Star Fox: Assault

Star Fox: Assault
Developer(s)	Namco Nintendo
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Designer(s)	Shigeru Miyamoto Takaya Imamura Tsuyoshi Kobayashi
Platform(s)	GameCube
Release	February 14, 2005 February 24, 2005 April 29, 2005
Genre(s)	Action, Shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Star Fox: Assault is a video game for the Nintendo GameCube and part of the long running Star Fox series. It was released in North America on February 14, 2005, in Japan on February 24, 2005, and in Europe on April 29, 2005. However, it was available for rental exclusively at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores starting on February 1 as a promotion. When initially announced by Nintendo and Namco, there was word of an arcade game to go along with it; since the arcade version was never seen, it is unknown if it was the same game as the home version, a companion, or a completely different game.

It was co-developed by Namco and returned the series to its space-combat roots after the previous game, Star Fox Adventures, which was more action-adventure orientated. However, the game did not live up to the expectations of many, and has achieved an average score of 70/100 from Game Rankings. . The game was known as Star Fox Armada, Star Fox 2, and Star Fox during development before settling on the final name Star Fox: Assault.

Gameplay

There are three types of gameplay for Star Fox: Assault: flying an Arwing, driving a Landmaster tank, and on-foot missions. All three types are available for multiplayer. The game follows only one set path, unlike Star Fox and Star Fox 64, which allow the player to take different routes before arriving at the final destination.

Flying an Arwing in Star Fox: Assault is very similar to Star Fox and Star Fox 64. The player flies around in space or close to the ground shooting enemies. Usually one of Fox's wingmates calls in for help if they have an enemy behind them. In some levels, the player can hop in and out of Arwing at anytime. Driving a Landmaster tank in Star Fox: Assault is a little different from in Star Fox 64, since the two levels in that game were on-rails. In Star Fox: Assault, players have complete freedom when in a tank. Again, like the Arwing, the player is forced to shoot enemies, run them over, or help their teammates if need be.

During the on-foot portions of the game, the player is equipped with a blaster pistol, and can acquire a variety of other weapons including a machine gun and homing launcher. The player is also able to ride the wing of an NPC's aircraft. During this, the player is armed with a plasma cannon to shoot enemies on the ground and in the air. By collecting all silver medals throughout the game, the player can unlock a playable version of Xevious, a classic scrolling shooter arcade game.

Weapons and items

Assault features a number of handheld weapons, most of which are frequently seen in first-person shooters, such as the blaster, machine gun, Homing Launcher, sniper rifle, and hand grenades. Also used is the Plasma Cannon, a rapid-firing gun with unlimited ammunition. This, however, is only used when wing-riding during the single player campaign. The game also has a number of special items, including personal force fields which deflect enemy attacks. The usual rings seen in other Star Fox games, that restore a vehicle's shield, are also present.

Story

Fox helps destroy the aparoids that have appeared on Sauria with Arwing in similar manner to previous titles

Star Fox: Assault takes place one year after the events of Star Fox Adventures. Andrew Oikonny, Andross's nephew, assumes leadership over his dead uncle's army and starts a rebellion against the Cornerian Army. The Star Fox team, consisting of Fox McCloud, Slippy Toad, Falco Lombardi, Krystal, and Peppy Hare (who has retired from piloting), quickly fly in to assist them. Once they fight their way through his forces, they follow Andrew to Fortuna, where he attacks them by transforming his ship into an imitation of Andross's final form, albeit much weaker. Before his battle with the team is through, however, his ship is destroyed by a strange, bug-like creature, which then attacks Fox. Fox destroys it, and takes a partial "core memory" from it for research.

Once back at the Great Fox, Fox and team learn from Beltino Toad that the attacking creature was an Apariod, one of a powerful species capable of destroying entire Cornerian fleets with little effort. The team also learns that a distress signal is being sent from Katina, and suspect Aparoid involvement. Fox investigates the planet on foot, only to be trapped inside the base with the Aparoids. With the help of a Landmaster, he is able to fight them off. After defeatinng a large Aparoid boss, resembling a giant saucer with four legs, he recovers another Core Memory, which is quickly stolen by Pigma Dengar, believing he can become rich from its sale.

Star Fox: Assault mission sequence

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• Fortuna: A New Enemy
• Katina: Frontier Base Battle
• Sargasso Region: Hostilities Revisited
• Fichina: Into the Storm
• Asteroid Belt: The Aparoid Menace
• Sauria: Reunion
• Corneria: War Comes Home
• Orbital Gate: Incoming
• Aparoid Homeworld: Breaching the Defenses
• Homeworld Core: The Final Battle

Fox and crew track Pigma to the Sargasso Space Zone, a popular hideout for bandits, overseen by Wolf O'Donnell. After infiltrating the base, they discover Pigma is not there, and the Star Wolf team shows up (with Panther Caroso as their newest member), soon after their discovery. They engage the Star Fox team in a dogfight, which they subsequently lose. Panther, attempting to flirt with Krystal, tells her that Pigma is on the planet Fichina. When Fox and crew quickly rush over to the planet, they discover that Pigma had deactivated its climate control center, turning it into a snowy wasteland. After defeating an Aparoid that threatened to destroy the control center reactor, the team then follows Pigma through an asteroid belt. Once they catch up to him, they find that Pigma had been taken over by the Aparoids and had no control over his actions. He is assimilated into a large spacecraft with large tentacle-like metal arms as weapons. Fox fights and destroys Pigma, and retrieves the core memory, which has the information that will lead the team to the Aparoid Homeworld.

Just before the team is about to go after the Aparoid Queen at their homeworld, Krystal receives a distress call from the planet Sauria, which is under attack by the Aparoids. Fox quickly lands on the planet and destroys the Aparoid hatchers before the dinosaurs there are wiped out. After the battle, Fox and Krystal reunite with Prince Tricky, now a teenaged EarthWalker. While the team was on Sauria, however, Corneria City was hit with a full-scale attack by the Aparoids, leaving it devastated. Fox, with the help of Star Wolf, who arrived to assist in defeating a common enemy, is able to take out most of hte attacking Aparoids. They soon find out, though, that General Pepper's ship had been taken over by the Aparoids, and has started to attack Fox. Fox is able to take down the ship with his plasma cannon, but before the General crashes into the ground, he is saved by Peppy, who suddenly arrives in an Arwing and softens the General's ship's fall, saving Pepper. After the battle, the Star Fox team heads for a large space station above Corneria, the Orbital Gate, which is used for warping to other planets. Before they are able to travel to the Aparoid homeworld, they are forced to defend it, with the help of Star Wolf again, from a series of Aparoid missiles. They manage to destroy all of the missiles, just in time for Beltino Toad to finish creating a program that will destroy the Aparoids.

File:WingridingSFA.jpg

Player can switch back and forth between ground and air fighting vehicles

Once the Star Fox team reaches the Aparoid Homeworld, they realize that the entry to the core of the planet is blocked by a base and a large shield. Though Fox is able to infiltrate the base and destroy a large amount of Aparoids, the shield continues to hold up. He suddenly sees Peppy and ROB ram the Great Fox, which is covered Aparoids, into the shield and open it long enough for the team to get through. The Great Fox subsequently explodes, leading the team to believe that Peppy and ROB were killed in the explosion.

Fox and crew enter the core of the planet, with Star Wolf showing up again to help them. Right before they reach the queen, they are attacked by a seemingly indestructable swarm of Aparoids. Wolf, Leon and Panther decide to distract them to allow Fox to proceed onwards to the queen's lair. The team confronts the Aparoid Queen, who uses the voices of Peppy, ROB, General Pepper, Pigma, and Fox's father in an attempt to deceive them into joining her. The team ignores her, and blasts her armor away until Fox is able to shoot the program inside of her. However, the queen is able to repress it, and attempts to escape. Slippy informs Fox that if he does not destroy her and launch the program, the queen will create an antibody. Once the team defeats the queen, the program launches, and the Aparoids are permanently destroyed. The team escapes from the core of the homeworld, and soon discover that ROB and Peppy survived the explosion by finding an escape pod just before the Great Fox blew. It is unclear whether or not the Star Wolf team made it out or not, but Fox believes they also somehow survived.

Aparoids

File:AparoidSFA.jpg

The Aparoids Fox McCloud confronts are similar to Star Treks Bord

Aparoids are insect-like creatures that are part machine and part life form and are the main villains in the game. The Aparoids are capable of infecting other life forms and machines and transform them into Aparoids. The game calls this infection Aparoideation. Pigma Dengar was the first character in the series to become infected after he stole an apariod core memory from Fox McCloud. The infection caused Pigma to meld with the (incomplete) base in the Asteroid Belt and become that level's boss. The Aparoids also infected General Pepper, the commander-in-chief of the Cornerian Military and most of the Cornerian Army. The General was saved by Peppy Hare after his ship was destroyed by Fox McCloud. Pigma however, most likely did not survive the infection. Large Aparoids contain a core memory that contains instructions as well as information on contacting the Aparoid Homeworld. General Pepper learned of the location of the Aparoid Homeworld from the core memory recovered by Fox from the remains of Pigma.

The Aparoids are led by the Aparoid Queen on their home planet. The Queen believes that all things in the universe exist for the Aparoids to infect and that becoming an Aparoid is not infection, but is evolution. Beltino Toad created a program that took advantage of the fact the the Aparoids cells are created using apoptosis, and Fox used this program to destroy the Aparoid Queen. All Aparoids are networked together, as once Fox executed the self-destruct program in the Aparoid Queen, all of the Aparoids and their home planet were forever annihilated.

The Aparoids seem to draw heavy inspiration from Star Trek's Borg, which assimilate other life forms. The appearance of the Aparoid Queen who serves as the leader also reinforce this.

Multiplayer

The game features multiplayer with support for up to four players. Players are able to fight on foot or in an Arwing or Landmaster, though some stages prohibit certain modes of travel. Playable characters include the entire Star Fox team (including Peppy), as well as Wolf O'Donnell. Multiplayer has a number of specific items and weapons, such as an upgraded sniper rifle and rocket launcher that can kill with one hit. A "Stealth suit" is another type of item available that can make the player invisible for a short period of time. The multiplayer mode is considered to be one of the weaker aspects of the game.

Reception and sales

Reviews

Publication	Score	Comment
IGN.com	7.0 of 10
GameSpot	7.3 of 10
EGM	7.3 of 10 (average)
Compilations of multiple reviews
Game Rankings	70 of 100 (based on 63 reviews)
Metacritic	68 of 100 (based on 58 reviews)

To date, Assault has sold roughly 305,000 copies in the United States, and almost 200,000 in Japan. Compared to the previous game, Star Fox Adventures, Assault has not sold nearly as many units. Where Adventures sold over 713,000 copies in sixteen months, Assault has managed less than half as many in the United States, also during the same number of months. Despite the low sales numbers, the game is included in Nintendo's Player's Choice line.

Star Fox: Assault, by critics, was the least well-recieved game in the series. Many complaints were aimed at the control scheme during on-foot portions, to which IGN said that "ground missions suffer from sloppy control". GameSpot noted that the multiplayer portion of the game has little lasting value, which was also shared by IGN, who said the design of the levels were too simplistic. However, IGN noted that being able to switch between the Arwing and Landmaster at will was a "welcome addition". In Electronic Gaming Monthly, two of the reviwers gave it a favorable 8.0 out of 10. Kevin Gifford said that "the game is aimed less at the Mario club and more toward the hardcore crowd". EGM also noted that Assault had an epic feel, helped by a great soundtrack.

External links

• Official website
• Star Fox: Assault wiki guide at StrategyWiki
• GameRankings reviews
• Speed Demos Archive - Speedrun