I haven't played a Star Fox game since the original came out on the
SNES. So I'm not exactly a huge Star Fox fan, but I am a huge fan of
Zelda and similar adventure / RPGs, so I'm glad they made a game like
this rather than a space shooter.
Star Fox Adventures will never touch Zelda's qualities, graphics,
controls, storyline or length, but I still had a ton of fun. The game
was pretty easy up until the last battle, but the puzzles were creative
enough to keep you entertained all the way through.
----------Battle System----------
Star Fox Adventures is an Action / Adventure game similar, if not
completely ripping off the Zelda 64 controls and just about everything
else. At the beginning you play as Krystal, then she gets captured and
Star Fox finds her bow-staff. They poorly explain that Star Fox doesn't
need his blaster here, so he must use Krystal's bow-staff to fight. The
fighting is pretty shallow, there's really no combinations you can
create or learn, he just does them after you constantly hit the A
button a billion times. If you move your analog stick he might swing
his staff in a different direction, but overall it doesn't matter where
you swing the staff, it will still always inflict the same amount of
damage. Within the game you'll find a young dinosaur named Tricky,
since he's the only one that can breathe life into the Spellstones, you
must take him with you on your quest. Tricky doesn't help you out like
Donald or Goofy would in Kingdom Hearts, he's used in a different
manner. You can call Tricky and get him to find secrets hidden within
the ground, or to stand on a trigger or to breath fire on an object. He
won't fight by your side, but he's there for all the puzzles in the
game. You have to keep feeding Tricky with fungus. Each time Tricky
uses an ability, he will lose a Fungus point, he can hold 5 at a time.
If you runs out he will complain alot and fall asleep, nothing bad
happens other than annoying you. You can feed him at anytime and find
Fungus anywhere in the game, so you'll never have a problem. To get a
Fungus you have to bash it with your staff to stun it. There's
something a little creepy about that.
Through out the game you'll find other Dino and Mammoth friends
that will help you out as well. You can ride on their backs and shoot
spaceships, or crush barriers. There's a few parts in the game where
you'll have to race in a ski-mobile type machine. Through out the game
you'll learn magic abilities with your staff. You can shoot fire, shoot
ice, use quake, or rocket over a platform. You can also disguise as a
SharpClaw to enter special areas or to sneak past enemies. Everytime
you or Tricky learns a new ability you can open up a new area in the
game and progress. You gain HP by getting the a Spellstone. There's
only 4 Spellstones in the game and you start off with 3 HP tanks. Each
tank can split off in 4 quarters. Overall you can get a maximum of 28
HP points. You find MP points in underground cave areas hidden off on
Dino planet. I only found 2 extra boosts, but I think there's 3 or 4
overall. You only get one staff through out the game and no power ups.
The boss fights are all unique, but sadly there's only 5 overall. The
first boss fight is a classic Zelda style huge monster where you have
to find the weak points to destroy. Another boss is a giant T-Rex that
you must electrocute and blow up. There's are the only two I can
picture in a Zelda game. The other three is a lot different, as in one
you have to blow up three ski-mobiles, another you have to shot a demon
from a platform while flying and the last is space shooter similar to
older Star Fox games. The last boss fight is (obviously) the hardest
thing in the game. I had to play it at least 20 times to finally beat
it.
----------Characters / Story----------
The game starts off with Krystal, who is trying to stop General
Scales from taking over the planet and to revive the Krazoa spirits.
Krystal gets captured, so Star Fox answers a distress call and goes out
on a quest to save Krystal, revive the remaining spirits and to restore
the planet back to normal. The story is pretty good and there's only
one big twist at the end that might surprise you. The dialog was good
for the most part, but there was a few cheesy moments.
----------Graphics----------
For a four plus year old game, the graphics hold up pretty well.
The environments are always unique to each other and the character
designs look great. There's not a ton of levels in the game, but
they're all huge with a ton of places to visit and some secrets to
find. There's a few times when you'll be walking on a straight blocky
path, but for the most part you'll be walking in a wide open fully
detailed field or cave. The game will change from night to day and the
helpful dinosaurs might even fall asleep at night. It might rain at
random as well. There's only 13 areas in the game, but they're all
pretty big with different sections of their own. There's really no
specialized dungeons like in Zelda, or really any safe areas also. The
game is kinda small, but they make up for it by making you backtrack
alot. One temple you have to go back at least 5 or 6 times, but you
might have to go in a different direction or find a new opening or
secret or passage. There's only 4 Spellstones in the game but to get
one you have to travel in space to get to the section with it, travel
that entire land, get to the boss, take the stone, get back to Dino
Planet, and then go to the Force point, there's only 2 Force Points in
the game, so you'll have to backtrack at least twice per Point. You'll
have to find a new way to get into the force point though. Like the
Zelda games, the camera is controlled with the L button. I haven't
played a Zelda game since Windwaker about a year ago, so I wasn't
exactly use to this camera style, but I quickly got use to it. You can
give the game a standard or wide-screen view. I picked the wide-screen
view, but there wasn't an black bars for some reason. I can't find a
reason to leave it on standard view or why they would even include it.
There was a time when I was fighting a huge boss and he started to
break up and turn invisible. This could of been fixed before the
release. There's not a ton of enemies in the game, and they reuse some
of them. There mgith be a lizard with a mace, and then a bigger lizard
with an axe or a giant bat, and then later a bat on fire.
----------Sound----------
Just about all the dialog is voiced out, only a few times where it
wasn't. At the beginning of the game all the characters speak in a Dino
language. For some reason I thought it was French, this scared the crap
out of me. Fox eventually gets a communicator that turns their language
to English, but you get the option to turn the Dino speak on or off.
The music is great, especially the song they play on Dino Planet and
Cape Claw, it reminds me of something similar to Jungle King.
----------World Map----------
The world map for Dino Planet is a standard map with dots
representing each area within the planet. It's not a connecting map
like Super Mario 3 or Final Fantasy Tactics, it just points to which
direction you need to run to. You have to unlock each area, but for the
most part the game is very linear. There's a warp stone that will take
you to a few places, but you have to walk to each area otherwise.
There's another map to the game, which is very similar to Kingdom
Hearts (although I'm pretty sure Star Fox Adventures came first). You
can get into your X-Wing and go to each section that was removed from
Dino Planet and controlled by General Scales. Once you pick your
destination, you have to fly the X-Wing while shooting meteors,
spaceships and mines. You have to gather a predetermined amount of gold
rings before you reach the end to break a force field. The graphics and
gameplay on this part of the game is about 100% improvement over
Kingdom Hearts generic version of rail shooting.
----------Time to Complete Game (first run through, last save before final boss)----------
17:23:41
No bonus at the end, other than the final dialog before the
credits. The game was pretty short but still slightly longer than I had
originally expected. After you play it through once, there's really no
reason to do it again.
