| E3 2004 Coverage > Star Fox |
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| Star Fox |
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Once you take out all the leeches, you get to face off against a gigantic boss. This was definitely the high point of the demo, so it's a shame I didn't notice many people getting that far. A huge crab-like robot descends from the sky, and starts wreaking havoc around the base. The best way to go about damaging it is by locking your Landmaster cannon onto the weak point on its underbelly and blasting away with charged shots. It's not necessarily as easy as it sounds, though. When you come close enough to start attacking it, the boss unleashes wave after wave of burning death. If you aren't constantly, and I mean constantly, rolling and evading, you will promptly find yourself without a tank. I think I went through at least four or five tanks during the entire battle, actually. (Peppy will beam another Landmaster down for you if the one you're in is destroyed.) Some of the most hair-raising parts of the fight were when I was running for my life trying to get a health powerup before Peppy got off his lazy ass and sent me another tank.
Once you hit the underbelly enough, the boss will fall to its knees. This is when you can actually damage it. The true weak point is on top of its saucer-shaped body. You can't hit it there from the ground, though. You have to actually hover your tank into the air and maneuver it so it lands on top of the thing. You then quickly drive forward and hit the weak point with the strongest assault you can manage. You have to be quick, though, because the boss will begin charging one of its attacks and if you don't get your tank off its top, the power build up will knock you off and deal a ridiculous amount of damage. Keep up this pattern, and the boss will eventually fall for good. It was a really entertaining fight, and it managed to keep me on my toes the whole time. It definitely gives me hope for the remainder of the game's ground-based battles.
Flight Mode
The standard variety Star Fox flight levels were noticeably absent from last year's showing, so I was definitely looking forward to checking them out this year. For the most part, I came away quite pleased. The demo level was stunning, really, and excellently emphasized the art style being used for the game. Ships are designed with a very angular and high-tech look and, as such, don't need to push too many polygons to simulate rounded surfaces. In taking this approach, Namco has allowed for the engine to draw a LOT of ships on screen at once. The very beginning of the level has literally dozens giant battleships from both the Cornerian Army and the Andross Fleet battling against each other, and the sheer number and size of the forces definitely impresses.
The actual level progression doesn't really require much explanation. If you've played Star Fox 64, you know what to expect. You start out being sent against "Oinkonny's" forces. Remember him from Star Fox 64? Oinkonny was the last name of Andross' nephew Andrew, one of the members of the Star Wolf squadron. Apparently he's been promoted during the last few years, one of the benefits of being related to your cause's evil overlord. You blast your way through squads of small ships, take out some of the larger battleships, and face off against several maneuverable mechs before the level ends and the enemy flees to Fortuna.
A couple of mechanics have been tweaked a bit from Star Fox 64. You still get bonuses from killing groups of enemies with locked on blasts, but the whole "hit!" point setup has been replaced with a more traditional point system. Certain enemies are worth certain amounts of points, and you get differently sized bonuses depending upon how many you kill at once. Also altered is the function of gold rings. While collecting three of them increased the size of your health bar in SF64, now they simply cure you of all accumulated damage.
The largest and most noticeable change involves the way the Arwing handles, and this isn't necessarily a good thing. As I mentioned earlier in the free-range section, the Arwings feel much floatier than they used to. This is no different in the flight levels. While Star Fox 64 felt extraordinarily tight and responsive, the Arwings in the new game don't have the same kind of handling. For example, the roll move is considerably slower than the SF64 one, and while it does increase your movement speed, it's a less controllable increase. While you could use rolls to quickly and precisely move your Arwing around the screen to evade an onslaught of enemies and attacks in SF64, the new roll isn't nearly as easy to chain together. Also, you no longer have the ability to turn your Arwing 90 degrees to either side so you can fit through narrow spaces and move to the sides faster. It seems that the general variety of movement abilities and speeds has been stripped back. Whether this is a design choice or just a result of the game being early in development is anyone's guess at this point. I would certainly hope that it's the latter.
Multiplayer Mode
The multiplayer modes available in the demo were very similar in design to the single player free-range mode. This should stand to reason, since the multiplayer mode was actually developed before any other part of the game. A standard multiplayer match starts everyone out on foot in an arena with normal blasters. As the level progresses, Landmasters and Awrings start appearing on the map, allowing for more vehicular-based combat. Like in the single player mode, you can jump in and out of the vehicles on a whim, so it makes for some very interesting battles. You can also choose a "machine battle" which basically only allows for Landmasters and Arwings, the selection of which depends upon the level of choice.
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| Duking it out on Dinosaur Planet. |
You are given the option of choosing between Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Krystal at the beginning of each round. While I didn't see it firsthand, apparently each character has different stats that relate to their health, accuracy, and machine compatibility, among other things. There were six multiplayer levels available in the demo: a base on Titania (the level from the single player demo), a space station (Arwing exclusive), Dinosaur Planet, a desert base, and two VRish levels. The last two levels looked like something out of Custom Robo, and were composed of obvious polygons outlined in bright colors. You could only battle on foot in those levels.
The battle options were typical fare; kill the most people, you win. It should be noted that you don't get kills for destroying machines (except in machine-exclusive battles), you only get them if you take out an actual on-foot character. Hopefully there will be some cooperative multiplayer modes in the final version of the game, like the mode seen in old movies where characters can ride on the wings of other Arwings, but none were demoed at the show.
Final Impressions
I got a pretty good impression of Star Fox at this year's E3, and it gave me hope that the finished game will be a worthy continuation of the classic Star Fox gameplay. It was really quite pretty, in the flight level especially, and I expect that it will continue to improve visually during the rest of its development. The music was also quite impressive, again, especially in the flight level. While nothing will likely ever reach the quality of the compositions from the original Star Fox on the SNES, this game's soundtrack definitely has its own orchestrated quality. The aural quality of the entire demo was tainted, though, by the horrifying voice-overs. I was about to drive a big-rig truck through Namco's localization offices to drive the point home, until it was explained that the voices are only temporary placeholders for the E3 build. Really dodged a bullet, there.
The only main problem I had with demo was certain characteristics of the flight mode. Like I mentioned before, the Arwings simply aren't as responsive as they need to be. And the level itself, while pretty, wasn't especially all that intense or engaging. I played Star Fox 64 again today on expert, and had a variety of ass-kicking runs through some very exciting levels, Area 6 in particular. This feeling was almost completely absent from the E3 flight level, though that could probably be attributed to the fact that the flight mode is probably the least-finished mode in the game. Hopefully the mode as a whole will be tightened up before the game comes out later this year.
So while there are still a few bits that need to be tweaked, Star Fox has definitely made considerable progress since last year's dismal showing. If Namco keeps it up, it could easily be the quality Star Fox 64 sequel that Star Fox Adventures sorely needed to be.