Switch 2: 10 GameCube Classics That MUST Be Added

Like a thoughtful dominatrix, Star Fox Assault asks the player exactly how much pain they're willing to put up with for their pleasure.

That pain comes from Assault's infamous Third-Person Shooter sections. Throughout the game, series protagonist Fox McCloud steps outside his vehicle to take on the enemy on-foot. Unfortunately for him, and us, the good sir McCloud is about as adept at shooting as a real fox would be if you handed it a gun and told it to go ham on Jeremy Clarkson's chicken coop. These on-foot sections are a nightmare of skittish movement and unintuitive controls, and seem to serve no purpose other than to make you breathe a sigh of relief whenever you see Fox sitting inside a vehicle at the start of a level.

Fortunately, when that happens, the pleasure is more than worth the preceding agony.

Assault's excellent Arwing levels are genuinely worth the price of admission on their own. Controlling one of the series' signature starships is never anything less than a delight, and the levels that put you in the cockpit are some of the best in Star Fox's thirty-year history. Blasting giant butterflies, mutated nemeses and insect queens shows Nintendo's long-neglected series at its peak, and it's no exaggeration to say that Star Fox: Assault is worth playing for these moments alone.