Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet

[TheGreatMonkey]

'Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet' (GCN)
From Extended Play on Tech TV.
Review By Jason D'Aprile


Rare might have gone over to the other side after a long and fruitful relationship with Nintendo, but it's leaving the Big N with quite a bang. "Star Fox Adventures" for the GameCube certainly manages to live up to the developer's high standards, and it adds yet another notch to the Cube's quality-driven lineup. This week on "Extended Play" we get down and furry with everyone's favorite star-faring canine, Fox McCloud.

Starfox Adventures
Platform: GCN
Developer: Rare Interactive
Publisher: Nintendo
ESRB rating: Teen
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Great looks and sound


Unlike previous games in the series, most of "Star Fox Adventures" takes place on the ground, not in the air. Taking Fox and friends to Dinosaur Planet, "Adventures" boils down to solid yet familiar third-party action and questing, with some aerial navigation and combat thrown in to boot. One of the first things you'll notice about the game is how great it looks. Every character is lovingly designed and looks terrific. From the facial expressions and the fur on Fox's head to every texture, explosion, and landscape detail, this game looks wonderful.


The audio presentation is excellent as well. Solid voice acting in both English and the language of Dinosaur Planet, dramatically cinematic tunes, and plenty of great sound effects highlight all the action. Home theater fans will also appreciate the wide-screen option for viewing even more of the action and the Dolby Pro-Logic II sound support.

The story sets Fox up on Dinosaur Planet after he receives a distress call, although the game actually starts off with a new female character investigating the situation first. This soon-to-be damsel in distress introduces players to the beautiful, fantastic world Fox will explore, where a tyrannical lizard man, General Scales, is forcing everyone to succumb to his iron rule. Throw in the fact that the planet is about to self-destruct and you've got all the makings of a proper emergency situation.

Just don't expect guns to be the answer to Dinosaur Planet's problems. This time around Fox left the blasters at home. Instead, Fox finds himself equipped with a magical staff. With this new weapon Fox can let fly with a surprisingly fluid array of martial-arts attacks, and when the staff becomes powered up with magical energy Fox can unleash dazzling elemental and energy barrages. While a staff might seem like a cliché, the smooth and intuitive controls and the fantastic animation lead to some truly engaging combat.

When he's not attacking bad things Fox finds himself talking to the local denizens, looking for clues and new tasks, exploring new paths, jumping gaps, leading a young dino to safety, and even occasionally dealing with disreputable shopkeepers. This variety of gameplay combined with the ability to regularly increase and change the powers of your staff make "Star Fox Adventures" feel like an adventure game. Fox will even engage in certain actions automatically.

For example, although there's no jump button, if you run toward the edge of a platform Fox will automatically leap to the next. Fox will grab ledges, get on ladders, and perform other actions in the same way, making it a far more user-friendly experience for younger gamers without dulling the action for more mature players. Another welcome option is the ability to save at will, instead of having to rely on save game points. One missing feature, though, is a completely controllable camera. You can easily refocus the view behind Fox, but there's no option to move the camera in other ways.

Probably the biggest flaw for fans, though, is the lack of focus on what made the original titles such favorites: aerial battle and navigation. The short space flight sequences are used to get to new sections of the planet, so fans who come to "Adventures" looking for the action they remember from the original SNES and N64 "Star Fox" titles will be disappointed.

What aerial sequences there are in "Adventures" are handled in much the same way as in previous games -- only they're much more graphically impressive. These flight sequences, whether on the back of a winged dinosaur in the opening level or in Fox's cool fighter, are entertaining and exciting, with easy-to-grasp flight controls. Unfortunately, they are neither plentiful nor lengthy. A few minutes of flying here and there is all you'll get in "Star Fox," and for fans of the series that's not enough.


Thankfully, however, there isn't much to complain about otherwise. Hard-core gamers might find the gameplay too forgiving and simplistic, but everyone else will be delighted to discover a land of beautiful graphics, intuitive and entertaining gameplay, and plenty of cool characters.

I don't know, the game looks pretty cool, but its not a Star Fox game to me unless its completely based on flying the Arwing.

I loved the original Star Fox game and the Remake they did for the N64. Well I guess We'll see how this game turns out.

[The Frog]

I loved the original game. Played it a lot on the SNES

Never got an N64 to try the newer one. This does look like a neat adventure game. I did like it when the Mario characters got dropped into that RPG game- that was a good transition back then. Heck, wife and I still dig it out to play now and then.

Maybe this will be a good one too.

Monkey- GCN- is that the Gamecube, or will this be available on the PC platform too?

[Redfield]

Same here, the first game had me hooked.

I plan on getting Robert (5yrs old) this game by Christmas. It seems fun.

I liken the graphics and excitement to that of Rouge Leader.

[The Frog]

Personally, I'm hoping they go ahead and do a new flight sim in Star Wars that continues from the point X Wing Alliance left off.

I love how the over feel of the flight sim has remained constant (to keep you from getting a learning curve issue) from the original X wing to now, jsut giving you new options along the way like countermeasues and flight control customizations. Bring able to set up your own custom practice dogfights in the game's flight sim trainer is great too.

There's a lot of new stuff in the last 3 years they could include, and like the Jedi Knight series, ,take teh story forward into New Republic or New Jedi Order eras.

[TheGreatMonkey]

Yeah GCN is game cube (GCN= Game Cube Nintendo)

There are also rumors of a new Star Fox game coming out That is Arwing based, But since Rare, the company that makes Star Fox, was bought by Microsoft its likely to be on the Xbox.