects concerning the single player mode. But the biggest problem of all is the same problem that last installment had: It's not fully a Starfox game. Although it was a good effort by Namco Starfox: Assault fails to bring back the magic that was Starfox 64, and it may be time that Nintendo stopped experimenting with the series' game play and fully returned it to it's original roots. Maybe then the Starfox series may finally be able to start it's path to the infinite notoriety that may of Nintendo's other series has reach.

Over all score: 7.7
Graphics: 8
Audio: 8
Controls: 6
Game play: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/28/05