N-Philes

Star Fox Command

Posted September 7th 2006 by Adrian DeHerrera.

There are a few ways you can tell when a game goes above and beyond being simply a "good experience": The first is when you call in sick to work the day the game is released and fake being on death's bed until Friday around noon when your boss actually calls to ask if you're ever coming back again (thank you, Resident Evil 2). Another way you know you love a game is when you invite friends over to play and end up drinking liters upon liters of soda until the sun comes up and one of your buddies goes to the can and freaks out because for a minute, he could swear he was pissing spiders (no, thank you Spider Fighter for the Atari 2600!). The way that I knew I loved Star Fox for the Super Nintendo was that I played through it the first time and kept re-playing it until I had to go to sleep. I played through it a couple more times the next day, blasted Andross' forces with Fox at regular intervals that month and later throughout the year without ever getting tired of it – which must have really pissed off my next-door neighbor who actually owned the game and whose mother I had to ask permission to play since he got tired of me coming over uninvited all the time. Hey, that's what you get for being a stingy-ass, Josh.

I'm not sure what exactly pulled me and another fans of the series into the world of Star Fox. Maybe it was the amazing gameplay, soaring over the vast landscapes, blasting away at enemy targets, often saving the asses of your comrades as they cried helplessly for your assistance while battling giant end-bosses all over the galaxy. I know that half the reason I bought the game was because of the awesome cover art, part of which exclaimed, "REVOLUTIONARY FX MICROCHIP CREATES SPECIAL EFFECTS LIKE NEVER BEFORE!". I mean how could you resist a game that had such advanced alien technology embedded in its plastic covering? That's right, you couldn't, but fortunately, the game lived up to the hype with its nicely rendered scrolling 3-D environments and ability to speed up or slow down as you fought your way toward the end of the level. Star Fox quickly soared its way into the halls of Nintendo superstardom and the series continues to this day to delight gamers, albeit recently with more mixed results than back in its SNES and N64 golden years.

Nintendo and its co-developers have had their work cut out for them since what has traditionally worked best is keeping the Arwings in the sky rather than putting the characters on foot missions which met with a largely negative fan reaction. At the same time, there's only so much barrel rolling and space flying you can take after a decade before you have to wonder where Star Fox can go without losing the magic of what makes the series so great.

In the Star Fox Command for the DS, Nintendo stays tried and true to the foxy formula with a few changes to controlling Fox and his slightly creepy anthropomorphized friends. To start, guiding the ships took some getting used to as the stylus is absolutely required. By utilizing the touch screen you can "point" the ship in the direction you want it to go as well as perform other functions such as speeding up and slowing down by tapping the top or bottom of the screen respectively. Fox also sports some Top Gun moves with evasive loops and 180-degree turns triggered by tapping specified icons on the bottom screen. One change to traditional Star Fox gameplay is that barrel rolls (a protective spinning maneuver which shields your ship temporarily) are accomplished by quickly scribbling the stylus from left to right; a move traditionally mapped to a shoulder button. Although most actions using the stylus work very well, the barrel roll isn't as precise as you might hope because either you go into a roll and don't come out of it until all of your energy is depleted or the response just isn't quick enough, leaving you open to enemy fire. Firing weaponry though is as easy as tapping either the A, B, X, Y, L or R buttons. Depending on which character's vehicle you're flying, you can hold the button down to lock on to one or multiple targets which can be helpful when you have multiple enemies attacking you at once or when you need a more powerful shot to take down a strong opponent. Overall, the control is much more accurate and engaging than I expected it to be, although I do prefer the traditional controls to the touch-screen. My personal preference though doesn't take at all way from the DS control system as Q-Games (co-developer) has created a new way to play the game without making it seem gimmicky, and for that the developers deserve some kudos.

Another different aspect to the game is that before entering into battles, the developers have created a tactic-based overhead map in the vein of Advance Wars which allows players to employ turn-based attacks to not only destroy enemy stations but also to protect your own giant ship, the Great Fox, from incoming missiles and advancing ships. Drag your character using the stylus to where you want them to fly and enemies will react accordingly - but be careful as the amount of turns you have is limited. Don't screw up or your robotic buddy ROB (think C-3P0 crossed with Ned from South Park) will send you a final message of woe before being blown to smithereens. If only it was F.L.U.D.D. burning to death instead of ROB. I found the Advance Wars aspect to be a fine compliment to the flying portions of the game; a fun way to complete your missions, which is more than I can say for the storyline.

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