| Game Reviews From a Parental Perspective! | |
|
|
|
| Home | Forums | Review Archive | Columns | Feature Articles |
|
Home >
Review Archive >
Video Games
> Results: Star Fox Command
Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Scroll down for our Kid Factor. 
The ESRB Says:
Mild Fantasy Violence: GamerDad shot down enemy space craft. But no grisly death scenes or anything, just an explosion. A new evil force has threatened the Lylat System. From the toxic seas of Venom, home planet of the defeated evil scientist monkey Andross comes an army of fish people led by the sinister Emperor Anglor. Can Fox McCloud, Slippy Toad, Falco, Krystal, and the rest band together again to form the StarFox team and save Corneria and the Lylat System once again? StarFox Command for the Nintendo DS is a totally different beast from other games in the series. The only thing it has in common with the classic games is that it's a 3-D aerial shooter. As a DS title, gameplay is entirely stylus and touch screen driven. In a one player game, start a mission on an overhead map. Draw lines to guide each member of the StarFox team and they'll follow that as their flight path. Intercept enemy craft before they reach the Great Fox, the StarFox team's mother ship. Players can also pick up missiles and other goodies in this phase. Once the flight paths are all plotted out, that turn ends and the enemy makes their move. A dogfight occurs if any player intercepts an enemy during this time. Once a dogfight is initiated, the game switches to an enclosed 3-D aerial battle arena. Players must pilot their craft and shoot down specific enemies to collect ﾑcores' within a limited time. Controlling the space craft in this phase is also entirely stylus based. Move the stylus around the screen to guide the Arwings left, right, up, and down. Touch buttons on the side to perform loops and 180 degree turns. Drag and drop bombs onto the radar map to blast clusters of enemies out of the skies. Double tap near the top screen to boost and tap near the bottom of the screen to slow down. Rub the screen left and right to do a barrel roll, which creates a magnetic field to draw in items and repel enemy fire. Players win the dogfight if they destroy the enemies and collect enough cores before time runs out. And if they can complete the mission in a given number of turns, they'll win. Repeated playthroughs unlock different paths in the story with more missions and endings. StarFox Command tries to be both a strategy game and dogfight sim and fails miserably at both. Graphics are bland and it's hard to see what you need to be shooting at. The player's ships and enemies look more like paper origami rather than sleek space craft. And while the play control is innovative, it certainly isn't very intuitive and makes dogfights much less fun. Gameplay ends up being rather repetitive and frustrating, especially when you fail a mission and have to start over. At least StarFox Command features wireless dogfights with people nearby or over the Internet. But for most, that's still not enough reason to join up with the StarFox team again.  
Kids will like the space themes and animal characters. While Star Fox Command is full of shooting and dogfights, violence only consists of blasting down space craft. No worse than Star Wars. Reading skill is a must as everything is text based, the characters only speak in gibberish talk. However, many young players may have difficulty with the unusual controls and tough yet repetitive dogfights. Since you can have wireless dogfight battles on the Internet, parents may need to watch out for a couple of things. One, other players may have dirty words or other not so kid friendly names as their call signs. And two, you can record messages using the DS microphone and play them back during battles, and other players may say things that kids don't need to hear. I personally never encountered anything like that when playing StarFox Command online, but it could happen.
Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Star Fox Command |
Read the GamerDad 2007 Holiday Guide!
|
Please Note: GamerDad is not intended to be read by anyone under 18. We stay clean, but be warned! Content Management System developed by Redbird Solutions. |
