War is hell, and no one's going to argue that it's cute or fun. But what if your combat unit was led by Fox McCloud, a darling little creature of the woods all decked out in armored gear? And what if he were joined by a nervous, possibly underage amphibian (Slippy Toad), a hotshot bird of a fighter pilot (Falco Lombardi), and a sexy feline with no last name (Krystal)? Even armed to the teeth (or gills, or beak, or whatever) with a blaster, a machine gun, or a wicked plasma cannon, the heroes of Star Fox: Assault can't help but look like they're having a cuddly good time.
The story picks up where the game's predecessors, Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures, left off, with our scrappy band of animals called in to help an innocent planet ward off invaders. The plot is massively unimportant, though: The joy of Star Fox: Assault is in blasting targets, and the wacky banter between the anthropomorphized friends just offers a distraction between battles. Three modes of play–on foot, in a tank, or in a plane–provide ample opportunity for blasting, too. Fox only needs to follow simple instructions (often from the Admiral Ackbar-like dog General Pepper) to identify his targets and neutralize them. If lots of stuff–including, but not limited to, batches of Borg-like commies called aparoids–gets blown up along the way, so be it.