Star Fox Command

The first time I heard about this game, my mind drifted back to the one time that I'd played starfox before. It was on the N64, when I spent a single evening at a friend's house getting killed in multiplayer. That evening is still firmly engraved in my mind. When I finally decided to buy Starfox Command, I had had little enough experience in Starfox gameplay, but I also had doubts as to whether stylus controls would work well for flying.
Both of these possible problems quickly disappeared. Three minutes into the tutorials, I was already comfortable with the controls (and my flying abilities had greatly improved since the days of the Nintendo 64). I was prepared to take a stylus-jab at single player.
Most of the game's new quirks I appreciated quite a bit. I enjoyed controlling my fighters to attack enemy squadrons via the map view, and the turn limit was just enough to keep me moving forward through the missions. Battles are fast-paced and action-based, and when you succeed at deflecting and dodging all of the various projectiles flying at you, you feel like a lot better pilot than you really are.
The most exhilarating part of single-player to me was the missile-chasing. Functioning as the poor man's missile defense, your fighter keeps going faster and faster, flying through hoops after the missile until you either miss a beacon or you destroy the missile. What makes it even more nerve-racking is if the missile will reach the Great Fox(your mothership) on the following turn, ending the mission if it survives your attack!
At the end of the game's main story, you recieve a key that allows you to choose different actions for the characters in the game on your next play-through, eventually leading up to one of the other eight endings.These branching plots add a lot of gameplay, and I often found myself anxious to finish a mission so I could see what would happen next in my chosen storyline.
The wi-fi mode is slightly more robust than previous wifi DS games, and I was happy to see the huge 26-letter ranking system come into play (the alphabet, if you hadn't already figured that out). Nintendo has also made another attempt to curb disconnecting; the system counts the number of times you've cut connection and attempts to pair you to others who have similar numbers of disconnects. With luck, it will prove effective over the far more disconnect-forgiving methods used in past games.
Multi-player still has some problems, unfortunately. The lack of computer opponents in multi-player handicaps the fun of the offline experience, especially once you finish Story Mode. In addition, it would've been cool if you could pick from the numerous single-player ships in multi-player sessions; alas, you can only use one (rather generic) vessel. Nevertheless, the game quite effectively brings the age-old and brand-new Starfox gameplay together to the DS.

I cannot believe how awsome the game is. The controls are new and original,the action is fun, and I love the stratagy.This is the best Starfox so far!

Pros.
~Good graphics[for a handheld]
~Great gameplay
~Challenging but fun stratagy
~AWSOME controls
~Good storyline
~No cons disrupt game play

Cons.
~Some dogfights are repetetive
~Bosses can get aggravating at times
~Annoying Alain babble

(.....)

For anyone who questions if the DS is more powerful then the N64, you need to play this game and see some of these worlds on here. Far better then the N64 version and none of that N64 filtering, with 9 different endings it just keeps playing and playing without repeating the game. Very nice feature.

Control with the stylus is flawless, planning the mission out, and then active control over your fight is how a portable game should be. Not like Advance Wars or Age Of Empires for the DS.

There aren't that many 4 or 5 star games out there for the DS. This is one of them. Don't be put off by the cartoon nature of this game.

4 outta 5.

My nephew loves this game. And the Wi-fi option add an extra challenge too.

Star Fox Command DS brings the fun space combat world of Star Fox to your DS handheld. It's actually quite fun, strategizing your order of attack and spinning into action!

Your favorite characters of Star Fox are in trouble, and need to a series of enemies. First, you get the overall top-down map screen. Each character's ship can fly a certain amount of distance in a turn - simply draw a line to say where they go. Use the stylus to wipe out some of the 'fog of war', and your main ship can shoot missiles. You only have a certain number of turns available, so plan your movements wisely.

When your ship encounters an enemy ship, you switch into real time combat. In this mode, you drag your stylus around on the bottom screen to "steer" while the top screen shows you where you're flying. You fly through rings to get power-ups, and shoot at enemies (with the D-pad on the left) to fire. It really is quite intuitive - no up/down, left/right issues. Simply drag your stylus as the ship flies. You spin your stylus in a circle to do the classic barrel roll, and there are two easy-access spots to tap to do a U-turn or a loop.

I love space combat, and it was really fun to have this type of game available on a handheld. I kept expecting to put the game down after a mission - but I'd say "just one more ..." and keep going. Note that these missions aren't easy! Expect to have to replay some of them several times to get through. You do have to learn the strategies and tactics of three dimensional combat.

The game expects you to go through a single pass rather quickly - but the beauty is that you then go back and re-play it, now having new options available at every stage. Instead of just contacting Slippy, now you have other choices you can do instead that are more difficult. You choose at each step what to do, and it affects the types of missions you take on and the endings you get to see. Think of it as built in difficulty levels.

A key element of space combat games are the visuals - with you trying to move and think real time in three dimensions, it's critical that you can see the terrain, your enemies, and anything else that might get in the way. While the DS graphics in general are nice, it wasn't always easy to see what you were fighting. The graphics were sometimes unclear - the ship's faded graphic would blend right in to the background's faded graphic.

Also, your ship is right in the center of the screen, and takes up a fair amount of it. This makes it challenging if you're right behind a ship, to see it. Surely they could have given you an in-cockpit view or at least a transparent ship.

For vocals, they give you the high pitched gibberish that means it's perfect for all languages. No need to do new vocal tracks for this game! Still, in modern times, it would be nice to have a regular vocal track available. It adds a whole additional dimension of enjoyment when you have great voice actors bringing life to the characters.

Still, this is a superb game for the DS, and one I really enjoy. Well recommended!