The Green Fox

WOW. This game looks stunning. Just look at the screenshots for yourself for a minute, it's a fantastic looking game. With an almost solid 60fps framerate and even widescreen and progressive scan modes supported you wont be disappointed at these visuals. There is some minor slowdown when a lot is happening at once but this is a rare occurence. The game even has weather and time effects, it rains quite often and turns from day to night while you play! I must also mention the water effects, they are the best I have seen to date, with ripples, distortion and even reflections of Fox and the level in the water.

Fox Gets a Power Crystal

SFA also excels audibly, with very nice music, sound effects, and speech. The classic Starfox theme brings back memories and thats even before you start your game Dolby Pro-Logic 2 support is also built in, to great effect. Sounds come from all directions and enhance the feeling of immersion in the game.. very well done =) All characters speak even though you can't understand them at first, until good old Slippy gets your translator online

Unfortunately the gameplay doesnt match the game's excellent graphics and sound :/ SFA plays like a dumbed down Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the game controls the jumping and has an enemy lockon feature like Zelda but its automatic, to defeat an enemy all you need to do is walk up to it and press A until it dies. You can carry many different items but few of them are used in combat. Prince Tricky, a native dinosaur, soon becomes your sidekick and you can command him to perform certain functions to progress through the game. Your staff can also 'learn' new functions as you progress which you can use to solve puzzles and sometimes fight in different ways.

Arwing Makes An Appearence

Starfox is quite a long game, it should take you around 20 hours to complete. After you finish it, you are unlikely to come back to it because.. erm.. it's just not that fun to play.. (sorry, I hate to say it..) The puzzles are straight forward, you will likely breeze through the game without getting stuck at all. That said, SFA isn't without variety, there are race sequences, flight sections and other subgames to punctuate the exploring.

Conclusion

I was expecting more from this game, because of Rare's track record with adventure games (Banjo Kazooie, Conker) The game is still good and the best adventure game out on the 'cube to date, but it doesn't have enjoyment factor that I for one need to have in a game. It seems like I'm playing this game to see what lush graphics it will throw out next, not because its fun or enjoyable.