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Star Fox: Assault Review
by Bruce Banner/The Hulk
Recently, Doom asked me to write down my thoughts about the game Star Fox: Assault for the Nintendo GameCube, for he felt a man suffering from multiple personality disorder would be the perfect candidate for reviewing the anthropomorphic aerial dogfight game. At first I was puzzled by his choice; I was, after all, a scientist who has little to no knowledge with video games past 1985. My colleague, the Hulk, is a different story; he is a seasoned veteran of button mashing and controller smashing. But it was only after playing Star Fox: Assault that my eyes were opened as to why Doom thought it was appropriate to assign. Star Fox: Assault is itself a schizophrenic game; at times it is fun and enjoyable, but at other times it is frustrating, repetitive, and generally a chore to play.
The fourth game in the series, Star Fox: Assault picks up where the last game left off; Andross is defeated and Krystal the anthropomorphic Dinosaur Planet fox is a member of the Star Fox team. Instead of facing Andross again like in all the other Star Fox games, your enemies are Aparoids, insect-like creatures that infect a variety of life forms, animal and robot alike. Like any parasitic bug in a sci-fi tale, they're a threat to the universe. The storyline is nothing we haven't seen before, it's strictly by the numbers sci-fi plotting. Several characters from previous games do show up, such as the Star Wolf team, though Pigma is a giant Borg-like host for the Aparoids and Andrew is killed early on. HULK HATE POINTLESS DEATHS! THAT HOW ONSLAUGHT STARTED!! HULK ALSO HATE HOW BOSSES REPEAT FROM STAR FOX 64! ANDROSS CLONES? HULK COULD PULL BETTER BOSS OUT OF HULK'S BIG GREEN BUTT! SERIOUSLY HULK COULD IF HE WANTED TO. ATE THE BEETLE WHEN BEETLE WAS GIVING HULK GUFF! HULK WANT ANDROSS BACK! ANDROSS WAS GIANT MONKEY! HULK LIKE MONKEYS! Anyway, back to myself and back to the topic...Star Fox games are not exactly known for their expert plotting and deep characterization, but even then this is rather light. Alien bug parasites that infect everyday ordinary people has been done before, and been done before quite exhaustively.
Unlike previous Star Fox games, which was strictly flight missions, there are three distinct mode of gameplay: one has you in the cockpit of the Arwing, another in a Landmaster Tank, and the final on foot. Whereas I more or less enjoy the first two gameplay modes, the other, the on foot portions, greatly annoy me. Arwing missions play much like they do in previous iterations of Star Fox; shooting, barrel rolling, etcetera. Thus, if you enjoyed the Arwing missions before, you'll no doubt enjoy them in Star Fox: Assault. Landmaster tank missions aren't as fun as the Arwing missions are, but they're enjoyable enough. There's not much like simply running over your enemies after struggling with them on foot. Which brings me to the big negative point of the game: the on foot missions. They are not fun, not in the least. Instead of channeling the immersive third person gameplay found in other games of the third person shooter variety, Star Fox: Assault manages to feature a boring, tedious on-the-ground mission series that has one wishing they could be in an Arwing or a Landmaster tank. To better explain the inadequacies of the land missions, I turn to Hulk. ...Never like the transformation...argh...BARRRRRGH!!
WHEN HULK WAS YOUNGER HULK, HULK PLAYED STAR FOX GAMES! GAMES GOOD! HULK NOT NOTICE ANY GROUND MISSIONS! PUNY NAMCO THINKS GROUND MISSIONS GOOD, THEY ARE WRONG! HULK NOT PLAY STAR FOX GAME TO SHOOT ROBOTS WITH GUN OR GRENADES, HULK PLAY STAR FOX FOR SPACE BATTLES AND SILLY VOICES! GAME WOULD BE MUCH BETTER WITHOUT LEVELS, EVEN IF GAME WAS 5 MINUTES OF SPACESHIP SHOOTING! LAND LEVELS PUNY AND WEAK! ARWINGS STRONG!
Not surprisingly, Star Fox: Assault features both good graphics and good sound. Certainly, no one will accuse the GameCube of having any graphics less than impressive, and Star Fox: Assault is one of the better looking titles, visually. Space battles are superb, planets and environments are lush with lots of variety in terms of style [for instance, one mission is on Dinosaur Planet] and all the character designs look appealing. The fur effects from Star Fox Adventures are gone, which is a good thing considering I never found the look very aesthetically pleasing. The music in the game is a great throwback to the Star Fox games of old. In fact, many of the songs in Star Fox: Assault are revamped pieces from Star Fox. Voice acting is unintentionally humorous. This may be seen as a fault, but Star Fox games have always strived to have low quality voice acting. Slippy's high-pitched whiny voice has become infamous in terms of how annoying it is.
Star Fox 64, the true predecessor to this game, had a play time of approximately 1 to 2 hours. The game was not long. So short, in fact, that Nintendo did not bother to implement a save function for the game. Star Fox: Assault has a slightly longer play time of approximately 5 hours, which is a very awkward increment for game length. 5 hours isn't a 'one day rental' time nor is it an immersive one. So it's neither a quick ride or something with depth; it's simply a 'that's it?' experience.
What ultimately dooms Star Fox: Assault is not so much the ground missions as it is the lack of flying missions. There are at most 5 flying missions and even then the missions are shorter than the ones on land. God, the land missions are so annoying and repetitive they make me angry. And we all know what happens when I'm angry...GRAARRRRRGH!!!! HULK STILL HATE LAND MISSIONS! CONTROLS ANNOYING! HULK NOT BUY GAME TO PLAY LAND FOX, HULK WANT STAR FOX! HULK SMASH STUPID NAMCO! RARRRRRRRGH!!!!...regaining my composure...Ah, that's better. Apologies for that unscheduled outburst. If Namco had simply added a few more flying missions, I believe the game would be much better. The land missions would still be frustrating to play through, but there'd be more Arwing combat levels to balance it out.
If you have a choice between buying Star Fox: Assault and buying Star Fox 64, I urge you to choose Star Fox 64. While the latter may be incredibly short, and the graphics dated, to this day it's still fun, which is not something one can say for Star Fox: Assault. While the Arwing missions in Star Fox: Assault are fun to play, there's simply not enough of them to justify the purchase of it.
Arwings flying high
STUPID LAND MISSIONS STUPID
Slippy annoys me
How many needles of black tar heroin to make this game good?: 4
What made up George W. Bush word would best describe this game?:
Annoyingtageous
Most uncomfortable moment: The land missions. All of them.