Star Fox Assault
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Star Fox Assault | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 All Ships, Report In!
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
Star Fox: Assault is the action shooter hybrid game that is the sequel to Star Fox Adventures. It focuses on various mission types including Arwing, Landmaster, and On-Foot. It was developed by Namco and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube as part of the Star Fox series.
Plot
The Plot of Star Fox: Assault, known as The Aparoid Invasion (also known as the Aparoid War) was a major galactic conflict that began shortly after the events of the Oikonny Rebellion and approximately one year after the Plight of Sauria. The Star Fox team became involved after a single Aparoid ambushed them during the battle against Oikonny on Fortuna, afterwards retrieving its Core Memory and learning of the coming invasion. The conflict ended when the location of the Aparoid Homeworld was revealed and the Aparoid Queen was destroyed, exterminating them from the Lylat system.
Why It Rocks
- Tight and responsive controls, despite BQ#1.
- The overall story is one of the darkest stories in the Star Fox series than any of its predecessors bar none, and this is due to the fact that the Aparoids not only attack the planets, but they have the ability to assimilate with organisms and/or non organisms and its symptoms are quite horrifying as it slowly takes control of the victims and eventually turns them into new Aparoids which subjects them to a fate worse than death, it really raises the stakes. It still retains its lighthearted elements that keep it from being too bleak and provided some levity that the games released both before and after have done and to this day, the entire story still holds up and has aged significantly well.
- The characters in this game are at their absolute best, especially Fox, Falco, Peppy, Krystal and even Slippy of all people, who is notably much less irritating than he was in 64.
- Krystal did not get very much action in the previous game, but here she is much more active throughout the whole game and it shows that she is still a beginner learning the ropes and Falco Lombardi of all people is helping her become better as a pilot and the relationship between her and Fox is professionally romantic and even humorous at times, especially with the famous honeymoon scene after the Sauria mission.
- The gameplay is quite solid and being able to do Arwing, Landmaster, and On-Foot missions is executed decently.
- The gameplay is also extremely fun, and it is just as good as in Adventures, as there's two gameplay phases, the regular shooter phases which are still incredibly fun to play, and the on-foot action levels that are very fun as well due to having a lot of challenges and because of the combats being great to play.
- In fact, the on-foot levels are the best of the game and are here for most of the game, which is great because of how fun those levels are, especially that it is challenging and it had ton of amazing weapons that are fun to use.
- Ton of amazing weapons to use that make this game one of the most fun shooter game of the GameCube, and there's 14 of them, which include:
- Blaster: This is a basic weapon with limitless ammunition and can be charged to make the blasts more powerful.
- Cluster: These are advanced versions of Smart Bombs. They are made up of groups of Grenades and can be fired manually or locked onto enemies. These weapons are exclusive to multiplayer
- Demon Launcher: A powerful variant of the Homing Launcher that is only received by players who constantly lose at multiplayer battles. It kills enemies with one shot. It is also able to destroy a vehicle in one hit while leaving the inhabitant with one hit point left.
- Demon Sniper: An advanced version of the Sniper Rifle, with a shorter firing delay between rounds, and a larger blast. Similar to the Demon Launcher, it can defeat all enemies and vehicles with one shot. It can be disabled by turning off the Special Items option in the multiplayer menu. It is exclusive to multiplayer mode.
- Fireburst Pod: Their functionality is similar to a Sensor Bomb. After an amount of time has passed from being planted, the pod releases a series of Grenades that are launched into the air and thrown across the playing field. If the pod is shot before launching, it scatters the Grenades in a localized area.
- Gatling Gun: refined version of the Machine Gun. It is more powerful but also has less ammunition and is less accurate. It is able to destroy armored enemies, so it is often used to clear large rooms.
- Grenades: These are explosives that can be thrown at enemies. They are not very accurate and are best saved for narrow hallways. Charging the grenades allows them to explode earlier, but charging for too long can also make them explode before being thrown, injuring the user. One tactic is to use a Barrier and chase an opponent while charging.
- Homing Launcher: rocket launcher that locks on its enemy target. It is useful in destroying enemies that are heavily armored.
- Machine Gun: A weapon with rapid fire capabilities and a substantial amount of ammunition. It can easily clear large rooms, though it is unable to damage armored enemies. It is Wolf's favorite weapon, as his official alternate artwork depicts him wielding one and, for his versus mode victory pose, he brings out a pair of them and starts firing rapidly.
- Missile Launcher: A rocket launcher that is exclusive to multiplayer mode. This weapon can be fired and then manually controlled to its intended target. One can press the button used to fire the weapon to make it self destruct.
- Plasma Cannon: A rapid fire weapon that only appears in single player. It is used while riding on the wing of another pilot. It has unlimited ammunition and can be used against a wide variety of enemies.
- Predator Rocket: This weapon must be set on the ground in order to be used. After it is on the ground, it releases a laser into the sky that detects only airborne vehicular movement. The rockets cannot pass through solid objects, and can easily be disrupted by ejecting from the vehicle being chased.
- Sensor Bomb: These are bombs that are planted in the ground and explode when someone approaches them. The mine can be shot by any weapon to destroy it.
- Sniper Rifle: A weapon with a scope attached to it, meaning it can be used from a distance. It is a fairly powerful weapon, able to take down most enemies in one shot in one player mode and all characters but Wolf in multiplayer.
- Absolutely great graphics for it's time that still hold up well by today standards, as the graphics are very detailled and the characters models are amazing, pretty much one of the best looking game on the GameCube, despite not being as good looking as Adventures (that one is slightly more beautiful to look at and had better lightning).
- Star Wolf is also excellent here, the rivalry with Star Fox is still there, but it also shows that Wolf has his standards as he kicked out Pigma due to his greed and untrustworthiness which is understandable since there is a chance that he would have sold them out as well. It is also noteworthy that Star Wolf teams up with Star Fox from the Corneria mission to the final mission. Wolf even gave Fox advice to not hesitate but to just act when the time comes.
- Awesome soundtrack that countain a lot of bangers to listen to and the musics still sound like something out from Star Fox, in fact it might be one of the best soundtrack from a GameCube game or even a Star Fox game for that matter.
- The Aparoid Queen is an absolutely terrifying foe, since she is the center of the Aparoid hivemind and controls them as her puppets and uses them to attack and assimilate the planets since she felt like the entire galaxy exists for them and she even has the Aparoids assimilate with Pigma, which is cathartic since he was responsible for betraying the original Star Fox team including Fox's father, but she also had distracted the team by attacking Sauria so she can have them attack Corneria, where General Pepper suffers from assimilation and later attacks the Great Fox, which results in Peppy ramming it into the shields to allow the team through and sacrifice his life, which is one of the most heartwrenching moments in Star Fox history. She even uses the voices of the people the Aparoids assimilated with, and even accessed their memories of James McCloud to break the team's spirit.
- The multiplayer mode is amazing, and it helps that each of the characters have different stats that make them more unique and not feel like they are playing as Fox over and over again and it has multiple powerups to give each player an advantage.
- Good voice acting in both Japanese and English (despite the latter dub having a problem, see BQ#4 for more infos), especially the Japanese version since it fit the characters and also, their voices are very great to heard, especially Fox and Falco voices.
- Unlike Adventures, there's still a fair amount of shooter levels and the on-foot ones, which mean that they balanced those levels much more, making this game feeling much more like Star Fox rather than the Zelda series.
Bad Qualities
- The controls are very finnicky with Fox moving too fast when he is on foot and the fact that he is also fast going backwards can result in the player falling off a platform or even off the edge, which could cause some cheap deaths.
- The game is very short, lasting only 4 hours, which is way shorter than Adventures, although it is understandable because of not being an adventure game.
- There's not any checkpoints present in the levels, especially the on-foot ones, which is pretty annoying because if you die and that you we're close to beat a stage, then you will had to restart it all over again.
- While still good, the voice acting in the english dub is a bit more dull than the previous games like if the characters we're in depression, this further prove how dark this game is.
- While it still a challenging game, it is much less challenging than the previous games because of the game throwing too many lives at you and thus it will be hard to even get a game over, much like in Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2.
Reception
Star Fox Assault received mixed to positive reviews by critics and gamers, with a score of 67/100 on Metacritic and a user score of 8.2.[1]
The game has sold well enough for it to be included in Nintendo's Player's Choice line in North America, which also includes Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures.
Trivia
- The game script will mostly remain the same in each of the 10 Missions. However, depending on the chosen rank, some dialogue will be changed. For instance: In Mission 9's Silver rank, entering the Arwing to destroy the Hatchers underneath the city will trigger Peppy to say "Fox, Falco, Slippy, Krystal... I'm proud to fight alongside you...", which hints that Peppy will make his sacrifice. However, in the Gold rank, this is changed to Peppy admitting that the Great Fox is under attack from Aparoids and Fox tells him not to do anything reckless.
- The English voice actress for Krystal, Alesia Glidewell, is also known for having her face used as the facemap of Chell in Valve's Portal and Portal 2.
- The English voice actor for Wolf O' Donnell, Grant Goodeve, is also known for his voice acting role as The Engineer in Valve's Team Fortress 2':.
- The official site for the game (before it was taken down) featured the names of the various character's species, although they were not of the standard animal names.
- When Assault was initially announced by Nintendo and Namco, it was also rumored that an arcade game was under development. However, the arcade game was never heard about again in the public.
- The music heard throughout the game are mostly tracks from Star Fox 64 redone in a higher-quality - heavy orchestral remix of familiar tracks. No Star Fox Adventures music is reused despite the Walled City returning, which may have to do with Rare copyright, or to fit with the developer change. The first five seconds of Star Fox 64's Game Over theme was conducted but not used in the final release, leading to a silent Game Over.
- Ironically, on the official website (before it was taken down), the Navigation Room was designed after Star Fox Adventures Great Fox, rather than the Great Fox represented in Assault.
- If the player jumps off a ledge to their doom (like on Sauria and/or the Aparoid Homeworld) after fully completing the mission, it will continue to show Fox falling instead of having him emerge back on the ground, owing to the mission technically being complete by that point.
Videos
References
Comments
Loading comments...