Star Fox: Assault

Written by Kyle Williams  on February 11, 2005

Review: Another trip through space with everyone's favorite fox.

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Fox McCloud has a long and fabulous heritage that dates back to the early days of the SNES system. As an early breakthrough in 3D action on a home console, Star Fox wowed us all with frantic action, addictive gameplay, and a cast of characters that, while cheesy, are truly memorable. After banking on the characters to take the series into a new genre with Rare's Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet, Nintendo has teamed with videogame veterans Namco to put Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Krystal back into space.

Star Fox: Assault draws a lot of its gameplay from pre-Dinosaur Planet Star Fax games. Capturing the epic feel of space battles that would make George Lucas proud, Assault's flight missions are packed full of frantic flight patterns and presents more targets for you to shoot than you can shake a stick at. SF:A also puts you into the driver's seat of the Landmaster tank. As a new direction, Assault also lets you do a little on-foot running and gunning, complete with a slew of havoc wrecking weapons to collect. Many of the levels combine a mix of these elements and do a great job of keeping the action from getting stale.

Now, in this day and age no game seems to be complete without a life extending multiplayer mode. In this aspect, Star Fox: Assault is the whole ball of wax. Taking advantage of the GameCube's four controller ports, Star Fox: Assault let's you square off against three of your friends in matches that go from air, to land, to foot. Assault is one of the best multiplayer experiences on the GameCube since Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Unfortunately, Star Fox: Assault doesn't bring the franchise as far back to the original formula as I would have liked to see. Don't get me wrong, Assault goes a long way for GameCube shooters and is a lot of fun. The problem is that the controls, especially the on-foot levels, seem to be a little too loose. Additionally, the interplanetary combat doesn't capture the sense of urgency that the SNES and N64 Star Fox titles held. Assault is a good game but it just doesn't seem to reach the heights that I expected it to.