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Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet

Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet

I have complained at length on this blog about popular gaming franchises receiving a pass for putting out lousy or even average games.  This is especially true of Nintendo’s first party standbys.

In the 25+ years I have been playing video games, I can count on my hands the number of titles based on Nintendo IPs that received bad reviews.  If you don’t count the CD-I titles (and you shouldn’t), you could probably count them on one hand.  Take Mario Party titles out the equation and its down to one finger.  Look, Nintendo rarely makes bad games, but there are a number of titles from their extensive catalog that would have received an average at best reception if they weren’t Mario/Zelda/Metroid Etc.  All of those Zelda handheld titles come to mind.  Hell, the mainstream gaming media tried to convince us that Mario Clash was worthy of an 8/10 back in the day.

Image result for star fox adventures

Now that I’m done ranting, we can actually talk about this week’s game.  Star Fox Adventures hit the GameCube late in 2002 to quite a bit of fanfare.  Any time Nintendo dusts off one of its first party franchise its going to get attention, but SFA found itself in the gaming news for what it wasn’t rather than what it was.  This was going to be a third person action game like Zelda rather than a flying game like its predecessors.  Fans had been clamoring for a sequel to Star Fox 64 for five years and many were disappointed (or worse) that this wasn’t going to be it.  But hey, its Nintendo, so lets give it a chance.

Graphically, SFA looks pretty good.  The environments are clean and well designed and the character models are similarly well done.  Fox himself looks a little creepy, but overall I can’t complain.  The sound is also good, it kind of feels  like background music but it fits with the game’s atmosphere.  Gameplay is solid, the controls are are pretty tight and it is easy to pull off most of Fox’s wide range of abilities.  It kind of feels like a test version of a Zelda game for better or worse.  

And yet I hated this game.  It isn’t poorly made like “Days of Thunder.”  It didn’t have the butt ugly graphics like “Shadow Madness.”  It wasn’t slow and plodding like “Brothers in Arms.”  Yet Star Fox Adventures commits a cardinal sin of gaming.  An unforgivable discretion that can’t be overlooked.  It’s really, really boring.

Looking good, sounding good or even playing good doesn’t matter if the game is dull.  The environments are boring, the story is boring (its about a lady version of Fox who gets trapped in some sort of crystal or something), the characters are boring, everything is boring.  It’s like they just thought “hey, lets take a half finished Zelda game and just slap Star Fox characters in it!”  It just wasn’t worth spending time on, and that was compounded by the fact that this was such an unnecessary departure for the series.  There was absolutely no reason for this game to have anything to do with Star Fox.  There are a few flying sections, and they are actually pretty well done, but its just a tease for what could have been.

Cross genre games can work, but they need to have a few things going for them.  Chief among those is a cast of compelling characters.  Games like Dissidia or Super Mario RPG work because they feature compelling characters from franchises everyone loves.  People love Star Fox for its gameplay, but no one really cares about the characters.  So without the classic Star Fox gameplay, what do you really have?  A waste of time.  I can’t really give it too bad of a score because its a well made waste of time, but you should still avoid it.

4/10

Play this if:
You have made it your mission to play all of the Zelda clones in existence
You are a diehard Star Fox an

Avoid if:
You value your time
You are looking for an actual Star Fox game

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