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Fox is just one of many so-called speed characters. His costume has been completely updated, so he’s full of fighting spirit.
Run! Fly! Move boldly! For such moves are the essence of Fox!
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Fox: Special Moves
Did you notice that thing dangling from Fox’s waist?
What is that?
Yup, that’s his Reflector.
This is it.
Take it out to initiate the Reflector!
It perfectly reflects projectile weapons fired at him. It’s a fine piece of weaponry, and one that most fighters envy.
The design of Fox’s blaster has also changed.
Enemies won’t flinch at the impact of its shots, but it does have rapid-fire capabilities. It’s the perfect weapon for stealing KOs.
Gimpyfish's E4All Impression
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Character Impression
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Character Impression
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Moving onto Fox now… Alright I said Fox got nerfed and sucks at first, and I was exaggerating and it was completely on purpose. Fox is still very good, but I don’t think he is going to be top tier anymore. Fox still has a lot going for him. He is very fast on the ground, second in the demo only to sonic (but sonic was WAY faster). Fox is NOT a fast faller in this game; in fact, comparing the falling speed of anyone in this game to the falling speed of anyone in melee would be absolutely ludicrous.
Fox seems to have different kill moves this time around. His up air and up smash just didn’t seem to be doing the trick. It seemed like Fox’s forward smash did a better job killing than either of those moves – and it also seemed to eat through shields pretty nicely. Fox’s up air is now primarily a combo move. His neutral seems to essentially be the same thing as in melee, but his back air is much more precise and difficult to land. It’s a quick kick behind him and then he brings his leg back in, the duration isn’t nearly as long, but it is a nice kill move regardless in Brawl. One major and obvious improvement is Fox’s forward air. Fox’s forward air now works likely in the way it was intended to work in melee, if you hit with the first (or one of the first) kicks, then all following kicks will land – you could POSSIBLY DI out of this, but we aren’t sure at this point. That being said it seems like you could perform a lot of tricks when you apply this move with the new l cancel. In melee you could use the first strike of captain falcon’s neutral air to set up for a grab, it SEEMS LIKE Fox should be able to do this same thing in Brawl.
Now I’m going to move onto Fox’s specials. Foxes blaster has some glaring nerfs. The first one we noticed was an obvious decrease in the range of the blaster. Not only is that the case, but in Brawl (at least in the demo) you cannot turn around with your neutral b moves, so it seems like laser camping in general would be much harder and much less applicable. Another aspect of Fox’s blasters that became apparent was the fact that he does not cancel upon landing. Fox CAN short hop triple laser in Brawl (sounds scary, but remember, brawl is NOT melee) HOWEVER if Fox does this he does incur a small amount of lag after he lands when he puts his gun away because there is no laser cancel upon landing.
The next moves I’ll briefly discuss are Fox’s recovery moves, the Fox’s Illusion and the Fire Fox. The illusion seems more or less the same, even to the point where you can still shorten the move by pressing B at the right moment. This move now seems to have some more “auto sweet spot” to it. If you use over b below the point where you would grab in melee for example, it seems like it will automatically shoot you towards the ledge so that you can grab. Fire Fox has gone though just about as much change as the illusion has, meaning not very many changes at all if you didn’t catch that. One of the noticeable changes to this move was sort of accidentally found. A Fox I was watching got hit beneath battlefield by something – it may have been an item, but that isn’t important. Fox did his up b at an angle towards the ledge from UNDERNEATH the stage, and ON HIS WAY UP Fox sweet spotted and grabbed the ledge. It’s a nice little feature for Fox indeed, although it seems like most characters have a different type of sweet spot anyways.
Now to discuss the big one – Fox’s Shine. Easily one of the most versatile and effective moves in melee, the move has been, unfortunately, nerfed – seemingly on all levels OTHER than stalling. First I'll say that Fox's Shine SEEMS to still come out on frame one, but its pretty much impossible for me to tell you that, so I'll say that it still comes out really fast. Not only is jump canceling the shine “different” – and by that I mean the timing is a little bit slower – but the way to do it has also changed. You MUST be HOLDING down AND b while you jump cancel your shine, you can’t tap b release and then jump. This change might not SOUND to different, but most people tap shine and try to get out as fast as they can, and they’ve already moved their fingers to start something else. That cannot be done in this game. The shine seems to knock everyone down as well, or at least that’s what I saw. Waveshining is obviously impossible anyways, so this effect doesn’t seem to be too big of a deal. The shine spike has undergone some changes as well. It visually looks like it would basically be the same thing, however – with the characters new sweetspots, overall speed of the game, and floatiness of the characters – the shine spike seems more or less ineffective. The shine hits at a VERY SLIGHTLY more favorable angle then it did in Smash 64 or Melee. I am unsure of how large the hitbox is on this move compared to Fox’s body, but it seems like most characters can recover after being shine spiked due to all of the above changes. Alright, now it’s time to discuss the only buff the shine received – stalling. Essentially in the air to cancel out of a shine you simply release the button. Falling through the air you can shine FAR more times than you ever could in Melee. The move simply ends faster naturally. Every time you shine it completely halts you’re downwards momentum as well. Initially it seemed like you could jump into the air, shine somebody right before landing, cancel out and follow up with something ala smash 64. Unfortunately the move doesn’t cancel out fast enough and it doesn’t look like you can punish the shine quickly enough. Maybe something will change in the shine before the release of the actual game though. Oh, and you probably don’t care and made these assumptions already, but the actual reflecting properties (you know, what the move actually is supposed to do) remained essentially the same.
All in all Fox is a good character, apparently some people that played Fox in melee were legitimately fans of him, rather than just playing him because he is good (which I have no problem with) so seeing the reaction to telling everyone he sucks was amusing. Fox seems like he will still be good, but he will be played in a completely different style this time around – but so will everyone else, because of how different this game is.
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Final Smash
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Final Smash
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Fox summons the landmaster tank. This final smash is really bizarre. That tank is humongous, but seemingly unwieldy. You can turn around with it, you can “do a barrel roll”, you can fire the laser. It initially seemed like the laser was going to be almost impossible to hit anyone with, but if you go near the opposing ledge of the way you are facing you can hover there and shoot on ground level, and running people over always works too. Players can stand on the landmaster tank, but if you do a barrel roll it knocks them off of you. Barrel roll also spikes people who are trying to recover, which is really cool to see. This final smash got boring really quickly.
