The game is broken up into two different styles of gameplay; flying and ground missions. The flying missions are by far the more enjoyable ones and will remind gamers of past Star Fox games. It’s these missions that save the game from receiving a lower score as they are genuinely fun and offer up varied levels of play. Classic Arwing moves are back and the ship controls extremely well. You’ll still have plenty of missions where your teammates get in trouble and you are forced to save their tales (I’m looking at you Slippy!). Like Star Fox 64, the team is constantly chatting back and forth, which really adds to the game, but some of the voice acting is laughable. Likewise I would go into the story details, but quite honestly it’s not worth the time.

The ground missions have been the bane of the game’s existence ever since it was shown a few years back at E3. Despite some control fixes and tweaking, they still come off as overly boring and lacking the oomph needed to make them enjoyable. On foot Fox will pick up a variety of forgettable weapons to blow up enemies of all sorts. Many missions will allow him to hop into his tank to take out bigger bad guys and defensive turrets. The HUD and radar provide little help in the missions and almost seem like they were designed by a bunch of freshman designers. The game’s foot missions are extremely generic in both story and presentation. I often found myself trying to pass these levels as fast as possible to get to the “good stuff” found in the flying missions. With questionable control schemes, boring mission design, uninteresting weapons, and horrible voice acting it’s a wonder some of these missions ever made it into the final game.

The graphics are a mixed bag. The entire game has a high-resolution look to it, but the air missions definitely look better than the ground ones, which makes me wonder if two different teams worked on the game. The flying levels are mostly beautiful with extravagant backgrounds and no slowdown in the frame rate. The on-foot missions are all right looking, but there are some clipping problems when too close to walls and the textures could have used some improvements. The music in the game is actually very well done with a symphonic flair to most tracks. It’s unfortunate that most of the time the hideous voice acting intrudes on the ambiance.

Star Fox Assault is a perfect game for younger gamers. I can totally see 5 to 10 year olds eating this game up. They’ll love the characters in the game and it’s not overly challenging. The multiplayer modes will keep them entertained, but any serious hardcore player will want to play a game with more substance and deep gameplay. It’s a shame that the game just didn’t focus on the flying missions like previous incarnations. The game isn’t horrible, but for a Nintendo release it’s definitely an average game at best.