Background: Star Fox Adventures has been widely criticized by hardcore Starfox fans since the day it came out for being much different in its core gameplay from the previous games in the series. Instead of being a 3-d space shooter like its predecessors, Star Fox Adventures saw most of its gameplay occur on foot in the style of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. What most people don’t realize is that Rare had initially been developing this game as an N64 release titled Dinosaur Planet. When Nintendo realized the aesthetic similarities between the main characters of Dinosaur Planet and its beloved Starfox franchise, they decided to bring the game into the Starfox universe and release it instead for the Gamecube. While the transition from space shooter to land-based action adventure seemed out of place, (think Call of Duty sequel in the form of a real-time strategy); Rare’s final collaboration with Nintendo proved to be a very solid action adventure title.
Story: The story of this game is merely there to drive the gameplay. In short, Fox gets a mission to save a planet from exploding because the magical Spellstones that hold it together have been stolen. He finds a mystical staff along the way and in addition to saving the planet has decided to save its owner Krystal by collecting various spirits along the way. Nothing really happens beyond that, with the exception of a MAJOR plot twist revealed at the end. Overall, 4.0/10
Graphics: I’m going to get straight to the point here: the graphics in this game are spectacular for a title released in 2002. In fact, they rival and even surpass most of the Wii’s library in terms of graphical quality to this day. The environments look and feel alive, water and fire look very detailed and the character models, especially Fox’s, are wonderful to look at. No complaints here. Overall, 10/10
Sound: There are both very good and very bad aspects to this game’s sound design. The good is certainly the soundtrack that you hear from start to finish. Most of the songs composed for this game fit the environments they correspond to perfectly; some of which will stick with you even after you complete it. The down side to the sound in this game is that there are many sounds that will become very annoying, especially when you hear them for the 50th time. For instance, every single time you pick up a new item in this game (which is a lot) a tune plays for a good 7 seconds (accompanied by an unskippable cut scene) that may seem tolerable at first, however it gets frustrating to listen to even before you complete the very first area of the game. There are also various enemies and even your sidekick throughout the game whose voices are fairly irritating. After a while I merely turned down the volume on my TV so as to keep my ears from bleeding. Overall, 7.2/10
Gameplay: I was tempted to do this review in two parts, one for the first 40% of the game, and the other for that point until the final boss. The reason for this is that by about the 40% mark I was quite bored and hoping that the game would pick up soon. Luckily, the second half of the game did just that. I’ll explain more about that later on. As far as the core gameplay goes, it’s fairly straightforward action-adventure fare. You’ll be running around fighting simple enemies and collecting items in a very linear progression (very similarly to Zelda games), which will in turn lead to puzzles and more collecting until you reach the final boss.
The collecting in this game is very plentiful and can get very boring. The linearity of each level means that you’ll essentially have to collect every necessary item in an almost completely pre-determined order. Some of these collecting ‘side quests’ actually require extensive puzzles to figure out, especially later on in the game. However, most of the items can be found simply by telling your sidekick Tricky to dig a hole in the ground (It’s very obvious where to do so) so you can bend over and pick them up. This takes no skill and no thought whatsoever to accomplish, resulting in a fair amount of tedious exploring. Also, as I mentioned in the sound section a cut scene plays every time you pick up a new item, which actually becomes so irritating that after a long time it just made me laugh at how ridiculous of an idea it was to include in the game. Artificial lengthening of a game is never a good thing.
You’ll also be doing a bit of platforming in this game. Unfortunately, the game falls quite flat in that respect. Instead of having to time your jumps like in most traditional platformers, the jumping is done for you by the game when you reach an edge. This isn’t an issue in and of itself, however it did lead to multiple frustrations. Early on in the game as I was walking along a walkway, I accidentally ran too close to the edge whereupon Fox immediately leapt into the air, allowing me to steer him back onto the platform and avoid certain death. A while later as I was running on another ledge I again ran too close to the side. Instead of jumping as it had done before, Fox merely stumbled clumsily over the edge and fell to his death, causing me to have to use up one of my life-restoring bafomdads. A little consistency would be nice, Rare. The rest of the platforming consists mainly of dodging enemy fire and walking on increasingly thin ledges, both of which aren’t difficult at all to do. And then there’s ladders. Oh boy Rare, you really dozed off on this one. Akin to Prince of Persia, there are many ladders and brick walls to climb throughout this game. If you’ve ever played Prince of Persia you would know that this was never an issue because the Prince climbed fairly quickly. The problem with this game (and one of my biggest pet peeves with it) is that Fox takes incredibly long to climb these obstacles. I honestly believe that I could climb these ladders faster than he does, and I’m afraid of heights. Now, if these ladders/walls weren’t very high it wouldn’t be a big deal, but there are some ladders that LITERALLY take Fox up to 30 seconds to climb. Thirty seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but sit there and count to 30 in your head. It feels like forever! Again with the artificial game lengthening.
Aside from all the combat and collecting, this game is chock full of puzzles to solve. Some of these puzzles tend to really make you think and thus make them highly entertaining. In fact, the parts of the game that I found most fun were the areas with multiple challenging puzzle rooms in a row. From early on in the game, your sidekick Tricky will be there to help with puzzles. The puzzles that exclusively require him are very easy though, and taking care of him ends up feeling like a mere chore. Even Fox doesn’t want to take care of him in the game, so why would I? In fact, there were many points in the game where I’d be better off leaving him in a ditch (and trust me I wanted to).While the puzzles in the beginning of the game require little to no thinking to complete, that changes for the better later on.
This is actually part of the reason why I felt the second half of the game was so much better than the first, and thus why I could have easily split up this review. For one, the best levels in the game (besides the hub area which is actually my favorite) come after the half way mark. It truly seems as though every bad aspect of gameplay in Star Fox was piled in towards the beginning of the game. The combat is forced upon you (doors will not open if you don’t defeat the enemies), the puzzles are very simple, and frankly the main areas are less than spectacular. Once you reach a certain point in the game, you are able to run by a majority of the simple enemies and the puzzles get harder. Most importantly though, you will have climbed the highest ladder in the game (and won’t have to go back to it). Three out of the four major bosses are also in the latter part of the game, all of whom are fun to fight against.
There ARE flying sections resembling the previous Starfox installments and fast-paced racing segments that are actually well done here. Unfortunately you won’t get to do these types of missions often and they are very short as it is. Regarding the difficulty, if you are looking for a challenging adventure game then you might as well look elsewhere. About 90% of this game is very easily beaten. There are two or three tasks though that can be very difficult and thus aggravating, especially for casual gamers. Overall, the gameplay earns an 8.2/10
Replayability: This is a long action adventure game, which on first playthroughs may take up to 18-20 hours to complete. The only additional secrets in this game you could try to find that aren’t crucial to beating the story are Cheat Tokens, which allows you to play a mini-game and unlock certain cheat codes (such as playing the game in sepia color tones). Honestly, it’s not worth playing the game again just to get or use these. The only reason to play the game again would be for nostalgia, as it does have quite a high sense of nostalgia once you’ve beaten it. This is due to the memorability of some of the levels in this game and the music that accompanies them. Overall, 3.0/10
To sum it up, Star Fox Adventures is a very well put together adventure game that can be easily nit-picked. It has its faults, mostly towards the beginning of the story, but none of these feel like they ruin the game. If you have the patience to get through many of these minor setbacks, the game picks up pace just before the halfway point and ends on a high note. While I don’t believe it is one of the crucial must-have games for the Gamecube, Star fox Adventures is a fun game that is well worth playing through to the end.
Overall, 8.4/10
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