Star Fox: Assault starts off beautifully. The traditional Star Fox theme blasts out in a slightly revamped way and you are introduced to an FMV of the Star Fox crew meeting up with what becomes their first mission. What becomes obvious from the start is that the Arwing missions are done almost perfectly. The flying about, the maneouvres, the enemies and the surrounding areas all feel familiar, and any fan of the previous games will be right at home. Controlling the Arwing is exactly as you would expect - you can U-turn (in certain stages), flip, roll, tilt and boost with simple button presses.

The only letdown is that there is still an on-rails feel to most of the flying levels; sure, there are some which allow more freedom, but there shouldn't be any on-rails levels when gamers were treated to fully controllable space encounters with Rogue Squadron 2 when the GameCube launched. The guys at Capcom could easily have made these levels non-linear and still kept the story flowing smoothly, they just chose not to.

Sadly, the Arwing levels are where the majority of fun is had. The reason this is a bad thing is that for every Arwing level you do, is that there will be at least two on-foot missions you need to complete. While this should break up the flow of the game nicely, all it seems to do is instill a sense of dread as no matter how much you play with the different control schemes, you will always end up frustrated. Just when you feel you have got used to running about, targetting, changing weapons, snipering and blasting holes in anything and everything, you jump into a vehicle and all of the buttons do different things.

All of a sudden the A button shoots when before it changed weapon, and when you jump back out - some missions see you going from air to ground and back - you go head to head with someone only to find you are changing your weapon really quickly. Everything controls differently to a point where it just gets too annoying.

The Landmaster, the tank of the game, should be easy to control. Strafing should work like it is supposed to, but this only happens when you aren't moving forward. Who really needs a strafing ability when you aren't moving forward? Again, this only becomes abundantly painful after you have been running about on foot for the last f5 - 10 minutes, simply because strafing works perfectly on foot and causes no issues at all. Each of the control schemes works fine (minus the Landmaster strafing) as a standalone control scheme, it's just a shame that Capcom felt they had to put multiple schemes in a single level.

Graphically, Star Fox Assault is sub-par. When Rare released Star Fox Adventures THREE YEARS AGO, they released one of the most amazing and lush environments known to the GameCube. It ran, for the most part, fluidly and even had an amazing fur effect on all furry characters. Shouldn't this have been the level that Capcom set for themselves when making Assault? From the get-go you will notice the lack of fur; Capcom has tried to fake it with texturing, but in comparison the effect comes up short.

Secondly, if you're not going to copy the graphics of a game whose sequel you are developing, do NOT take your characters back to a planet that someone else designed better. Going back to Dinosaur Planet should have been filled with homages to the predecessor. There are only two things that do the level justice: some of the textures are reminiscint of Rare's Dino Planet; and you get to meet up with Prince Tricky again. Despite his annoyances from the previous incarnation, it will fill fans of the series with some nostalgia.

As mentioned before, Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader should have been a basic blueprint for many of this game's outlines, from something like the simple space battles through to the audio. Having no Dolby Pro Logic II support hurts those with systems capable of it. Rogue Leader proved that hearing the enemy flying behind you helped in the full-on dogfight that was taking place, so why did Capcom leave out such an intense aural pleasure? We're not sure exactly, but it hurts almost as much as the voice acting.

Fox sounds like Fox, although it isn't the same voice actor and there is something wrong with the way Falco constantly seems completely unimpressed. Maybe the voice actor for Falco wasn't paid enough and his disinterest in the project is seeping through. Either way it is best to just ignore the voice acting, sit back and enjoy the music and effects. All in all, this is the only aural pleasure you'll be having.

Multiplayer is where you will find most of your time spent. Do play through the single-player game, even if it is just to unlock all the multiplayer maps and arenas, then invite a few mates around to reminisce back on your earlier experiences with Lylat Wars 64. Most of the maps are great, but stick to the air for best effect.