So having played Adventures, I could finally continue the Star Fox saga in order. The current canon anyway, which goes Lylat Wars-> Adventures-> Assault-> Command. The original Star Wing was retconned by 64, and Star Fox 2 was never canon anyway but I still intend to play them as well, as Command’s multiple endings gives a good excuse to explore the other non-canon corners of that universe.

My friend Scraps helpfully lent me his copy of Assault, another borrowing for which I’m glad, as it doesn’t feel like Assault has quite the staying power of other Star Fox games. It’s another experiment you might say and like Metroid Prime Hunters seems to have been built around the multiplayer, with the campaign added afterwards with the existing mechanics. This may be related to the never-released arcade adaptation, much like F-Zero GX/AX.

This one’s a Namco production, and its strengths, especially as a fan of the series, are its adherence to the lore and continuity and how it builds on them. It does a great job expressing this cool world in an impressive way, with developed settings, characters, and sci-fi concepts. It also manages to ccapture a very epic feeling to the events of the game. It adds explicit FTL travel by warp gates, new characters Panther as a member of Star Wolf and Slippy’s dad Beltino, as well as the game’s major antagonists, the hivelike Aparoids. No new planets aside from the Aparoid homeworld but it gives a new level of realism to many established locations such as Corneria and Fichina.

The characters are a strength of the series, and Assault gives them lots of chances to converse between and during missions. They even bring back Tricky, which made me very happy so soon after Adventures. The relationship between Fox and Krystal is developed a little clumsily though. There’s also a little problem with Fox in that his voice actor and model don’t convey much emotion, so as the protagonist he didn’t hold up too well.

Let’s talk about the gameplay though. As I alluded to the missions are mainly in multiplayer maps, with objectives to do. You can hop in and out of the Arwing or Landmaster when you need to, and there’s a lot of on-foot running and gunning. The controls for this mode can be customised but are generally a bit awkward, which sucks because you spend so much time like that. The maps are often a little small for proper Arwing All-Range action too. The first mission fools you into thinking this game will be a scrolling shooter like everyone wants after Lylat Wars, which makes all the pilot stuff a rude shock. They do try to mix up the pilot gameplay though. There’s lots of weapons to use in different situations, and terrain varies from mission to mission.

So you have three different control schemes to master that need to be switched between in many missions, and things like laser upgrades for the Arwing or a pilot’s weapons don’t affect the other mode. It feels a little bolted together.

On balance the game doesn’t top the Star Fox charts, but it remains the most modern-looking and with an in-depth plot, which definitely counts for something. It’s just a shame that the campaign (which is uniquely linear for the series) pushes the roaming on-foot structure so much, because the few Arwing scrolling stages were good fun and work better, for my tastes anyway. It also has lots of impact plotwise on Command, which I’m now playing, which makes me appreciate the continuity the whole series has kept up with (since 64 anyway). As for whether you should play it? Trust your instincts.