Star Fox Command

"All you'll get from this game is a sweaty stylus and aching fingers."

If you're familiar with and love the Star Fox series, prepare to be greatly disappointed. Now don't get me wrong here. I loved Star Fox 64 and Assault only improved 64's greatness. But SFC took a turn for the worse.

Star Fox Command changes the entire way the game works, besides flying around in an arwing and blowing up enemies. If you haven't heard, SFC now uses an overhead map where you plan your course and engage in time limited battles and such. Just read on to learn more.

Sound Music and Graphics: 9/10
The graphics were good 3D quality for the DS. Each enemy ship had it's own original design and the quality was pretty decent as well. The sound of the voices were like the weird noises that were used in Animal Crossing, and the laser shots and bombs were different enough to arn a good enough score. Whenever you engage in battle, the music theme of the player you're controlling plays, and most if it isn't too bad. The sound and music quality comes out greatly for a DS game. This game has got a lot of diversity in the effects it has, so don't worry too much about this aspect.
Sound, Music and Graphics = Overachieving or just Decent enough for the DS

Story: 6/10
Star fox games usually involve the battle between the enemy army threatening the Lylat system, and Fox. But this time around, it seems they tried to turn it into more of a love tragedy story. Weird fish like creatures called the Anglars suddenly rose up from the seas of the planet Venom and obliterated the Army of the Lylat system. Now it's up to Fox, the fearless leader of the Star Fox Team to stop the terror. But the Star Fox team has split up over the years and now it's up to Fox alone to save the Lylat System. That's what the story is early on in the game, but then later on it's just all about Fox and his former female teammate and lover, Krystal, apparently, trying to get back together and fight together and blah blah blah. That kind of story doesn't go well with a game like Star Fox It seems the developers worked more on getting people to like the storyline more than the gameplay. It was pretty bland and simple through and through, and not many surprises. Another feature of the game was that after you beat the game once, you can unlock different paths to take throughout the game and get different endings and be different characters. It was mostly just about the different characters and the paths they take, but the main plot mostly revolves around Fox and Krystal and the different ways they get back together or not. In the end, it sort of leaves you with that feeling that the story could have gone a lot better, and that some cliche tragic love story doesn't really go well with spaceship fighting action games. Especially when you use animals.
Story = Boring and Cliched

Gameplay: 2/10
This is where things went bad. Star Fox used to be all action. And people liked that. No waiting or anything. Constantly blowing up enemies galore in just a few shots, trying to rack up the highest score possible, and destroying everything in sight. But sadly, SFC is a slow-paced tactical to action game with not much action at all. Heres how it is. The game isn't a "Shoot and fly your way through hordes of enemies" kind of gameplay, it's a tactical strategy like game where you move Fox and your other characters around the overhead map and try to engage the enemy ships in combat. You then enter the actual combat, where you can fly around in your ship and shoot stuff. But this becomes an ugly mess right away. They've added a time limit. You heard me. A time limit. That takes away almost all the fun in it. But wait, it gets worse! You're objective in every engagement is to destroy only the select ships they tell you. Usually only 1-5 ships. You can destroy all the other ships for an extra life if you want, but there's that time limit. Every engagement is same old same old and doesn't really change much. You destroy one ship, move across the map and destroy the next, and so on. You also get to chase down and blow up missles as sort of a minigame, but that's nothing, really. The overhead map is pretty lame too. The Great Fox, which is your mothership, starts out in the corner of the map and your characters start out surrounding it. You then take turns with the enemy moving throughout the map trying to obliterate each other. The enemies will always head for the Great Fox and if they touch it, it's game over. enemies are launched from bases, and you can capture the bases. Once you destroy all the enemies, you win the level. It's pretty easy and simple and nothing really changes after that. The overhead map and strategy system doesn't really require any strategy at all. Everything is set up for you and the game pretty much gives you the hints and idea to you where you should send someone, what turn to destroy certain enemies on, and petty much the works. So it really doesn't require any strategy at all. So when the strategy system fails, and it greatly interferes with the once awesome gameplay Star Fox used to have, this combination gives you one bad game. The only good aspect I could think of was the boss fights. Each boss fight was unique and challenging.
Gameplay = Repetitive

Control: 2/10
It gets even worse here. For control, you can use any button to shoot, and the stylus for everything else. I mean EVERYTHING. For menu select and all. So if you're touch screen doesn't work good enough, forget about this game. You'll always be in an arwing ship when you play the game. You slide the stylus around the bottom screen to point in the direction you'll fly. and to barrel roll, you slide it back and forth. to U turn and whatnot, you have to touch buttons one the bottom screen. Sounds simple enough. But eventually, it'll get to you. I constantly found my fingers aching only after a little while of playing, and trying to aim your laser becomes very irritating very shortly. Turning also becomes a problem, and you'll be constantly moving your stylus to the center of the screen to get better positions. It's almost as if you're relieved sometimes to stop playing because it' just so god damn uncomfortable. And the worst part is that you have to use the stylus. You can't change control types. This game is a nightmare for someone with big fingers and a small stylus.
Control = Uncomfortable

WiFi: 6/10
It could get a 7, I guess. SFC has WiFi. You engage other players in dogfights and blow them up to earn points, while collecting powerups throughout the course. That's pretty much it. You now also have the option to play 2 and 3 person matches at will, which is pretty good, considering that was a problem in past DS WiFi games. The one thing I hated though was that when you killed an opponent, a start comes out of them nd you have to collect tat star to earn the point. But enemies always take those stars before you can get them and steal your point. That always bugged the crap out of me.

Overall: 4/10
In general, It almost seems that you want to just hurry up and beat this game instead of enjoying it. The maps are flat and bland, the gameplay is boring and untasteless, and you get the overall feeling that this game was rushed, hoping the hype would sell it out. It's the same gameplay til the end of the game and you will get tired of it quick. It's just a whole bunch of crappy maps with no real difference between them mixed in with a shoddy storyline plus a very repetitive gameplay. I only played it for a few days until I got bored of it and left it for other, better games. Personally, I don't think this game with uncomfortable controls, a boring and cliched storyline, and repetitive gameplay is worth $30.00.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/27/06