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Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet Preview
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
Thankfully another title to move allegiance to the Gamecube, Starfox Adventures is looking the better for it.
Starfox Adventure: Dinosaur Planet started life off on the N64 as Dinosaur Planet, it was set to be one of the machineās final swansongs, another stellar action/adventure title to get out teeth into whilst the Gamecubeās launch date got closer.
However somewhere along the development road someone from Nintendo of Japan caught a glimpse of it and decided that it wouldnāt be a bad game to launch on their new machine, and bolstered one of Nintendoās biggest franchises to it. So Dinosaur Planet N64 became Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet on the Gamecube.
Itās apparent that Rare have a fair amount of respect for Miyamoto, in the same way that Banjo Kazooie paid homage to Mario 64, SA:DP roots lie in another Miyamoto classic, Zelda 64.
Players take control of Fox McCloud eight years after the defeat of Andross featured in Star Fox 64. A malicious dictator General Scales has corrupted the world of Dinosaur Planet, so itās up to you to save the dinosaurs and kick some general ass. Joining Fox are Starfox members, Peppy and Slippy (not quite sure where Falcoās gone but itās relieving not to have his moaning following you everywhere).
New to the Starfox team for this adventure are Rob the Robot and Tricky the Triceratops. The latter follows Fox wherever he goes, by pressing down on the C-stick a number of commands appear on screen; such as Find, selecting this will instruct Tricky to dig down and look for hidden items, other commands include Heel, Distract, Guard and Play. It seems that the interaction between both characters will be the solution to some of the games puzzles.
SA:DP plays pretty much like Zelda, the auto-jump is there and so too is the marvellous Z targeting. One neat little touch is the way that when you have an enemy targeted the backgrounds blur out, making use of the Gamecubeās Depth-Blurring features. It makes perfect sense, keeping your focus on the targeted enemy and looks pretty cool too.
Unfortunately at present SA:DP isnāt the best looking game youāll see on Gamecube, itās immediately apparent that the game started off on the N64. Despite some very impressive character models, the environments are quite disappointing; a lot of textures arenāt up to scratch, lacking detail and blurring up close. Thatās not to say SA:DP is a bad looking game, and thereās still time for the guys at Rare to sort the problems out, if anyone can do it these guys can.
As in Zelda 64, real-time lighting is featured in SA:DP. Day will turn to night, one cool difference to Zelda 64 is that during the night hours the dinosaurs will go to sleep whilst during the day theyāll be roaming around and getting up to their dino duties.
The main action will revolve around Zelda like play, same style objectives, combat and controls, however Rare have promised us that youāll have to jump aboard your arwing in certain missions and engage in some Starfox 64 situations.
SA:DP is shaping up to be a hot project, combining Zelda gameplay with the Starfox license sounds like a good idea to me, and if anyone can do it Rareās one of them. The game shown at E3 was apparently just knocked up for the show, since then all has gone quiet, could Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet emerge as a AAA title alongside the Gamecubes launch? I wouldnāt be surprised.
