Star Fox: Assault [GC]

Flying the Arwing feels as satisfying and precise as it always has, even when dodging all sorts of obstacles. And tearing through enemy fleets is equally cool, thanks to the Arwing's offensive and defensive capabilities, many of which have been carried over from previous titles.

For example, the Arwing's standard blaster evolves by collecting power-ups, and players can execute barrel rolls to evade enemy fire. Players can also charge the standard blaster to deliver a far more powerful shot that locks on to enemies. And what's a space-faring vehicle without heavy artillery?

The Arwing comes equipped with bombs, which you can also acquire more of through power-ups scattered throughout each level. Of course, you can also slam on the Arwing's breaks to slow down (for avoiding collisions) and hit the boosts, too (again, to avoid collisions.)The Arwing, like the Landmaster Tank, takes visible damage.

Old-school players will recall flying around with no wings in the first Star Fox adventure and it's no different here. And, just like in the first game, any power-ups a player has gained will be lost once the Arwing takes too much damage. As previously stated, the ground based missions feel very arena-like, since the room you have to maneuver feels limited.

Each of the stages we played took place on a space station or fenced ground base. Each area has specific objectives, which are marked on a small map on the lower left hand of the screen. Enemies appear as small yellow dots and vital objectives appear as large red dots. Stages in the tank and on foot control in similar fashion, mainly because you can hop in and out of the tank whenever you want. Certain obstacles and enemies can only be destroyed using the tank, though. One stage had us raiding a space station on foot, with the Arwing docked in a nearby hangar. While Fox had his work cut out for him on foot, he could at any time hop into his Arwing and blast into space, leaving the station (and mission objectives) behind.

We know your teammates will call for aid at times, requiring you to leave the station and help them, but we think there's a little more to this new gameplay option. We'd like to see several missions take advantage of this. Perhaps the game will split certain objectives between land, air and space, requiring you to hop between several vehicles. We do know the game tells you what vehicles you will use before the start of each mission, but for now, we only saw two.

However, action on the station was hectic enough as is. Enemies constantly swarmed our fury hero, many of which boasted nifty design. They certainly look funky, anyway. We played several stages during our time with Star Fox Assault, including ground missions on an icy planet, where mission objectives included the destruction of several towers. We also played through a revamped version of the opening space battle, which had Fox and Co. flying through a gaggle of enemy ships, many of which were several times the size of your nimble Arwing.

Each stage contained multi-stage bosses and mini-bosses, so players needed to adapt their attacks as the bosses evolved from one form to another. Oikonny, one of the first bosses we encountered, should look very familiar to Star Fox veterans. To sum up, Star Fox Assault looks to deliver another round of what we've come to expect from the series. And from what we've played, that's really not a bad thing. We'll bring you more just as soon as we land more info.

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