zalemander
Member
So I stopped by the Nintendo World DS Touch event in Osaka today, and had a chance to get my hands on a lot of upcoming games. The main reason I went was admittedly not for the ds, but to check out the latest gamecube offerings. Starfox Assault was probably one of my most anticipated games there. Seemed like a lot of people were interested in playing too, as the wait to play it was almost an hour.
The demo lasted about 7-10 minutes, and seemed pretty far along (quoted as 80%). The title, options, etc were all intact. It starts off with an opening cinematic of the starfox team running towards their ships, that, while done with the in-game graphics engine, looks very fmv-ish. The characters seemed to have a lot of personality here too, from the way slippy stumbles into his ship to how fox stylishly flips into his, snaps his neck a couple times, then proeeds to take off from the great fox.
The first level I was thrown into was an on-rails, space level. The game played incredibly similar to the 64 instalment. 'A' was used to shoot / lock on, 'B' was for bombs, C-stick was for U-turns / flips, 'R' was used as your brakes, and 'L' was used to roll (only left too...which felt slightly strange sometimes...for instance rolling left when making a sharp right turn).
In this space level, the difficultly was laughable. It was a breeze to finish (probably since it will be the first level in the game). Slippy expectedly gets into trouble in the beginning with bogeys all over him, and crystal seems to be pretty aggressive - similar to falco. The level itself was very well done graphically. Particle effects were nice to look at, with tons of explosions, afterburner trails, sparks, and some enemies teleporting and flickering into your path. Destroying the large enemy craft was satisfying in this game as it was in Starfox64, where after shooting a huge craft in it's weak spot for a while, it would seem to "break" after enough hits, crumble, and fall apart.
The space level ended with site of the next level's boss heading into Corneria's atmosphere (I'm pretty sure it's Corneria since I read something about it in the crew's conversation, though my Japanese wasn't that fast to confirm it). The demo then went into a cut scene of the pilots blazing into the atmosphere of Corneria leaving a trail of flames behind their ships. This was the start of the second level of the demo.
The Corneria level was also on rails, and was just flat-out gorgeous. The Starfox team flies through a dense forest complete with plenty of waterfalls (done extremely well, some of the best I've seen), trees, rivers, large rocks...very impressive. The water effects weren't the most complex, but got the job done. I was surprised how much action was going on in the background while at the same time everything else was happening. Many times I missed several power-ups either because I was admiring the scenery, or caught up taking out a group of enemies in a slightly different area.
This level then continued to travel into the enemy base built into the forest, and then catches up with the boss spotted from the previous level. It's a huge robotic head and a pair of hands (really, really similar to andross, just more metallic looking). A very easy kill, but some of his (re)actions were animated well and very entertaining. After clearing the boss, the attendant proceeded to take the controller out of my hands and thanked me for playing.
A few other things I noticed:
- After watching the videos IGN posted recently, someone commented on how it seemed to play slow. It was a bit slow / floaty, but weren't all starfoxes? The game ran incredibly smooth (60 fps from what i could tell), and I didn't notice any hiccups regardless of all the action going on. It was really incredible to look at.
- Something that bothered me, after killing enemy craft, the destroyed parts became transparent very quickly and dissappeared... sometimes before even hitting the ground (in the Corneria level). Took away from the realism factor a bit.
- The fur is still there, but it seems only during the cutscenes. I didn't play the multiplayer, but after watching it being played, I could tell it was left out, as well as the action being knocked down to 30 fps.
The game seems to have come a long, long way from when it was observed at previous events. I am now much more excited about it's potential and release next year.
The demo lasted about 7-10 minutes, and seemed pretty far along (quoted as 80%). The title, options, etc were all intact. It starts off with an opening cinematic of the starfox team running towards their ships, that, while done with the in-game graphics engine, looks very fmv-ish. The characters seemed to have a lot of personality here too, from the way slippy stumbles into his ship to how fox stylishly flips into his, snaps his neck a couple times, then proeeds to take off from the great fox.
The first level I was thrown into was an on-rails, space level. The game played incredibly similar to the 64 instalment. 'A' was used to shoot / lock on, 'B' was for bombs, C-stick was for U-turns / flips, 'R' was used as your brakes, and 'L' was used to roll (only left too...which felt slightly strange sometimes...for instance rolling left when making a sharp right turn).
In this space level, the difficultly was laughable. It was a breeze to finish (probably since it will be the first level in the game). Slippy expectedly gets into trouble in the beginning with bogeys all over him, and crystal seems to be pretty aggressive - similar to falco. The level itself was very well done graphically. Particle effects were nice to look at, with tons of explosions, afterburner trails, sparks, and some enemies teleporting and flickering into your path. Destroying the large enemy craft was satisfying in this game as it was in Starfox64, where after shooting a huge craft in it's weak spot for a while, it would seem to "break" after enough hits, crumble, and fall apart.
The space level ended with site of the next level's boss heading into Corneria's atmosphere (I'm pretty sure it's Corneria since I read something about it in the crew's conversation, though my Japanese wasn't that fast to confirm it). The demo then went into a cut scene of the pilots blazing into the atmosphere of Corneria leaving a trail of flames behind their ships. This was the start of the second level of the demo.
The Corneria level was also on rails, and was just flat-out gorgeous. The Starfox team flies through a dense forest complete with plenty of waterfalls (done extremely well, some of the best I've seen), trees, rivers, large rocks...very impressive. The water effects weren't the most complex, but got the job done. I was surprised how much action was going on in the background while at the same time everything else was happening. Many times I missed several power-ups either because I was admiring the scenery, or caught up taking out a group of enemies in a slightly different area.
This level then continued to travel into the enemy base built into the forest, and then catches up with the boss spotted from the previous level. It's a huge robotic head and a pair of hands (really, really similar to andross, just more metallic looking). A very easy kill, but some of his (re)actions were animated well and very entertaining. After clearing the boss, the attendant proceeded to take the controller out of my hands and thanked me for playing.
A few other things I noticed:
- After watching the videos IGN posted recently, someone commented on how it seemed to play slow. It was a bit slow / floaty, but weren't all starfoxes? The game ran incredibly smooth (60 fps from what i could tell), and I didn't notice any hiccups regardless of all the action going on. It was really incredible to look at.
- Something that bothered me, after killing enemy craft, the destroyed parts became transparent very quickly and dissappeared... sometimes before even hitting the ground (in the Corneria level). Took away from the realism factor a bit.
- The fur is still there, but it seems only during the cutscenes. I didn't play the multiplayer, but after watching it being played, I could tell it was left out, as well as the action being knocked down to 30 fps.
The game seems to have come a long, long way from when it was observed at previous events. I am now much more excited about it's potential and release next year.
