Its been just over a year since the Star Fox crews last outing on the Game Cube with Star Fox: Assault and now theyre back on the DS again with some new gameplay elements in Star Fox: Command.

Several years have passed since Fox McCloud and his friends defeated Andrey Oikinnys army and since then, the planet Venom has been kept under close surveillance by the Cornerian Army. An ominous silence hung over the planet. Suddenly, mysterious weapons appear from Venom and start attacking the Lylat Solar System. The Cornerian Army try to fend them off but their efforts are proved futile. Quickly, many cities become occupied by the unknown enemy. Surprised, the Cornerians soon learn that they are the Anglor race who has been living in the deep seas of Venom. It is time for the Star Fox team to act again but with all the members having separated and living a new life, it was going to be difficult for Fox McCloud the team leader to gather his friends again to fight the new threat.


The good old Star Fox team.
As with the original Star Fox game on the SNES, players are allowed to make decisions during the story allowing them to play through different routes and levels. However, players only have one choice during their first play through single player mode as the other two are locked. Once the game has been finished once, you obtain a key that allows you to unlock the other choices giving the single player mode some replayability with over nine different endings to unlock and view again in the gallery section. There is a convenient skip button if youve already played through the story once. Also, the game helps you out in your decisions by marking any choices youve chosen before in blue. Alternatively, you can also replay levels that you have played through before to try and break your score record.


What to do next
As for the story dialogue, narration is done by the characters themselves with strange sounds (or is it Cornerian?) thats definitely not Japanese or any language Im familiar with. You have the option of turning it off if you dont like it or, you can actually record your own voice into the game and the software will ask you several different questions. It then applies filters over your voice samples to create different sounds for the characters.

The game itself is actually split into two parts; a strategy and action phase. In the strategy phase, you begin with a map of the area youre going to be fighting in. In one corner of the map will be the Great Fox which is basically your base. Once it is destroyed by getting in contact with the enemy, you fail your mission instantly so you have to work to protect it. It isnt all defenceless however as it can hold up to a maximum of 3 missiles and shoot them at any enemies in sight. On the rest of the map there will be various bases occupied by enemy mother ships which launch various mechanic enemies and missiles to attack your team. Most of the maps are covered in a fog of war which you can rub out with your stylus but, theres a limit to how much you can remove. After each turn, the fog grows back a little. There are also various extras such as missiles, repair rings and time globes scattered here and there.