OrtizGames

(old post)

I am amazed as I read over the little text at the end of every story arc I play through. Every word in the paragraphs set before me is like a stab straight through my heart. Thirty minutes of irritatingly broken gameplay and I’m rewarded with the most painful realization ever conceived as a gamer, even stronger than realizing Square is never going to make a Final Fantasy VII remake–Fox McCloud is dead. He’s been since dead long ago, possibly around the time of Dinosaur Planet which, in spite of myself, I have to say was a decent platformer that was actually fun once you got over the fact that you were Fox McCloud running around on the ground with a stick and that you were basically playing Zelda. I could tolerate this. It was not what I wanted from a StarFox game, but I could tolerate it. In the same way I could tolerate playing Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2. Trust me, I didn’t like it. But I gave it a chance for story’s sake, and I enjoyed the progression of events, even if I was controlling a queer, skin-tight-suit-wearing prettyboy who wanted to be Solid Snake. This, however, has so far been an unforgivable game. Star Fox: Command puts you at the helm of various pilots which you commandeer through each stage of the game, drawing little paths on the DS touch screen for them to follow. You must fly in front of incoming enemy blips in order to intercept them, and once you’ve drawn up your paths you press Advance (generally any button on your D Pad, in my case), and your ships will fly along their paths, causing enemies to spot them and exclaim, Metal Gear Style, and follow them, ready to be engaged. In that sense, it’s something vaguely similar to a tactical RPG. In fact, it’s reminiscent to the play style of Star Fox 2, the beta of which I still have erotic dreams about. I honestly think SF2 could have been the greatest Star Fox game of them all–no, the greatest space shooter of them all. It held promise, gameplay, graphics–everything refined–had the backing of an incredible story–I mean, that game had it all. And Star Fox: Command could have been everything Star Fox 2 had promised to be and more. But it has none of that. Instead, it borrows concepts, abstracts them, and adds on a tacky art style that makes me shudder and close my eyes, miserable. The tactical assignation system works fine and is simple to understand, but often lags whenever you’re waiting on a turn ending, and it doesn’t ever tell you it’s thinking, so you end up trying to click forward again, wondering if it didn’t register you pressed it the first time only to find that it jumps ahead and skips your next turn because you pressed forward again. It’s nearly cost me rounds of play, which is maddening. Then once you get past the tactical part of the game, you come to the shooting part. You’re prompted which enemy you’ve intercepted you would like to engage, and then you’re thrown into a free-roam square space filled with enemies, where you’re required to apparently “collect star pieces”. They’re essentially medals that look like stars. Yes, I know that sounds like Mario, and I have no idea where they came up with that one. You find these pieces shooting down key enemies that hold them, indicated at the beginning of any stage when you’ve engaged an enemy. The map will be filled with enemy ships, but usually you’ll just end up ignoring them and going after the star pieces, since you really don’t have time to waste–there’s a time limit, and you have to collect time markers dropped by enemies on the field in order to get back precious seconds. Yes, time markers. You control using the stylus, which is suprisingly pleasant, despite my roommate’s insistence that it can’t possibly feel natural. It’s certainly not something I’m used to, but it’s intuitive and comfortable. My hand doesn’t cramp up like when I play Metroid Prime: Hunters, and shooting is a breeze: just press any button, and if you’re a righty like I am it’s all too easy to use Up on the D-Pad. Hold to charge and lock on, like any Star Fox game, and let go to release your charge. Some ships have multilock. It all works fluidly. The only thing that results in impossible for me is firing bombs, which requires you to click a button on your screen – like Metroid Prime for DS’s turn-into-a-ball button, only more terse and idiotic, since you need to fire a bomb rather rapidly in this game whereas changing into a ball in Metroid isn’t necessarily a combat maneuver. However, none of the comfort actually matters. Now, I’m not saying shooting down enemies is easy. I don’t mean that at all. Star Fox: Command is absurdly difficult at times, with enemy fire hailing down on you like God’s angry Reckoning. But most of the time–the majority of the time–there is no skill involved in the game. Most of the time you can shoot down an entire enemy fleet without even looking at the screen. Enemy ships don’t avoid you, and oftentimes will fly straight into you, despite the fact that you’re in a quote unquote “All-Range Mode” scenario (for us Star Fox geeks). All you have to do is keep pressing fire, and eventually they’ll all die. Couple that with your insanely long-lasting barrel roll (draw a little circle on the DS screen) and you’re pretty much a massacre machine. All enemies conveniently have HP bars, too, so you know how close you are to destroying them–not that it really matters–half the time I’m not sure how much my shots actually do to them, anyway. Of course, there’s always the exceptions–some enemies, like these infuriating spinning <em>snail</em> things, don’t seem to take damage when you shoot them regularly, despite the fact that they have a glowing weak spot a la Star Fox 64. I think I even do more damage when I try shooting them in the head on than when I go for the weak spot. In those cases, a charge shot usually takes them out almost frighteningly fast (they don’t last much for having HP bars). However, some characters don’t have a charge shot–like Slippy, whose ridiculously strong lasers still can’t make up for the lack of a charge shot so they gave him the largest HP bar in the game as well. In these cases, trying to take enemies out can be somewhat infuriating. There’s also the fact that in the tactical bits you have to intercept and engage three different kinds of enemies: fighters, bases and missiles. Bases are just enemies with a giant mothership hovering around that shoots a giant laser. You ignore the mothership, collect the star bits, and then ROB (that infernal machine) prompts you to fly through rings into the mothership while using the barrel roll. Yes, into the mother ship. Like in <em>Independence Day</em>, only less suicidal. Don’t ask me why. When you destroy bases, they stop releasing missiles. We all remember the frustrating Sector Z mission with missiles. Star Fox: Command tries to duplicate that unpleasant experience, a mystery to me, by having you <em>fly through rings</em> while trying to shoot down one of the blasted things. Luckily, these missiles don’t have much HP, but I’ve had them get uncomfortably close to the Great Fox, and if I can’t use charge shot (with characters like Slippy, for example) shooting them down becomes ridiculously difficult, especially since the rings (called “beacons”) are generated seemingly at random and are pretty much relentless and unpredictable. Once you’re done shooting down all the enemies you’ve engaged this turn, the next turn begins. If one of the enemies or a missile manages to hit the Great Fox… well. You lose. You have to start the stage over. You also have Arwing lives again, and those represent the amount of ships you lose. If you run out of life or time in any skirmish with an enemy, you lose an Arwing. But your wingman remains in the game, acting as if nothing happened, despite their catastrophic death minutes ago. All that is <em>tolerable</em>, however, compared to the <em>writing</em>. I was insulted when I first started playing Star Fox: Command and I found out Krystal was in the game. Krystal is a gibberish speaking blue fox from a planet filled with dinosaurs with mystical powers. She is not a fighter pilot. Yet she was in this game, and how. The story revolves around the invasion of a species known as the “Anglar”, which are essentially just gigantic fish people. I imagine they must be somehow connected to Andross, because he’s in every game, but I haven’t finished it yet so I really don’t know. Basically, Peppy (who is a general now) implores you to go stop them, so you do. Predictably. Only, it’s just Fox and ROB at first. You gather up the crew as you go along, learning about how Fox is an emo kid and doesn’t want to risk anyone’s life–which all sounds fairly correct–but then when Krystal starts coming into the conversation everything goes sour. Fox with a love interest is wrong, and Fox with a love interest he pines over is almost painful. The definition of our vulpine hero is “a professional”, and Fox is one to every extreme, constantly striving to live up to the name of his father. Having him sob over Krystal when the girl suddenly turns out in a romantic entanglement with Panther from Star Wolf (Panther, the sloppy replacement for Andrew and Pigma, of all people) is just disturbing. Fox isn’t the only character who’s soul is dead in this game–Falco, our loveable, sarcastic, spiteful jerk suddenly steps out of character constantly through the game in revolting displays of affection. “Krystal!” he cheers at one point, “You sure can fly, girl!” My brain short circuited. Falco–the <em>real</em> Falco–would <em>never</em> offer a compliment if it wasn’t tinged with some sort of sarcasm or tease behind it. To anyone. Even his constant cutting off and dismissal of ROB as a “bucket of bolts” feels horribly forced and not at all heartfelt. Falco is supposed to be a jerk: cocky, insufferable, and internally deeply afraid of losing everyone but unable to deal with it. What happened to Star Fox? Why are Star Wolf good guys in this game? I’ve spent years gunning Wolf and Leon <em>down</em>–why am I helping them out now? It’s been evident more and more until I haven’t been able to ignore it any longer. Assault was a horrible piece of garbage, tolerable only because it had Arwings in it even if they moved far too slowly. But I realize now the issue with Assault wasn’t only the cheap gameplay and sloppy voice acting–but the writing that went into it, and how absolutely dreadful Star Fox plots have become, centered around Fox’s meager attempts to “find love”. Fox has never been about that. Now, he’s been robbed of his choice. Fox McCloud is dead, my friends. I mourn him with great sadness in my heart. Command could have been a decent game, despite its rather broken gameplay–I actually can enjoy myself on each missions, shooting down enemy ships and encountering curiously different final bosses. But it’s the story that firmly declares to me the fact that Nintendo has lost one of their great contenders for good. A lot of people say Nintendo has always had their big sellers–Mario, Metroid and Zelda–but what about Star Fox? That used to be a huge name for Nintendo, a classic that should have been able to maintain a strong and lucid IP for a long time. Everyone loves Fox. He’s a Smash Brothers character. So why did they let him sink so low? People may keep their unwavering faith in Nintendo, but after seeing how they’ve massacred one of my favorite video game characters of all time… well. Let’s just say if they come out with a new Star Fox that’s just as bad as this one, I may never buy another Star Fox again.

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I’ve started doing my Game of the Week Reviews, like I should be doing.

This week, Star Fox: Command.

I haven’t done the ones for all the old ones. If I get a chance, I’ll get around to them. If not, well… they’re still there so you can see what I’ve played.

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