Overall score on pook's 100-point system (TM): 81 or 8 (see below). A great Zelda-styled adventure, with some questionable presenation.
-the breakdown-
Graphics (28/30, judged by era)- Though a relatively early Gamecube release, coming a year after launch, and having been evolved from an N64 title, Rare pulled out all the stops and produced a really nice-looking game, easily one of the GC's best, which even holds up well over time. Large and varied levels, the full use of visual effects and a steady framerate all contribute to serious eye-candy. An overall lack of enemy variety and fighting animation keep this game from the perfect score it might have otherwise earned.
Sound- FX/Voice (3/10) One of the serious detriments to the game is an absolutely annoying job of voicing the characters. They opted to create a sort of alien language, which ceases being used very quickly in the game. It's then voiced with the passionless and talentless ease of Jake Lloyd speaking to Watto in Phantom Menace. Beyond that, your sidekick Tricky is voiced unnecessarily childish and the rest of the characters, while better-sounding are various shades of british. Overall very disappointing. Worse, if you choose to knock out the SFX in the cutscenes, where most of the offense occurs, it also cuts out ambient and non-voice sound effects, thus rendering the cutscenes utterly unenjoyable. Apart from that the sound effects were fine, if panned a little too hard to one or the other side.
Sound- Music (6/10) While there are definitely some good tunes in this soundtrack, and the soundtrack of generally good length, a number of them fit stylistically into the "Survivor" school of world-music, which I generally don't get into. Worse, some of the tracks feature voicework which brings on serious shades of the Lion King. The more heroic and fantasy-tinged tracks are otherwise enjoyable.
Gameplay- Length/Lastability/Replay (15/15) Possibly a bit short for full-retail price, this game is a perfect length for the Player's Choice pricing of the game, clocking in at a satisfying 18 hours or so. There is no reason to replay the game beyond that, however.
Gameplay- Story: (3/5) Originally a non-Starfox game, the world and characters were seriously shoe-horned into this world, and it is often pretty jarring, especially at the end. What might otherwise have been a decent scenario ends up a bit marred by the obvious insertion of foreign characters. And you know, dinosaurs aren't really that original anyway these days.
Gameplay- Game Design (26/30)- All of the above considered, Starfox is still a plenty fun game. It's essentially a Zelda title and follows the pattern decently, with a good variety of puzzles and challenges. Fighting is fun but severely limited by enemy type and battle variety. Boss battles are creative and interesting. The pacing of the game is good, and the world well-designed so as to minimize extremely long treks. While some parts of the game require backtracking, it's pretty quick to get across the world. The space flying scenes in the Arwing are awkward, but fun diversions. A bit longer of a game might've helped, or one with more variety as mentioned above. Barring that, some more integrated flight sequences would've made the game go much farther.
**Final Thoughts- If you seriously cannot stomach playing "Celda" then this game is for you. If you want more of that type of game, this is for you. It doesn't offer much new to the genre, but does what it does quite well nonetheless.
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