Star Fox Assault (GameCube)

Like Adventures, you'll very soon be saying "Is that all?" as with only 10 missions to complete (only half involve the classic pure Arwing missions that we have all grown to love in this series) you'll most likely finish this game on easy in one sitting, however thankfully there is an incentive to keep on playing with harder modes of gameplay and 2 other methods of playing the story.

The Single Player mode is a great experience at the start, but slowly starts to repeat itself as most of the mission objectives are similar and use the same plots from Lylat Wars, you will at least say twice when playing "Hey, Hasn't this happened before?" if you have played any previous Star Fox game.

Sporting a soundtrack with newer versions of the old music from Lylat Wars and a couple of new mixes, they aren't out of place and suit the level they are used on, but the lack of a Arwing engine noise except when boosting does leave the game sounding rather boring if your flying to another target on the map. The character voices thankfully are much better than Lylat Wars. (No more hearing a toad that breaks windows with his high pitched voice every time he asks for assistance in the battle.)

The graphics on this version finally do the series justice. The screen is constantly busy with other events happening aside from what your doing without any noticeable slowdown. The first mission starts off with a large fleet attacking each other and while your attacking the small enemies, you'll see giant battleships firing lasers at each other. This feature alone impressed me a great deal as previous Star Fox games didn't have much going on in the background.

The multiplayer is nothing special, all of the gimmicks put into it have been seen before in other games and there is nothing really that will amaze you despite having numerous unlockable extras for this mode.

This game could have been so much more if only they had more missions to complete or gave the player an option of which planet to go to next like in Lylat Wars. On the plus side, the developers listened to the public's cry and included a level select so you can replay your favourite level without having to progress through the story mode every time you wish to play it. They also provided the player the chance to save after every successful mission in story mode so they can take a breather, but one cannot get the feeling they only added these to make a short game last a bit longer. For those who enjoyed Lylat Wars' Arcade-like stance on story mode, you will like Survival Mode, similar to this game's version of Story Mode, but leaves out the save option forcing you to finish the game in one sitting.

In terms of Unlockable extras, it feels rather uninspired, You can unlock Namco's old shooter Xevious after finishing missions on a certain difficultly. That, and mostly unlockable extras for the Multiplayer fail to impress, This could have been Nintendo's golden chance to put Lylat Wars or even Starwing (Star Fox's) on the disc as with their current trend of putting old versions of the games with the new versions (Maybe they are planning something like this for the DS? We can only hope), or at least give the player the chance to use different characters for story mode.

Overall, if your a fan of this series it's worth a try, but for the lifespan of the game you may wish to consider renting this as you'll finish the story mode very quickly, but the overall concept of the game is a good step forward for the series and has reasonable replay value with the chance to do missions again to get higher scores.
A step forward from Lylat Wars, and the story isn't rushed at the end like in Adventures. It just needs about 5 more missions and perhaps the much demanded Co-Op mode to make this game an absolute essential.