Company: Rareware
Platform: Gamecube
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What’s it about? You take the role of Fox McCloud (wasn’t he in Highlander?) an intergalactic fighter pilot who after saving the universe a number of times, runs out of paying jobs. With his crew gone what is a Fox to do? Save a planet of course! Hearing of a distant planet in distress, Fox rejoins his crew of old and journeys to save this unfortunate world from a clan of wicked dinosaurs.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly- Starfox Adventures is yet another game with excellent graphics. Some may remember Rare for games such as Donkey Kong Country, Golden Eye, and Perfect Dark. Rare has always seemed to push the graphical boundaries of every console that it has developed games for. This game is yet another example or what Rare can do. Released almost two years ago there are newer games on the Gamecube whose graphics pale in comparison to this beauty. The close ups of characters are amazing and backgrounds seem to reach for miles and miles. The controls take a bit to get used to but are mastered fairly easily. You collect a large selection of weapons and gadgets as you progress through the game. Prince Tricky is a dinosaur sidekick who helps you out with a variety of talents and tricks. The musical score on this game really sets the mood in many situations. It ranges from tribal African sounds to booming battle drums. This has to be one of the better musical scores for a video game.

The bad. The game play time is not very long about 20 hours or so. Most of your missions consist of playing fetch. It seems to always come down to you having to go and find a certain item and bring it back. You don’t get to develop any kind of relationship with other characters besides the basic “what do I do next” talk. Controls during battle are iffy. You lock on to one character at a time and must fight until you defeat that enemy. If you are surrounded by enemies, the others will just stand around and wait for their turn for you to defeat them. One of the major problems with this game is the Arwing fighter sequences. You briefly get to fly and Arwing from the planet to a certain destination and back again. This part just seems so out of place in the game. They provide no challenge whatsoever. I feel that the fighter sequences were not originally part of the game and were rushed to be added. The game would have been better off without them.

Replay Value- For those of you expecting jet fighter mayhem, this will not be a game for you. But if you are into a toned down and simplified version of Zelda, then Starfox Adventures is for you. You can pick this game up almost anywhere for under twenty bucks. Definitely a hidden gem, Starfox Adventures has to be one of the most underrated and over looked game on the Gamecube. It’s too bad that this will be the last Rare game developed for Nintendo. I would have liked to seen more.

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