Fox's Review: Star Fox Command

[Fusion]

Wait... Fox is reviewing a Star Fox game?  For real!?  You read the title thread right folks, I'm reviewing a STAR FOX game.

Thankfully, this game is better than that POS TOS-based game in the Star Trek franchise.

*Title screen shot*  *Gameplay shot* - Both unavailable because emulators suck right now.

Let's start off with the story...

Story:
*Warning: Possible spoilers.  If you read this section, you have been warned!*
It goes over the past events that occured before the game, however... For some reason Star Fox: Assault's Aparoid assault is not mentioned, but however, Krystal is on the Star Fox team in the prologue.  The Star Fox team has broke up, a new Great Fox was built by ROB... But this is one of the tyer elements of the story: Fox told Krystal to leave the team, for it was too dangerous for her.  Krystal, upset by Fox's decision, left him and was soon not heard from since.  Peppy's now the Cornerian General, and SLIPPY HAS A GIRLFRIEND.  Yes, that means some day that annoying as hell (he's not really annoying in this game, though) frog is going to get laid.  REJOICE!  Anyhow, this fat guy named Angular (or Anglar for you stubborn types) with the Angular army (a bunch of triangl...er...Anglar Army) takes over every planet in the Lylat system, so Fox decides "this guy seems like trouble, and I'm in a hurry so I'll fight them all myself!"  And of course, over the course of the game you'll meet others who have their own individual ships (that's a first) who can join your team.

Gameplay:
This is the part I was confused about before I tried it.  The game is entirely controlled from the touch screen, but that's alright because it doesn't require you to do crazy stuff.  The buttons, in-game, fire your laser.  While some people think you have to double-tap the very top of the screen to boost, you just have to tap that half of the screen to boost.  And of course, you just gotta scribble a little to do a barrel roll.  Firing a bomb requires a bit of practice now, though.  Not so much firing, but getting it to hit is more of the problem.  But once you master that, you'll find the bomb's effect has been amped up quite a bit.  It's useful against bosses, not just for one-hit deals.  Unlike Super Mario 64 DS, you don't tap the touch screen and a little target thing appear, the entire screen is the "joystick" in a sense.  If you keep the stylus centered, you'll fly straight.  Bring it to the left, you turn to the left.  Vice versa, though you flight experts might be confused a bit that up actually makes you go up and down actually makes you go down, but there's an option to change that.

The turn-based elements are pretty simple, but they're also at the same time sometimes annoying.  You should always keep on your toes for a missile power-up, because that will allow the Great Fox itself to strike the enemy's fleet.  The enemies attack with the dice-style dots to tell you how many there are.  The good thing is, you can fly right by them, they'll spot you and give chase.  You can deter enemies from the Great Fox easily.  BUT, if you let them get to the Great Fox, ROB gives a pathetic dying speech and you fail the mission 'cause the Great Fox blew up.  But if you survive, then you can clear the mission with ease.

The only thing that's been done away with is the laser powerups, but I can understand that because you really don't need them in this game.

Sound:
The sound is typical Star Fox fare, some tunes from Star Fox 64 were rearranged.  The sound effects are pretty much all new, but they give SF:C a feeling of freshness.  And no, not like the E3 video, not all the ships have the same shooting sound.  Fox's arwing has that sound, though.  The character voices have been replaced with the garbled talk we knew Fox for in the SNES Star Fox games.  While some of us think this is a bad thing, there's a trick to it.  The characters can speak in your own voice.  You can record your own voice into the game, which is a cool thing.  The game asks you three questions, you respond to them by answering them with your own voice, and then you can do a voice test to see how it sounds.  I don't really use the custom voices, or the voices in general (there's an option to replace the voices with non-irritating beeps.) mainly because... Well, I dunno.

Graphics:
Waited for this, didn't ya?  I'm not talking about the graphics, mainly because they're just too unimportant in this game.  Sure the DS doesn't have N64 antialiasing, but that just makes the graphics so much the sharper.  Though I do have to admit Fox's as well as every other character's designs in this game seem a bit... Well... Odd, at the least.  But it doesn't look as bad in-game.  I don't like the art style, but at the same time I don't hate it.

Oh, yeah, and there's Wi-Fi support in the game, too.  Just be warned that sometimes opponents have a tendancy to drop out for reasons related to anger.  There's no voice chat, but it's clear to tell when you're being ganged up on.  But otherwise, it's a fairly simple game of shoot-to-kill.  I also found a nice glitch.  Get a star when the time's run out, you won't actually get the star, but it'll float at your ship.

[Falco Lombardi]

I like the wi-fi play when its a full room but I don't like the way you have to do some things when playing though.