This is the final RARE game on a Nintendo home console, it is the first Starfox game based on foot, it mixes game styles of Zelda and Starfox together and looks better than Gail Porter skinny dipping in a vat of Dr. Pepper. So on paper Starfox Adventures was set to be the game to end them all. Instead that isn't quite what we got.

True to form the Starfox team are assigned to yet another peacekeeping mission on Dinosaur Planet, with a new pay rise the team are more than happy to comply. Dinosaur Planet has been torn apart and Fox McCloud is sent to sort it. After discovering the planet had been attacked by the evil General Scales (groan) Fox sets about trying to locate the Krazoa spirits, the devices that hold the planet together. So typical RPG nonsense and so it begins.

Starfox Adventures is notably gorgeous in that it is the best looking game on the Gamecube, the individual fur effects on many of the characters and the beautiful special effects found throughout. But graphics doesn't mean a thing if the game is crap, and it is far from perfect. SFA has some chronic gaming problems; the battle system is frustratingly repetitive, bugs haven’t been ironed out because you often use a different weapon to the one you selected, Tricky can appear in multiple places at once and have the ability to walk through things. The game is surprisingly simple, linear and easy and the voices of the characters are highly irritating.

But that doesn't make this a bad game, because despite all those faults the game still reeks of the brilliance of Rare design. It is extremely good fun from start to finish, there is never a moment when you think to yourself “god this is dull”, even with the repetitive battle system. The story progresses at an exciting level and typically with Starfox games there is a dramatic twist at the end of it all. Probably one of the best achievements is Rare making Dinosaur Planet actually play and feel lik
e a Starfox game. The small levels that require you to fly your Arwing through rings are great, retro Starfox fun and despite only being small it is pulled off excellently. The traditional Starfox characters, the technological inclusions of jet bikes and communicators all connote futuristic gameplay.

Ideas such as the Jet bikes and mammoth riding are one of the things that make the game stand out so much. Some really innovative ideas that keep you on your toes and all with a whiff of Zelda. Finding secret zones under the ground, having to move from flag to flag in a snowstorm or risk getting lost (*cough* Ocarina of time) and all round similar gameplay. Even the music is reminiscent of Zelda; the Starfox music has been remixed to give it that RPG feel. To say the game is as fun as Zelda is actually rather accurate but so many aspects stop it from becoming a true masterpiece.

But hey the game is fun, and that, after all, is the most important thing.

Dringo.

(www.star-fox.com)