Starfox Command - Nintendo DS

Ah, public transportation. Many believe strongly in the power of buses and trains to reduce each human's carbon footprint and save the planet. Walt Disney envisioned that cities of the future would all have centralized, efficient, and clean public transportation systems to take people to and fro. Well, Walt must never have been in Philadelphia on a Septa train. I personally have. There are days when I spend up to and including three hours sitting on a train, and I can tell you, riding is no utopia.

In order to help while away the hours I spend on the train, last week I decided to invest in a Nintendo DS Lite. For those who don't know, this is Nintendo's latest hand-held console, in the style of GameBoy. The gimmick with the DS is the dual-screen function combined with a touch-screen gameplay. And the first game on my menu? Starfox Command.

If you're familiar with the Starfox series, the cast will be familiar to you. Fox McCloud is back with Slippy Toad, Falco, Amanda and all the others.



Basically, Starfox Command boils down to a turn-based air combat game. You go from one map to the next, and you have to use the stylus to draw a path on the touch-screen map assigning your ship to a particular arena of fighting. You can control up to four fighters per map, although you do not have the ability to choose which four you assign.

The pre-battle map on the bottom, your selection of pilots on top.

As in many a Nintendo game, the story line of Starfox Command is inane. Something to do with saving the galaxy from the evil Emperor, patching up damaged interpersonal relationships between anthropomorphic animals, with just a dash of braggadoccio. But you didn't buy Starfox for the story, you bought it for the air combat sections. And these do not disappoint.

The flight controls were very novel, at least for me; this being my first DS game. Instead of controlling with the control pad and shooting with A, B, X, or whatever, you fly your ships using the touch screen. The top screen shows a third-person view from behind the spaceship, and the touch-screen on the bottom displays an inset map of the area you're flying through. If you want the ship to bank right, you drag the stylus to the right. If you want to speed up, you double tap the top of the screen and hold it there. There are buttons on the side of the touch screen that give you bombs, somersault ability, and barrel rolls. And any of the six buttons on the DS do the same thing: they shoot the lasers.

In flight controls

As far as the game goes, the battles are a lot of fun, although I daresay they border on the ridiculously easy. The biggest issue I had with Starfox Command was that it was over all too quickly. I was sitting on the train yesterday, killing many a space fish and galactic giant worm, and next thing I know, its over. I had beaten the game. In like, maybe, 10 hours of play. Only twenty minutes into my commute home. And I'm sorry, I don't care if a game is hand-held, it needs to last at least until my stop.