After finally getting around to playing it again,

[N3B]

I've concluded that StarFox Adventures is still one of the best games on the GCN, and one of my favoritest games of all time.

the graphics are spectactularly beautiful.

fox is a funny guy.

music ownz.

gameplay itself plays alot like Zelda.

little details - like when slippy comes over the comm link with the translation, fox twitches in startledness of the comm coming on / sick of slippy doing that.

[Draxas]

I did not enjoy this game. It's the only game I own that I've ever seriously considered selling back (though I didn't, and likely never will).

- Anything this game does, any Zelda game since Ocarina that's not on a handheld does better. While this may not seem like a fair comparison, I figure that if you're a 2nd party developer for Nintendo, there's no excuse to use a second rate engine to run a copycat game.
- Fighting with the staff is extraordinarily frustrating, due to the pretty random hit detection on a lot of the combos. Luckily, this is mitigated by the crappy combat system, where enemies only come at you one at a time, Dragonball Z style, to have their asses kicked while their buddies look on and wait their turn. Why is this? I don't know, maybe dinosaurs really are as stupid as they say, but I'm pretty sure velociraptors were pack hunters.
- WTF does magic have to do with a Starfox game? Actually, the entire Starfox theme really seems forced on this game, which is no surprise, seeing as how it was originally being developed without using the license.
- During my playthrough, I discovered many nasty, game-breaking glitches. These included bizarre camera teleportation effects, which showed weird angles completely unrelated to the action onscreen. These would often pop up at extremely inopportune times, like during the middle of a fight or while trying to swim away from a whirlpool. Of course, what was happening to Fox didn't actually stop, even though I lost control of him, so I would often regain control with significantly reduced health and in a poor situation. This was especially bad with the whirlpool, as every time I approached the edge, the camera would glitch, and during the glitch I would be sucked back inside to the center. I'm not sure if I actually managed to escape that situation, or if it necessitated a reset.
- The final boss really feels both rehashed and out of place. This is another good example of how the Starfox theme was forced onto the game.

Let me just say, that one of my favorite parts of Starfox Assault is the mission where you return to Sauria, and find the whole planet trashed and infected by Aparoids. I laughed at them, and then shot at the dinosaurs. It was very therapeutic.

[Ranger]

Agreeable terms

[N3B]

- fighting with the staff = not frustrating IMO. all the combos / dodges are relatively easy to pull off, and come out fluidly. the only bad thing i can say about staff combat is that it gets repetitive, since all the combos equate to the same damage/result, and with one-on-one combat, you wind up just spamming the same attack sequence over and over again.

- magic? note that the game takes place ON FOOT.... none of the other existing star fox games did. they were both arwing/tank oriented. makes sense that if they're trying to change the way the game is played and keep the same atmosphere to satisfy customers, why not throw in a magic system? plus, what kind of adventure game DOESN'T have magic, especially one where Miyamoto is involved.

- glithces eh? never had those problems.

- have only fought andross once, and that was several years ago, so i don't remember much about him.

- couldn't one say that GE sucked because PD did everything better?

- what the hell is Sauria...

Even still, I really enjoy this game. To each his own.

[Ranger]

/me waits to watch N3B get blown out of the water

[Draxas]

Hardly blown out of the water. He is entitled to his opinion, and I understand a lot of people actually DID like the game. I just wasn't one of them.

Sauria refers to Dinosaur Planet, it's the proper name assigned to the world by stellar cartographers after SF Adventures ends, since that's how they refer to it in SF Assault.

You are fortunate to have not encountered any glitches. Maybe I should check my disc for scratches... But it would be pointless, as I never intend to play it again.

Let me rephrase. You are correct, staff fighting is not frustrating. In particular, the neutral direction combo is perfectly effective if used repeatedly, and other combos are unnecessary. However, if you DO use other combos, you'll find (or at least I did) them to be pretty flaky with their hit detection. However, you are certainly right about one thing: Fighting with the staff is BORING. It's just the same few combos over and over again. It also is ideal for highlighting a major flaw with the damage system for enemies in the game: When fighting with the staff, no damage is inflicted on an enemy unless it is knocked down. Since all but two of the combos fail to accomplish this, it makes the whole system seem stale about 10 minutes into the game. Compare this to Ocarina of Time, a game relesed several years earlier, where combat strategy includes dozens of ways to inflict damage, a more logical damage engine, and the additional difficulty of being mobbed by several monsters at once, and it's fairly easy to see where the game falls short of its potential.

Speaking of comparisons, your GE vs. PD comparison isn't really all that valid. GE was released in 1998, PD in 2000. Saying that PD is the better game is understandable, as it is expected that progress would have been made toward that end over the course of those two years. However, it is not really fair to say that GE sucked just because PD is better. The key difference here is that I had a lot of FUN playing GE, even long after PD was released. I cannot say the same thing about SF Adventures, and when it comes to brass tacks, how much fun you feel a game is, is all that really matters.

And now the magic thing. Based on your comments, it's obvious to me that you haven't played SF Assault yet. I'll simply say that you spend quite a lot of that game on foot as well. The difference? Assault lets you select from an assortment of nasty weapons that fit the sci-fi/technological theme of the StarFox games much better than firing firebolts out of the end of a magic staff. The designers could have easily substituted high technology for every magical effect in the game, but they instead went with a route that made little sense when taken in the spirit of the series.

And you want a Miyamoto adventure series without magic? Play some Metroid, and get back to me.

[Ranger]

It's littered with Chozo Magic >_> Phazon Magic <_< and Luminoth Magic.

Silly advanced species who can't even protect themselves from an extreme mutagenic catalyst

[N3B]

i'm not one to spend $50 on a new game. i always wait until the price has dropped or i can borrow a friend's, so naturally i haven't played it.

but i still stand by the magic aspect - the game was supposed to be "different" than the standard SF series. SFassault is ground-based as well, but he's using his blaster and other crap like that, more sci-fi oriented. SFadventure, he's using tha staff and its magical upgrades. the entire SFadventure game has a more "mystical/magical" feel to it, and would make sense IMO for there to be plenty of magic present.

not that it really matters, but there are 3 staff combos that known down - forward, neutral, back.

well then, how about SFadventures vs. SFassault. one could logically say SFad sucked because SFass was better and released later on and stuff like that. but i'm having fun playing SFad, and that's what counts. don't get me wrong, i'm sure i'd like assault, but as stated, i've yet to play it.

<goes back to bed>

[Ranger]

in all honesty SFass barely lives up to 64 if at all. and 64 trumps all at current in my mind. So yea ... Adventures took a step down and now they are just recovering from it. If they wanted to tangent they could have done a thing focused around Crystal and then moved in the same general direction without forcing the game

[Draxas]

It's difficult to make comparisons of Adventure and Assault, because they're very different types of games. The only thing they really have in common is the SF background and characters, and I felt that Adventures really misused those by taking them out of their logical element.

I don't think I ever got the back combo to hit anything with the final blow (same problem I had with the down combo; the bolt that shoots out of the staff at the end always seems to fly past the target), which basically meant that its net damage was zero. So I stopped using it.

I can certainly understand not wanting to get games at release; the only reason I have Assault now is because I received it as a gift. Indeed, considering the mostly negative reviews it received, I likely would have skipped the game entirely, which would have been a shame.

As for magic in Metroid, that's simply not the case. You can't really classify "black-box" technology as magic, or else most of sci-fi suffers from that. The idea is that it is reliant on how these things are presented. Metroid presents its sci-fi in a more technology-oriented way: The Chozo are a psychically gifted species, which is how they accomplish most of their "magical" feats, Phazon is a powerful mutagen, which helps explain its bizarre effects, and the Luminoth and Ing function the way they do because of a cataclysmic stellar event, not a powerful magic spell. "Magic" is never directly referenced as such at any time in the series; there is always a pseudo-scientific explanation for everything, which fits the theme much better, and seems more appropriate.

SF Adventures, on the other hand, unabashedly tosses around the terms "magic" and "spells" to where it feels inappropriate to the background. Even more bizarre is how Fox's team members seem to simply take it in stride without question; if I were General Pepper, I would have recalled Fox when he started spouting nonsense about magical powers, had him locked up in a Cornerian asylum, and sent another agent to finish the job. It seems that the powers-that-be feel the same way that I do; despite the fact that a number of characters and places from Adventures appear in Assault, no mention is ever made toward magic of any sort. Even Krystal, who has now joined the StarFox team full-time, is referred to as the team telepath, not the team sorceress. She also uses the same guns as everyone else, dispensing with the staff entirely... And with a few simple changes, it all seems to fit the concept better.

But, most importantly, if you have fun playing the game, don't listen to me. As I said before, that's all that matters.

[Ranger]

I was joking about the magic :-p... Anyway how do they explain Chozo ghosts again...

[Draxas]

I forget exactly. I think they're something to the effct of "residual psychic imprints of Chozo corrupted by Phazon" or somesuch... If you really care, I can check the log entry on Prime.

[Ranger]

I would have to play my way back up there prolly. But its still not a real great explination...

[Draxas]

It certainly beats "summoned by a Space Pirate Necromancer" though.

[Ranger]

lol it would have been worth a parody and a laugh. Even then though, Metroid would have done something like Pirate surgery and phazon expiriments