Star Fox Adventures review (GameCube)

At times you'll wonder whether these two shouldn't just take Fox's place on the ground, since they seem so well prepared. Their help is purely optional, so those bent on figuring things out for themselves can feel free to do so. It's worth pointing out that not all the puzzles are made easy by asking Slippy for a pointer, but none of the game's puzzles are particularly difficult regardless. Many aren't really that interesting, either, and seem to be there just to slow your progress--they have very specific, often obvious solutions that can be time-consuming above all else. Yet like the combat, the puzzle-solving portions of Star Fox Adventures do get a little more involved as the game wears on. For instance, not too far into your journey, you'll join forces with what looks like a little triceratops called Prince Tricky. Tricky becomes a trusty sidekick, and he'll follow you through thick and thin, helping you solve puzzles along the way. Tricky has a number of different skills (easily accessible from your inventory) such as digging up items or breathing fire, and you'll often use these to get through different areas. But since all of Fox's various gadgets and all of Tricky's skills can be used only in very specific places, you'll find that the puzzles in Star Fox Adventures are much more about observation than logic.

Sometimes Star Fox Adventures is about good old fashioned shooting. Yes, Fox McCloud will get to hop in the pilot's seat of his powerful Arwing starfighter, which he'll use to fly to Dinosaur Planet's more distant regions. At these times, gameplay essentially becomes a reenactment of the previous Star Fox shooters. In the Arwing, you can fire your lasers, shoot bombs, perform barrel rolls, and slow down and speed up at will, all while having to dodge enemy fire and various obstacles. These sequences last for only a few minutes, but they're fun enough to make for a good diversion and some nice nostalgia if you played the earlier Star Fox games. You might find yourself wishing there were more flying to be done.

The shooting sequences are notable since they're a throwback to Star Fox's roots, but the truth is that Star Fox Adventures has lots of clever little twists like this. They tend to be integrated almost seamlessly with the rest of the game, which itself is one gigantic and nearly seamless world, featuring huge, diverse environments with little to no loading times in between them. The course of the game is mostly linear but does open up a bit eventually, allowing you to go out of your way to try some new moves in old places and see what types of goodies you can scrounge up that you couldn't reach before. Since Fox runs along briskly, and since the game looks so good, you probably won't mind having to revisit some areas more than once.

Screenshots and movies of Star Fox Adventures shown prior to the game's release got a lot of people talking, and with good reason: This is one outstanding looking game. The graphics aren't totally flawless, as some of the level architecture is pretty simple and the frame rate occasionally drops from silky smooth to just plain smooth. Still, Star Fox Adventures has much, much more eye candy than most games. Actually, calling it "eye candy" isn't giving it due credit--the visual effects found in Star Fox Adventures make the characters more believable and the environments more lifelike. Beautifully done weather effects change the look of Dinosaur Planet at different times, and all manner of colorful foliage and wildlife populate the place. You can often see a very long distance toward the horizon, and the whole world of the game constantly seems to be in realistic motion, like it's truly alive. Between that and the game's expressive character models, some sporting what looks like real honest-to-goodness fur, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better-looking game out there than Star Fox Adventures.

This is certainly one of those games where the quality of the visuals enriches the entire gaming experience. When you're stuck looking for yet another key somewhere, you'll often gently remind yourself to take in the sights rather than wrack your brain. Of further note, those armed with high-definition televisions can opt to play Star Fox Adventures in progressive scan mode, which makes the graphics sharper and even more vibrant.

Those armed with Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound systems will be better off still, though Star Fox Adventures sounds good anyway--the game's audio quality generally stacks up to the quality of its graphics. A mix of British and American voice actors do a consistently good job of delivering the dialogue, all of which is spoken aloud, and Fox's voice is particularly well done. There's different music for each area of the game, and these tracks tend to fit well despite looping a bit too frequently. The game's sound effects themselves are serviceable though somewhat generic, and you may recognize a bunch of them from other games. But all in all, Star Fox Adventures is an aesthetically pleasing game in every way.

Actually, Star Fox Adventures is simply a great game in most every respect. It's true that those expecting the same sort of frantic shooting action that characterized previous Star Fox games won't find it here, nor will they finish Star Fox Adventures in just a few hours like they could finish those old games. This is a completely different type of game that expects a little patience from you, as well as a willingness to not just move along from point A to point B, but to also survey the scenery from time to time. It's true that Star Fox Adventures didn't even originate as a Star Fox game, but the game's main cast fits in perfectly with everything else that's going on. And given the amount of detail in all the game's environments, you'll likely be struck by how long the game turns out to be--probably around twice as long as the typical action adventure game these days, and Star Fox Adventures has some hidden bonuses to be discovered, too. It's sad that this is the last Rare game for a Nintendo system. But if you're gonna go out, you might as well go out in style, and Rare certainly has.