Game Review: Starfox Adventures (GC)

Tags

Falco, Fox, Fox McCloud, Gamecube, Krystal, Nintendo, Peppy, Prince Tricky, Rare, Slippy, Starfox, Starfox Adventures, Tricky

Usually when I replay games I tend to stick to the classics, titles that score 9.0 or above. I have precious little time to play games that I have to make sure I’m always playing something worthwhile but every now and again I get the urge to load up something lesser, a game that I would merely describe as ‘good’. My latest replay is one such occasion, 2002′s Starfox Adventures.

This game had a fairly unusual development. It started life as Dinosaur Planet, Rare’s answer to The Legend of Zelda, a 3D action adventure title for the N64 but never made it to the platform due to a new generation-transition taking place before development cpould be completed. The title moved on to the newfangled Gamecube but underwent more than a graphical makeover when Nintendo approached their developer, liking the anthropomorphic charcter style to ask if they could make it a Starfox game. Rare agreed and the game’s hero, Sabre was replaced by Fox McCloud, the heroine, Krystal was morphed into another anthropomorphic fox and the title eventually changed to Starfox Adventures, becoming the third game in the series although it shares little in common with the other titles.

The game opens with Krystal searching Dinosaur Planet for answers about the extinction of her people riding a Cloudrunner pteradactyl. An encounter with a strange, flying galleon causes her to drop her staff before she lands on the vessel and meets General Scales, nasty boss of the Sharpclaw army. After escaping him she flies to the Krazoa Palace, answering a distress signal. At the palace she learns from several injured Earthwalker Triceratops dinosaurs that the place was attacked by General Scales who sought the power of the Krazoa Spirits, which, in reaction to the attack where dispersed across the planet. Krystal manages to retrieve one but is then trapped by a mysterious unknown being. Soon afterwards the Starfox Team minus Falco receieve a job from General Pepper who explains the predicament of Dinosaur Planet, large pieces of which have actually broken away from the surface into orbit. Fox flies down and soon learns that this is because General Scales has removed the four Spellstones from the Force Point Temples breaking the seal on the terrific magical energy contained in the planet, an energy so strong it is constantly pushing the planet apart. It’s up to Fox to retrieve the Spellstones and save both Krystal and Donosaur Planet.

Water effects shimmer beautifully

It’s a big departure for the series having Fox step out of the cockpit for most of it. There are still some Arwing missions in there but the vast majority of time will be spent on foot exploring the planet, fighting bad guys and tackling puzzles. The game’s structure runs like this. Each of the four Spellstones is located on one of the orbiting regions that have seperated from the planet. Upon finding them they will open the gateway for him at which point he must return to his Arwing and fly a brief on-rails approach to the orbiting location. After landing he negotiates the many traps and puzzles and defeats a boss to claim the Spellstone before returning via the Arwing to the planet and taking it to its corresponding Force Point Temple. Then he will have to track down a Krazoa Shrine where he will have to undergo a challenge to free a Krazoa Spirit which must in turn be taken back to Krazoa Palace. Then the whole process repeats. Much of the gameplay revolves around Krystal’s staff which Fox finds early on. Aside from handling combat the staff can be imbued with a number of useful powers from firing projectiles to causing minor earthquakes. The staff has a power gague that can be refilled by collecting colour-coded energy crystals. You are also accompanied by Prince Tricky, a young Earthwalker to whom you can give a number of commands such as to find buried treasure or breathe fire on enemies or objects that need to be burned. Each time you command tricky his energy will be depleted a little and you will have to keep his stamina up by feeding him GrubTub fungus, little mushrooms that hop away from you and must be stunned to collect. Tricky basically acts like Navi in The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time.

And that’s a pertinent point to bring up because this game owes a real debt to the 3D Zelda franchise. The open-eneded overworld structure and dungeon-driven gameplay bears a close resemblance to Link’s adventures and the similarities don’t stop there. Many of the puzzles are borrowed from Zelda such as block-pushing target-shooting and wall-bombing, you can assign abilities to a shortcut button, not to mention the staff’s energy gague looks and acts a lot like Link’s magic meter. And most blatantly of all Zelda’s famous ‘puzzle-solved’ fanfare is copied note for note and used for the exact same purpose. But there’s one way in which the game isn’t much like Zelda. It’s nowhere near as good.

Starox Adventures is at best a reasonably varied romp through gorgeous landscapes, at worst a bloated, repetitive drudge with next to no gameplay merit. More than half of the puzzles and challenges in the game revolve around fetch quests. More often than not in order to progress you’ll need to find something and return it to its proper place, discovering any such object activates just about the most stupid ‘item-foun’ animation in gaming history and you have to watch it again and again. The environments themselves aren’t teribly well-designed, dominated by a lot of featureless corridors and a strange quirk in which waypoints feature a symmetrical design forcing you to pass by performing the exact same action whether you’re coming or going. You’ll have to revisit many locations to perform a lot of the same tasks and there’s tons of boring backtracking. The combat looks pretty flasy but is in reality rather shallow with Fox’s handful of staff combos handled entirely by the A button. The standard Sharpclaw enemies have a habit of letting you take them all out one at a time, even when there’s five or six surrounding you they attack one by one.  The Arwing missions are short and pretty weak, capturing none of the frantic, intense action of Lylat Wars. The story isn’t great either. The idea of bits of the planet breaking off into orbit is cool but there’s not much more to it than that and General Scales isn’t a very threatening viallain. Worse is the painfully bad script and laughable voice acting, much of which was done by the Rare dev-team. A lot of characters have fairly cheesy regional British accents which might be oddly amusing if not for the atrocious delivery of the cliched lines. After Lylat Wars’ legendary writing and voice work it’s a real downer. Oh, and Prince Tricky is really annoying too.

Sounds like a stinker doesn’t it? Well don’t let the game’s many flaws put you off because it’s not in fact a bad game. There’s a decent bit of variety, with decent vehicle sections, including a couple of places where you ride dinosaurs as well as some first person shooting challenges. The gameplay, whilst totally unoriginal works perfectly well, Fox is responsive and quick, the controls are tight, the combat smooth and the various powers and commands all work well. The quiet, understated score perfectly evokes the tribal motif of the world although there are no real standout tunes and the sound effects are decent enough. It may be reptitve but having Zelda as your main influence is no bad thing and many of the puzzles are decent.

There’s even one way in which the game surpasses Zelda. The item selection interface that has always necesitated frequent pausing and unpausing of Zelda games is handled with the C stick. Flicking it opens up the inventory menu which has three columns, one for the various items you have gathered, another listing your staff powers and a third for Tricky’s commands. You switch between the coloumns by titlting left or right on the C stick and scroll through the options by tilting up or down. To choose an option you press A or you can press Y to assign it to that button for a shortcut. All this is done in real time without pausing the game and streamlines the experience in a way that Zelda is only just getting round to doing in Skyward Sword. Starfox Adventures also manages to nail down some of the atmpsohere that Zelda is famed for with locations like Moon Mountain Pass and Krazoa Palace proving nice and moody. Some of the dungeons are also pretty nice to explore, particularly Cloudrunner Fortress.

There's no denying Fox looks awesome

But there’s one aspect of game design in which Starfox Adventures really excels, the graphics. The game boasts seriously pretty visuals, a wide colour-palette brings Dinosaur Planet to life with brilliantly detsailed textures and character models. If the camera zooms in you can see Fox’s fur swaying in the breeze, defeated enemies disappear in a blaze of gorgeous purple light, indeed the lighting is fantastic throughtout painting a vivid sense of reality about the pretty locations. This game is neartly ten years old but it still looks absolutely great and surpasses most Wii games in the looks department. It’s technically impressive too. Most of Dinosaur Planet is one great big environment free to explore from Moon Mountain Pass to Cape Claw with large environments linked by long corridors. It’s in these corridors that the game does its loading with a loading spike noticeable by slight, forgivable glitches. Very impressive, at least for 2002.

Starfox Adventures is a story of highs and lows then. It looks superb and plays well enough, offering some decent variety but is nevertheless repetitive and sometimes lazily designed with little of real value to distinguish it. That said it always manages to be engaging. The difficulty level could be better with only occasional spikes in the challenge, such as the Test of Fear and there are almost no side quests to speak of, which is strange given the open ended design of the world and the fact that it only takes about ten hours to complete. Still, somehow this game is always likeable and inviting, and although it’s a major departure for the series I don’t think there’s anything wrong with focusing the Starfox story on a single planet. It’s not like it was a permanent change and the series’ mythology is developed fairly well.

Presentation – 7

The visual angle is outstanding but it’s all let down by a terrible script and hopeless voice acting.

Gameplay – 7

Everything works well but there’s just not that much to it.

Graphics – 10

Simply gorgeous throuhgout. One of the prettiest games on the Gamecube.

Sound – 7

A well judged tribal soundtrack is marred by that damned voice work.

Difficulty – 6

Generally a breeze with only the occasional challnege slowing progress down.

Longevity – 6

Not the longest game out there and not much to do after it’s over but there’s a bit of replay value.

Verdict

A serviceable action adventure that fails to live up to its lofty ambition but is nevertheless quite entertaining.

7.8

out of 10

Book Review: The Borrowers Afloat – Mary Norton

Tags

Arrietty, Homily, Mary Norton, Pod, The Borrowers Afloat

So Triss didn’t arrive in time for me to start it after finishing The Borrowers Afield so instead I decided to carry on with Mary Norton’s series in the mean time.

Our family of three, Pod, Homily and Arrietty are living with their relations, Hendreary, Lupy and their children in the gamekeeper’s cottage, but when the gamekeeper is taken ill he has to leave for hospital and his grandson Tom also moves out. Since borrowers depend on the presence of humans to survive they quickly realise that they won’t be able to stay in the house much longer and so plan to move out. With Spiller’s help they exit the establishment via a drain floating downstream in a wooden knife box as they travel to the miniature village of Little Fordham.

The Borrowers Afloat is a more eventful and exciting book than its predecessor although it takes a little while to get going while the two families discuss their predicament. The escape from the house is a breathless and vividly described sequence and there’s plenty of more excitement after that. Mary Norton doesn’t quite make the most of the scenario at times however and the book doesn’t feel like an evolution of the series. There are few surprises and you get nothing more than you expect.

This third book keeps the series ticking along quite nicely, maintaining its quirkiness and comedy and continuing to charm.

Verdict

An improved third outing that serves as a nice addition to the series but doesn’t excel like the original. Fans and youngsters will still enjoy it.

Game Review: Fire Emblem – Path of Radiance (GC)

Tags

Ashnard, Elincia, Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem - Path of Radiance, Gamecube, Greil, Ike, Intelligent Systems, Mist, Nintendo, RPG, Soren, strategy, Titania

I like Ike. In fact I like him more than I thought. This is the second Fire Emblem game I’ve reviewed and it’s the second time Path of Radiance has been mentioned on my blog. In the Top 100 Games 2011 post it was listed as my 41st favourite game with a score of 9.3 out of 10. I did mention in that post that the positions of each game and their respective score was changeable and that’s exactly what’s happened here. This is only the second time I’ve played Path of Radiance and I very often  feel that a single playthrough of a game is not always enough to gauge how good it is. The real indicator here was that I played this game immediately after The Legend of Zelda – Oracle of Ages, which has a score of 9.4. I’m happy with that score but of the two games I know which one I enjoyed playing more.

In 2005 Fire Emblem – Path of Radiance became the first home-console game in the long-running series to be released in the UK. Set on the continent of Tellius it tells the story of the Greil Mercenaries and Ike, the blue-haired son of the group’s commander, Greil, one of the most capable fighting men in the world. As the protagonist Ike starts out wet behind the ears, inexperienced in combat but determined to one day match his father’s prowess. In the early stages of the game he learns how to be a mercenery by joining in with a handful of jobs. Ike learns the ropes at the same pace we do. Aside from dealing with the odd brigand Crimea, the country where the mercenaries are based seems peaceful enough for a while until the straight-talking, tactically-minded mage Soren returns from studying in the country’s capital to deliver news that neighbouring Daein has invaded. While deciding what to do they encounter some Daien forces and unwittingly rescue Princess Elincia, the only surviving member of the Crimean royal family whose very existence was previously kept secret. Deciding to aid the princess they escort her to Gallia, home of the beast tribes where even more perils await. After a few twists I won’t spoil Ike finds himself travelling with Elincia on a long road to liberate Crimea.

It’s a superb story. Most fantasy games don’t get the kind of mature, well written narrative we’re treated to in Path of Radiance. Not bogged down by an overemphasis on magic, grotesque monsters or depressing darkness Path of Radiance presents a twisting, thought-provoking tale that deals with politics, class, racism and equality and balances the heavier aspects of its plot with a bright, colourful visual style and a healthy smattering of humour. The story is handled almost entirely by dialogue scenes with static charcter art and text boxes but the writing is so subtle and intelligent that even this slightly simplistic approach manages to be deeply immersive. Said character art is hand-drawn and absolutely lovely lending every character real personality and style to compliment their dialogue. The whole setup is backed up by a lovely, varied musical score that weaves a breezy sense of adventure one minute and a palapable atmosphere of peril and tension the next. There are a few CG cut scenes complete with reasonable voice acting but although they’re beautfiully animated they’re few and far between. That said, it’s utterly absorbing and you will really care about the large cast of characters.

 

The character speaking appears brighter on screen.

Which makes the gameplay all the more intense. As I mentioned in my Shadow Dragon review the Fire Emblem series is famous for its inclusion of permanent character death. If one of your allies falls in battle they are gone forever and there is no way to revive them short of reloading you last save. This forces the player to play cautiously and think very strategically as they navigate their units round the 3D top-down maps engaging with foes. One reason why there are so many charcters to enlist throughout the game is to accommodate for the prospect of losing a significant number of characters. Since you can only use a limited number in each quest, usually no more than twelve, you will build up a surplus of charcters unless you have a habit of losing them. Of course one quirk of permanent charcter death is that there’s no way for the script to know who is still alive at any time which means most of the characters will be largely absent from the main story’s important scenes. It’s no good if Rolf has something critically important to contribute to the plot of chapter twenty-one if he died in chapter thirteen you see. For this reason some characters are better developed than others but although the less important figures don’t show up in the story much they do get little skits of their own to let you get to know them either through support conversations, which actually benefit you in the field or in optional conversations accessible in the game’s base menu.

And what a great cast of characters they are. The Greil Mercenaries, including Boyd, Oscar, Rolf, Soren, Shinon, Gatrie, Rhys, Mist, Greil and Ike are an immensely likeable bunch and they gain a huge number of equally charismatic allies from Mia the feisty female Myrmidon to Makalov the lovable gambling waster. They do, of course, all belong to their own class of fighter with their own strangths and weaknesses and designated weapons, for instance, Boyd the Fighter uses axes while Gatrie the Knight favours lances and Rhys the priest heals allies with staves. By ganining experience they can all level up and eventually change classes and sometimes gain the ability to fight with different weapons. This is nothing new to the series but one thing that is new is the laguz units. The people of Tellius are divided into human beorc and the shape-shifting laguz who appear human normally but can shift into animal forms including cats, tigers, hawks and crows and are very powerful indeed. They can’t maintain these dangerous forms indefinitely however, unless they use certain stat-reducing equipment and a gague counts down until they automatically shift back into their vulnerable humanoid forms. The laguz units add a whole new layer to the already very deep strategy and provide the story with one of its most interesting aspects. Laguz and beorc don’t traditionally get on, the latter routinely referring to the former as ‘sub-human’, fearing anf hating them and sometimes even enslaving them. Needless to say the laguz don’t take kindly to such treatment and certain characters, namely female cat Lethe are never shy to express their intense dislike for the beorc and regard them as weak. There’s tension between characters even within your own army and several people definitely go on an ethical journey through the game’s sub-plots.

 

Blue squares show Ike's movement range, yellow, his attack range.

But that’s only half the story. The tight strategy gameplay is just about the most addictive and satisfying of any game I’ve ever played a feat Intelligent Systems achieved by giving you a strong sense of constant progress. The game is completely linear divided into twenty-nine chapters with no variation. To begin with the progress is divided into story sections and the mission itself with the base menu becoming available after a few chapters. From here you can get stuck into the nitty-gritty of micromanagement by outfitting your army with weapons and items, up to four of each, assigning new skills or awarding bonus experience as well as engaging in support conversations. Once you’re happy with your preparations you can proceed through some more story until you get to the map and the game proper. This was the first Fire Emblem game to feature 3D maps and charcter models and on the whole they’re well-presented and colourful although the character models look very angular and ugly if the camera ever zooms in. The various in game themes inject a sense of atmosphere and urgency. In each chapter you will have a specific objective, usually to rout the enemy or defeat the boss but sometimes you’ll be required to defend a space for a set number of turns or have all your units escape from the map. The turns are organised in up to four phases, first the player phase where you move and attack, second comes the partner phase when any yellow-computer-controlled partner units that are present make themselevs known fighting for your cause. Next comes the enemy phase and finally the other phase if applicable, both computer-controlled, obviously. Most of the time it will just be player and enemy phases making up the turns as the other two only crop up occasionally as the chapter demands. In the player phase you command your units one by one moving them around the grid and engaging and defeating foes or healing allies. It’s packed with depth and once you’ve got to grips with everything you’ll be considering which are the best units to fight which enemies and choosing the right weapon, attacking enemies from a distance with ranged weapons, exploiting weapon advantages, making use of charcter abilities, considering terrain advantages, visiting houses to gain items, opening treasure chest and stealing items from enemies with theives, recruiting new allies and rescuing units in peril.

Path of Radiance introduces a number of new features to the series such as the prospect of gaining bonus experience. The scenarios of some quests encourage you to avoid attacking certain enemy units, for example in one map as well as the Daein Army you’ll face off against some local vigilantes. Leave them alone and you’ll gain bonus experience that can be redeemed in the base menu with any unit you choose. It’s completely optional but adds another layer of depth. Then there are support conversations, not a new feature but done a bit differently here. Each unit has a number of other predetermined units it can have support conversations with. Have a given unit fight alongside compatible units enough and you can watch said conversations in the base menu thus increasing their support relationship. Units with support relationship can give each other a stat boost when standing within a few spaces of each other in battle. It’s a welcome feature but not one you necessarily notice an advantage from, the same goes for a unit’s biorhythm which is supposed to influence their performance but is a bit of a mystery.

 

Boyd faces off against a fellow axe-wileding Fighter.

When units fight it’s not always to the death, instead they will trade one blow each with damage done according to the strength stat of the attacker and their equipped weapon and the defending unit’s defence stat. If one unit’s stat for speed is high enough compared to the other they will get a second attack in the bout which can make a world of difference. Further to that both contesting units will have a percentage value for their chances to land a hit based on their various opposing stats and also a percentage chance to land a three-times-as-powerful critical hit. Before attacking you can view a window listing the damge each unit will do and whether either can attack twice as well as both percentages effectively giving you a good idea of how the battle will go. Fights play out on a seperate screen with much more detailed character models as they exchange blows. It’s not as pretty as the hand-drawn sprites of the past and many players will choose to switch off the battle animations in favour of the more basic equivalent shown on the map screen to save time but they add a sense of reality to the game.

If a unit fights in a battle but doesn’t land a hit they gain a single experience point, hit the enemy and they got a fair few, around fifteen or more, achieve a kill and they earn upwards of forty points, sometime a hundred for defeating a boss. Units level up each time they gain a hundred experience points, increasing their stats randomly and change class after levelling up at level twenty. In addition to this each unit has a letter grade for thier skill with their appropriate weapons from the lowest E to the highest S which dictates what kind of specific weapons they can use, each individual type within each weapon class has a designated class, for example Iron Swords are E class while Silver Swords are A class and only units of that class or better can equip them. Units can improve their weapon class by using that weapon lots of times.

 

Ike and Mist's deceased mother in a CG cut scene.

Levelling-up your units is a constant and steady process and therefore immensely satisfying. Building up a strong army and mopping up waves of enemies and benfiting from the experience as an addictive process and there is an immense level of enjoyment to be had with meticulously organising your team. It’s a cerebral affair that demands careful strategy and thought with every move.

Such is the way of the Fire Emblem series but what makes Path of Radiance stand out so much? Well apart from the riveting story there’s Ike. He is by far the best hero in the series, charismatic and likeable but still an underdog who goes on a emotional journey through the plot remaining strong throughout. Putting it simply he’s just very, very cool and one of the best units in the game. The supporting cast stand head and shoulders against their equivalents in other games in the series too. It’s also incredibly long, this recent playthrough took me more than forty hours to complete. More than anything though it’s just an immensely rewarding game to immerse yourself in. Every aspect of the game’s design combines to give you a mesmerising experience that will make you want to spend all your free time doing nothing else. It’s not perfect, there are some rough edges, if you lose a valuable unit through a lapse in organisation you’ll be forced to resent and retread maybe an hour of progress which is a big pain and perhaps most pertinently it’s not the kind of title you can get the most out of unless you’re a hardcore gamer but those quibbles aside Fire Emblem – Path of Radiance is a rich and massively entertaining experience. Oh, but the Wii sequel Radiant Dawn is better.

Presentation – 8

Superlative writing and a crisp appearence make for a highly satisfactory package but more could be done to smooth out the details.

Gameplay – 9

The most compulsory kind of addictive gameplay that is constantly rewarding but despite comprehensive tutorials could prove dauntingly complex.

Graphics – 7

Very pretty on the whole but textures and character models can appear bland. The use of colour is nice though.

Sound – 8

A rousing and varied soundtrack is complemented by a creditable array of sound effects.

Difficulty – 9

Punishing unless you’re careful. Finite experience limits grinding.

Longevity – 10

Absolutely massive. One playthrough takes forty hours with plenty of replay value.

Verdict

A quite magnificent strategy RPG experience that blends incredibly addictive gameplay with an involving story to brilliant effect. It won’t be for everyone and there are pitfalls but fans of the genre and particularly the series owe it to themselves to dive in and experience the rich, rewarding ride.

9.5

out of 10

Book Review: The Borrowers Afield – Mary Norton

Tags

Arrietty, Homily, Mary Norton, Pod, The Borrowers Afield

When life gets really busy you havew to find the most efficient way to manage your time. I love reading but I love doing a lot of other things too. For that reason I do all my reading in my lunch break at work since I can’t watch movies or play games (except maybe handheld titles) there. I always go outside for lunch because the tea room where I work is about the size of an average public toilet cubicle, which means braving the elements. It’s been a cold, windy winter and I have shivered my way through most of the books I’ve read in the last year and a half, not a good thing, but it gave a strangely immersive quality to Mary Norton’s second tale about tiny people, The Borrower’s Afield, published in 1955, that I would never have got at home because this story sees the borrowers discovering the harsh outdoors.

We again begin with Kate, the same girl who heard the story of The Borrowers as told to her by Mrs May. This time after she and Mrs May set off on holiday to the town where the events of the stories took place she is treated to the next chapter of the story by Tom Goodenough whose knowledge of the borrowers is rather authoritative.

Jumping back in time the story proper picks up straight after the end of the first as Pod, Homily and Arrietty flee the house and cross fields in search of the badger’s set they believe their relatives now inhabit. Dodging insects and other fauna they set up home in a lost boot and meet a young field-going borrower called Spiller.

While the novelty of reading about miniature people hasn’t exactly worn off we’re familiar with it now and to match the value of the original Norton would have had to crank up the plot a few notches to give the book a boost. She didn’t. Instead we get a consistently amusing account of the family’s attempts to adapt to life under the sky with few twists. Things get more interesting towards the end and the comedy always hits the spot, especially Homily’s recurring incredulity at their surroundings and situation but it never really becomes riveting. That said there are plenty of worse ways to spend a lunch break and the youngsters should find plenty of wonder in the imagination on display.

Verdict

Another agreeable and witty foray into a tiny world that is as inoffensive as it is unambitious.