Star Fox: Assault (GameCube)

Fan expectations can hurt how people view even the best games. After the Star Fox series had a diversion into a 3D adventure game with Star Fox Adventures, many people were clamoring for a return to the rail shooting of older titles like Star Fox 64 and the original Star Fox. When Star Fox: Assault came along, many people were hoping it would essentially be Star Fox 64 2, but the game decided to do more than provide just space shooting. When all people were looking for was space shooting though, many prepared themselves to dislike the other content on offer.  However, as a big fan of both Star Fox 64 and Star Fox: Assault, I’d encourage people to be more open to this spectacular GameCube title as it manages to provide a solid, all-around experience that pushes beyond just providing good aerial combat.

Picking up after the events of Star Fox Adventures, Team Star Fox are helping quash the remnants of their old foe Andross’s troops when an unexpected new foe enters the picture. Strange organisms known as Aparoids begin appearing around the Lylat System, these insect-like beings able to assimilate any creature or piece of technology they can get a hold of. Team Star Fox’s crew of humanoid animals set off to try and eradicate this threat, but the Aparoids are a powerful and populous threat that will push the team to their limits. Star Fox: Assault is not afraid to advance the franchise by aging up characters, decimating famous locations, and putting the fate of many main characters in question. While Andross and other foes Star Fox face across their other games are threats for sure, the Aparoids are incredibly capable and have the potential of wiping everything out in their mindless quest to integrate everything into their collective and the game does a great job of making them feel like a serious threat even when you’re able to blast the individual bugs away quite easily. The game doesn’t dip too deep into being completely dire though, allowing comedic moments and cheesy dialogues between the the members of Star Fox and their enemies. The characters aren’t really complex or anything, but they do have well-defined personalities that make their interactions interesting and spice up the gameplay with some fun banter. The lines might not be as instantly quotable as Star Fox 64, but it still has a lot of fun ones filling in the space between the conversations needed to advance the plot. The music is incredibly strong in this title as well, some songs returning from previous titles but all of them having actual instruments backing them up. The orchestrated soundtrack really adds to the feeling of each level, the music feeding into a sense of scope and importance for the individual missions.

Although short, the single player delivers in terms of variety. The classic space shooting from other Star Fox titles returns, a few stages focusing on shooting down foes with your Arwing or using the charge shot and bombs to blast groups of them, ultimately culminating in a sturdy and challenging boss. Star Fox has usually done an excellent job of balancing its effective shooting and movement controls with a variety of enemies that challenge them, and that certainly continues here. These aren’t the only level types on offer though, as Star Fox: Assault introduces ground missions where you will run about as Fox McCloud on foot, completing various objectives and picking up new weapons to deal with the threats you encounter along the way. While some weapons like the sensor bomb are clearly meant only for multiplayer, there’s still a good variety on offer despite the basic charge blaster already packing a mean punch. These missions are rarely fully devoted to this gameplay type though, as you will usually be provided a vehicle like the Landmaster tank or even the Arwing to either make certain objectives easier or to complete a new task in the open environment. Sometimes you may even end up riding the wing of one of your allies, firing a powerful cannon at pursuers and other troublemakers to keep your ride safe. Although Star Fox: Assault uses the objective “Destroy All Hatchers” a bit more than others, the levels all feel distinct with large maps and new enemy types to face.

One thing I can imagine would trip up many players is the way shooting as Fox handles. Rather than playing like a traditional shooter, the ground missions give Fox similar controls to the vehicles which might disorient people who don’t pick up on the similarities. Precision is never a huge issue though with very few enemies requiring you to aim anywhere but forward or slightly upwards. Weapon selection and avoiding damage as you navigate are the primary concerns while on foot and the controls handle it pretty well for the most part. Trying to do a dodge roll can be a bit finicky, but everything else feels like a proper transition of the Arwing and Landmaster controls to a ground unit. Unsurprisingly, those two vehicles are in top form here, the only drawback to them being some boss fights last a bit too long if you don’t have a laser upgrade. Levels are designed to match the skills of the machines, the Arwing requiring speedy reactions and rapid fire, the Landmaster being powerful but slow to navigate, and Fox on foot having to push his way through areas cluttered with enemies that he has to deal with appropriately. Star Fox has often had short campaigns, but Star Fox: Assault makes sure its linear one has enough variety to keep it fresh and it’s structured properly to fit well within its time frame.

Star Fox: Assault has three difficulty modes so that players of any skill level can be challenged, with a Bronze, Silver, and Gold setting taking the place of Easy, Normal, and Hard. These difficulties also determine how many points you need to earn the medals you get for killing enough enemies, keeping your allies safe, and completing things quickly enough. Mission Mode exists if you wish to tackle individual stages for these medals, the game adding in unlockables and hidden S flags to give you even more to do once you’ve finished the game. I was a bit surprised the game was quite generous with lives on any difficulty, but death only restarts the current mission so Game Overs weren’t a concern anyway. Extra lives just mean you get to start at the checkpoints instead of the start of the level. The lives didn’t make the game any easier though, and even veteran Star Fox fans should find the end of Gold to put up a powerful fight.

Because it set out to do shooting differently, Star Fox: Assault’s multiplayer has a unique feel to it. Many weapons have some form of homing or make up for their lack of it with higher power, so playing against another human player doesn’t end up being about accuracy so much as evasion and acquiring the best guns and vehicles. Star Fox: Assault gives it players a pretty good control of the settings for multiplayer, allowing you to change the match type, the parameters, which vehicles will or won’t appear, and even set up some unique modes like a battle with jetpacks or sniper battles. While the shift away from focusing on accuracy already opens up the gameplay to players of disparate skill levels, the game still has some pretty good options for evening the odds. Handicaps can automatically activate barrier shields when a player would have otherwise died and there’s a pretty good comeback mechanic in the form of the demon launcher that gives the player in last place a three shot instant kill weapon. You can make battles intense and skill-focused or pure dumb fun, avoiding or eliminating aspects you don’t like, but there are a few issues that you might have trouble avoiding. Battles in spaceships will often devolve into spinning chases where there’s no reason to stop flying in a circle after your opponent and no recourse to prevent it from happening again after a player breaks it. In a stage with on foot and vehicles enabled, whoever grabs the limited vehicles will often have a major upper-hand that the other players have little means to counter, but some fiddling with options can help you avoid some of these troubles. All in all, it’s not hard to find a sweet spot for a kind of multiplayer match everyone playing can enjoy.

THE VERDICT: Star Fox: Assault is not Star Fox 64 2, but it doesn’t need to be in order to be an excellent game. While I would love to have that game as well, Star Fox: Assault takes the elements of Star Fox and advances them with more open maps and more varied approaches to battle. Things aren’t just a matter of forward progression to a boss here, as mission objectives encourage a shifting style of play that can embrace effortlessly blasting waves of enemies in a starship or carefully pushing through groups on foot.

And so, I give Star Fox: Assault for the Nintendo GameCube…

A FANTASTIC rating. Open yourself up to Star Fox: Assault and meet it on its level and you’ll have an excellent adventure with these sci-fi animals in space. Balancing a high-stakes story full of fun characters with solid gameplay split into multiple types and with various goals, Star Fox: Assault lays out a tight yet thrilling campaign but gives you the means to come back and go for medals and search for hidden objects. Coupled with a multiplayer that has a unique approach compared to other shooters and Star Fox: Assault seems like a strong advancement for the series but one that never got the recognition it deserved. Things could certainly be advanced further and explored more deeply in future titles, but the series would shift away from this style as it struggled to evolve in a way the fans might accept.

Star Fox: Assault is an excellent package of space battles and ground assaults, capturing the feel of the Star Fox series while treading new ground in an almost literal way. Due to the double whammy of this game and Star Fox 64, Star Fox cemented itself as one of my favorite video game franchises of all time.