Star Fox DS

[Thrik]

Hits the US in two days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_7ko1TW_kk

:tup: :tup: :tup:

Anyone know when the European/UK release is?

[Kolzig]

http://www.play.com/Games/DS/STCS4/3-/1098634/Star_Fox_Command/Product.html

1st October.

[Thrik]

God.

[Kolzig]

First US reviews are here:

http://ds.ign.com/objects/826/826993.html

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/action/starfox/review.html

[Wrestlevania]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_7ko1TW_kk

I was worried as to how the humble DS would handle planetary encounters, but that scenery looks fantastic.

[brkl]

Hmm, is the DS substantially more powerful than the N64?

[Thrik]

I don't think so, but the fact the screen is so small does mean it looks like there's a lot more juice coming out of the hardware. Metroid Prime DS looks pretty damn awesome too and far better than N64 shooters.

[miffy495]

The DS is slightly more powerful than the N64. The difference is about the same as how much more powerful the Gamecube is than the PS2 though. Really not all that noticable unless they're running the same thing side by side. Still, it can pump out a bit higher res textures and a few more polys per character model. Then you've got, as Thrik said, the smaller screen which really does help make things look a lot cleaner.

...and yeah. Payday is Friday, so Star Fox is mine on Saturday.

[Kolzig]

I hope the game arrives to me soon after it's released in US.

I don't want to wait for too long.

[miffy495]

Got it on Friday, and have been playing it since. Good, but goddamn is it ever hard. The enemies themselves aren't usually that bad, with a few expletive-screaming exceptions, but those missiles make it far too easy to lose. The combat is very good though, so I'm enjoying it. Anyone else picked it up by now?

[Kolzig]

I got it through mail last week and it's very good.

I've already played it through once and man it's so great to see that every playtime really is different, all the different choices that you get to make and the story is different and all the maps are different too.

Also, I feared that the controls might suck because several reviews said so, but I'm so damn happy to realize that the reviewers were totally wrong.

[Wrestlevania]

*bump*

I got Star Fox Command for my birthday last week and, contrary to Miffy's opinion, I think it's far too easy. In fact I think it's probably the easiest game I've played in a while; I finished the basic storyline in three 1hr sittings pretty much, having had to retry no more than a couple of encounters. I'm currently working my way through unlocking all the alternative routes through the game, in turn unlocking a lot more of the overarching story, which is fun in itself.

Enemy designs are wildly varied, but all very basic by necessity of the DS' weak 3D power for this sort of game, so it's not as impressive to play as I was hoping it might be. The stylus control is necessarily accurate, but having to scrub back-and-forth to perform barrel rolls is haphazard and occaisionally frustrating. Otherwise it plays as well as you could hope for.

The game as a whole, though, just isn't what we knew and loved about the original SNES Star Fox. I'm disappointed that every encounter - excluding missile chases - is a replication of the 'boss arena' type levels from the original. I (along with many others I suspect) loved the spectacle of the pseudo-on-rails sections leading up to the boss encounters in the original game. With those gone, and the strange impression of lower graphical detail, Star Fox Command comes off as a half-cocked tribute.

Those shitty cutscenes and childish dialogue are driving me fucking mental, too. Thank Shiggy someone in the design team had the decency to include a 'skip' option.

[miffy495]

Yeah, my fucking hard opinion was quickly withdrawn after I managed to get the hang of the barrel roll. Got all the story arcs only dying on the final boss a couple of times after mastering that spin. Hard until you realize "wait, rolling deflects all enemy shots?" Then really, really easy.