Star Fox Adventure (GCN)

I actually liked it

Since I was playing the N64 again I thought give the Rare games a spin since I don't own a console that can play those game at home (the one and only reason I ever is interested in a XBox One in order to get the Rare Replay... and maybe the Mistwalker games). Sadly my sister have taken the Banjo-Kazooie games that I first intended to play so I picked up Diddy Kong Racing instead. Never finished it and didn't do it this time either, but I got further and only have one single stage left before defeating the dragon boss for the second time. So I picked up Jet Force Gemini, still stuck at the double boss at Lupus stage. Picked up Perfect Dark and got to the end boss on easy, but got killed. Tried getting invincible cheat to finally see the end credits, no. Couldn't finish the first stage on hard and actually got out of the Datadyne Tower intro stages on medium difficulty, but not further than that. Put in GoldenEye instead, sound not working so I should probably try to clean the cartridge and couldn't finish the first stage. Then I put in Shadow of the Empire instead, finished the speed-racer and space station stages before the sewer did me in. Put on some Castlevania 64 and actually got to the castle for the first time, where I got my ass kicked and closed the game. Then I remembered another Rare game, Star Fox Adventure on the GameCube.  No memory card though since all of them was at my place so I played the first half of the game in one go and then restarted when I got home on my Wii with memory card plugged in.

I think the graphics looks nice 16 years after the release (compared to many N64 games).

Simply put the game starts with the fox girl Krystal arriving at Dinosaur planet following a distress signal on a pterodactyl (called Cloudrunners in the game) where she is attacked by a flying ship that belongs to general Scales, the tyrant that almost have conquered the planet. Her staff fall to the planet and she is able to esquape to Krazoa palace, a holy place for the dinosaurs where she finds a krazoa spirit and releases it in the temple, but she gets caught in a crystal (ha) by an unseen force. Cut to the Star Fox team that have lost Falco and gets a mission by General Pepper to investigate Dinosaur Planet since it threatens to blow up the whole system (since the planet is being teared apart by the magical forces in the planet when Scales took the four Spellstones that kept the energies in check). As Fox arrives at the planet he is tasked with finding the prince of the Earthwalkers (triceratops) that have been kidnapped by the SharpClaw clan (General Scales army).  Doing so put Prince Tricky as your companion that can help in certain puzzles. 

Escort Mission: The Game

So get the Gatekeepers to open the portals to the floating continents in space, fly there, get spellstone, take it to one of two force point temples, get a Krazoa spirit and take it to the Krazoa palace in order to release it, rinse and repeat. And I gotta say, I liked the game when it came out, I finished it several times, but playing it again... it's rather linear. There's hardly any sidequests and only thing is getting stuff you don't actually need. Mostly cheat tokens that hardly does anything or Bafamdads (1-ups) that you hardly will use after the first spellstone gives you an extra heart container, or Airwing energy-balls that you need a minimum amount of that you shouldn't have any problem with getting. Your progress is constantly determined if you can get item A or do quest B that enables you to get onward, either giving you a ability or giving you the ability for more money to get another item or pay your way past a checkpoint. Why? Why can't I explore and try to find the krazoas in between on my own? Is this Rare's commentary on the rail-shooter by doing the whole adventure on the same style? Well, the reason is that the development got cut short since Microsoft bought out Rare and they finished this as their final game for Nintendo. And it was even in development for the N64, but titles Dinosaur Planet and without anything Star Fox. Now, I know that some people would have liked to see the original intent (and I would lie if I wasn't curious at the time the gaming magazines reported on it) and some people seems to really hate this Star Fox game. I get it if you want a on rails-shooter, but to me this was much more fun than the rails-shooter. It had enough deep story (although now I would say there's some weird things story wise). Then again, I only played the original Star Fox game and not the N64 that everyone seems to love.

I really like the design of the Airwing in this

You get all the stuff and at the top of Krazoa Palace a mysterious force makes General Scales give Fox the last spirit and releasing that and freeing Krystal, Andross awakens once again (being the mysterious force that trapped Krystal and controlled Scales) so Fox follows him on the Airwing and after fighting of the first waves of Andross Falco appears giving you bombs so Fox can blow the brains of Andross once again. Day saved, pay check arrived and Krystal thanks Fox by joining the Star Fox crew. It felt a bit rushed in the end, especially that you never fought General Scales and Andross was a bit from the left field, although it can be chalked up to be the constant enemy for Fox... although he wasn't there for the next two games if I recall. Overall I still liked it, but it is a bit much gathering items that you hardly use (why do I need 31 fairies to light my way when it's only required twice or to have over 100 energy-balls when only around 20 is necessary to complete the game?) and the linearity of the game makes replays rather redundant. You can't really miss anything except things that doesn't help you in any way. Wish they were able to let it stew a bit longer, but sadly it wasn't to be, but it was at least over 10 hours to play the game, but I have forgotten much since I was perplexed several times over the solutions of the puzzles.