Author Topic: F-Zero: GP Legend (Wii U) Review Mini  (Read 2362 times)

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Offline famicomplicated

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F-Zero: GP Legend (Wii U) Review Mini
« on: January 10, 2015, 11:30:00 PM »

Because what we all want in F-Zero is more story.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/39352/f-zero-gp-legend-wii-u-review-mini

If you played F-Zero on the GBA and felt it needed a cheesy story mode like F-Zero GX, then look no further than F-Zero: GP Legend!

Like the story mode in GX, this game is balls hard; the second mission makes you play a track perfectly, I mean take every corner flawlessly, not hitting the sides once, and coming first. After that, you pretty much have to either come first or second in every race to progress through the story mode, which makes up most of this game. A more apt name for this mode would be 'random event generator', as increasingly bizarre and unrelated things happen, often mid-conversation. 'Oh someone has been kidnapped, but forget about that because another guy feels sad for losing all the time, so race Dr Stewart and feel better about it'. Perhaps the terrible cutscenes would have been less annoying if it meant doing unique objectives on the track, but all it boils down to is 'race and come first'.

The mission structure is strange as it forces you to repeat the same races as seen from the point of view from the other characters, but with the race track and conversations being exactly the same, it's kind of a pointless and repetitious endeavour. The cutscenes themselves are a mix of pre-rendered backgrounds and badly drawn anime versions of the F-Zero characters.

There are also some clunky audio decisions, such as when a pair of characters are talking they both have their own separate music, so conversations flick between the two tracks rather awkwardly. Music is a mixture of the original GBA/SNES tracks and a few new ones that are instantly forgettable. Voice samples make this feel more 'modern' than the original SNES game, but let's not get too excited about that.

Underneath it all though, it is F-Zero, and if you didn't mind the anime cutscenes and have no problem with going through endless story scenes before you get to the action, there's nothing fundamentally wrong here. However for me, the story scenes were too painful to sit through, which in the end is just delaying what little fun there is to be had anyway.

I could only recommend this to people who are huge fans of the floaty racing style of the originals, otherwise it's probably best to stay clear of this story-heavy off-shoot F-Zero game.

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Offline randlan

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Re: F-Zero: GP Legend Review Mini
« Reply #1 on: January 11, 2015, 12:32:06 PM »
For a dissenting opinion, I did not care about the story in this game at all, yet I enjoyed the game very much. It was a lot more fun and easier to play than F-Zero: Maximum Velocity. If you enjoyed trying to beat all the challenges in F-Zero GX and like the more "classic", SNES-style F-Zero, you should give it a try.

Offline Khushrenada

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Re: F-Zero: GP Legend Review Mini
« Reply #2 on: January 11, 2015, 12:47:45 PM »
Interesting. I saw a review for this a couple days ago on Pietriots. Here's the link!

The reviewer there was more positive but he seemed to like a lot of the elements you disliked so personal taste and all that.

When I got into the F-Zero series, it was because of F-Zero GX. I was still buying retro games at the time so I looked up the SNES version and found I could get it complete in box and sealed for a $1 so I bought it. However, I was rather disappointed in it. It just didn't compare to the tight controls of GX so I soon gave up on it. Sometime later, I saw F-Zero X for sale at an EB Games for a low price so I bought it. That was closer to the GX feel and so I enjoyed it more. I'd have played it more but I was buying a lot of games at the time and so my attention was divided a lot and I forgot about it. When the Ambassador program for the 3DS rolled out, I was able to try Maximum Velocity for the first time. Despite wanting to like it and make progress in it, it almost felt like a step backwards from the original SNES game and so I just quit trying with it.

Legends is the only F-Zero game I've yet to try but I'm hesitant to as it seems I only like the 3D versions of the series and not the 2D. Pietriots says it is the best of the 2D series which I would hope is true considering when it was released. The fact that it does have a crazy story appeals to me a lot more to try the game out even if the story doesn't make much sense. So conflicted.
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Offline NWR_insanolord

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Re: F-Zero: GP Legend Review Mini
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2015, 01:19:04 PM »
I didn't play much of this back in the day, but I remember it being much better in terms of gameplay than the first GBA game. It's also pretty ludcrous in this day and age where Nintendo seems to have absolutely abandoned the F-Zero franchise that there was a point where they were high enough on it to greenlight an anime series based on it.
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Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: F-Zero: GP Legend Review Mini
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2015, 08:51:51 PM »
It's also pretty ludcrous in this day and age where Nintendo seems to have absolutely abandoned the F-Zero franchise that there was a point where they were high enough on it to greenlight an anime series based on it.

That's pretty much the reason they stopped though.  Between GX and the anime, Nintendo was spending quite a bit of money trying to make F-Zero more popular and yet it did much worse then F-Zero X performed, which in itself performed worse the original SNES game.
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