Star Fox on the DS

Star Fox Command brings the Star Fox francise to Nintendo's newest hand-held system, the DS. Like all the previous Star Fox games, the main character is Star Fox, leader of the Star Fox squardon, a psuedo-mercenary type squadron that assists the glactic military in its time of needs. There are also playable characters, Flaco, Skippy, Krystal, along with a few mission specific characters. The plot of the game is that a race called the Anglars, who live in an acid sea on the planet Venom, are bent on destroying the Lylat system. Star Fox has disbanded his organization but as the crisis excalates, he calls back his friends and they rejoin him, of course, being succesfful and saving the day!

Star Fox makes great use of the DS system. The DS (Dual Screen) has two screens, one which has a touch feature, which games have used in different capacities. In Star Fox, the touch screen and stylus to control the fighters and using any button to fire the weapons. The touch screen also where the two special manuvers are used along with bombs. You fly the ships via 3rd person.

Using the stylus to control the rig takes some getting used to and, at first, I thought I wasn't going to be able to do anything succesfully because of it. As I got used to it though, I became better. My biggest complaint is while you can change a few things about the controls, you can't switch it back to regular D-pad control, which I would have perferred.

As each mission is completed, points are awarded based up how quickly the missions were done and how successfully. By earning more points, more mission options became available to chose from. With the bombs being activated on the touch screen, I frequently forgot I had then and rarely used them.

Most missions play out in a fairly similar manner. The team goes to an area, has to fight hordes of enemies, collect starts that they drop, and liberate cities. Each zone has a time limit which can be increased by finding time boosts or succesfully blocking shots. Not all the enemies have to be killed, though some do drop special items, like power-ups, bombs, and time increases. When you enter a city to liberate, again, the goal is to kill certain enemies to earn stars and once they are all killed, you do a quick fly and spin through a mother ship, destroying it.

Star Fox Command also adds in a strategic element. In each zone, turns are taken before you fly the ship. You can tell each pilot where on the map to head, what power ups to try to collect and what enemies to try to engage. The mother ship can also fire missiles, destroying groups of enemies. The goal during this stage is to free the cities and keep the enemies away from your mother ship. I rather enjoyed this part of the game.

The game also features multi-player through Nintendo Wi-Fi. You can either partner up with your friends locally or go online and fight against players all over the world! Very fun!

The graphics are on par for a standard DS game. It makes good use and reminds me of the N64 verison, which is pretty good, considering the size of the DS! Sounds were alright though the game could have benefited from some voice acting instead of just warbles as the characters speak. An interesting feature is the ability to add your own voice to the game for in game missions!

Overall, Star Fox Command was a fun game. I felt that the missions did become repeative, though as the game progressed, different aspects were added to them. The main story mode was over way to quick (I finished it in around 6-8 hours). But the Wi-Fi capabilites all a lot to the game.

Star Fox fans should consider picking this game up and trying it out. I enjoyed it!