Star Fox Command

"Starfox: Command - a game that attempts so much, yet accomplishes so little"

Starfox: Command was a game hoped to be the redeemer of a declining series. Many hoped its change in style of gameplay would add a fun twist to the experience. The gameplay itself was based off the obscure Starfox 2, originally scheduled for release on the SNES, though it was cancelled when the prospective release date for the Nintendo 64 was threatening the sales of the game. The gameplay is much different from that of any other Starfox game. The question is whether or not the changes will result in the savior of a failing series or the termination of a legendary series. Did the developers make the perfect changes, or has the series been shot to hell? Sadly enough, this horrible sequel could be the last game in this series.

A good description for this game would be god-awful. It in no way has a Starfox feel to it at all. First off, the game takes out one of the most important parts of a starfox game - rail shooting. Instead the combat in the game is in "all-range mode." Even this doesn't feel right. For some reason the developers decided they needed to change too many things about the starfox series in this game. They add a timer and cores. The timer isn't that bad, but it doesn't really make that much sense. Why is everything timed? Timed battles in a game should be used sparingly to emphasize importance of a battle and emergencies. When it's overused it becomes either gimmicky or a nuisance. The cores, while they didn't really take much away from the game by being in it, because they're extremely easy to pick up by barrel rolling, didn't really add that much either. They also seemed to be gimmicky. Sure, it distinguishes special enemies from the others, but the difference should be obvious, and again, there doesn't seem to be a reason for the need to collect them to finish a mission.

Now I'll move on to the 'strategy' part of the game, though I only loosely associate that term with the single player campaign. From all that I've played, nothing is realistic. A 7 year old could easily create tactics to beat the enemy in this game that's emulating a war. I'm not saying it should be impossibly hard, but the strategy in this game involves only application of simple common sense to your mission objective while keeping the ability to defend your "base." There are a few key points you might need to defend in certain places, but with your multiple fighters you can take paths and have everything covered. I haven't finished the single player, so I'm hoping that this gets better as the game progresses, but I don't see it getting to a really good point at any time.

The plot is incredibly cliche. Sure, I really didn't think there needed to be a plot in this game before I bought it, but they did this in a way that made me dislike it. I would have been fine with a good guy - bad guy routine. But they added in too many cliches. The emotional walls between the characters and the breakup of the team were just too much for me to handle. I cannot stand cliched emotions. cliched stories in action games like this, but the emotions take it overboard. Predictable emotional walls don't belong in an action game.

The controls are alright, but I would have liked more from them. Many people complain about the lack of a standard control set feature, though without analog on the DS, it's not that great, though it still works, as seen in the original Starfox for SNES. The decision to keep it out would have been fine with me (though having it optional is still a good idea), if the stylus control was much better. It should allow for swift movement, but it really isn't that useful. The whole point of using the stylus in shooters should be to emulate the ability of a mouse. MPH did this well, but in Starfox: Command, the movement by the stylus is extremely slow. If it's going to be like this, then they should throw in the D-pad controls, too.

I do have other problems with the controls. I think there's too much of a learning curve. Sometimes I find myself both using the dpad and the stylus to turn, though this isn't really a problem, it just causes me to shoot a lot. What does bother me is the turning is too slow. If you're looking on the touchscreen for the map and you decide to turn to go after an enemy, you'll have to continue to look at the bottom screen for a while because you're turning too slow while your opponent continues to move to different places and you adjust to that, and you get adjusted to the slow movement of the bottom screen. Then when you look back up the persons moving across your screen and you have to turn back the other way to chase after them again. I had a little difficulty explaining that, but it's a problem I had with getting used to the movement and controls of the game.

Besides this, there is one other problem with the controls. This has to do with the boosting, braking, and rolling. The all could have been done using the dpad/respective face buttons, and the shooting could have been done with the shoulder buttons, and things would have been much easier. Sometimes I find myself braking when I'm trying to boost, when I'm tapping on the middle to upper part of the screen. It's incredibly annoying, and can lead to a lot of damage. I also had two problems with rolling. First, it's harder to control your ship while rolling, because if you want to turn certain ways you also have to keep your stylus in a position where it will continue to roll, and keep the stylus always on the touch screen. While this may seem simple, it's not that hard or rare for a hand to slip. The other problem I had is starting the roll. When I'm trying to pull off a roll very quickly, sometimes I move the stylus too fast and I've already moved it back to the left by the time my roll starts on the right, so the game gets confused and then tries to go roll the other way, but if I'm trying to defend against enemy fire really quickly, I'll move my stylus very rapidly, and sometimes continue this change a few times, leaving me open to more damage from enemy fire.

From what I've experienced in the multiplayer mode, it's a little hectic, but once you get used to it, it gets better. Because this is all open terrain without any sort of obstacles, I don't imagine there being much method to the madness. The fact that there's always action is the only good thing about multiplayer. At least there's rarely a dull moment. I think the controls take a lot out of what this game could be. I would have liked much swifter movement. Without boosts, this game is much too slow, and with it turns are very wide, though still faster than normal. WORST PART OF WIFI: IF ONE PLAYER DISCONNECTS, THE ENTIRE MATCH IS ABANDONED!!! This can be very annoying, and it sometimes takes a while to get a whole game completed! Imagine playing MKDS with this rule. Could we ever get a non-friend four-player match completed? Though disconnecting is less frequent in SF: C, it's not as bad as in MKDS. It can still be painfully frustrating to get a match going sometimes, though.

I would have loved for there to be voice acting in this game, because it was very fun in SF64, but I'm not the kind of person to berate a game for not having voice acting, cause I don't really think of it as a big factor in games. However, the mumbling growls the characters make are a little disturbing at times. The characters are supposed to be of intelligent life, but these are the sounds they make. It's not entirely accurate, I would say. Other than that, the sound was fine. The effects were accurate, nothing you wouldn't expect. Just the normal warning sounds, shooting, etc. They get the feeling right. Nothing seems awkward or out of place. The music isn't exceptional, but definitely passable. They're pretty simple, making it easy to get the feeling right. Overall I don't expect to much from a portable game's soundtrack, and this game delivered what I expected: something passable, not overly detailed, but accurate and not too redundant. The visuals were mostly the same. Not amazing, but also not bad. Things weren't intricately detailed, but I wasn't bothered by the graphics, especially because I didn't expect much detail from the DS. I was always able to tell what was going on. The screen accurately showed the distance an object was from me, which is something very important in a game like this, where distance is very important in combat.

My main problem with this game is that it tries to be too many things that it isn't. It tries to be a strategy game, but it lacks strongly in that. It tries to have a real plot, but is a cheesy and cliche. It tries to be a fast-paced shooter, but doesn't have a proper control scheme for that. And finally, it tries to be a Starfox game, but it took out so many factors that made the other games what they were. I still try to have hope for this game, because I don't want to waste $30, and I don't want to hate a SF game, but I'm worried.

Finally, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert on this game. Like I said, I hope that the game redeems itself as I continue to play it, but from everything I've seen so far, it's just not QUALITY. This game just gave me a feeling that it was thrown-together, and left a very mediocre impression. It can be surpassed in all of its unique features by many things. I usually don't like to expect a game to be a certain way because of its title or its place in a series, but this is one of the few games I'll do it with. I felt wronged, because in very few ways is it similar with the other starfox games. I was not expecting the same game, but I didn't want a totally different game that took away the best parts of the others with the same name.

Final score: 3/10 - Bad.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/11/06