May 10, 2006 - Nintendo really dropped the ball with Star Fox Assault for the GameCube, as the company really strayed from what made the series so special back on the Super NES and Nintendo 64. The company's ready to give the franchise another fresh start, this time on the Nintendo DS, and it is one of the top DS games we've played on the show floor this week.
Nintendo is really going back to the game's roots. All combat is in the air this time - no tanks, no on-foot missions. This is one hundred percent an air combat game. Star Fox is no longer on rails, as all missions take place in a free-roaming, enclosed arena of different locations all across the universe.
The E3 demo was a limited version of the final game that showed off the game's mission variety. Players plot out their course with the touchscreen, drawing a line from point to point - the distance players can fly on this map is limited to the ship's fuel bar, and this s where the game's strategy comes into play. Players must intercept fighters before they get to the Great Fox by moving their ship on the battle map, turn by turn. If players skip fighters to go right into a mission, they might put their Great Fox ship at risk by the intercepting ships on the map.
The E3 demo featured a training mission (branded with Slippy), as well as Easy (Krystal), Medium (Fox) and Hard (Falco) missions to select. Each of the missions showed off the game's shooting mechanics - though it's full free-roaming gameplay, the design focuses on combo attacks. Players are rewarded with stars and time by blasting squadrons zooming in for the attack. Players can blast away with the standard cannon, or lock-on to the nearest ship by holding down the fire button, blasting him down by releasing it.
The biggest change, though: full touch screen control. The bottom screen does double duty as the game's radar as well as all Arwing functionality. Players drag the stylus around the bottom screen, and the Arwing will move up, down, left and right, with the analog precision of where the stylus is in relation to the screen's centerpoint. Double-tapping the top of the screen will cause the Arwing to boost, and double-tapping the lower part of the screen will cause it to air-brake. A quick tap of a button on the side of the touch will make the Arwing pull off an airborne loop-de-loop or a quick u-turn. A new mechanic: to detonate one of the Arwing's bombs, players tap and drag the icon onto the radar map to blow it up in the exact spot on the battlefield. Firing is simply tapping either the shoulder button or the D-pad, and yes, lefties have their own option.
Even with the change of control, the game feels very similar to Star Fox and Star Fox 64. The game looks really slick, running at 30 frames a second with no problems in its draw distance. Missions had a great variety of areas to zoom through, with some excellent detail in texture work that made the game look far superior to the Nintendo 64 game.
The final version will feature more than 15 playable characters and more than 30 missions to complete. It will also have an assortment of multiplayer functions, including eight player local and four player Internet play over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service.
This game is definitely one of the hottest DS titles at the show. It's set for release later this year.
