N-Philes

F-Zero GX

Posted by Archived.

I, as well as so many people, have so many fond memories of playing F-Zero X into all hours of the night. I have even gone so far as to hail it as a perfect game. So you can imagine my joy and excitement when I heard that a new F-Zero game would be coming to the Gamecube. Then I heard that Nintendo would not be doing it, but rather Sega. And I thought, yeah, okay, I can deal with this, Sega will do an excellent job. I know it's been two years since Sega pulled out, but seeing both the Sega and Nintendo logos together on the title screen just sends chills down my spine. Without Nintendo behind it, would F-Zero GX still feel like my favorite game from the N64 era?

Gamplay

When F-Zero X was released, it was about two things: ridiculous speed and having thirty different racers out on the course. And you know what? It was a damn good game. I loved it. I loved how you had to unlock 24 different vehicles because it was a huge accomplishment to attain that plateau. It was bragging rights, pure and simple. In that game, the only way to get all of them was to beat all the Cups on every difficulty, and after beating three, you unlocked another tier of six racers. That's slightly changed for this game. After beating a Cup or chapter in the Story mode, you earn an amount of tickets (in a cut-scene, Captain Falcon has space-credits, but the currency in this game is tickets, I don't understand) with which you can buy various ship parts (more on this later), other Story chapters, and other racers. So you could just go and buy all your favorite cars, instead of bragging about how you unlocked the Black Bull. Instant gratification, I'm not a big fan of it.

The Grand Prix mode has made it back fully intact, with the F-Zero norm of five courses in a championship returning, unlike F-Zero X, which had six courses. This is the first iteration to not feature royalty names for the Cup, like Knight, Prince, King, Jack, Queen, etc. Instead, there are the Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald Cups (and the unlockable Diamond Cup). It's a slight change, but when listing them off right now it takes a while to remember the difficulty level. The Ruby Cup levels are mostly straightaways and fairly easy. Actually, most of the courses are really easy on all of the Cups until you reach the fourth and fifth levels. And then, the racing's not really that tough, it's more difficult to survive. I had well over a hundred point lead going into the final race (Mute City) on the Sapphire and repeatedly died until I lost all of my lives and had to start the Cup over again. Eventually I got to a point where I just took it slow and steady and finished the race. I got 26th and still won handily by forty points. This was on the Standard Difficulty. It's here that my other problem lies. I expect my rival to always be at least within two or three spots behind me (if not ahead of me). My rival should not be getting eighth when I place first. This easily allows me to get such a lead that I can utterly just tank a race and still win the Cup. I remember the days where if I got sixth or worse on one race I was practically screwed. Now the only thing standing in my way is not my opponents but rather the course itself. Like before, there are also the three various difficulty levels, with the Master difficulty after that.

Quite possibly the biggest addition to the series is the Story Mode. In it, you follow the exploits of Captain Falcon as he, ummm, does stuff. In these chapters, you have to complete various unconventional missions that range from racing for pinks down a mountain path that includes tons of boulders tumbling down towards you to collecting little lighted charges. It's good that these are here; they mix it up the same way the Death Race did for me in the N64 game. The only thing is these missions are bloody hard. I figured they'd be a cakewalk and an opportunity for me to get some more tickets, and though I'd heard they were hard beforehand I dismissed that as people just not knowing how to play F-Zero. Some of them are near impossible, until you figure out how the AI works. Like how the computer likes to maintain a barely visible distance between you and it. Don't attempt to catch up, and it won't go any further. Then at the last second, use all your boost (which is thankfully back to the Shield/Boost meter) and you should win. Or come close. It's more luck than anything. Now, one would typically think that once a chapter is beat, the next one would automatically unlock. Not so. If you win, you'll get, let's say, ten tickets (the amount changes every time), but the next chapter costs fifteen tickets. And then, you're like, "Crap, I just bought all the cars and the only way I'm going to get another chapter is if I beat the Sapphire on Expert." Luckily, by the time you have to be really, really good to beat the Story Mode, so that should be more or less on of the last things to do on your to-do list.

Also new is the Create-a-Racer mode. Truth be told, it's not very deep. It has about five to seven different chassis, cockpits, and boosters, all listed by different letter grades. From what I could conjecture, the chassis is related to the body rating, the cockpit represents the grip, and the booster is the boost. Eventually, you'll just end up with the same AAA racer like everybody else will and all your customized vehicles will look the exact same (except for emblems and color differences). And then you can't even name the car. I was thinking something like "Greased Lightning" but instead it's the Burning Lynx G4. I don't really like her that much. But what is cool about your customized racer is that you can take your memory card to any F-Zero AX machine (launching in September) and play there. And if you place first on any race at the arcade and then bring your Memory Card back home, you will activate that AX race on your home copy. Sweet indeed.

This is all well and good, but please note you can have even more fun if you play in the VS. mode. I've managed to get quite a few four-player games together and they're absolutely insane. A new feature is the "Recovery Feature" which you can activate and if you die, a little robot will come and bring you back onto the course. This is essential, because it's lame to die in a four-player match and then watch while your other friends race. It can be a little hard to see, but then again, I'm only playing on a 20 inch. It's still mad crazy fun.

Visuals

The biggest complaint people had with F-Zero X was that it was graphically bland. There was nothing going on in the background, low polygon vehicles, and poorly detailed racetracks. I would argue that the graphics in F-Zero X were just fine and got the job done, all at sixty frames per second.

Of course, that simply would not do with F-Zero GX. Amusement Vision went all out on this one. From the landing gear retracting into the ground at the beginning of a race to the lightning explosion coming out of the back of the car every time you boost, they've upped the ante. Backgrounds are populated with tons of details. Port Town features a giant statue of the perennial fan-favorite/most useless peripheral ever ROB. The Vegas Palace is a giant casino, and looks marvelous, with a giant roulette table in the middle and neon-lights running alongside the entire border of the track. Lightning is a terrifyingly intense course with guess what, tons of lightning in the background. There's even rain on the course, although that is the first thing to get sacrificed as soon as the multiplayer mode starts. Aeropolis and Mute City are your typical downtown city levels, with skyscrapers abound. In F-Zero X, you were lucky if you passed one or two Jetsons-style buildings. Also, on the Emerald Cup's Big Blue level, you go into an underwater glass tunnel for a brief while, and you can see all the other above ground buildings. My favorite level is Green Plant. It's essentially a beautiful forest with a giant racetrack going through it. Every tree is rendered perfectly. Seriously, it's a sight to see. The only chink I can find in the engine is when you use a boost, you're going so fast that trees are forced to immediately pop-in.

The course roads themselves have been totally revamped. Something's always going on, be it a checker pattern, chaser lights, metal grating, or transparent glass flooring. You know how when you watch road stripes on the highway, passing them means you're moving, and if they go by quickly, that means you're going by really fast? Same thing applies here. All of this looks amazing, especially in screenshots, but for gameplay purposes, it simply does not work. There are just so many bloody distractions on the track that catch your peripheral vision that it's hard to keep your eyes on the road. In F-Zero X, if you didn't have a border, you knew it. In this, you really can never be sure. You see lights and you think, "Oooh, I can go this way," and the next thing you know, you're plummeting to your death. Not good. It's here that I think the game just goes a little too far. There are just too many graphical tweaks. It's like they said, "Hey, let's throw this in. Why? Because we can." Sure, it's amazing and the best thing I've seen on the Cube except for Resident Evil, don't get me wrong, but in a racing game, you are supposed to be looking at the track, not all the other stuff around you.

And then there are the video cut-scenes. They simply are atrocious. I would argue that storytelling should not be in an F-Zero game, but that's beyond my control. There's a thing called F-Zero TV that airs after every time you win a Grand Prix. First, these videos are similar to the quality and tone of those in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. An announcer asks the winner one of your three choices (and the choice set is different for each difficulty) and it's entirely pointless. Like this piece of wonderful dialogue:

ANNOUNCER: So, what do you have to say to your rivals?

CAPTAIN FALCON: I say, "Bring ‘em on!" (End Scene)

Yeah. The other videos that bridge the different chapters in the Story Mode are also quite weak. The quality's a little better in these, but it's still not excellent. In terms of storytelling, every scene feels like Bullseye's introduction scene in the pub from Daredevil. Same tone, same cheesiness, and quite possibly the same music. But all of that is tolerable for the great gaming.

Audio

On the video side of things, there's some horrible synch up with the voices, but that really doesn't bother me too much. Captain Falcon doesn't really sound like I would picture him; he's a really horrible caricature and not a real person. I was amused when Samurai Goroh made fun of his ride, mockingly saying, "The Blue Falcon is the fastest ship." I had flashbacks of that SNL skit where Christopher Walken auditions for Han Solo.

On the musical side of things, well, it's not as rocking as F-Zero X. I was hoping most of the themes would find their way back, and the F-Zero theme came on, and I was content. But then my friend threw a big hubbub about how the Big Blue music was not the same. The new music on the whole sounds pretty much the same, and while it's not great, it is still very good.

This game gets an N-Philes score of A.

F-Zero GX is a worthy successor to F-Zero X. I could argue that the course design is not as awesome, but it definitely hasn't had as much time to grow on me, although I absolutely worship the Green Plant: Intersection level. For that level alone this game is worth it. The new features add enough to make this game more fun, and the AX connection (when finally utilized) will be awesome. While F-Zero X was graphically bland, this game tries too hard to be graphically lush to the point of interference, and that's pretty much the only reason this game did not receive a perfect score. Other than that, Sega and Nintendo, I love you and I hope your next collaboration will be just as great.

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