Note: These impressions do not reflect how I feel about Microsoft purchasing Rare. I am not jumping on some anti-Rare bandwagon. This is exactly how I feel about Star Fox Adventures after 8 hours of gameplay. Since I already own an Xbox, I could care less about Rare not being on the Nintendo GameCube in the future.

I’m probably the most skeptical person on staff when it comes to Rare titles. Some Rare games I’ve really liked in the past, like Donkey Kong Country (the first one), Diddy Kong Racing, Golden Eye, Blast Corps, and Conker. But to be quite honest, that’s about it. Rare has the potential to do amazing things with Nintendo hardware sonically and graphically, but sometimes, the gameplay has been severely lacking. In my opinion, games like Banjo Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Donkey Kong 64 became boring scavenger hunts. When I found out Rare was morphing their N64 title Dinosaur Planet with the Star Fox license for a GameCube game, I had a very uneasy feeling. After sinking in about 8 hours into Star Fox Adventures, I know why.

The adventure levels are the true meat of the game, and so far, they aren’t very challenging. It’s your job as Fox McCloud to save Dinosaur Planet by scouring the planet in search of the Krazoa Spirits and the four Spell Stones. Surprisingly enough, Star Fox Adventures isn’t as much of a scavenger hunt as the rest of Rare’s adventure titles. Even though you’ll be collecting different items, you’ll actually use these in your travels. It’s not like you’re collecting things just to collect them, like Jingos or feathers, which made me a little happier. At least Rare didn’t screw up there.

The combat system is as simplistic as you can get. You’ll come across General Scales’s minions once in a while, and you battle them with your staff, by pressing A. There are variations of this by repeatedly pressing A, and then moving your control stick in a certain direction. The instructions don’t tell you what does what, but it doesn’t matter anyway. The dinosaurs you’ll battle will be easily destroyed in moments, regardless of what combo you choose. Even if there are multiple enemies around you, only one will attack you at a time. It’s really nice that they are so polite and take turns. Even if you get hit by one of General Scales’s minions, there are more than enough health items to bring you back to full strength.

Rare opted to take the jump button out of the control scheme in an attempt to make the game more Zelda-like. All you have to do is run to the edge of a platform to jump to the next one. It works all right, but I would have preferred Rare ditching the roll button for the jump button. Since enemies are so easy, I’m not sure what you need to roll away from.

The puzzles consist of levers, moving boxes, gathering items, or shooting targets. So far nothing has been unique or overly complicated. If you’ve played any adventure game before, you’ve seen most of these puzzle combinations already. There are times that your goal isn’t too clear, but that is remedied by communicating with Slippy, who will basically tell you exactly what to do. It’s so pathetically easy, it makes me wonder why Rare decided to have puzzles in the game to begin with.

The Arwing levels are sadly just mere additions to the adventure. To get from one area to another you’ll hop in your Arwing and blast though a quick mission. These missions would be fun if they were longer than a minute or two, and if they actually mattered in the overall game. So far, I’ve only flown 3 Arwing levels, but I’ve only needed to get through one or two gold rings (out of 10) to pass the level. Yes, seriously, that’s it. I was tempted to pass the controller to my cat Louie, so he could attempt the level. There is absolutely no challenge to this. No matter how well or poorly you do, it doesn’t affect anything outside of your high score table, which basically makes the missions meaningless. So far, all of the Arwing segments take place in space, without any major bosses, and haven’t varied too much outside of the rings moving. For anyone getting Star Fox Adventures for the flying levels, save your 50 bucks. Even though you can drop bombs, and do the typical barrel rolls, it just doesn’t seem like Rare got the gist of what Star Fox is really like.

Visually Star Fox Adventures is stunning, but not without faults. The characters and environments are luscious. I don’t have a progressive scan television, but even on my mediocre 32” RCA TV, this has to be one of the best looking GameCube games yet to hit the system. The fur and water effects are just drop dead gorgeous. Once you wipe the goo from your eyes, you’ll begin to start noticing slight faults. Your sidekick Prince Tricky will walk right through you, and visa-versa. When you feed him mushrooms, depending on the angle, it looks like he’s eating them out of the inside of Fox’s crotch. Now I know why this game got a Teen rating. There are also aliasing issues where I’ve noticed extremely blocky-looking shadows. Even so, overall, the visuals in Star Fox Adventures are delicious.

On par with the visuals is the audio, and if you have a surround sound setup, your ears are in for a real treat. The music is fantastic, and goes along well with the theme of the game. The voices and the “dinosaur language” are well done, and Rare used top notch voice actors for the characters. The sound effects are a mixed bag of new sounds, and some that you could swear were taken right out of other games. Not that running on metal grates or laser blasts can sound all that different than how they do in other games, but it just seems rather generic.

With those rants out of the way, I have to admit, I don’t know if I’ll actually play this game through to the end. I also don’t believe it’s this epic adventure that everyone has said it is. 40-60 hours? Hell no. My guess is that average gamers like myself should be able to complete Star Fox Adventures within around 20-25 hours at the most. The beginning is slow, and only now that I’m over a quarter of the way through only now is the game getting more interesting. Some people may really enjoy this game, but for me, I think Star Fox Adventures is beyond easy, and uninspiring. It may look and sound great, but even so, I’m getting rather bored. I wish Nintendo would have kept the Star Fox license away from Rare. To say the least, I’m disappointed in Rare’s one and only GameCube title so far.