Star Fox Adventures

Welcome to Star Fox Adventures!

What is this game?
Well, first off, this is a huge departure from standard Star Fox fare. Unlike its on-rail shooter predecessors and successors, Star Fox Adventures aims for more Zelda-esque gameplay. The game takes the player through a visually impressive world on an adventure to prevent Dinosaur Planet from exploding. Released in 2002 by Rare (makers of such games as the Donkey Kong Country series, Goldeneye 64 and Killer Instinct) Star Fox Adventures was the last game Rare produced before becoming a subsidiary of Microsoft.

If it's not a normal Star Fox game, what is it?
The gameplay itself is fairly straight-forward and features numerous elements. The primary gameplay is an action-platformer as Fox navigates through assorted dungeons and temples fighting enemies with a magical staff with the aid of a young dinosaur, Tricky, who serves a number of specific uses such as digging up items and setting things on fire. The second type of gameplay is an on-rail-shooter homage to the original Star Fox games. Though much simpler in nature, it is actually remarkably fun and captures a decent amount of the original games.

So, is it good or what? I can't tell.
For the most part, it's pretty well made and received generally positive reviews. The visuals were (and frankly, still are) great and the gameplay, while containing a bit too much backtracking and item gathering, is still reasonably fun. Luckily for you, since this is going to be done mostly with screenshots, you won't have to watch 90% of the boring shit!

Let me clarify a bit more since some people seem confused. This is a good game, this is not a good Star Fox game. If you're interested in the world and the characters, then you'll probably hate this game. The plot gets kind of dumb at the end (mild spoiler) the end boss is a retarded bait and switch and Krystal is a fucking horrible attempt at a love interest (though there is a reason for that). This game is basically an attempt to turn Star Fox into Zelda and try to cash in on platform-adventure games.

Screenshots, eh?
Yeah. As mentioned, this game is pretty visually impressive, but displaying the whole thing in a video would be a monstrous pain in the ass due to all of the pointless timesinks (you'll see what I mean as the LP goes on). That said, there may be other types of media used depending on the situation. I'm also adding a bit of extra dialogue to lampoon some of the sillier parts of the game. In general the game has pretty straightforward writing, so a normal font means it's actual text from a cutscene, but if the characters' text is italicized, it's my writing. Also, anything in square brackets is me explaining what's going on.

The Cast (Click on any of the thumbnails for a larger image)

Fox McCloud:

Leader of the Star Fox team for several years now, he is an ace pilot who is called upon to once again save the Lylat sector by preventing Dinosaur Planet from exploding. As the adventure progresses, his desire to let the planet explode is steadily growing.

Prince Tricky:

Prince of the EarthWalker tribe (triceratops), he is vitally important to Fox's mission since without his aid many paths would be blocked. Tricky is a combination of Navi from Ocarina of Time and a swiss army knife. Plus, if you're ever frustrated, you can just beat him up to hear him whine.

Krystal:

Sigh. This is probably the biggest reason I dreaded this LP. Krystal is in the game for two reasons. First, she was originally the main character of the game Dinosaur Planet (the game that became Star Fox Adventures) and as a love interest for Fox. It's so blatantly obvious they might as well have stamped it on her forehead. Thankfully, the original plot of the game got gutted rather heavily, so we'll only have to deal with Krystal in a few cutscenes and for the first level of the game.

General Scales:

The main villain of the game, his goal is the conquest of Dinosaur Planet and in order to do that he has engineered the destruction of the planet to weaken the other dinosaur races. No mention is ever made of whether he realizes that he is actually going to cause the whole planet to explode, but those are just details to a true megalomaniac.

Falco:

Falco is...not really in this game. Falco frequently leaves and rejoins the Star Fox team, but he will show up in the game at some point. (The images I've used for Falco are actually from Star Fox: Assault because I couldn't find any images of him from Adventures. Why? Well, you'll see.)

Peppy Hare:

Former wingman to Fox's father, James McCloud, and a mentor to Fox, Peppy has grown old since the first games and now fills the role of information giver. In this game he provides Fox with information relating to maps and locations within Dinosaur Planet.

Slippy Toad:

One of Fox's wingmen, Slippy is all the general technological wizard of the Star Fox team and will aid Fox in this adventure by providing tips and hints as well as some technological assistance.

General Pepper:

General Pepper is the head of the Cornerian Defense Forces and will provide Fox with objective information and information about equipment statistics (The headshot is from Adventures, the full sized image is from Assault. His only model in the game is that of a floating, transparent head, so finding good quality images is nigh on impossible).

ROB64:

ROB 64 is responsible for piloting and maintaining general operations aboard the Great Fox. He only really shows up for a few moments in the game. As a side note, the NUS on his chest (not visible in the above screenshot) refers to the Nintendo Ultra Sixty-four, the original name of the N64. It's also the first section of all N64 peripheral serial numbers.

Extra Stuff

Sangoeil summarizes the game for us:

Sangoeil does what we all wish we could do:

Sangoeil goes for the hat trick and scores:

The Let's Play Archive

Star Fox Adventures

by WeaponBoy

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