Star Fox Adventures Review. Rated T. 1-5 stars. Got that? No? Good! Off we go!
Star Fox 64 for the N64 was the first videogame I ever bought. So, obviously, I decided to get this game when it came out. However, my friend got the game for his GCN before I did, so I decided to borrow it for a bit to see if it was any good. Did I make the right choice? We’ll see, we’ll see…
Story: ****
The story take place eight years after the events of Star Fox 64. Andross (the SF villain) has been defeated. That’s bad cuz the Star Fox team (consisting of Fox McCloud, a fox, Slippy, a frog, Falco, an eagle, and Peppy, a hare) makes money by blowing up Andross’ army. They make very little money nowadays, so little that Falco quit to find another job. (Dang, I liked him. -_-) However, the team’s boss gives them a mission on Dinosaur Planet. It appears that the planet is somehow being ripped apart by some unknown force and Fox must find a way to get it all back together. To do that, he needs to find the four spellstones, which contain energy that holds the planet together, and return them to their force point temples. This would be accomplished easily if not for the fact that, unknown to Fox, another Fox by the name of Krystal is searching for the six Krazoa spirits, which are the guardian angels of Dinosaur Planet, or something like that. Also, evil-big-bad-typical-sci-fi-villain General Scales (sort of like a combination of Bowser, Wart, Yoshi, and Ganondorf) has scattered both the spellstones and spirits across the entire planet. Then Krystal gets herself captured (if you knew what she was imprisoned in, you’d break out laughing) and Fox ends up having to find the spirits and return them to the Krazoa Palace along with the spellstones.
Original story, but they don’t use the characters enough. I don’t want to just contact Slippy for a vague hint on the pause screen, I want to have him fight alongside of me along with the other team members in the Arwing (sort of a sci-fi jet fighter) levels! And why does Scales, the game’s villain, only get about 45 seconds of screen time?! Yeesh…
Graphics: *****
Well, these graphics are certainly some of the most realistic I’ve seen in quite a while. The water effects look even better than Mario Sunshine, which is weird because that game was basically nothing but water effects. The plants look realistic and the explosions in the space mini-games look superb! Fox’s fur even looks real!
Music: ****** (Can I do that?)
Two words: absolute perfection. I like it better than SMS’s tropical tunes. I like it even better than Sonic Adventure 2’s Rock/Rap/Jazz mix. It is the best I have ever heard. And I mean it too. It’s not the usual sci-fi music from the previous two SF games, quite the opposite actually. Beautifully crafted music that sounds real. Words cannot describe my opinion of this music. In fact, the Cape Claw (a beach area) has probably the best music I have ever heard. Thank goodness for this game’s sound test cheat!
Sound: ***
Voice acting. That’s a plus. But then, you see it a lot in games now, so I can’t really give this game an outstanding rating because of it. There are the usual adventure game grunts, explosions, crashes and slashes, though.
Gameplay: Divided into categories
On-Foot Exploring: **
Yeah, that’s right! A TWO! I mean it! Most of the time is spent wandering around the fairly small overworld and doing pathetically easy puzzles, most of which are just “take item, put it down on switch” or “throw switch, run through door in less than thirty seconds” type puzzles. You can talk to the dinos for clues on what to do next, but you can usually figure out what to do on your own. Usually, to get to a new area you just have to run through the areas preceeding it.
Fighting: *
Ugh! Horrible! I was kind of expecting something like you see in an action movie, but nooo… The battles are simply “approach bad guy, whip out spear thingy, wait for an opening, whack enemy, enemy falls down, whak enemy a bazillion times with spear, enemy dies, repeat for all enemies in the area”. And the Spells you can use from your spear thingy usually make the battles even more pathetic! The ice spell can even freeze an enemy, allowing you to kill the thing in one hit! I would've just liked to use Fox’s ray gun from the SSB games, not some staff/spear/magic wand thingamajig. Ugh…
Arwing Levels: ***
At least this is a halfway decent part of the game. Maybe it’s because I really liked Star Fox 64, but still, I wished they could've upped this part a bit.
Boss Battles: ***
Most of the bosses are pretty fun to fight, especially the one where the big crab monster eats Fox and you have to whack the thing hanging in his throat to get the spellstone. Unfortunately, what gets this a three rating is because there are only five boss battles in the whole game: Galdon, King Redeye, The Krazoa Test of Fear, Dakor, and the final one… uh… find out for yourself.
Overall Gameplay: **
Game Length: **
Nothing here that a week’s worth of fairly heavy playing can’t overlook.
Secrets: *
There are only about three REAL secrets in the game, all of which are sidequests. Find all the cheat tokens, rescue the lightfoot (Dilopasaurus) babies, and collect all the fuel cells (Arwing gas). Even the cheat tokens aren’t really worth the 20 scarabs (this game’s currency) and the trouble finding them as most of them just tell you hints on what happens in the later points of the game or unlock bland cheats, the only halfway-decent ones being the sound test feature and the dino language option (see below).
Dino Language: *****
Heh, a cool thing about this game is that they made up their own language for it! They use it a bit at the beginning but then Fox gets a translator and you never hear it again. But speaking dino is easy. You simply replace an English letter with a different one. I’ll provide a translation here:
A: U - B: R - C: S - D: T - E: O - F: V - G: W - H: X - I: A - J: Z - K: B - L: C - M: M - N: D - O: E - P: F - Q: G - R: H - S: J - T: K - U: I - V: L - W: N - X: P - Y: O - Z: Q
Oh, and names of people, places, and things are in English.
Example
English: Lemmy, can’t you just accept
my fanfic?!
Dino: Lemmy, sud’k oei ussofk mo vudvas?!
Best of all, this way, my little brother and I won’t understand each other when I talk like this! (Not that we do in the first place…)
Reccomendation: I dunno. This is more of a “rent it for a few days” kind of game rather than a “buy and play over and over” kind of game.
Overall: ***
Like I said, you’re better off renting this game first and seeing how you like it, rather than buying it. It just doesn’t seem like it’s REALLY worth 50 bucks. More like 20 or 30, not 50. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, however. I’m just saying, there’s room for improvement. If they had given each spellstone a separate force point temple instead of two stones per temple, and more sidequests and about three more Arwing levels and one or two more boss battles... Really, you should just shell out five bucks to rent this game and see for yourself whether you like it or not. However, if you like simple, easy to pick up and play games with good graphics and sound, you might like this game.
The Good:
+ Graphics!
+ Please God, please make a CD soundtrack.
I cannot live without the Cape Claw music.
+ FINALLY, they release Dinosaur Planet!
+ Another title for an underused series.
The Bad:
- AAAH! Krystal! Put some less-revealing
clothes on! We don’t want this to be rated M!
- Please tell me that’s not who I think
it is as the final boss…
- We want better gameplay! Strike!
Strike! Stri- WHAM!
- I think I read somewhere that this
is RARE’s last Nintendo game…
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