Nintendo Gamenet | F-Zero GX Review

F-Zero GX
[September 26, 2003]

Publisher	Nintendo
Developer	Amusement Vision
Genre	Racing
No. of Players	1-4
Accessories	Memory Card Steering Wheel
No. of Blocks	4
Release Date	August 25, 2003
ESRB Rating	Teen

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When you I think of F-Zero, you think cool hover machines, fast speed, and small courses with big jumps. But still, nothing could have prepared me for this. F-Zero is fast, very fast. The tracks are intense and the A.I is smart. Its almost everything I could have hoped for.

Features

Gameplay
F-Zero is fast, furious, and merciless. You fall behind you stay behind. The game being so hard may turn some gamers off, but for those who want a great challenge, this is for you. The game is fast, and at times you will have to turn at the right second to make the turn, or you will ram into the fence.

After the firs lap of every race, you will get the ability to boost. Now, unlike previous F-Zero games, once you have the ability to boost, you can use it all you entire for the next to laps. But, the catch is that every time you boost it takes away your energy, or your health bar to speak. So, if you boost too much you'll either blow up or have low health, which then if you hit something then you will blow up, so the trick is to conserve your boosts and use them wisely. Thankfully there are power strips on each course, so if you run over them, they will recharge your health meter. Also, you can attack other cars using a spin attack.

There are about thirty drivers in the game, each with different stats. The stats are lettered A-E, A being the best, E being the worst, judging your characters boost, body, and grip. Each character seems to have lots of personality and look different from each other (with some exceptions of course). There is even a Fox McCloud wannabe named James McCloud. Each of the riders are extremely vicious on the course, all bent on winning. The will push you, boost ahead of you, and do whatever else it takes to beat you and the other 28 opponents racing. The character in the lead changes all of the time, and even once in first, its hard to keep in that position.

After each time you win a cup, you will get tickets. Tickets are basically money. You can go to customize and buy new racers, new parts for your own custom vehicle, and more chapters of story mode (which well get into later). Making your own vehicle is simple but unfortunately limited. After you play through a cup, more parts will be available to purchase. Upon purchasing parts, you then just say which one you want and it goes automatically for you. And there are only three types of parts you can buy. You can by a body, a cockpit, and a booster. Each has a letter racing, and like the characters, A is the best and E the worse. After building the machine you want, you can then change the color of each of the parts separately, add on Emblems to your vehicle, and choose who you want to pilot it.

There is then the emblem creator, which is basically fir you to make your own designs to put on the vehicles. You have different options, such as making circles, strait lines, making your pencil bigger or small, and basically make any design you want; its a nice addition to the game.

Once you get bored (if you get bored) with Grand Prix, you can head into Story Mode. In Story Mode, you follow Captain Falcon in a series of chapters. In each chapter, you must accomplish certain tasks, such as collecting 60 capsules and complete the course within a certain amount of time, or beat a certain character in a one on one race. The stories are told through nicely made cinema scenes. The only catch is that you have to buy each chapter. They give you the first one free, but after that you gotta use your tickets to buy them. Overall, there is a ton of stuff to do in this game. Of the things I didnt mention where training, VS. (Which is very fun and addicting), And Character Profiles. This is a big and tough game.

Graphics
This game is beautiful. Though the character design is a little on the cheesy side, the games courses and machines look great. The levels are finely detailed and fun to look at, and a lot of times I found myself replaying levels just to look at something in the background that caught my eye. To bad though, most of the time you will be going by so fast you wont spend a whole lot of time looking at it. The game itself runs very smoothly, with no slowdown time, even with 30 racers (including yourself) on there. Even with four players, the game moves as smooth as silk at 60 frames per second, and when you throw in 16x9 widescreen support you have one sweet package.

The cinema scenes in story mode also look great, and there is a lot of details put into them. The characters have lifelike animations, and some nice textures. Even some hidden little things if you can catch if you watch closely. The game looks almost as good as it plays.

Sound
This is probably one of the games weaker points. Not to say that it is bad, but the techno tunes just aren't the best. The music could have been better, and I would have liked to see some more original songs back besides the Mute City song. The sounds in the game mostly consist of the engines running, and depending on which level, some of the background makes some noise. Also, each character has his or her own theme song. The songs are techno oldie rock kind of thing. As for the voices in the cut scenes, they sound funny. The voices a lot of times can make the scenes cheesy, but fun to watch. The sound isn't the best, and could have been much better, But again, its not horrible, I just was hoping more out of this. As for the voices, they are cheesy and at times almost over acted.

Control
The games controls are simple enough, and work efficiently.

The game controls good and is very responsive, which is good because if it wasn't then you would be running into walls everywhere. Each of the machines control differently, some slide more then others and some turn sharper, giving each of the 30 machines a different feel. The responsive, easy to use, easy to remember controls work great for the game, but if you don't like them, you can always change it. Also its worth noting that the game supports the official GameCube Logitech Racing wheel.

Replay Value
There is so much to do in this game, it will take you a while to do it all. There are characters to buy, machines to build, races to win, story mode to finish, friends to beat, and plus its just plain fun and addicting, so you will be stuck on this one for awhile. Can you say The Smash Bros of racing games?

  This is a great game, I have been looking for it for a while now. And I must say I have not been disappointed so far. There is tons to do in this game, but if your not great at the racing stuff, it might be to hard, and get some gamers frustrated. I would say if your hardcore, this is a great game for you, but its fun for anyone nonetheless.
                                                                                                                                  -- Jason N.

I'm simply a massive fan of the F-Zero series in general. Speed and pure adrenaline drive them, and it's this and so much more that pulls them ahead of so many other cookie cutter futuristic racers. F-Zero GX is no exception, adding all of the mainstays which made the series popular, to a winning formula of A class graphics, Sound and gameplay. Not only a must have for any racing fan, but for every other cube game too."
                                                                                                                            -- Andy Calvert

   Believe it or not, besides a few minutes with F-Zero Maximum Velocity this was the first F-Zero game I really played. I was in awe of the speed and graphics, everything went so fast and looked good at the same time. Often in racing games we can only have one or the other, speed or looks. Usually game can look good but it slows down due to choppiness, but with F-Zero GX it goes at blistering speeds while retaining an undisturbed 60 frames per second. It also supports 16x9 widescreen mode for those widescreen TV owners out there.
   The FMV story mode is beautiful also, finally giving characteristics to the racer. The controls are also responsive and handle well, and wait till you try it with the official GameCube Logitech Racing wheel. With that in mind this is a great racer if you love speed. But be warned, its not for everyone and may be too hard for a few gamers. If you are unsure I recommend you rent it first.
                                                                                                                            -- Paul Sandhu