Starfox Adventures

GameCube, Starfox Adventures (2002) game

Rare were one of the best developers of games in the N64 days, second only to Nintendo, partly because they took inspiration from the company and tended to replicate the top games in their own style. So Nintendo would release 'Mario Kart 64' and Rare would release 'Diddy Kong Racing,' a less pure game, but much larger and more varied. Nintendo created 'Super Mario 64' and Rare had their own three-dimensional platform game, 'Banjo-Kazooie.' The one biggie they didn't draw from was 'The Legend of Zelda' series, and 'Starfox Adventures,' or 'Dinosaur Planet' as it was known during its N64 days, looked set to complete the collection. Only, troubles abounded, the game was delayed, it was eventually shunted over to GameCube development, and finally, Nintendo firmly requested Rare dispense with their own characters and turn it into a Starfox branded game. Reading back in 'NGC Magazine' it appears that Nintendo's farming out of their favoured franchises was something that began in this era, so it was a taste of things to come, albeit in this case a game that had been an original title. I wonder if it was a rush to try and increase productivity of Nintendo's mascots, or whether they felt the game wasn't going to be up to the usual standards and wanted to add a USP to help boost the initial period of 'Cube uptake. Either way, Rare's quality seemed to have dropped in the N64's later years, with titles such as 'Banjo-Tooie' failing to live up to the heady heights of their innocent youth. Which makes this game both a curio and a landmark for its position as Rare's final release on a Nintendo home console.

Having cut my teeth on shoot-em-ups such as 'Afterburner' on the Commodore 64, and 'Xenon II' on the Amiga, I felt I'd experienced as much of the genre as I needed to, and wasn't much into it, and so I never bothered to pick up 'Lylat Wars 64,' the previous Starfox game, and didn't have a connection with those characters. That, combined with a less than stellar review in 'NGC,' and the impression that Rare titles were no longer the must-have games of yore, led me to bypass 'Starfox.' Only in recent years as I've gone back and played through a number of old 'Cube titles with the advantage of cheap, online prices and availability, did I become intrigued enough to give it a go. And since the last two Christmases I've had a Rare platform game to entertain me, I selected 'Starfox' as this Christmas' game of choice. Initial impressions were that it was very much a 'tribute' to 'Zelda,' but without the special ingredient that tends to make that series zing. In comparison, 'Starfox' was rather flat and small, especially when you look at what the 'Cube became capable of, with the vast landscapes of later titles such as 'Twilight Princess' and 'Gun.' In that regard it betrayed its N64 origins, and wasn't helped by flying sections that were clearly bolted-on gameplay in order to fit the Starfox style into the pre-existing design.

The game wasn't doing anything new, and to me, felt like a mishmash of various other games: 'Jet Force Gemini' for its third-person perspective and on-rails shooting sections; 'Donkey Kong' for its ridiculous number of items to collect; the later 'Metroid Prime' for the environment shifting puzzle mechanics (Chozo sounds close to Krazoa, though you could say 'Prime' stole from this since both developments were around the same time, though this came out first); obviously 'Zelda' for its Fire and Water Temples, with the Krazoa Palace even carrying similar music to the Temple of Time. And yet it did attempt to incorporate new ideas: beginning the game you're plunged straight into a boss battle, if one where you can't fail, so there's no slow tutorial to ease you in gently. The biggest addition to the formula was having a sidekick to give a new layer to proceedings. Of course games with sidekicks stretch back to the Amiga days ('Bubble and Squeak,' for example), and Prince Tricky wasn't the most useful element in your arsenal. There were puzzles which required his assistance, but for the most part he wasn't particularly necessary and more often than not he'd get in your way (I never did work out the purpose of playing ball, aside from changing his colour), but it did at least show advances in artificial intelligence. It also took away the feel of being in some deep place away from anything friendly, battling singlehandedly. And he could have been better integrated. Perhaps it would have become a chore to have to think about how to get him across obstacles or up into high places, so the game just magically brings him wherever he needs to be, but such thought could have added to the puzzle elements.

Fox has rather a lot of things to keep track of and carry, and in much the same way as 'Banjo-Tooie' the breadth of items felt more like a blind to make you think a lot was going on. 'Zelda' always excelled at giving you a new tool to play with, unlocking new areas and ways to progress, giving you a sudden burst of freedom. But with the new additions to your staff's powers, Tricky's abilities, or a collectable to rack up, it was much more simplistic and more like picking up a key to unlock the next door or hole, the sense of freedom wasn't very apparent. And yet, the game was pretty attractive, with some beautiful and varied landscapes, even if they were the typical snowy wastes, forest areas, and ancient ruins that we expect from games. But that's not really the game's fault: these are real world connections, and our world only has so many different styles of environment, and new, invented landscapes never impress as much as those based on the natural landscape. So the moon-like areas of Moon Mountain Pass were different, but I much preferred the beauty of the sandy bay of Cape Claw, or the autumnal forest near Lightfoot Village, golden leaves dropping around you. The music, too, was mostly quite nice, and as you'd expect, the package was professionally designed - I liked the use of alien language at the start where you don't understand what's being said initially, although some voices grated, especially when you couldn't skip them (such as the whiny shopkeeper!). Unlike the N64, you could see far into the distance where a flame might be burning or a creature flying, a true realisation of the enhancement the 'Cube enabled.

Unfortunately, as with so many games, the environment wasn't interactive enough, and while you would whack trees with your staff and lever up boulders to release the Scarab bugs that acted as currency (why didn't the shopkeeper take a step out of his front door and simply gather up as many bugs as he wanted? - it's a standard trope of games, that the currency is freely available all over and merely takes the effort of collection), things were pretty rigid. The same could be said for the combat system, a case of hammering the A Button until an enemy was defeated, with little tactical detail or variety. It was nice to see footprints in the snow and that sort of thing, though these were already standard effects, and it would have been nice to see that you had an impact on the game world, and weren't merely passing through it to your next objective. One way in which the game improved on 'Zelda' was never allowing you to be stuck: you could always contact Slippy to provide a clue as to what you needed to do next (although sometimes they were a little too vague), and Peppy to show you where you should be on the world map. This meant idle wandering, and the threat of boredom setting in was kept to a minimum. Unfortunately it was still possible to get stuck for periods because of the inconsistency of the game: like Link, Fox could only jump by running off the edge of cliffs or platforms, but sometimes the game wouldn't let him, automatically forcing him to grip the edge and pull himself back up, or when you were expecting to grab the edge, plummeting you into an abyss.

There were also ridiculous things such as the moon area where I got stuck: all you had to do was place rocks in steam holes, but because there were two different types of hole, one of which allowed you to place a rock, the other which didn't, I tried one, and assumed that wasn't the solution because it wasn't the correct type of hole! So I was wandering around trying all kinds of things until I accidentally stumbled on the realisation that the obvious was the correct way to go, it just needed to be the precisely correct hole. There were the occasional moments like this, where, admittedly, it was my own stupidity rather than difficult puzzles, but it only furthered my impression of an inconsistent game world. The various temples were fine, even if the whole point of it all was rather convoluted (get a SpellStone so you can unlock something which will take you to a Test to win a Krazoa spirit…), but while the tasks weren't mostly that taxing, some could be, and the frustration levels certainly were at times: my toughest task was the Test of Fear where it was a cunningly simple experiment in concentration. You had to keep a variably moving slider in the green section, while all around you on the screen, dinosaurs were attacking and the camera was swinging wildly. It was so tough to deal with your natural responses and the way a game has taught you to react via the controller, that in the end I just had to cover up the screen in order to pass it (cheating, really), but it wasn't that which was the real problem: it should have been called the Test of Patience because every time you failed (a lot), it sent you right back to the entrance so you had to go through all the rooms again.

Although it was a trial, the idea was a glimpse of true genius, the kind of thing at one time, that Rare pulled off regularly, so it's sad to say that moments of being impressed were, yes, rare. At the same time, I did enjoy the experience, it was a nice place to visit, the puzzles kept my brain active over the festive period, and sometimes I was looking forward to getting back to it. For these reasons, and despite its general lack of invention, and for failing when looked at as the last Rare game for Nintendo, I enjoyed it more than I didn't, and welcomed the chance to play a new game in that genre. The ending, with Andross, the villain of the Starfox universe, felt rather contrived, another example of a different game being injected into 'Dinosaur Planet,' one of an alternate style not entirely in keeping, making it feel even more of a mashup of genres. I can't see myself playing through it again in future (unlike 'Zelda' where 'Link's Awakening' and 'Ocarina of Time' held multiple replay value, and I really want to play others in that series again), but while it was there, it was a functional, beautiful and fairly engaging experience. It made me long for a 'Banjo-Kazooie' or a 'Donkey Kong' on the 'Cube to see how they would have used the power to create big and bright 3D worlds.

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