My introduction to Star Fox came from
the GameCube adventure Star Fox Assault. I greatly enjoyed Assault
several years ago when a friend let me borrow his GameCube and the
game. According to most game reviewers out there, Assault is
considered the worst of the series and Star Fox 64 has been regarded
as the best. So when Nintendo released Star Fox 64 3D a little while
back I was excited to get my 3DS fired up and popped the game in.
This review was mostly done several months ago, but got lost on the
burner in the mix of everything happening back in September for me.
So after noticing my slip up I drove right into fixing this
oversight. The result is a very late, but full featured, review of
this 3DS port of the original Nintendo 64 title.
I was ready to try out the new things
Nintendo was bringing to Star Fox with the added 3DS features like
3D, motion sensing and online multiplayer. Unfortunately the new
features only hampered the playability of this port. The 3DS used in
the 3DS only gives the player a small window of viewing space to see
the images in actual 3D. If you get out of the window the screen
becomes the biggest eye sore in history. This really wouldn't be too
much of a problem, except the game also features motion sensing. What
do you do to use the motion sensing? You move, it's a very simple
concept to grasp. Unless you are the development team behind Star Fox
64 3D. So you have a system moving to move the ship in the game and
there you have a player trying to not only play the game, but also
stay within this window to see the 3D of the game. After two missions
I had to turn the 3D off. About three missions later I minimized the
motion sensing as well. So I was basically playing a fifteen year old
game on a brand new system.
Getting to the online
multiplayer...well every time I tried to play online it never
connected to anyone or anything. So I was never able to play games
online against anyone else. Add to that it's been several months
since the game came out and there still is no one to play against.
Now I'm not going to fault the game for that. The score I give will
not be a representative of the online component. Wouldn't be fair to
bash a game's online features without actually getting the chance to
play them myself. For those who have been able to play online I
would like to hear what you thought about it in the comments below
the article.
Looking just at the game from almost
fifteen years ago, however I enjoyed it mostly. The concept holds up
fairly well even if everything did seem arcane by today's standards.
Which really sucks, because when I stripped the new features away and
just played what was the N64 version of Star Fox 64 I liked it. It's
the new stuff that damaged the appeal (again not incorporating the
online mishaps into the new category)
So the new stuff wasn't a great
indicator of how good this game is. SF 64 3D can be beat in about two
to two and a half hours, but there is different paths I could take to
up the replayability of the story (since there wasn't an online scene
to play with). The characters were interesting and just got the the
point. There wasn't over fluffed dialog between Fox McCloud's team.
This helped to get things moving into the combat quickly. All this
assisting the game in being beat in such a short amount of time. If
you're needing something to beat quickly before jumping into a bigger
game, get this one right here. If you're wanting something that will
engage you for weeks...your game is in another castle fair gamer.
SCORE:
6.5 / 10
Can't comment on your anniversary post so I'll do it here. Happy first anniversary.
ReplyDeleteI fixed the problem and you can now comment on the Anniversary page itself. Anyway, I appreciate the best wishes. I'm looking forward to the next year and I'm working on a new article detailing my new project.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your continued support of Just1MoreLevel.com and can't wait to hear what you all think about my new venture.