t looks like someone at Nintendo finally took my advice and broke both of Fox McCloud’s legs. I know this is a horrible thing to say, but disaster strikes whenever this fuzzy little critter frolics in the brush. His place is in the cockpit. That’s where he’s at his best. When he isn’t soaring in his Arwing, the only thing that is airborne is a Nintendo machine thrown out of a window by a disconsolate fan boy. Nintendo tried to expand the Star Fox brand with the on foot focus in Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault, but it just didn’t take. Rather than making the same cataclysmic mistake of grounding the excitement, Nintendo and developer Q-Games are giving Fox another chance to earn his wings. Star Fox Command isn’t the sequel to Star Fox 64 that everyone has been looking to the skies for, but it does deliver the same nerve-rattling intensity that the series has been lacking in recent years.
The Nintendo DS’ touch screen may not seem like a suitable navigational tool for a game of this ilk, but thanks to the ingenious design from Q-Games, it handles the Arwing’s movements quite well. Sliding the stylus across the screen adjusts your vessel’s pitch and yaw, and a quick circular motion performs the evasive spin. The ship’s other functions, such as the flip, are also designated to the touch screen – not as stylus movements, but icons that you simply need to tap. I found that this newfangled control system allows you to be more accurate in your targeting and more precise in your evasive maneuvers, but also more prone to mixing up your actions. A quick evasive swipe may be read as a spin, or you may accidentally hit the flip icon as you veer to the side.
Unlike the Star Foxes of yesteryear, this one isn’t a track shooter. It plays out more like a strategy game. Before you can down your first bogey, you must first coordinate the movements of your team by drawing their flight paths on a top-down map. When your tactics are set, the enemy will make its move. If your flight paths collide, the game switches to a real-time combat phase. These segments usually only consist of a handful of targets, but the enemy doesn’t follow the old one-shot and run strategy that it used to. They’ll stick to your tail and rip your Arwing to shreds if you don’t lose them quickly. It still has that great Star Fox feel to the combat, but now it has elements of Ace Combat and Advance Wars thrown into the mix. A game that once just focused on your piloting skills now brings out the general in you.
The mind game that comes from reading your enemy’s tactics is truly fascinating, but the game runs into the problem of the battles being far too short. A map usually only takes a few minutes to clear. Just as you start to get into the strategy element, you are pulled away and sent to another galaxy and another battle.
The game still offers a number of different paths, which is great for replay. Multiplayer is also present and proves to be as much fun as it was back when it was powered by the FX chip.
Star Fox Command isn’t the second coming, but it is a great start to repairing a franchise that had crashed and burned. Let’s hope that Nintendo continues with this formula and adds some length to the wars that unfold in future installments.