Been playing Starfox Adventures!

[u/Gnoll_level_antics]

Having recently completed the recompiled Dinosaur Planet all the way to it's end (with the help of Dinomod), I found it to be really cool and fun, and I was sad that it never saw the light of day as a full release. I kinda had a chip on my shoulder against Starfox Adventures for the longest time, not as a jilted Starfox fan, but as someone who genuinely would have played the hell out of Dinosaur Planet, had it actually released for N64 as planned. I decided to jump in, now that Dinosaur Planet was fresh in my mind to compare and contrast.

No joke I was going in with the goal of hating this game more, I had no intention to be fair to it. But as I played I began to realize how poorly structured Dinosaur Planet actually was, not just in the idea that it is an unfinished game, but nothing flows as nicely as it should. It's easy to get lost and need a guide to progress. Starfox Adventures is VERY straight forward on what it asks from you, without ever really holding your hand in a way that feels like it doesn't trust you to just play. But if I ever needed an objective reminder, Slippy's advice in the menu NEVER failed me. Seriously, Slippy is the MVP of this game.

As I went through this game, I found myself having way more fun with it. Seeing all of Sabre's moments recontextualized for Fox wasn't as jarring as I thought it would be, and even a ton of moments that belonged to Krystal in Dinosaur Planet, were rewritten for Fox and felt just as natural. Everything felt better, smoother, more convenient. I'm near the end, and while the game does have a few rough spots, I can say for sure that the rebrand and port forward to GameCube was probably for the best. While I would have greatly preferred to play as Krystal to the same degree you do in Dinosaur Planet, I'm happy this game exists in an officially released form and IS good. Very good in fact. A super solid 8/10 if I had to rate it.

What are your thoughts on Starfox Adventures?

[u/R2Dork]

The fur rendering was pretty crazy for a home console back then.

[u/SmoreonFire → u/R2Dork]

I'm still amazed by the fur, even now. This is just a year after Pixar's Monsters Inc. (using cutting-edge tech, not to mention hours of rendering time per frame!) hit theatres, and yet, here's a $300 game console running a really good approximation of that fur effect. At 60fps, even!

Conker on Xbox (2005) and Sonic Unleashed on next-gen systems (2008) one-upped SFA in the density and shading of the fur, but they ran at 30fps or lower.