One of the more under-appreciated mascots of the 16-bit era. Rocket Knight Adventures feels like it was crafted with love, being one of the best looking games on the Sega Genesis.

An action platformer with a rocket boost mechanic, the game feels like Donkey Kong Country with the ability to shoot out of a blast barrel at will. Absolutely satisfying gameplay and Konami knocked it out of the park on their first try.

Difficulty is hard but fair. If you play with unlimited continues, the challenge level is somewhere around the challenge of a souls game, maybe a little easier. Bosses are easily the best part of the game.

I remember being super impressed by all the setpieces in this game, and now having finished the game, the setpieces absolutely do not slow down until the credits roll. Quite impressive again for a Genesis tile. Pls bring this boy back Konami.

Hearing that Penny's Big Breakaway were the Sonic Mania dev's take on a 3D platformer had me having a keen interest for a while. Evening Star prove they don't need to ride the coattails of a big IP to produce a banger.

The game is mostly comparable to Super Mario 3D world offering a linear fixed camera level layout with optional objectives and collectables found along levels. The gameplay is something of a mix between Mario Odyssey and Sonic, with Penny's Yoyo feeling like Cappy with the throw/swing/bounce combos you can do with it, and rolling on the yoyo feeling like Sonic in ball form. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it feels very free-flowy.

While I did enjoy the gameplay, it felt like it was missing something. Like it kinda felt sluggish a lot of times. The physics feel a bit too tight and could have benefited from loosening up a bit, embracing the looseness of Sonic Adventure and Mario 64, but the physics feel closer to Mario Galaxy. It hindered my enjoyment a bit when I wanted to zip through levels just to get a collectable I missed, but was hit with sort of a speed limit.

The visuals are amazing. I love the pastel Sega Saturn inspired worlds, and you can tell this was originally going to be some sort of classic Sonic inspired game before they made it into their own thing.

The music is mostly meh with some standout tracks.

There is a good amount of content here for a 3D platformer, and you will be spending a good chunk of time in this game if you intend to go for the 100%, which is the recommended way to play this game.

The most enjoyable part for me were the special levels which felt like Mario Sunshines secret levels. Here the gameplay shined the most to me, where it was still doable but a bit challenging, whereas standard levels were a bit too open and bit on the easy side. I think Penny's Big Breakaway would benefit more from having linear challenge based levels like Crash bandicoot, based on my enjoyment of the special levels.

Great game with a lot of potential, will be keeping my eye on more games by Evening Star knowing they have the dog in them to deliver us a 5 star platformer one day.

Didn't know this game existed until a few days ago when @MagneticBurn reviewed this and instantly caught my attention with the cover art. What hooked me even more is the fact that everyone is praising this as one of the best shooters on the N64.

Having now beaten the game, this is definetly a very good shooter and you owe yourself to play this game if you are into shooters.

The difficulty is just right. The game is very challenging but fair, and not very punishing as you have limited lives, but unlimited continues.

I actually recommend this for people looking to get into the shooter (shmup) genre as this one is a bit less intense than most giving you a dodge button with i-frames, which is something that absolutely makes this game more accessible to newcomers. If you take advantage of that dodge button, you can clear this game, not too easily, but it makes nothing feel unfair.

What I loved most about Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth is the graphics. It has the most charming type of 3D low poly of the generation, something akin to Mega Man legends or Sin and Punishment. It makes blasting things feel way more satisfying and crunchier.

Heard this game was underrated back in the day and now is getting the praise it deserves. Great surprise and I'm glad I played it. Now I'm in the mood to play more shooters.

Going into the Bayonetta 3 later than most people, I didn't have high expectations with all the backlash this game was getting from the fans.
After now beating the game, I see where this backlash is coming from. However, at it's core Bayonetta 3 is still a very good game with some major flaws that held this from being the best in the trilogy.
Being one of the most ambitious Platinum games, it contains some of the highest highs in the franchise, while also bearing some of the lowest lows, with the lows here being bad enough to drag down it's "Great" status that both Bayo 1 and 2 hold.

To start with the good, playing as Bayonetta is as good as ever. She has the largest and most diverse arsenal ever and I enjoyed all the weapons offered. I had an abosulte blast with every second as Bayo and really wanted more.
The scale of the bossfights are the biggest and (arguably) the best. The only comparison I can make here is that each big bossfight feels like something Final Fantasy 16 did with it's huge bossfights where it would mesh the great standard gameplay, with amazing cinematics and fun minigames in between making something absolutley grand and satisfying.
The multiverse scenario also brings foward some of the best and most diverse settings in a Bayonetta game. Playing to find out where I would end up next was a great treat.
While the demon slave system did have some problems which I will go into detail with, I still appreciated the inclusion of it and how it made you truly feel like the demon witch Bayonetta has always been, with the abiity to summon your favorite hair demon and mog anything both big an small.

With those positives, Bayo 3 would have easily been my favorite in the trilogy, but this is where I bring in the issues that severely brought it down.
I will start with the complaint that most people have with this game and it's with the new character Viola.
Viola as a character herself is not nearly as endearing as Bayo, or Jeanne, or even Luca. All I can really say about her character is that she's just a typical clumsy teenager.
Now her gameplay was the worst part. I could not really enjoy her gameplay as she played like a watered down Vergil from DMC. All the diverse weapons, combos and fun that Bayo has in her gameplay is sucked dry with Viloa. She has one Summon too which makes the gameplay even worse as you can't control it, and while summoned Viloas combat becomes even worse with the loss of her katana. She takes about 1/3rd of the game, a 1/3rd that could have easily gone to more Bayo gameplay. This alone soured the game for me and brought the hype I had from the beginning right down.

Previously I also praised the Demon slave system, and while I do like the inclusion of it, it is simply too overpowered and takes away a lot of Bayo's fantastic gameplay. Most of the time you are expected to use it as the game now presents you with a lot of gigantic enemies that you are expected to deal with by summoning the demons. I simply would have enjoyed fighting these giant enemies playing as Bayo alone, but if you try to do that you deal chip damage which takes a much longer time than just using your summons. To fix it, all they had to do was nerf the magic bar. As the magic bar just auto regenerates really quickly, you basically have unlimited summoning time. Repeneshing the magic bar should have not been automatic and should have only been filled up by using items or raking up combos (or any other way to reward good gameplay).

In short, you barely get to have some good time with Bayo's combat, because you're forced to play as a shitty character 1/3rd of the time and with the inclusion of demon slaves, there is even less opportunity to combo your foes as Bayo.

The story was one of the biggest complaints from the fans. Personally, as this is a Bayo game I don't really care for the story as long as it sets up a cool premise for the gameplay. In the case of the Multiverse story, I liked that it gave you an excuse to fight in vastly different areas and meet cool unique alternate versions of Bayonetta. Even all the stuff in the ending, I did not really mind.

I hope the future of this franchise does not take the "Viloa is now the main character" route as that would simply kill any hype and uniqueness the character of Bayonetta brought to action games. But with all the feedback Bayo 3 did recieve, one could simply hope Platinum will listen and bring back what people really like about this franchise.

Review based on PC version, that does not contain any online servers or split screen.

Disney Infinity 1.0 is something I'm sure I would have appreciated much more if I played this while younger. Essentially it is a game engine where you can create Sandbox levels with some Disney themes. From what I've played, everything kinda seems barebones. At it's strongest, you can get a cool platforming level out of it. At it's weakest you'll get a semi-empty open world sandbox with collect X item missions or beat X enemies. The singleplayer is pretty much basic missions teaching you the necessities to see how the engine works.

But what really hurts this game is the fact that there is no online to share and play other levels. The ability to make your own "Toy Box" is there, but the fact that you can't share it or at least play some split screen really makes it pointless.

It's a good idea, and I'm sure the later versions get much better, but without continued support, there really is no point to playing this.

On a random day in 2005, after binging a few Quentin Tarantino flicks and a couple of Fist of the North Star chapters, Shinji Mikami looked at his masterpiece that was Resident Evil 4 and said "What if RE4 but Kenshiro and Tarrantino fr" and God Hand was born (This is my headcannon).

God Hand was a game I was ready to drop in the first 2 - 3 hours of playing as I was struggling with some of the earlier bosses and didn't wanna give myself an aneurysm while barely making it out of every fight that I've died to multiple times. But then I looked at the huge following this game had and saw all the singing praises, and I wanted to be a part of that camp too. So I decided I wasn't gonna be a little bitch boy and try to properly figure out how this game works.

When the game clicks, it finally CLICKS and you feel like a boxing god (intentional with the title?), but at the same time no matter how good you get the game will just get harder thanks to it's dyanamic difficulty system, just one of the mechanics borrowed from RE4. Unless you spend a good chunk of your life playing this game, it will remain challening no matter what. This is honestly, quite one of the hardest games I have ever played. Keep in mind though the game is also one of the fairest games I have ever played. I don't think I've ever died once thinking it was the games fault. Everything done by the enemy is clearly telegraphed and you are given a window to deal with it in multiple ways. And when you die, the checkpoints are mostly frequent bar a few exceptions, and it's generous enough to give you all of your health back when you die.

In regards to fairness and difficulty, the way it's hanlded here makes you not wanna put the controller down because as opposed to other what is considered to be "hard" games like Souls games, while challenging, are pretty punishing usually sending you back a bit if you die at a bossfight, and at the risk of losing some of the experience you gained. God Hand is hard hard in the sense where you need good reflexes and awareness for every single fight, but also very fair because of it's generous checkpoints. In a souls game, there are plenty of ways to cheese things if you're at a wall, but here you cannot cheese at all. It's just you and your skill, and you aren't getting past a point until you get better. Best way to put it, this is a discipline simulator.

When this game was initially released, the game was mostly overlooked by critics due to the criticism of the combat not being robust. This is far from the truth about the combat and to put it, God Hand's combat was way ahead of this time. What we have now as modern God Of War over the shoulder combat, which has endless praise from critics, was clearly inspired by God Hand. Similar to Resident Evil 4, God Hand employs the same control scheme where it is an over the shoulder tank controlling game, with not much control over the camera. This was highly ambitious for an action game back in the day, where action games were mostly 3rd camera-pulled-away types of games. It works really well in God Hand as the right stick is now used as it's dodging system, which is implemented insanley well.

God Hand is not an offensive based game where it's about pulling the best combos you can. In fact, there really aren't much button combos here.. 90% of the time you will be just mashing the square button to the tune of your preset combo. God Hand's gameplay is mainly defense and crowd control focused. 1 on 1 fights are pretty straight forward and purley defense focused. In these fights you are dodging attacks and retaliating when there is a window of opportunity, wheras if you put more than one enemy in a fight, the strategy has suddenly changed and it's about positioning yourself in a way where you don't get blindsided or stockpiled. Crowd fights are more about putting yourself in a position where you can get into a 1 on 1 with a enemy for a moment, before going back to controlliing the crowd again. Once the game systems click, you will be dodging and taking out baddies one by one like a champ.

The game isn't perfect, there were moments that kinda sucked for me, like that one section with the big claw machine. Moments like these are few and far between, but when they come it kills the momentum you have.

Apart from the gameplay, the setting and style reminds you of a Quentin Tarantino movie which brings immesne charm to the whole package. There are so many goofy cheeky moments that bring a laugh out of you in between all the chaos, it makes getting through the hard moments so much more worth it just to see these goofy scenes.

By the end of the game I felt like I had just conquered a mountain. Despite at the beggining feeling like this is game I probably couldn't finish, I made it to the end and had so much fun while doing it. I am now apart of the God Hand cult and "I love it".

I don't think I've ever instantly fallen in love with a video game faster than I did with Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom.
With the resurgance of 3D platformers in the indie scene, this game is most definetly something you can add to the list of greatest 3D platformers of all time.

A platformer where there is no jump button? That is right... sort of. In this game you are taking advantatge of slopes and ramps with the dash abiity your taxi has in order to "Jump" and get to high places. As you play the game you will eventually learn more and more tricks where you will be moving around the map like an abosolute master, the same way you would be moving in Mario Sunshine or A Hat in Time. The skill ceiling here is TALL, and once you really get good with the mechanics, you will be jumping and zipping all around easily getting to out of bounds places. The game controls like an absolute dream and you'll have no problem getting used to the mechanics.

The game is structured like a 3D Mario game and Banjo-Kazzoie where you're given open zones to explore and collect gears (this games version of Stars or Jiggies). Some are out in the open for you to platform to and collect, and others require you to complete some sort of challenge. The standard fare, but not a single gear was ever frustrating to get. Going for the 100% is immensly fun.

With it being a Taxi game, there are also some Crazy Taxi moments where you gotta pick up and drop of passangers during some of the levels, which bring another unique twist to this platformer. Think Crazy Taxi but you're platforming as well as driving to your destination.

The visuals are super charming, it's a like a cross between Megaman Ledgends and a beautiful Sega Saturn game. It is absolutley charming and shines with every level theme the game has from the beach, to the bustling city, to haunted mansions. It's got all the themes you'd expect a platformer to have.

It takes about 8 - 10 hours to finish this, something expected from the genere, however when you beat the game there is a huge post-game that is about the same size as the main game, and in completly new levels too. There is so much content here with some of the postgame being real challenging if you want to exhaust everything you can from this game.

With this being the studio's first game, I am very shocked at the result here. I have no idea who the individual devs are, but this game feels like it was made by very experienced people in the industry. Something you'd expect nowadays from Toys for Bob or Insomniac. This is definetly my favorite platfomer so far from 2024, and expected sleeper hit.

There are a lot of good ideas presented here that seemed to improve an idea of the sequel to the first game, but the execution brings it down a bit to the point where I couldn't enjoy this as much as Bomberman 64. I still enjoyed and appreciated some aspects to it.

I really liked the original Bomberman 64. It had a few flaws in a couple of areas, but I was more forgiving to it considering it was the first 3D adventure-style Bomberman. The main issue I had with Bomberman 64 was that the level design was okay if you weren't fully exploring the level for the 100%. You could beeline it to the end of a level without much challenge. In Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, this is the main thing they addressed, but not to the degree I like.

As opposed to the open-ended nature of levels in the original, levels are now structured like Zelda dungeons. I like this idea for a 3D Bomberman game that is based around exploring and puzzle solving. The more intricate level design actually puts you to the test without the need to go for 100%

While the "Dungeon puzzle" designs are fine and clever. The execution is not. The game has a lot of backtracking, which is fine for a game like this, but the problem is there are a lot of rooms that are locked and won't open until you beat all the enemies in that room. That is also a fine concept, it is done in Zelda too. The problem is that every time you leave and re-enter a room (which you will be doing a lot) the enemies are reset and the doors are locked again. And this happens so much, I can tell you it probably adds an unnecessary extra 2 hours to your playthrough.

For every level, if you die you start all the way back at the beginning. Sometimes with some of the puzzles already solved, but you have to track all the way to the point where you previously were. It is real easy to die with the fact that there are bottomless pits everywhere (insta-kill), so this also heavily takes momentum out of the game.

The original Bomberman 64 let you move the camera around which was a godsend in a game where you need to properly see all your enemies and aim your bombs carefully. This game does the genius idea of removing all camera control, so now you're stuck with a fixed camera and worse bomb aiming because of that, with the prone-ness to easily die now due to falling off things because of the bad fixed camera. The fixed camera also makes the game feel much less grandiose.

In regards to the gameplay itself, everything here feels slightly worse than it did than the original. Movement, charging bombs, throwing bombs, kicking etc. Everything feels more sluggish and less accurate. They really messed up what was fine to begin with controls. The biggest sin is how bombs are charged. Originally, you had to pump them up by mashing the A button, which would give you a satisfactory pumping animation. The faster you mash the faster it would pump. Now for this game, you have to hold the B button and it will slow grow. Keep in mind if you are next to a well, or your companion, the bomb won't grow at all for some reason. This makes charging infinitely less satisfying and made me want to avoid doing it.

The act of boming itself is much worse too. In the original 2D Bomberman games, you bomb would blow up in a '+' shape. This made sense for how the game is presented. For a 3D game, the + shape does not cut it. Good thing this was addressed immediately in the OG Bomberman 64 with the fact that the explosion is circular, but in this game it has been reverted back to the + shape. This is a bad idea with the fact that enemies move in a free 360 degree motion, as opposed to just a vertical or horizontal direction. Because of this, your bombs will now miss like 60% of the time.
You are given different bomb types this time around which act like new Zelda dungeon items. Each bomb fulfills a different purpose for solving puzzles, and enemies are weak to some more than others, but you will be using your Ice bombs 90% of the time as that is the only bomb that will blow up in a circular shape without charging it.

On top of all the annoying gameplay quirks that heavily bring the game down. There is a lot of unskippable dialogue, which I'm normally fine with in RPGs, but this is a Bomberman game. Like I don't wanna spend 5 minutes reading dialogue about "deep" Bomberman lore, c'mon.

This game on paper sounds like my ideal kind of Bomberman game, but it shows how even with the best ideas, bad execution can ruin something good. I still enjoyed the game for a single playthrough, and the best parts were going through these dungeon like levels, and figuring out the puzzles as you go along, but with everything else bringing the vibes down I just wanted this game to end.

If you want a REALLY good Bomberman Zelda-like though, go play Bomberman Quest on the Gameboy. That shit is as good as Link's Awakening let me tell ya.

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW:

I generally don't play early access games and usually wait out until 1.0 is finished, however this was just sitting in my library looking like a juicy steak that I couldn't resist.

Obviously a homage to Star Fox, Ex Zodiac is looking to be one of the best Star Fox-like games that is not Star Fox or Star Fox 64. This definitely scratches that itch as the gameplay itself feels like a 1:1 creation of Star Fox 64.

Each level is vibrant and deep, each containing smaller secrets you can find to acquire more power-ups. The charm of the original Star Fox is here and you can tell the dev is a big fan.

Besides the "arwing" gameplay, you also get a bike that controls similar to the landmaster and also bonus levels, that plays like a homage to Space Harrier.

Ex Zodic feels like it's made by a mega fan of the rail shooter genre and wants nothing but to do it justice. At the moment there are about 9 stages that can be completed in about hour, but the devs says there's plans for 13 stages.

As the game is unfinished, my feedback would be to incorporate ways to make the game more replayable (e.g. Branching paths with different difficulties, challenges etc) and the moment it's a straight forward level by level game with not much reason to go back unless you want a higher score. Also a slight nitpick more than a complaint, similar to the OG Star Fox, it's hard to read the dialogue while concentrating on the action, so hoping for voice acting in the finished version. Since this is an indie game, maybe the Dev could also follow the trend of indie games and incorporate some kind of endless/roguelike mode as an unlockable after beating the main game.

I used to see my cousins play this game a lot as a kid, but it looked fairly generic to me. All I remember is it had some funny sound effects for some reason.
Years later I find that this was made by Rare, so I wanted to give it a shot considering their reputation on the N64.

Blast Corps is a 'turn your brain off and wreck shit' kinda game. You're given levels each with a time limit to complete the objective, the objective mostly being wreck all the required shit before time runs out. The variety comes in the type of vehicles you are given each mission. Sometimes you are given a bulldozer and other times you are given a giant mech amongst other things. Something it will switch up and you will need to use multiple vehicles in a sigle level.

The gameplay is satisfying and easy to pick up. But once you've completed the first couple of levels, you've basically seen everything the game has to offer and the rest of the game provides similar challenges, just much harder. If you wanna complete this game you will be retrying a lot of the later levels over and over again.

Blast Corps is a fine time waster if you wanna just crumble the fuck outta some 1990 lookin-ass buildings with some big machinery, but once your fun runs out the game does not have much else to offer.

This probably has one of the funniest bad endings I've seen in a video game.

I'm glad Bomberman 64 is a game that exists. I always loved the premise of Bomberman, being a little marshmallow man that can conjure bombs from thin air, and everything you kill in this world is cute. However, I always found the regular Bomberman gameplay kind of repetitive considering there's like 50 versions of Bomberman with similar gameplay.

Bomberman 64 breaks that cycle and provides an action adventure game where you are given levels to explore and solve puzzles while bombing the living daylights out of cute things.

The gameplay is pretty simple, it's a fully 3D Bomberman where you can conjure bombs, but also kick and throw them. With these skills you can explore each level to complete the objective and reach the end. You either have the choice of just finishing the level objective to get the bad ending, or going out of your way to fully explore each level and find all the collectables by completing some sort of puzzle or defeating some big enemy in order to get the good ending. Regardless it's a fun time with a lot of cheap kills by dying to your own bombs (this will happen a lot).

It's fairly short if you only focus on the objects and can beat the game in about an hour. It can be quite challenging if you aren't familiar with the tricks, so it's fairly replayable and you can get better and better with each run.

This is an absolutely charming little game that I recommend you play once if you're for some good N64 nostalgia.

One of the best FPS Roguelites I've played. Roboquest has the feeling of a Halo game, with the aesthetics of Borderlands/Hi-Fi Rush with a neat little Mega Man premise. A great recipe that is kind of held back by being a rogue-lite.

I love Robots, I love this artsyle, I love great movement , upgrades, choices of classes. This game has it all. It's what you expect from roguelites; Random weapon drops, procedural levels and permadeath with small incremental upgrades.

The gameplay is very good, and if it weren't for the satisfying gunplay, sexy doom-like movement, great aesthetics, this would be just another FPS roguelike in a sea of roguelite indies.

I had my fun with it but I don't have the patience to finish roguelites these days unless you are Shovel Knight Dig or Enter the Gungeon. I may pick it up again one day to complete it as I did really like this one.

Pseudoregalia has the bones and structure of so many things I like in video games. The game is a 3D Platoforming Metroidvania akin to Blue Fire or like a 3D Ori and the Blind Forest a.k.a Good Shit.

The game has some of the smoothest best feeling controls in a 3D platformer I have ever felt. All you start off with is a basic jump, but as you explore, progress, doing metroidvania things, you unlock more and more of your movement options. By the middle of the game you will be zipping zooming and bouncing all around the levels. Rooms that took you minutes to get through at the beginning will take you seconds by the end. As a Metroidvania it is expected you need to unlock things to access new places. So naturally the things you unlock are new platforming moves, meaning you still need to earn access to the new place by using your new platformer moves, whether it's a wall kick, wall run, long jump etc.

The gameplay here is nothing but a pure 5/5 and I would change nothing about it.

The level design is really good here as you unlock more moves, you given more than one way to access a location. There is a bit of backtracking here, but once you get used to the map you can figure out where to go. No problem there.

I love the homage to N64 graphics. I was a N64 kid so it brought back a nice familiar feeling.

My major gripe with the game is all the aesthetics of the levels. You are in one big castle, but everything is just so bland. No matter which section you are in, all the visuals feel like the equivalent of stale bread. This does have a huge hinderance on enjoying considering all you are doing here is platforming. There is essentially no story, and the music is very bland. If the platforming wasn't really really good, I would be bored out of my mind. It was apparent when I had to backtrack through the same locations like 10 times because I needed to find out where I needed to go next, but I had to cross the bland castle over and over again.

I hope the dev takes this game to the next level with a sequel that keeps the same concept, but just has better production overall. I can see a game like this being of my favorites of all time.

A new entry in the fun with-friends flavor of the week genre (e.g. Lethal Company). So far I love the concept of this game, where you get to roleplay being Logan Paul in a suicide forest.
It's basically an excuse to act stupid with mates and have laugh at the playback at the end.
Although you will quickly see all the game has to offer in a few hours so the novelty wears off fast.
It was a smart idea giving this for free for 24 hours because I don't think it's something I would buy or convince my friends to play if it wasn't free. Still had a good couple of laughs with it.

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.