Star Fox: Assault has to be one of the most criminally underrated Nintendo games. Now I’m not saying that this is some hidden masterpiece to rival the all time greats. It definitely isn’t. But let me explain

I love Star Fox but it’s an interesting case of a series while good, never really goes anywhere. The series rarely evolved with each entry, rather choosing to continuously keep things familiar to its origins. This is with the exception of Star Fox Adventures which hardly counts due to the nature of its development (Was developed as a completely different game/new IP before being reworked into a Star Fox game). This kinda led many to share the sentiment that the franchise feels stale, has no idea where to go, etc. Star Fox: Assault seems to be absent from most of these conversations. Between people singing the praises of Star Fox 64, arguing about the strange existence of Star Fox Adventures, or saying how disappointed they were by Star Fox Zero, nobody really ever leaves room to talk about Assault…and that absolutely shocks me. Star Fox: Assault feels like the biggest and last step the series made to actually take itself somewhere, taking the formula and trying to evolve it over repeating itself. This feels like the proper sequel to Star Fox 64 rather than another loose imitation. Frankly, it feels like the final Star Fox game even though it wasn’t since what little came afterwards just went right back to basics.

Star Fox: Assault still contains the same great on rails space piloting and shooting gameplay you’ll certainly be familiar with by now. These segments are as good as ever, delivering on twice the spectacle thanks to the GameCube’s visual capabilities as well as the game’s excellent orchestral soundtrack. This is not the entire game, however. Alongside missions with the classic Arwing gameplay, Assault introduces ground missions. Now…depending on how much you get along with the controls will decide whether these missions are a make or break deal for you, considering they take up half the game. There are a few control options and while it doesn’t take long to get used to them, none of them particularly change the core issues. They’re still generally a bit clunky. The sensitivity is cranked up to 100 and everything just feels very slippery. I highly recommend the dual sticks control option which will give you the smoothest possible experience. I think the ground controls alone are enough to drop my rating from a 4 out of 5 to a 3.5, but…eeeeeeeeh. I love this game too much. While this is still A review and I like to be critically honest and fair, it’s still MY review and thus I don’t like to totally downplay or dismiss my personal feelings either.

All that being said, I do still enjoy these missions quite a bit actually. I think once you get a feel for the controls as best as you can, there’s plenty of fun to be had here. It’s really cool to run around and blast your way through enemies as Fox with a small handful of weapons at your disposal. Sometimes you have access to the Landmaster to ram through enemies on the ground with a tank or even your Arwing to seamlessly take the battle back up to the skies. Some missions even have you take up arms while standing on the side of a flying ship. 3rd person shooter segments feel surprisingly appropriate in a Star Fox game, especially when it’s integrated so seamlessly with the other classic play styles. While the controls could’ve absolutely used more polish, I love the variety that these ground missions add to Star Fox’s gameplay loop and they feel perfectly in line with the kind of series Star Fox is. I love how pretty much all missions maintain the feeling of a large scale space battle. The ground is highly populated with enemies to blast away whilst your allies cover an ongoing battle in the skies, and as mentioned before sometimes you can even hop back into your Arwing to assist them as the gameplay seamlessly transitions into SF64’s All-Range Mode. Honestly, even if you don’t enjoy these segments it’s hard to say they’re offensive. They still contain shooting, vehicle action and they typically don’t last very long at all. Nor do they take up the entire game. The classic Star Fox 64-type missions are still here to balance it out and they’re as quality as ever.

The only other thing to talk about really is the presentation and other miscellaneous things which I briefly touched upon earlier. This game looks fantastic. GameCube era visuals have continued to age pretty gracefully and Star Fox: Assault is no exception. The jump from Star Fox 64’s very simplistic, sometimes empty environments to Star Fox: Assault’s colorful, highly detailed, and populated environments is absolutely gigantic. Even other visual elements like UI and character design. I love the UI aesthetic and I’ve always enjoyed the pretty unique GameCube era designs of the cast. Everything is enhanced by the game’s truly spectacular soundtrack. Like, I’m serious. This game has a full blown orchestral soundtrack and it’s incredible. Truly makes the game feel like a space epic. Also just like Star Fox 64, the game still contains fully voice acted banter between the game’s cast during its missions. While not quite as quotable as 64, this dialogue still brings out the memorable personalities of the characters. Combined with some of the cutscenes and mission briefings, it’s actually pretty great how well the Star Fox series is able to showcase so much personality in such a short run time. Yes, this game is very short as is the case for most of the series. You can finish the main story in 2-3 hours. The story itself is nothing special but I do love the character moments it provides.

Don’t know where else to put this in the review so here’s this brief note- It’s been a hot minute since I’ve actually gotten to play the game’s multiplayer but it’s quite fun and one of the most remembered aspects of the game. Star Fox multiplayer is always a blast. Didn’t want to go by without mentioning it.

In the end, I think it’s a shame Star Fox: Assault as a whole has pretty much been all but forgotten. After the release of the DS’ Star Fox Command only a year later, the series went quiet without an entirely new mainline entry for 10 years with only a 3DS remake of Star Fox 64 in between. Star Fox Zero marked an anticlimactic return in 2016 as another reboot and becoming one of if not the series’ most hated entry. At least as of the time I’m writing this, Star Fox has been absent once again for almost another decade. You know what’s frustrating though? That they literally just had it. Star Fox: Assault was the one. It paved a great direction for sequels to follow…sequels that unfortunately never came. Nintendo has been vocally reluctant on pursuing some games because they don’t want to make anything that doesn’t offer a fresh idea. As I’d explained at the beginning, Star Fox as a series was often criticized for growing stale. So it kinda baffles me that when Assault actually helped bring the series forward…that’s where they quit? And when the series came back a decade later it was just…back to basics again? Make it make sense. Star Fox has unfortunately become a dying name in the eyes of the public and what little of it is still discussed is often spent on people’s strong opinions on other entries. But…I don’t want Star Fox: Assault to be forgotten. We don’t talk about it enough. It’s one of the couple Star Fox entries that really put its foot down in finding its place in a series that struggled to find one. A proper follow up and evolution to its predecessors. Not a repeat. A game like Star Fox: Assault is the game the series needed, but Nintendo didn’t realize that and probably never will.

Star Fox Assault? More like Star Fox Assault On This Game's Reputation. Seriously everyone was way too harsh on this game when it was first released.
The foundations for a great Star Fox game are here. With just a bit more tweaking this could have honestly been as good as 64.

I'll go through what this game is, and what it was criticized for. At heart, Star Fox Assault is intended to be a successor to Star Fox 64, an evolution of that game. It's a short arcadey score based shooter that is about blasting down enemies while protecting your friends. You can easily get through it in one playthrough.
Having said that, this sounds like what every fan wanted after Star Fox assault, so what went wrong?

Let's start with the good. The music is fucking phenomenal and uses an orchestral soundtrack that remakes a lot of 64's tracks.
The story and writing is actually not bad. This is surprising considering that Star Fox Adventures had Sonic Adventure 2 tier writing (I mean that as an insult to both SFA and SA2).

The on-rails Arwing sections are back, and they're really good. Like almost Star Fox 64 good, but if Star Fox 64's on rail Arwing sections are 10/10, Assault's is 9/10. The reason for this being that stages aren't as depthful as 64 as they lack secondary objectives that lead you to alternate paths, but everything else plays exactly like 64 if not better. So what's the problem here? 3 of the 10 stages are Arwing only.

Now, 64 wasn't only on-rails. You had plenty "All-range" levels that let you fly around freely on the map. People also liked these levels in 64 and this is what the other 7 of the 10 stages are here. So what is the issue here if people also like All-range mode? What would be the gripe if a Star Fox game was more All-range focused? Well, the on-foot sections is what everyone had a problem with.

I'm going to get into more detail about the on-foot levels, and how it was unfairly criticized, because the boos this game got when it was first revealed killed any momentum this franchise had going for it (before Star Fox Zero killed it again). People were so scarred from Star Fox Adventures being so different from the standard formula, it triggered a fight or flight response if they saw Fox on foot again.

As mentioned, the on-foot sections is an expanded All-range mode from Star Fox 64. You are given an open level with objectives to complete.
On-foot doesn't only just mean on-foot though, as you are given access to your Landmaster (Tank) and Arwing at any time. You can go from land to air in seconds and it is very impressive for the Gamecube era. When you are in the Arwing, it feels no different from Star Fox 64's All-Range levels.

The on-foot gameplay was the most criticized aspect of Assault. And I will go ahead and say, the gameplay is fine. It plays exactly like Megaman legends, and there is no issue with that. Are there smaller issues that could have been ironed out to make the on-foot gameplay even better? Abosultley. You are given a couple of weapons to cycle through in your arsenal, but there is only 1 cycle button meaning if you want to switch back and forth between weapons, which you will need to do in order to kill enemies that are unaffected by some of the weapons, then it is a frustrating time. Other than that, the on-foot is fast-paced, controls well, and is satisfying to run and mow down enemies. My point here being that people just dismissed the on-foot sections because Star Fox Adventures existed.

The other big part of these on-foot sections is the use of the Landmaster. I love using the landmaster as I feel like a beast blasting groups of enemies on the ground, or locking on and shooting things down from the air. However the landmaster has one of the biggest issues I believe to be in the game. The controls. Driving and turning this tank is not the same as every other tank controlling game. You CAN adjust the settings so that the tank does control like a tank, but then you are also forced to have the on-foot sections use tank controls. You can't have one or the other. You will need to compromise.

I won't go into detail about the All-Range Arwing sections as they pretty much are the same as the 64 ones. Except the fact that you can jump out of your Arwing at any time. There is one glaring problem with using the Arwing in All-Range mode and that is performance related. Sometimes when you are flying in the air, enemies won't appear on screen till you're really close with them. That can kind kill some runs as dogfighting with aircraft kinda requires you to know where all enemies are. It doesn't outright ruin the game, but it can sour some parts.

The other minor gripe I have is that the on-rails play at 60fps and on-foot is 30fps. But this doesn't bother me too much since a certain Dolphin can help you fix that issue.

I really liked Assault. At first, I was liking this as much as Star Fox 64 but as I went further into the game, the jankiness mentioned before started to sour some parts for me. But overall I'm still salty that we effectively killed a potentially great future for Star Fox considering if the next game just followed what Star Fox Assault did and refined a few things like controls, performance and maybe a few branching paths or levels, we could have gotten the next big great Star Fox we have been waiting for. But now Nintendo have listened to your unjustified cries, and now you will get nothing but Star Fox 64. Star Fox Zero? Nope it's just Star Fox 64 gyro edition.

What a game! Considering I didn't even know it existed until a week or so ago, I'm so glad that I found it in that resale shop, even if it was for about retail price.

The flying sections are all great, needless to say. I was at two minds about the on-foot sections at first, but once I played a level or two and died a couple times, I was cruising through them. The only issue I have control-wise is the land-master, which handles kind of weird, at least in the control-scheme I picked. Maybe if you play with just the control stick and not the c-stick it drives more managably.

The story was actually way more serious and dark than I was expecting, tbh. With all the campy voice acting to start, I really wasn't expecting things to get nearly as grim and bleak as they did.

Verdict: If you liked Star Fox or Star Fox 64, this one is at least worth a try. The on-foot stages might totally turn you off, which I'd understand, but I didn't find it a total deal-breaker, and came to even like them a fair bit :3

I believe this was one of the very first video games I ever played. It was when I was very young at the Target store demo during the Katina level, and I had somehow gotten the Landmaster out of bounds and couldn't figure out how to get it back in. Actually playing it years later, made me truly realize how phenomenal of a Star Fox game this is. The soundtrack really has a hand in it as it is one of my favorites in any video game, and the 64-esque Arwing levels are fantastic. This right here was the last good Star Fox game Nintendo ever decided to make, but at least they went out with a bang

Following up Star Fox 64 was no easy task, but I believe Bandai Namco was on the right path to make a great sequel. The on foot combat sections are a good way to add variety to a series that had pretty much perfected on rails shooting, and having the player jump between different vehicles on these missions was the perfect way to tie everything together.

That's why it's a shame that the biggest problem with Assault is the on foot combat itself. The execution of the gameplay style has some flaws, like the lousy weapon switching or the low enemy variety, but I really believe all of that could be largely ignored had the gameplay style been reserved as something to add some variety to the game, instead of being the main focus of it. And even if all these problems were fixed the vast mayority of the missions in the game are centered around destroying X ammount of Y enemy in maps made for multiplayer deathmatch battles (multiplayer mode that I have never ever seen anyone even mention, let alone play). And those repetitive objectives are made worse by a minimap that doesn't help with finding your targets and the fact that the integration of the arwing in these missions ammounts to little more than having to fight off a handful of generic enemy pilots every once in a while. Speaking of the Arwing, it's hard not to feel short changed by the lack of on rails levels on this game when the three times you get to go through some traditional Star Fox levels are so good! Despite lacking the special objectives that made every level in 64 so unique and memorable all three levels are great fun, with the last mission being the highlight of the game, and yet most of your time in the space ships will be spent in some rather plain dogfights.

On a more possitive note, the story may be the thing people rave on the most about this game, and for good reason. The team clearly realized how and why the simple characters from this series are so beloved, and they were able to nail down their team dynamic while developing them in a way that feels natural.

It's easy to see why the game got such a lukewarm reception (especially being such such a short experience), but I'd recommend all Star Fox fans to at least try this one out, if only to see the banter between the Star Fox and Star Wolf teams.

This felt like a true Star Fox game after having dealt with the previous game set on the dinosaur planet, but it still works it's way in and we have Krystal onboard the ship.

The gameplay is a lot of fun with the third-person combat along with jumping on and off the space ship when having a combat on the planets or other location that you need to get out for a bit.

The story is really interesting as it starts with a battle against the remnants of Andross' followers led by Oikanny before the appearance of an ancient enemy that, much like the Borg, are intent on absorbing and evolving as it spreads along the universe. A danger to all involved and even bring in once-enemies onto your side.

However, the problem is that your allies aren't programmed too well so in certain cases, you have to do everything at once because the AI can't be trusted to fight off the enemies.

Gameplay + Stream

A good game that controls poorly.

I love this game. It was made before the age of twin stick shooters. And thus, by today's standards, it controls pretty horribly. Everything is inverted by default. You can change that though. Which, props to the devs on that one. You can mostly fix the controls. Except for the landmaster. It will always be annoying to control.

The game excels during the arwing missions. They are by far the best part.

An issue with the game as a whole is that it's repetitive. You get the same mission types over and over. The timers are a bit to strict but luckily if you fail, you can speedrun things since you know where the objectives are.

The worst part of the game are the on rail missions when you ride on top of an ally flying their arwing. They are very strict. It's not kind. It's very trial and error. They demand near perfection.

It's still a pretty game. It advances the Star Fox lore. Taking place after Star Fox Adventures. The story is neat. All in all, a good game.

If you are nostalgic for it, maybe don't go back though. I played a lot of multiplayer with friends when I was younger. I have a lot of good memories of it. But playing it now, I really saw the issues. This one might be better to keep as a good memory.

9/10. What an Amazing, underrated, gem of a game, and easily the best of the Star Fox series.

The excellent combat of the Arwing, Landmaster and Wingman sections, and the... decent combat on-foot makes for an all-round great time, with a bit of a time, the somewhat unusual controls become more than manageable even for that last section.

In addition, the worldbuilding, character-work, and stakes provided by this game blow all of the repeated Andross War storylines out of the water several times over, as you fight to stop an insidious hivemind known as the Aparoids from consuming the entire Galaxy. Andross's dark charisma might've been enjoyable, but the soulless, cold, and mostly mute Aparoids provide an eldritch-level threat that I rarely get from a video game.

Only minor issues I have are how the Wolfen managed to follow Star Fox into the Aparoid planet even after the shields closed, a decent chunk of the music is just remixed Star Fox 64 tunes (though the original tracks in this game are absolutely incredible) and I do kind of wish they had committed to killing off Pepper and Peppy.

In the end, this is, in my opinion the best on-rails shooter, the best Star Fox game, the best GameCube game, and the best game with a toad always getting shot at.

If you have a GameCube I would highly recommend giving it a go.