"All ships report in!"

Now, if there is one company that takes the cake for weird series concepts, it would be Nintendo. Think about it. You have a plumber who eats mushrooms, shoots fire, and dons invincibility to save damsels in distress from giant lizards at least 3 times his size. Then you have an elf-like human in green who arms all sorts of weapons, like a sword, shield, and boomerang. He saves princesses from treacherous villains through expansive fields and dark, murky dungeons. On top of that, you have a pink creature who inhales enemies to steal their powers and float for an inhumane amount of time. Next is a series which involves catching random creatures from around the world and forcing them to injure each other anytime you happen to get in a battle.

That's all well and good. But when a franchise involves ordinary woodland animals being stockpiled with lethal weapons, grenades, jetpacks, and high-armor tanks being thrown into the driver's seat of Arwings (technologically advanced spaceships) and saving the galaxy from apes, you know that someone took one too many hits off the crack pipe.

I mean, take a look at Team Star Fox here. We have Fox (kind of a 'duh' statement there), who's always willing to do whatever it takes to defend whatever's good. Then we have a female vulpine (who resembles Fox's species) named Krystal. Along that, we have Falco, the trash-talking, arrogant, overly confident Arwing master and Slippy, the toad who's voice is the birth of a million feminine jokes.

Star Fox Assault (henceforth Assault), takes place years after Adventures. Since then, Peppy has officially retired (but he's in this game, relax), and Krystal has taken his place. Former Star Wolf (a group of mercenaries hired to take down Team StarFox) member Andrew Oikonny gathers the remnants of Andross' troops to launch an attack. Some ships have come to stop them, but to no avail. The resistors are easily taken out. When things look their worst, a familiar ship appears on the horizon. It's the Great Fox, the supplier of Landmasters, Arwings, and better yet, Team Star Fox! The group instructs them to "leave those amateurs to us", and they go to take them down themselves. The team rushes down to the stowing of their Arwings. After hopping in and starting communications, the Arwings are commanded to be released into the vast realms of outer space.

It begins with your team voicing several commands back and forth, while you pick up powerups, bombs, and health packs, taking down any enemies that dare cross your path. After greatly reducing enemy numbers, you run into Oikonny himself. Not willing to fight at the moment, Oikonny flees to Fortuna, where you give chase. Take out more enemies, and you once again cross paths with the ignorant ape. Being cornered, Oikonny decides to once and for all destroy StarFox. If you've played and beaten StarFox 64, you should recognize this boss fairly quickly. Fire at the weak points, and use bombs to amplify damage. Oikonny is taken out fairly quickly (all bark and no bite, I see). It's not the end, however, as Oikonny is blasted down to earth from an aparoid. The aparoid nearly blows Krystal out of the air, so you prepare to fight said aparoid. Blast more weak points, watch out for meteors and finish the aparoid off. The aparoid has a Core Memory (reveals information about the aparoids), so Fox goes to collect it. As he does, however, more aparoids like the one you just fought appear on the horizon, so Fox is advised to hurry up and get out of there. Meanwhile, you find out that aparoids appeared about 17-18 years ago, and destroyed an entire fleet of ships. Naturally, your team decides to head out and destroy them all (considering they follow the usual cliche of taking over the universe). And so ends one of the most realistic space missions I've ever witnessed.

Welcome to Star Fox Assault.

A lot of StarFox fans were hoping that Assault would go back and embrace the shooter roots. Assault does just that...halfway. Instead of completely opting for a shooter-based space simulator, Assault mixes onfoot missions with space missions, and absolutely none of it is lackluster. Despite what I've heard from many people, the ratio of onfoot compared to Arwing is just about equal. That said, the majority of your missions will involve a mix of everything, which is probably the best idea.

Both the onfoot missions and the Arwing missions play differently. With the Arwing you don't have much weaponry to fight with, but you can upgrade what you currently have (i.e. Your standard Beam Shot can be charged as well as have its power upgraded up to 3 times), and you have maneuvers at your fingertips such as rolling, looping, and U-Curving. All are useful techniques for whenever you find yourself surrounded by enemies. With onfoot missions, you can perform many moves at the touch of a button and pick up a host of different weapons. These weapons range from the blaster (your standard weapon with infinite ammo), to a machine gun, to grenades, to a sniper rifle, and much more.

Arwing missions are the highlight of the game, and come the closest to adopting the style of the earliest StarFox games. You head into an Arwing and fly to the end of the course to fight whatever happens to be the next boss. During these you can pull off all sorts of stunts to fend off enemy attacks, as well as return fire to end whichever enemies annoy you. Some targets will be more important than others (like bombing the whole group of enemies rather than the two just flying around), but other than that, feel free to blast anything. It's especially important to blast as many enemies as you can, as this boosts your score (and some enemies will suicide themselves from the back if you don't defeat them). Enemies are weak and often go down in a couple of shots, but will gang up on you a lot. This is especially evident in the final Arwing missions, where you will often be tailed by groups of enemies at a time.

Onfoot missions sadly almost always have the same goal (destroy 4-8 hatchers, targets, generators, *insert other synonym for something that revives enemies*) but thankfully can have the basic gameplay tossed up quite a few times. The most common version of this is the ability to hop in a Landmaster (or an Arwing) at any time. The Landmaster controls like any other tank, moves pretty slow, sluggish with turning, but is insanely powerful and takes quite a bit of punishment before biting the dust. Outside of that, it can briefly hover in the air to help target annoying enemies overhead, and roll to the side like weight is nothing. You can also (in a couple of missions) go wingriding, where you stand on the wing of another Arwing and fire at enemies that come by. They don't last so long as to become boring, and appear infrequently enough so you don't grow sick of them.

All of this is commanded with a convenient, userfriendly control scheme. No matter if you are in an Arwing, Landmaster, or onfoot, the controls are easy to pick up. If you've played any decent console FPS/TPS in recent years and you've mastered it, you already know these controls. There's even two more alternate control schemes if you happen to not be a fan of the standard one. Effortlessly traverse the lands of Katina by rolling to the side, strafing, shooting, jumping, and pumping your fist in the air as soon as that annoying target goes down.

If you ask me, the most striking aspect of Assault is its realism. I mean, one onfoot mission has you invading an enemy hideout, destroying machines that constantly respawn enemies. Sure it doesn't sound that real, but when you combine it with some people from the hideout (referred to as 'ruffians') constantly voicing their disgusts at you when you defeat their troops, your own partners calling for help and giving you tips and having to read a special meter every now and then (the meter reads enemy presence around the hideout; when the gauge rises, go out on an Arwing and blast some spaceships until the meter goes back down), it makes for a realistic and satisfying experience.

Only to add to that realism, Assault sports beautiful graphics and great music. While Assault doesn't reach the detail of say, StarFox Adventures, it actually comes pretty close. Arwing missions in space have never looked better, as the whole solar system is brimmed with detail. Pass by an asteroid belt and gape in awe as you notice the fully detailed craters planted inside the asteroid. Fight StarWolf and notice incredibly well-made laser effects while Wolf swoops and loops around your Arwing. Destroy a whole mess of aparoids with a machine gun and notice how beautiful disassembled machine-bugs can be. The amazing fur effects in Adventures is sadly only present in the cutscenes, but that's only a minor drawback.

If that weren't enough, Assault boasts a deep, well-played soundtrack. The first time you encounter StarWolf, you'll realize you may never hear a more beautiful rendition of the classic theme. A lot of missions boast intense music for when you head deep into enemy territory. Don't forget the nerve-wracking boss introduction and battle theme. Some songs are so good you just want to goof around in the stage so you can hear the ear-candy as long as you want. Voicework is surprisingly kind of good. While Slippy's is as annoying as ever (but is a major improvement over his voice in the '64 version, and thankfully has ONE thing right, he doesn't open his mouth much at all) and I'm not entirely fond of Leon's new tone, the rest don't sound bad at all. Sure they sound different, but it doesn't affect the game nearly as much as you think. Some of the new characters (like newest StarWolf member Panther Caroso) sound incredibly badass and have their voices suit them perfectly.

On the easiest of three difficulty levels (Bronze), Assault will last the average player about 6-8 hours. Before that worries you, though, the higher difficulty levels offer better, longer experiences (some fights are blisteringly difficult). Silver isn't too hard, but isn't too easy, either. It's basically there if Gold was too hard and Bronze was too easy. Some of the fights are more intense, and enemies are a little smarter. Gold difficulty will provide a challenge even for the most masterful of gamers, and can be the best experience of the game possible (if you don't mind throwing controllers and ripping your hair out, that is).

Don't think it stops with singleplayer, though. There's an extraordinary multiplayer experience to be had here. It basically runs off of a deathmatch formula, where you hunt down your opponents and shoot them 'till they croak (terrible Slippy pun). You can play as any of the four from Team StarFox (and a couple you unlock at later times), and can set match types. Many match types go great with certain stages, considering most of the stages are very big. For example, Aparoid City is a gigantic stage with at least five pathways, hidden passages inside other 'buildings', with the ability to hop in an Arwing and take the fight underneath the whole stage. Can you imagine how intense a four-player sniper-rifle only match can be on that stage? Jump out of the way of one guy's scope, only to have someone perched on an Arwing follow your every movement and snipe you to your death (sniper rifles, for most characters, are one-hit kills).

If that isn't good enough, team up with a buddy by hopping on his Arwing. As he flies around, you wait for his Arwing to be above a bottomless pit and then you betray him by jumping to safety and in midair, blowing his Arwing up and watching him plummet to his death. Multiplayer in this game is just something you have to try to believe.

There's many stages for you to do battle on, each more awesome than the last. Most are based off the areas from the missions in Story Mode (you'll have to unlock these), but there are additional stages, most of which actually look really cool. 3 are built with an entirety of red, blue, green, and yellow blocks formed to make buildings over the ground. Characters are built by stats, and have a special ability. Krystal for example, revives with 2 barriers instead of the usual 1. Slippy's blaster charges with twice the speed of a normal blaster, and there are several more.

Assault never really gets boring, to be honest. Many of the missions are fun enough to warrant many playthroughs, and the ability to replay missions whenever you want only enhances that feature. You can also go for a highscore or set personal challenges for yourself, but if that isn't your cup of tea, multiplayer is insanely addictive and pushes your skills to the limits in the heat of gunfire.

+Fun multiplayer and the ability to replay missions adds a lot of replay value to an already great title
+Great graphics help to intensify the realism of the missions
+Nice music often hypes you up for whichever mission is thrown at you next
+Very realistic Arwing missions will help to relax the nerves of the veterans who were shied away from Star Fox Adventures
-Slippy's voice is STILL annoying
-Missions onfoot often carry the same goal
-"Do a barrel roll" is sadly omitted from this game

Those Star Fox fans who shied away from the series after Adventures, the longtime Star Fox veterans as well as the newcomers to the series would do good in giving this a try. Assault isn't perfect, but what it does right it does very well. Assault is a game that I was hesitant in trying, but I couldn't be more pleased with the results. While Assault doesn't completely bring you back to the times of Star Fox 64, Assault is far from not being worthy of your time. You'd do well to sink your teeth into this one.

Barrel Rolls Forever!!!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/06