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I don't completely hate Star Fox Command.


KingTremolo

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If Command had tighter writing and actually respected player choice, and made the strategy elements WORTH a damn (ie engaging enemies over different terrain creates different environment hazards to deal with) and used normal ass controls, it would've been a fine damn game. I've said this three times now but Command's problems weren't its ideas but how badly it used those ideas.

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  • 1 month later...

After the disappointment Zero had both on fans & consumers in general I actually appreciate Command for what it was. Yeah it wasn't well revived by fans but Ohh man it could have been worse.

I'll gladly accept Command's touch screen controls with outdated graphics over Zero's visually attractive dull areas & its horrible rewarding system.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Joseph I respect you man but are you on fucking crack

 

Zero is visually dull but Command isn't? Have you fucking -played- Command recently? Every goddamn encounter recycles the same battlefields and it all looks the saaaaaaaaaaaaame. To say nothing about how Command doesn't even have rewards and in fact actively punishes you for player choice.

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My point was, Command is more excusable then Zero. I can excuse some flaws Command had since it came out months after Assault by a little team known as Q-Games. However, Zero had about 2 years of development time from Nintendo & Platinum. There's just no way to excuse or ignore Zero's flaws knowing it was developed by highly experienced teams.

In other words, I'll gladly accept a game that sucked for being developed under a year by a small team then a game that took a couple of years by experienced people yet turned out to be disappointing. 

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We don't know how long Command was indev for, though. Just because it came out a year after Assault doesn't mean it was indev for a year. Zero's faults are minor dissapointments for the most part, where as Command's are HUGE GLARING FUCKING ONES that absolutely ruin the entire experience. Have you even -played- Zero, Joseph? What flaws are you even referring to? Visually uninteresting areas? Yeah, like, maybe Sector Beta for being an all range mode battleship fight it doesn't really have a lot going on there. Most of Zero is artistically gorgeous to look at. 

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On 07/06/2016 at 2:30 PM, Joseph. said:

My point was, Command is more excusable then Zero. I can excuse some flaws Command had since it came out months after Assault by a little team known as Q-Games. However, Zero had about 2 years of development time from Nintendo & Platinum. There's just no way to excuse or ignore Zero's flaws knowing it was developed by highly experienced teams.

In other words, I'll gladly accept a game that sucked for being developed under a year by a small team then a game that took a couple of years by experienced people yet turned out to be disappointing. 

 

7 hours ago, Robert Monroe said:

We don't know how long Command was indev for, though. Just because it came out a year after Assault doesn't mean it was indev for a year.

Command was announced at E3 2005 and released in the second half of 2006, meaning it had over a year of development, some of that likely overlapping with Assault. Making an educated guess, I would say that the game had around 2 years of development. Developing a game with the scope of Command with, as Joseph said, a small, inexperienced team (which I don't think is fully accurate anyway) in under a year would be extremely difficult, and I reckon, nearly impossible.

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18 hours ago, Pgpaw3 said:

 

Command was announced at E3 2005 and released in the second half of 2006, meaning it had over a year of development, some of that likely overlapping with Assault. Making an educated guess, I would say that the game had around 2 years of development.

Thanks for correcting me on that. Either way Command was a DS game with little hype. So in the end we didn't really expect much. It had its flaws and console limitations but was still a decent game & sold average. Zero on the other hand was a slap to the face.

 

Two years of development & we got a game with:

- Little Content (no dogfights, same planets, & missions that felt the same & some being tedious) 

- A Horrible Rewarding system (collecting all medals gives you...training missions?!?!)

- Changing Views on Two Screens (Motion controls didn't make the game all that game, however this did and there's no option to turn off + awkward controls)

- Certain Areas Felt Empty (The Backgrounds are nice but the overall stages feel empty. In 643D the multiplayer maps where huge & had things in them. Q-Games actually did a nice job here)

 

And this is all for $50 to $60 dollars... Of course it sold badly. Its like Nintendo gave up on it.

 

Rob, dont get me wrong, I'm not saying Command is better then Zero. I just wouldn't touch Zero for what it was - a huge disappointment.

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On 31/05/2015 at 0:57 PM, KingTremolo said:

 

  I started with Star Fox 64, and a lot of my time in this series is in multiplayer.  I love the Star Fox multiplayer experience in every game that it's featured.  While Assault is better local, Command featured online, which was a fun way to carry out dog fights while I stayed at hotels and such.

Same here dude. SF64' multiplayer was what REALLY got me into the series. It's always been a multiplayer game for me. The rail shooting had already been done better by Sega's offerings, so it's not as if the single player has every been anything to shout about.

Assault happens to be my favourite in the series. I've not gotten round to Command, but I really need to check it out once I get hold of a 3DS again.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Late to reply here but eh.

- Little Content (no dogfights, same planets, & missions that felt the same & some being tedious)

um excuse me there are at least 2 secret levels that are nothing BUT fucking Starwolf 1-1 dogfights (ok one of them is a 2-1). You dogfight Pigma in Area 3, you dogfight all of Starwolf in Sector Beta, you dogfight Leon in Fichina, and you dogfight all of Starwolf ALONE on Venom. Did. You. Play. The. Fucking. Game.

Of course you haven't, you've repeatedly said you won't touch Zero for what it was - so if you're going to criticize it from an outsider perspective, fucking make criticisms that are -factually correct-. To wit I am assuming you just mean boss-fight tier dogfights and not just shootemups where you take out a lot of weak enemies ala Katina in SF64 - because if we include that then there's also the second half of Corneria, Area 3 before the Pigma fight, Sector Beta again, and the second half of Corneria 2 as well. And that's just all range mode, plain old dog fight melees.

 

- A Horrible Rewarding system (collecting all medals gives you...training missions?!?!)

No, collecting ALL the medals unlocks the Retro and Black Arwings. Collecting some medals unlocks challenge missions for certain vehicles. Training missions are unlocked when you unlock the vehicle related to it.

 

- Changing Views on Two Screens (Motion controls didn't make the game all that game, however this did and there's no option to turn off + awkward controls)

How good or bad this is is a matter of personal opinion and debate. I will say you can just use the select button to go into first person mode on your TV (and put the third person camera on the gamepad), so you never have to look at the pad if you don't want to. You can also change the motion controls to only work when holding down the fire button ie it only moves when your charging your shots if that's more your cup of tea.

 

- Certain Areas Felt Empty (The Backgrounds are nice but the overall stages feel empty. In 643D the multiplayer maps where huge & had things in them. Q-Games actually did a nice job here)

The only levels I can say felt empty were Area 3's first half (the dogfight) and Sector Beta. Area 3 has the space colony in the background but its otherwise a big open space. Sector Beta is literally just a big spaceship battle, but you see Titania in the far distance. Fichina might count as "empty" but its a ground based tank level and its full of ground based enemies so I'm letting that one slide.

 

And this is all for $50 to $60 dollars... Of course it sold badly. Its like Nintendo gave up on it.

You're also forgetting the WiiU has sold like absolute ass and is a very small market to begin with. It's sold about 0.31 million copies, which while not a humongous success, is not -bad-. It's average. It's ok. It's the lowest selling Starfox game, but its still sold over a quarter million. It's respectable, but not fantastic, though given how much Nintendo tried to hype it up, is ultimately a dissapointment. Regardless, it didn't sell "bad". It more than likely made back its budget, and for its opening week it actually placed 5th for most selling game. 

 

Look, I'm not being a Zero apologist here - I did love the game, but it didn't blow me away. It wasn't the second coming of Starfox Awesomeness that I wanted it to be. It was familiar, comfortable, a bit eccentric for better and worse, and ultimately just alright. I had fun, I don't regret my purchase, I got my time out of my money (16+ hours for the full game and I got Guard for free and I like playing that too). If you want to criticize it though, get your fucking facts straight. Do some research on your own beyond just parroting what you heard second and third hand through the internet hate machine. 

 

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On jeudi 9 juin 2016 at 9:39 PM, Joseph. said:

- Little Content (no dogfights, same planets, & missions that felt the same & some being tedious)

No dogfights in Zero? An aerial dogfight is a close range duel where each pilot tries to get behind the opponent's tail to shoot him down. Like Rob said, SFZ does have dogfights. Heck, that duel with Wolf on Fichina is literally a dogfight, since Wolf's ship transforms into a wolf-like mech.

As for the missions feeling the same, that's something I'd say about SFC. Every interception/dogfight is the same "shoot x number of y enemies", every mothership is the same (and you destroy all of them with a barrel roll attack), etc. Every world in SFC goes this way : intercept enemies and missiles, destroy mothership, boss fight, rinse and repeat through all Lylat. Thankfully, bosses are different, but it has always been like that in every SF game.

Sure, you can get different bosses and stories in Command that you unlock depending on your team and choices, but it's not that different from SFZ's multiple path mecanics, where you can get different missions per planet. The only differences are that :
- in SFC, you make your choice in dialogue boxes, while in SFZ you make your choice during the missions (like going into a portal);
- SFC has different endings, SFZ has one ending but multiple ways to get to it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

You guys sound as if i said Command was better then Zero and to make myself even clearer i'm not a fan of command. 

I stated that I would prefer Command over Zero because of its disappointment. Also, Zero doesn't have any dogfights and by dogfights I mean online or local battle modes like the one 643D had. The ones in Zero are A.I. based. My fault for the confusion but I thought the term dogfight was related to online modes (Obviously Zero has "dogfights", every star fox game does)

On 7/5/2016 at 0:55 PM, Ala1n-J said:

Sure, you can get different bosses and stories in Command that you unlock depending on your team and choices, but it's not that different from SFZ's multiple path mecanics, where you can get different missions per planet. 

Well that's the thing. Zero wasn't much of a step forward from command which is why I have no incentive to play it. Sure its playable & one can tolerate it unlike command however it ends their. SFZ has nothing worth wiled or special that would breath life to the series. It's a generic game with the star fox logo stamped on it attached with a gimmick. If you were to remove the logo no one would defend it I can assure you.

We see the same thing with the sonic fandom. Some fans actually defended '06 and even Boom. We know they weren't good games but the mind attached to the childhood series blinds the person. Zero isnt as bad as those games but we see the same pattern. Zero is generic for a current gen game yet people defend it only because its part of the Star Fox Franchise.

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True, but the tradeoff is we get co-op gameplay for the first time ever in Starfox.  and the ingame dogfights in Zero are some of the best in the series, only slightly behind the Venom dogfight from 64.

And how wasn't Zero much of a step forward compared to Command?  It brought back the mostly good aspects from past games and mixed it into this game such as 64s general structure and alternating pathways or SF2s ability to transform into different ships, also it introduced new elements such as the ability to fly and shoot.

I'm aware Zero is not perfect, but I'd take it over Command.

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On 7/17/2016 at 1:26 PM, ArwingFan said:

True, but the tradeoff is we get co-op gameplay for the first time ever in Starfox.  and the ingame dogfights in Zero are some of the best in the series, only slightly behind the Venom dogfight from 64.

And how wasn't Zero much of a step forward compared to Command?  It brought back the mostly good aspects from past games and mixed it into this game such as 64s general structure and alternating pathways or SF2s ability to transform into different ships, also it introduced new elements such as the ability to fly and shoot.

I'm aware Zero is not perfect, but I'd take it over Command.

I agree the co-op was a nice addition and the A.I. Dogfights were good however none of these concepts are new. It wasn't a step forward from command in the sense that it barley added new features, it mostly improved on what the series is known for.  Basically my problem is even those things which the series is known for (Boss Fights, Level Design, Team Chatter, Choosing Multiple Paths) were a bit lackluster in Zero. Add to that the unsatisfying rewarding system & the absence of Multiplayer and you get an alright game.

Command was a step backwards that probably almost killed the franchise while Zero, being a batter game, didn't have the capacity to breath much life into the series.

So I prefer Command (I really don't tho. It's a really bad game and i'm just disappointed in Zero ):

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  • 1 month later...

I think Starfox Command is better than Zero...Then again I haven't finished Zero yet because I am stuck on that stupid Pigma boss fight.

When I say better I think this game had better boss fights, the boss fights are pretty good, and at least this game actually took a risk. I am honestly not the biggest fan of Starfox 64 and as a person who was waiting for years for a new Starfox game to find out the newest game in the series is a reboot was a slap in the face to me.

Not to mention more female characters to play as...Now don't get me wrong, I don't play Command often, but I don't think Command was a bad idea, the execution was just a bit poor...I'd rather see a reboot of this game because I want the Starfox series to be concluded.

Plus...Even though I think all Starfox Command endings objectively suck in there own way as the biggest Fox and Krystal shipper ever the ending where they get married and have a son sold me...It was all my middle school self wanted.

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>Starfox Command happens and all of its possible endings are garbo and thus pisses everyone off

>the general agreement is that a reboot is needed to salvage the series from the plot tumor it crashed itself into

>a reboot is exactly what happens

>now everyone's all "REEEEE WHY ANOTHER START OVER"

>mfw the last start over was 19 years ago anyway

 

this fandom i swear

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  • 1 month later...

Command had some good gameplay elements and unique gimmicks.  Too bad that there are only a handful of things you get to do in the game before it gets repetitive.

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  • 3 months later...

If there was one thing I took away from it, it was the multiple choice of endings. Sure that comes standard with most games today, but I still thought it was a nice touch.

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  • 1 year later...

I'm not being funny guys, but I don't see what a reboot would accomplish as nobody outside the minority fans such as us give a rat's arse about the stories in these games. Heck, even I couldn't care less about the plots. The characters themselves are enjoyable, but it's basically the same plot as in any arcade 2D shmup - blah blah blah enemy alien forces are taking over the galaxy blah blah blah use one ship to single handedly defeat the evil empire. I have more emotional investment in Fredryk Phox's [fecking awesome] 'A Fox in Space' plot, and that, so far, is only 13 minutes damn long! It doesn't help that Nintendo are outright the worst when it comes to storytelling and dialog in games.

Games like Star Fox Zero don't sell bad because of the story. They sell bad because nobody wants to play 3rd person rail shooters, and they don't want to pay full price for them when the gameplay is so limited, the main campaign is only 3 hours long, and there's no bloody multiplayer! Bugger all people bought Panzer Dragoon Orta, Crimson Dragon, Omega Boost or Sin & Punishment 2 on their respective launches for the same reason(s). I own all of those besides Crimson, and all of those are OUTSTANDING games, and I played the ever-living crap out of them. But nobody wanted them at the time.

I for one LOVE 3rd person rail shooters and I'll play anything in that field. But I'm fully aware that I'm in the minority. Simply put, a new Star Fox game could be the best game in its category yet it would still sell like pants regardless.

If Nintendo want a hit Star Fox game, make it outside that genre, and have Tim Schafer write it.

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  • 5 months later...

The elements used in SF Command such as online play could prove useful to a future game in the series. Think of the customization options the game could be given through such a schematic.

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