Latest Star Fox has fine
start but gets frustrating

The past and the present collide in Star Fox: Assault, and the results aren't always pretty.

Fans of the "Star Fox" franchise will be pleased to know that furry hero Fox McCloud and his animal cohorts have taken to the skies once more after their last, predominantly ground-bound Gamecube outing, Star Fox Adventures.

The space combat portions in Star Fox: Assault are a reminder of what brought the series to prominence, first on the Super Nintendo in 1993 and then in its Nintendo 64 sequel in 1997: thrilling, all-out 3D dogfights against enemy forces. Whether the player is being guided on a predetermined path in some sections or set loose to fly in the vast expanse of space in others, it's arcade-style twitch shooting at its finest.

Star Fox: Assault Rating: Teen Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Gamecube

If Namco, who developed this game for Nintendo, had stopped there, this game would have been fine. Instead, the powers that be decided that it would be nice to let Fox out of his Arwing spacecraft and run around on planet surfaces, just like he did in Star Fox Adventures, more often than keeping him in the air.

That's where things start becoming less thrilling and more an exercise in frustration.

Start with the map and radar system, with enemies represented as yellow dots and targets represented as red dots. While this system works fine in the free expanse of the space combat sections, it doesn't work nearly as well with the terrain changes on the ground levels. This often leads to many frustrating dead ends in the search for targets to eliminate. An alternate map view that shows the level layout obscures Fox, rendering it virtually useless.

It's while you're bumbling around aimlessly that the endless radio chatter between Fox and his squad mates starts becoming irritating as well. Sure, the dialogue provide hints on where to go next, but when the same hints are repeated over and over again, you soon start wishing that you could turn your blaster on the hint-giver instead.

Then there's the matter of the game's length -- at 10 levels long, it took this reviewer a little more than a week to get to the final level on normal difficulty. To compensate, several levels have complex mission objectives. But with few invisible checkpoints to record progress, it's possible to work through a level for a half-hour, die and have to start back at the beginning of the level with nothing to show for it.

The verdict: Rent this game before buying it. One or two rental periods might be enough to see all it has to offer.