What StarFox really needs is to flip a u-turn and go back to the rail-shooter greatness it used to be.
In this adventure, the Star Fox team doesn't take you into the thick of battle at the beginning of every level. Instead it takes you to a map on the touch screen where the missions transpire. Accomplishing these missions requires that you destroy all the enemies. However, if you lose all your lives, run out of turns, or let your mothership be destroyed, you lose.
Playing it all out is simple. The limited amount of turns you get for each mission will ensure that you try and rout the enemy fairly quickly, but assorted power-ups such as missiles and refuel stations warrant the occasional detour. To get things going, you use the stylus to literally draw out short flight paths for each character and then double-tap to end your turn when you're satisfied. After your turn has been confirmed, all of your characters, as well as onscreen enemies and missiles, move in sync along their respective paths.
These sequences are commonly billed as "strategy", but that's strictly a formality. "Common sense sequences" would be more appropriate – and more honest. In a given scenario, you might opt to send one character toward an enemy mothership because they carry more bombs, and another character to destroy a missile because they can lock on to it. This technically qualifies as strategy, but is so rudimentary that it's more like fitting a square peg in a square hole. Not only that, but If you wanted to, you could ignore the logistics altogether and still accomplish the mission – often easily.
So the strategy component, though shallow, is amusing and serviceable, but that's not why we play Star Fox. We play it for the combat sequences, where the real magic happens. Or at least, where it's supposed to happen. For better or worse, every aspect of controlling the assortment of Arwings is relegated to the touch screen. To speed up, simply double-tap on the top of the screen. To slow down, tap the bottom of it. Barrel-rolling is done by quickly sliding the stylus back and forth, while loop-de-loops and u-turns are as simple as tapping touch screen "buttons". The only thing you won't do with the stylus is shoot your standard lasers, because that's what all the other buttons do – even all four directions on the D-pad . That makes ten "shoot" buttons in all. Ten. That's at least eight too many.
There's no getting around the fact that Star Fox Command over-flaunts what the DS has got. Gamers familiar with NanoStray have seen this before, where changing weapons was needlessly assinged to four "touch buttons" instead of just using the four normal buttons on the DS. NanoStray also suffered for having no alternative control options to amend this, and the same is true for Star Fox. So, instead of assigning barrel-rolls to the triggers, you just have to get used to trying to steer as you slide the stylus from side to side. Instead of letting the d-pad control acceleration and braking, you must adapt to the double-tap scheme and the unwanted changes in aircraft attitude that result. These quirks aren't insurmountable, but they're cumbersome all the same.
Still, a thousand alternative control options couldn't have saved the gameplay, which is what ultimately shoots Star Fox Command down. Here's a rundown of the typical sortie: a number of enemies, usually between two and ten, flies around in circles. As you engage them with laser blasts. . . they pretty much just keep flying around in circles. Eh? When they finally decide to return fire, they usually fly directly in front of you (just like real dogfighting) and open up their flickering weak points that you blast away at for massive damage. They do a good job of shooting steady streams of projectiles your way, but sustaining barrel-rolls deflects their shots, keeping your life bar full. Do the math. This little charade usually goes on for around three seconds per enemy, or around a minute to wipe out the whole gaggle. Once they're destroyed, you collect their grey, star-shaped "cores", then head back to the overworld map or off to engage another set of enemies with a different character. Rinse, repeat.
Then there are the "mothership" missions. In these, the gameplay is basically the same as above, but with a small, anticlimactic twist at the end. This time, after the enemies have been destroyed (all both of 'em), the game automatically places you on a new course – a series of big red squares that lead to the mothership's vulnerable underbelly. To win, pilot your Arwing through said series of big red squares that lead right to the mothership's vulnerable underbelly, barrel-roll when you're there, and you win.
Finally, there are the "missile" missions – probably the most entertaining mision type of all. Remember the big red squares that led right to the mothership's vulnerable underbelly? They're here too, only this time they lead to a big red missile. On flying through those big red squares, you'll catch up with that big red missile, lock on to it (or just mash a shoot button or two. . . or ten) and take it out. If the character you're using can't lock on, these missions are somewhat challenging. With a target-locking character, you can beat them by accident.
Like any respectable space shooter, a variety of settings keeps the visuals fresh, even as the gameplay goes stale. The staple archetypal battlegrounds, such as deep space levels littered with hulking brown meteorites, citiscapes painted in crimson twilight, and vast expanses over Cornerian oceans are all accounted for, and they look terrific. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the various spacecraft, which are all flat, sparsely detailed, and only mildly shaded. The enemy ships are just plain weird. With few exceptions, they are mostly just abstract constructs of shapes with wide angles, broad faces, and flashing lights. A few physical differences between the Arwings, like how Falco's has three little "feathers" on its wingtips, add a bit of personality, but they don't hide how utterly sterile the designs are as a whole. The ships look especially bad when viewed against the beautiful backdrops, and there is a striking disconnect between them that drags the entire package through the mud.
In spite of its faults, it's entirely possible to have an entertaining, if short-lived, run with this game. The application of touch controls is a bit overzealous, but piloting an Arwing via the touch screen is still fun in a whimsical kind of way. The online battles via Wi-Fi might also be enough to keep you biting the line once the single player campaign loses its flavor, but given the fact that there are still better ways to spend time on the Wi-Fi net.
StarFox Command is evidence of the series slowly creeping back to its roots, but the developers still can't resist the urge to try something new with it. That's all good and well, but enough is enough already. The past three installments in the series, to include this one, prove that what Star Fox really needs is to flip a u-turn and go back to the rail-shooter greatness it used to be.