Oh great, another racing game. By now you all know exactly how this is going to go. At this point I think I’ve made it clear that I don’t like racing games, I hate driving, they usually don’t appeal to me, etc. etc. This is just going to be more of the same, right?
Not so fast. This futuristic racer isn’t like the “realistic” racing games I covered before, nor is it a random entry in a series that has nothing else to do with racing. F-Zero GX, released for the GameCube in 2003, is an absolutely phenomenal game from what many consider to be Nintendo’s forgotten first party franchise.
Most gamers know series protagonist Captain Falcon from Super Smash Bros., but F-Zero has had little love thrown its way by the big N other than a few references in that series. How little love? This week’s game was the last one released on a non handheld console in the United States. Remember, this came out in 2003, which was 17 years and almost three console generations ago. And it really is an absolute shame. It would have been great to see how the series could have grown from this point, as GX nailed what so many racing games fail to capture.
What is that you ask? Speed. I have talked about sense of speed in my previous racing games and how difficult it is to capture. But FZGX pulls it off, the insane framerate and brilliant graphics make you feel like you are rocketing through a futuristic city at 1000 mph. There are points where it almost gets to be too much, but I have never played a racing game that made me feel like I was really moving quite like this one.
A big part of that is the course design. There are 20 tracks, all of which feature hairpin turns, gut churning hills, crazy loops and breathtaking jumps. Environments range from a tech metropolis to a volcano to a futuristic desert and every background is filled with detail (not that you have time to look at it). You will race inside and outside, through cylinders and half pipes as you compete with a field of 30 other racers. Each course has boosters that you need to hit strategically to keep pace with your foes. There are no weapons here, you need to avoid obstacles, hit the boost panels and properly navigate turns to win. You can also boost on your own once the second lap starts, but this also drains your health. Loose it all or fall off the track and its game over.
The graphics are absolutely beautiful, everything is smooth, clean and detailed. I always found myself impressed with the higher end GameCube games, I feel like they have some of the best graphics of the generation. But it’s more than just the quality. The colors just pop and everything is so appealing to the eye. The textures are all smooth and for all the speed the game offers, rarely is there any weird clipping or random lag. Personally, it’s between FZGX and the Resident Evil Remake for the best graphics on the ‘Cube, and both games are up there for best graphics of the whole console generation. The sound is also awesome, there are some really cool metal riffs integrated with pulsing beats and the music helps to up the sense of urgency. I swear they took the time to sync the tunes with the tracks, as they often come to a bridge or a slower paced part of a song while you are on a straightaway or a less dangerous part of the track, only to have it pick up again once things get a bit hairier.
Another issue I always have with racing games is that once you beat a few tracks, there really isn’t much to do. FZGX has tons of unlockables, with every one of the 30 racers available as a playable character (as well as a few others). There is also a create mode, where you can build vehicles from scratch with parts you unlock. It’s not the deepest, but it’s a nice feature to have. The created vehicles are important for clearing the higher game modes or beating staff ghosts, AI versions of near perfect runs that the developers included as part of the time trial. These are not easy to beat or even unlock, but its cool to see them. Even if the Grand Prix mode is the bulk of the game, It’s nice to have some options.
I should also mention there is a story mode here. It’s only nine levels long, features some awful cutscenes and is probably my least favorite part of the game. I always hate it when a game forces you to play in a way that’s counterintuitive to the way you want to play that kind of game. I hate stealth sections in RPGs or straight action games, I can’t stand driving levels in shooters, things like that. Having to complete some stupid objective isn’t why I picked up a racing game. Just let me race. It also doesn’t help that these levels are absurdly, unfairly hard.
That’s probably the biggest issue with FZGX. The difficulty is just brutal. I personally don’t think it’s quite as hard as it is made out to be, but it’s still an insanely difficult game. Enemy racers are just merciless, especially on the higher levels. You need to be precise just to finish in the top 10 and you really need to master the game’s sliding mechanics. The controls are near perfect and incredibly responsive, but you are still moving at such an incredible rate of speed that its sometimes challenging to control your machine. The boost being tied to your health means you need to know exactly where to use it on each course so you can maximize its potential while staying alive. There are regeneration sections of the track and where they are located goes a long way in planning out your boosts. It also doesn’t help that if you die four times, you lose all your progress in the GP and need to start over again. Each GP cup has five tracks, so that can be frustrating.
That said, the game is fair in other ways. A lot of racing games, most notably Mario Kart, have AI in their Grand Prix mode where only a set amount of CPU racers can win. Once someone finishes in first, they will finish 1-3 in all the rest of the courses unless you stop them. It makes the game feel like a 1v1 affair and ensures that if you finish anywhere but 1-3, the game is basically over. That doesn’t happen in FZGX. It’s entirely possible to finish 16th and still have a shot to win your GP cup, which I found very cool. It’s little things like that which make it truly challenging rather than cheap. No matter how many times I lose all my lives, I want to get right back at it.
Really, everything about FZGX is straight up quality. You can tell Nintendo put a lot of time and effort into it being the best game it could be. But they didn’t do it alone. FZGX was the first major collaboration between the big N and its once-hated rival Sega. Remember, those two companies had been at each other’s throats for 15 years. Even when Sega abandoned hardware and decided to specifically make software, many of us thought they would never work with Nintendo. It might not mean much now, but in 2003 it was jaw-dropping to fire up a Nintendo console and see this:
It may have been strange, but FZGX was clearly the product of two gaming heavyweights who knew exactly what they were doing.
There was a time where I thought F-Zero GX could potentially be my favorite racing game. But now I don’t think so. F-Zero GX is definitively my favorite racing game. The speed, the graphics, the presentation, the challenge, I love everything about it and I think it’s sad Nintendo has done nothing with this franchise. Even if you include handhelds, there have been a grand total of zero of these things released in the U.S. since 2004. What gives? By now, so many gamers recognize Captain Falcon that I’m sure it would have some appeal to Nintendo diehards. Maybe I need to start a petition? Even though the F-Zero franchise has been dormant for a long time, I still consider GX a must play and easily one of the top 75, maybe even top 50 games I have ever played.
9.75/10
Not so fast. This futuristic racer isn’t like the “realistic” racing games I covered before, nor is it a random entry in a series that has nothing else to do with racing. F-Zero GX, released for the GameCube in 2003, is an absolutely phenomenal game from what many consider to be Nintendo’s forgotten first party franchise.
Most gamers know series protagonist Captain Falcon from Super Smash Bros., but F-Zero has had little love thrown its way by the big N other than a few references in that series. How little love? This week’s game was the last one released on a non handheld console in the United States. Remember, this came out in 2003, which was 17 years and almost three console generations ago. And it really is an absolute shame. It would have been great to see how the series could have grown from this point, as GX nailed what so many racing games fail to capture.
What is that you ask? Speed. I have talked about sense of speed in my previous racing games and how difficult it is to capture. But FZGX pulls it off, the insane framerate and brilliant graphics make you feel like you are rocketing through a futuristic city at 1000 mph. There are points where it almost gets to be too much, but I have never played a racing game that made me feel like I was really moving quite like this one.
A big part of that is the course design. There are 20 tracks, all of which feature hairpin turns, gut churning hills, crazy loops and breathtaking jumps. Environments range from a tech metropolis to a volcano to a futuristic desert and every background is filled with detail (not that you have time to look at it). You will race inside and outside, through cylinders and half pipes as you compete with a field of 30 other racers. Each course has boosters that you need to hit strategically to keep pace with your foes. There are no weapons here, you need to avoid obstacles, hit the boost panels and properly navigate turns to win. You can also boost on your own once the second lap starts, but this also drains your health. Loose it all or fall off the track and its game over.
The graphics are absolutely beautiful, everything is smooth, clean and detailed. I always found myself impressed with the higher end GameCube games, I feel like they have some of the best graphics of the generation. But it’s more than just the quality. The colors just pop and everything is so appealing to the eye. The textures are all smooth and for all the speed the game offers, rarely is there any weird clipping or random lag. Personally, it’s between FZGX and the Resident Evil Remake for the best graphics on the ‘Cube, and both games are up there for best graphics of the whole console generation. The sound is also awesome, there are some really cool metal riffs integrated with pulsing beats and the music helps to up the sense of urgency. I swear they took the time to sync the tunes with the tracks, as they often come to a bridge or a slower paced part of a song while you are on a straightaway or a less dangerous part of the track, only to have it pick up again once things get a bit hairier.
Another issue I always have with racing games is that once you beat a few tracks, there really isn’t much to do. FZGX has tons of unlockables, with every one of the 30 racers available as a playable character (as well as a few others). There is also a create mode, where you can build vehicles from scratch with parts you unlock. It’s not the deepest, but it’s a nice feature to have. The created vehicles are important for clearing the higher game modes or beating staff ghosts, AI versions of near perfect runs that the developers included as part of the time trial. These are not easy to beat or even unlock, but its cool to see them. Even if the Grand Prix mode is the bulk of the game, It’s nice to have some options.
I should also mention there is a story mode here. It’s only nine levels long, features some awful cutscenes and is probably my least favorite part of the game. I always hate it when a game forces you to play in a way that’s counterintuitive to the way you want to play that kind of game. I hate stealth sections in RPGs or straight action games, I can’t stand driving levels in shooters, things like that. Having to complete some stupid objective isn’t why I picked up a racing game. Just let me race. It also doesn’t help that these levels are absurdly, unfairly hard.
That’s probably the biggest issue with FZGX. The difficulty is just brutal. I personally don’t think it’s quite as hard as it is made out to be, but it’s still an insanely difficult game. Enemy racers are just merciless, especially on the higher levels. You need to be precise just to finish in the top 10 and you really need to master the game’s sliding mechanics. The controls are near perfect and incredibly responsive, but you are still moving at such an incredible rate of speed that its sometimes challenging to control your machine. The boost being tied to your health means you need to know exactly where to use it on each course so you can maximize its potential while staying alive. There are regeneration sections of the track and where they are located goes a long way in planning out your boosts. It also doesn’t help that if you die four times, you lose all your progress in the GP and need to start over again. Each GP cup has five tracks, so that can be frustrating.
That said, the game is fair in other ways. A lot of racing games, most notably Mario Kart, have AI in their Grand Prix mode where only a set amount of CPU racers can win. Once someone finishes in first, they will finish 1-3 in all the rest of the courses unless you stop them. It makes the game feel like a 1v1 affair and ensures that if you finish anywhere but 1-3, the game is basically over. That doesn’t happen in FZGX. It’s entirely possible to finish 16th and still have a shot to win your GP cup, which I found very cool. It’s little things like that which make it truly challenging rather than cheap. No matter how many times I lose all my lives, I want to get right back at it.
Really, everything about FZGX is straight up quality. You can tell Nintendo put a lot of time and effort into it being the best game it could be. But they didn’t do it alone. FZGX was the first major collaboration between the big N and its once-hated rival Sega. Remember, those two companies had been at each other’s throats for 15 years. Even when Sega abandoned hardware and decided to specifically make software, many of us thought they would never work with Nintendo. It might not mean much now, but in 2003 it was jaw-dropping to fire up a Nintendo console and see this:
It may have been strange, but FZGX was clearly the product of two gaming heavyweights who knew exactly what they were doing.
There was a time where I thought F-Zero GX could potentially be my favorite racing game. But now I don’t think so. F-Zero GX is definitively my favorite racing game. The speed, the graphics, the presentation, the challenge, I love everything about it and I think it’s sad Nintendo has done nothing with this franchise. Even if you include handhelds, there have been a grand total of zero of these things released in the U.S. since 2004. What gives? By now, so many gamers recognize Captain Falcon that I’m sure it would have some appeal to Nintendo diehards. Maybe I need to start a petition? Even though the F-Zero franchise has been dormant for a long time, I still consider GX a must play and easily one of the top 75, maybe even top 50 games I have ever played.
9.75/10
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