RPGamers Network > Reviews > Game Reviews > F-Zero GX
Obviously, you're thinking...just another racing game where you ride around a track and win. To an extent, you're correct, but to a greater extent, you're way off. Granted, you race hover cars around a race track and try to win, and there's your main point...for Grand Prix anyway. The modes such as Customize, Story, Time Trial and Practice have roughly no such thing. It would be best to go over each in select detail.
The Grand Prix is the mode where you generally race against 3 difficulties of opponents on 3 modes of tracks. Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald cups respectively, are for Beginners, Intermediates and Experts in comparison. The opponents can be Novice, Standard or Expert. So in turn, that's 9 cups to win in total. There are 30 cars in a Grand Prix race...you and 29 others. You also have a rival which appears from the second race onwards and is the one with the highest (or if you're highest, the second highest) amount of points at the time. There are 5 races in a cup which allows for a lot of variety and also to catch up if you don't do too well at the start of the cup. 1st place in a race gets you 100 points, 2nd gets 93, 3rd gets 87 and so forth. Obviously the one with the most points at the end wins. This is the easiest way to increase your racing skills against opponents and is also the easiest way to gather tickets(explained later). You can attack them by spinning into them or ramming them. You can also ram them off the course.
Speaking of falling off course, your machine has a little health bar. If it goes to 0, your machine explodes (only on time trial, story and grand prix, anywhere else it respawns) and you retire the race. You also retire if you fall of the course or in some cases, if the time runs out. You have lives in the Grand Prix which you lose when you retire, so that's the only one you have to be careful in lives wise. From the 2nd lap onwards (barring Practice and a few stories) you get booster power, which allows you to boost your car and speed past everyone else. Use it wisely, because it uses up your health bar each time you boost. It makes sense to note the health recovery parts of the track which are the purple glowing strips, so you can time your boosts to perfection.
There are lots of riders with their cars to unlock and choose from. Each has different profiles and different car stats which include Boost, Body and Grip and are shown by rankings of A(highest) to E(lowest). The large choice makes it great for experimenting different cars on different tracks.
Speaking of experimenting, there is a feature called Customize which has 3 different options. The first is Garage where you store saved cars that you've either put things on or created from scratch. The ones you create from scratch may eventually become your best all-round cars and involve you buying parts and combining them together to make a vehicle. It doesn't take much effort really. The best part about that is that you can change the colour to whatever you wish on the 3 separate parts. The Emblem Editor is a memory card eating up feature but it's great fun if you enjoy drawing. The game has pre-made emblems for you to put on the cars in the garage but you can also draw whatever you wish, within a limited space of course, and save it for 3 blocks on that there memory card of yours. The third option is the item shop where you can buy new characters (that's right, buy people), new parts for customizing, new stories and also new songs (weird things in other words). You buy things with tickets, which are plentiful and you get them for winning Grand Prix and Story levels.
Story mode, the most original part of the game, revolves around Captain Falcon for the most part, though you wouldn't think that looking at the intro. There are 9 Chapters and each of them has a Normal, Hard and Very Hard mode. You might have noticed that the difficulty of GX is Extreme Challenge. This is where that comes from (as well as the expert difficulties) because even Normal mode of some things are near-impossible. You get a lot of tickets for doing it, and new cars and items arrive in the item shop, but it's a definite challenge to do them, especially the Very Hard modes. I still have not done a fair amount of the stories' hard and very hard modes. Anywho, it's adds extra frustration and challenge to the game.
The other modes include Time Trial, which is self explanatory. Practice, which lets you set the things. Replay, where you get to watch your time trial races and Vs mode, where you can race against friends, with some computer racers if you wish. You can also race your ghost which you can save on memory card, so you can try and beat records easier i suppose.
The graphics in the game are superb. There is no lag whatsoever, it's completely smooth all the way too, the detail put into the tracks is great, and some of the speed at which you do corkscrews (go around a full pipe) and loop de loops will leave you stunned. The sound effects are as good as they can get, judging by the fact that the vehicles are fictional, so any sounds can be used, but the explosions are the same great quality. The storylines are pretty good...at least they give reason for why you're playing.
Music, ah the music. A brilliant soundtrack. Sounds of Big Blue is the clear winner as the best song (though it's secret and once unlocked, still requires 99 tickets but still...). The soundtrack, which I may do later, is based on guitars and fast paced percussion and other fast instruments. You could say most of the songs sound futuristic. The only flaw is that some of the songs are boring and leads to the fact that you can only remix a song so many times before it loses appeal...with a few exceptions. I suppose I'd have less general things to say about the music if i had every track, but even the Character themes sound cool...good work there.
So if you're a racing fan, it's worth a play at least. If not, it may not be for you because of the difficulty. A game for both Nintendo and Sega fans to celebrate the coming together of the two. If this is a taste of things to come, the gamers will want the main course. Great game.
| Game Stats | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Racing |
| Platform | GameCube |
| Format | GD-ROM |
| # of Players | 4 |
| Released Jap | 07.25.2003 |
| Released US | 08.26.2003 |
| Released EU | 10.31.2003 |
| Aprox. Length | 20-30 hrs. |
| Reviewer Rankings | |
| Battle System | 8.0 |
| Gameplay | 9.0 |
| Music | 9.0 |
| Originality | 8.0 |
| Plot | 9.0 |
| Replay Value | 9.0 |
| Sound | 10.0 |
| Visuals | 10.0 |
| Difficulty | Extreme |
| Overall | |
| 9.0 | |
F-Zero GX
By: Nintendo/SegaReviewed By: Kie
The GameCube has had an indifferent life. Being criticised and mocked by the other consoles for have "childish" games as it would seem. It seems Nintendo have produced, at last, every genre onto the GameCube. It took a long time, but the sequel to the game that rocked the Nintendo world 6 years ago has arrived. F-Zero X was the pinnacle of racing back in it's day, just as the first real racing game on the GameCube is today. Nintendo and Sega, the two old rivals and greats from the original console world team up for the first actual time and create a great game.Obviously, you're thinking...just another racing game where you ride around a track and win. To an extent, you're correct, but to a greater extent, you're way off. Granted, you race hover cars around a race track and try to win, and there's your main point...for Grand Prix anyway. The modes such as Customize, Story, Time Trial and Practice have roughly no such thing. It would be best to go over each in select detail.
The Grand Prix is the mode where you generally race against 3 difficulties of opponents on 3 modes of tracks. Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald cups respectively, are for Beginners, Intermediates and Experts in comparison. The opponents can be Novice, Standard or Expert. So in turn, that's 9 cups to win in total. There are 30 cars in a Grand Prix race...you and 29 others. You also have a rival which appears from the second race onwards and is the one with the highest (or if you're highest, the second highest) amount of points at the time. There are 5 races in a cup which allows for a lot of variety and also to catch up if you don't do too well at the start of the cup. 1st place in a race gets you 100 points, 2nd gets 93, 3rd gets 87 and so forth. Obviously the one with the most points at the end wins. This is the easiest way to increase your racing skills against opponents and is also the easiest way to gather tickets(explained later). You can attack them by spinning into them or ramming them. You can also ram them off the course.
Speaking of falling off course, your machine has a little health bar. If it goes to 0, your machine explodes (only on time trial, story and grand prix, anywhere else it respawns) and you retire the race. You also retire if you fall of the course or in some cases, if the time runs out. You have lives in the Grand Prix which you lose when you retire, so that's the only one you have to be careful in lives wise. From the 2nd lap onwards (barring Practice and a few stories) you get booster power, which allows you to boost your car and speed past everyone else. Use it wisely, because it uses up your health bar each time you boost. It makes sense to note the health recovery parts of the track which are the purple glowing strips, so you can time your boosts to perfection.
There are lots of riders with their cars to unlock and choose from. Each has different profiles and different car stats which include Boost, Body and Grip and are shown by rankings of A(highest) to E(lowest). The large choice makes it great for experimenting different cars on different tracks.
Speaking of experimenting, there is a feature called Customize which has 3 different options. The first is Garage where you store saved cars that you've either put things on or created from scratch. The ones you create from scratch may eventually become your best all-round cars and involve you buying parts and combining them together to make a vehicle. It doesn't take much effort really. The best part about that is that you can change the colour to whatever you wish on the 3 separate parts. The Emblem Editor is a memory card eating up feature but it's great fun if you enjoy drawing. The game has pre-made emblems for you to put on the cars in the garage but you can also draw whatever you wish, within a limited space of course, and save it for 3 blocks on that there memory card of yours. The third option is the item shop where you can buy new characters (that's right, buy people), new parts for customizing, new stories and also new songs (weird things in other words). You buy things with tickets, which are plentiful and you get them for winning Grand Prix and Story levels.
Story mode, the most original part of the game, revolves around Captain Falcon for the most part, though you wouldn't think that looking at the intro. There are 9 Chapters and each of them has a Normal, Hard and Very Hard mode. You might have noticed that the difficulty of GX is Extreme Challenge. This is where that comes from (as well as the expert difficulties) because even Normal mode of some things are near-impossible. You get a lot of tickets for doing it, and new cars and items arrive in the item shop, but it's a definite challenge to do them, especially the Very Hard modes. I still have not done a fair amount of the stories' hard and very hard modes. Anywho, it's adds extra frustration and challenge to the game.
The other modes include Time Trial, which is self explanatory. Practice, which lets you set the things. Replay, where you get to watch your time trial races and Vs mode, where you can race against friends, with some computer racers if you wish. You can also race your ghost which you can save on memory card, so you can try and beat records easier i suppose.
The graphics in the game are superb. There is no lag whatsoever, it's completely smooth all the way too, the detail put into the tracks is great, and some of the speed at which you do corkscrews (go around a full pipe) and loop de loops will leave you stunned. The sound effects are as good as they can get, judging by the fact that the vehicles are fictional, so any sounds can be used, but the explosions are the same great quality. The storylines are pretty good...at least they give reason for why you're playing.
Music, ah the music. A brilliant soundtrack. Sounds of Big Blue is the clear winner as the best song (though it's secret and once unlocked, still requires 99 tickets but still...). The soundtrack, which I may do later, is based on guitars and fast paced percussion and other fast instruments. You could say most of the songs sound futuristic. The only flaw is that some of the songs are boring and leads to the fact that you can only remix a song so many times before it loses appeal...with a few exceptions. I suppose I'd have less general things to say about the music if i had every track, but even the Character themes sound cool...good work there.
So if you're a racing fan, it's worth a play at least. If not, it may not be for you because of the difficulty. A game for both Nintendo and Sega fans to celebrate the coming together of the two. If this is a taste of things to come, the gamers will want the main course. Great game.
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