Star Fox Command

"Be prepared to use your stylus A LOT."

Star Fox is probably one of those series that have thousands of fans worldwide. This new title, even featuring online battles by using Nintendo Wi-fi Connection, had theoretically everything that should appeal to a fan of the series. However, the game turns out being a clear example that seeing videos of a game aren't enough to know all about it.

OK, the graphics are quite good in almost every scene you see, with some very small glitches during the battle sequences; eventually, they may even resemble the older Star Fox 64, which is impressive, bearing in mind that this is simply an handheld console.

The sound is generally good, with almost everything in the game having its own sound effects, and every different world seeming to include a different music in their battles. There isn't any voice acting but it could seem so, as the characters, when speaking, produce some strange noise that resembles actual voices, like what happened in Animal Crossing. I would swear that more than once these noises seemed so real that they was actually voice acting, but that may be my head betraying me.

This is all nice, but then you start playing the game, and you'll start noticing its flaws. The main menu turns out being quite limited, with a Story option battle options, which come in wireless and online battling flavours. The story mode is probably the one where most people will spend their time, and despite featuring a huge story mode (with several branches and some different endings), you are also able to play specific levels, just for fun and without having to play the entire story all over again.

After entering the main option of the Story mode, you can notice that the game can be basically split into 3 sequences: chat, strategy and battle.

The first one is usually seen between levels, and it includes the characters talking to each other, you choosing where to go next, and all that.

The strategy sequences are the ones that lead to battles. There, you can use your extra turns (which may vary between 1 and 5, depending on many factors) to move your current ships to new positions, apart from using missiles (that come from your mother ship) to instantly destroy enemy units. The strategy sequences end when you collect all the items for that level, but you can lose if you find yourself with less than 0 lives,if you run out of "turns" or if your mother ship is destroyed. You can just move your ships depending on the number of turns that you have, and when those are over, your mother ship will be instantly destroyed, in an unavoidable way. During these sequences, if any of your ships are touched by an enemy, you'll enter a battle or event sequence.

When those start, you'll be seeing a small introduction scene that basically tells you "defeat X of the enemies I've just shown you to win the battle", and that's exactly what you need to do. Sometimes, that instantly wins the battle, but others you are also required to destroy a huge mother ship, which is simply done by blowing up its core, and this is where problems start.

In several points during the game, you'll be doing different things, which are only explained AFTER you losing once while performing them. Not very nice, when you'll sometimes find that you just lost because you were supposed to do barrel rolls while bumping into a mother ship's core, and stuff like that. Other times, they won't even tell you anything about the way to perform a specific task in that level, and you'll be left to magically discover it, a task that turns out being even harder due to the controls of this game.

Believe it or not, 99% of the features in this game are accessible by using the stylus only. The creators didn't even let you chose what you want to use, and therefore you'll be using the lower screen to move your ship or introduce special motions. Most of the times, they'll be quite ineffective and the controls turn out being sluggish. As for the buttons, either if it is L, A or even the directions controls, they are all used for exactly the same thing: shooting the very same projectiles.

Each level turn out being exactly the same thing, with minor tune-ups and a final different boss, and nothing is improved as you advance further. The story isn't any good either, and there's even a slight lack of replay value. Of course you can play online (which I couldn't test for this review, as I don't have a wireless connection) and try to get all the secret endings, but you'll probably get bored of the game easily as it puts you to do the very same things over and over again.

So, who should get this game? Mostly, fans of the Star Fox series, as they will hopefully enjoy the possibility of playing online with many other fans of the series. With the game coming to America in less than a month, other people should perhaps try it before buying it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/06