One thing I want to say right out of the bat is that I think Star Fox Adventures is a great game. I know I’m going to be highly critical of it in this review because it really could have been something truly special. The game started out as a new IP called Dinosaur Planet and was very far into development before it was changed into a Star Fox game, with one of the main characters removed and another now taking a background role. I’ve played a build of Dinosaur Planet and I do think that the game is worse off because of this change, with some big emotional moments completely removed. Another huge change was being turned from an N64 game to a GameCube game.
This change was a bit of a mixed bag. Rare did a wonderful job of improving the graphics massively in such a short time, with some phenomenal fur effects that still look amazing in motion. In some areas, though, you can very clearly see the game’s N64 origins. This created a somewhat disjointed look (especially so in screenshots), yet the majority of the time it still looks great. Another thing that had to be changed was the world, due to the loading time added in using DVDs. Rare didn’t want to resort to loading times, so they added some oddly winding corridors (some with puzzles you have to solve every single time you go past) to hide the loading zone. Great for making the world seem more connected, but also somewhat annoying.
One clever thing that Rare did was understand that by changing the story and reducing the scope of the game late on, as well as these “loading zones”, the world they had to rearrange and cobble back together would feel disjointed, so they added a story element where chunks of the world had broken off, so Fox needs to use his Arwing to visit them. This adds some Arwing sections which are decent enough, but all feel the same.
For the most part, Star Fox Adventures is a wonderful game in a very similar style as Ocarina of Time, with a lovely world to explore and dungeons to work though. It’s not quite as natural in terms of progression, with a lot of instances where people randomly give you the item you need to progress (instead of a more natural progression), a problem that was part of the prototype I played as well. The world is fascinating, which makes it more annoying as Fox acts like he’d rather not be involved in anything that’s happening – it’s just a payday. There are plenty of powers Fox can get for his (or, rather, Krystal’s) staff, which in turn allows for more access to locations. It does feel a bit odd that the world is catered so much to the staff, though (in the original, Krystal and Sabre could use magic, their weapons were just used to direct it).
I’ve used the word disjointed a few times and it really is the best way to describe the entire game. While I loved it as a kid, something always felt off about it, and now I’ve played the prototype Dinosaur Planet, I can see where things have been cut apart and moved around, with it not matching its new placement very well. While I’m sure things would have needed to have been scaled back when turning it into a GameCube game, I feel like also turning it into a Star Fox game meant they had to tear away some interesting parts of the world and lore and didn’t have time to replace it, meaning some of the stronger story moments had to go. Even with all that, Rare’s brilliance still shines through all the cracks and it’s still wonderful to play.