F-Zero GX Review

Developer	Amusement Vision
Publisher	Nintendo
Genre	Racing

How fitting—the series that created the futuristic racing genre with its first installment now comes closest to perfecting it with its latest. To cut straight to the point, while F-Zero GX may have a few rough spots, it is still the best futuristic, high-speed racer available today, and is easily a strong candidate for best racing game of the year.

Gameplay - Truth be told, if you cut away all the glitzy glamour, you’ll have a game that doesn’t play much different from its predecessor. Just as in F-Zero X (released 5 years ago on the Nintendo 64), the lot of the gameplay is in the Grand Prix mode, in which you’ll still be racing a small hovercraft through twisting and writhing courses against 29 other competitors. The main emphasis is still on intense speed, and in this respect, no other racing game in the history of racing games has done it better. It’s possible to go in excess of 4,000 mph in GX, and it certainly feels like it. It’s not just a gimmick either, as it of course directly affects the gameplay. Believe it or not, you actually have to slow down sometimes in order to make certain tricky portions of a track even negotiable.

The control of the hovercrafts is not entirely different from F-Zero X, but more refined. For instance, “drifting” (when your craft loses its grip of the track) has been incorporated more into the technique of racing. What was something to avoid at all costs in F-Zero X is now an actual maneuver that is executed by holding both shoulder buttons. You actually get more control over your craft when you drift (making sharp, 90 degree turns easier), but of course it also slows you down a little.

Other than that, if you played F-Zero X to death, you know exactly what you’re getting into here. There are still no weapons other than your craft itself, which you can ram your opponents with. The boosting technique remains unchanged; it still becomes enabled after the first lap, and it still saps your ship’s energy. This extreme similarity may seem like an indictment, but it’s anything but. Not every sequel needs to reinvent the wheel. F-Zero GX plays just as good as F-Zero X did (which is to say, it plays wonderfully), and it becomes a new and fresh experience in that there are 20-plus new tracks to race on. One might say that GX is too much of a rehash that doesn’t offer enough originality or freshness, but that wouldn’t change the fact that GX is extremely fun.

Perhaps F-Zero GX’s biggest problem (or, to be more accurate, the aspect that will probably garner the most complaints) is that it really gets tough as hell. How tough? So tough that even the easiest difficulty isn’t a cakewalk. You have to be good to win all the cups (of which there are initially three, with one being locked) on Novice. Win all the cups on Standard and Expert, and you’re great. Win them all on Master difficulty, and let a monument be erected in your honor, for you are truly a god among men.

What exactly is it that makes F-Zero GX so difficult? It’s the sum of three parts—intense speed, aggressive AI, and tracks seemingly designed with the implicit purpose being to kill you. For example, there’s a course called Mute City: Serial Gaps. Merely surviving on this course for three laps is an accomplishment. It's full of sharp turns, with many portions having no walls, and a few tricky jumps to boot. Now consider all of that when you're going stupid fast, and you're in for some bad times. And that's not even taking into consideration any attempt to place well on that race, as the competing AI racers are seriously cutthroat.

And on top of that, Serial Gaps is only in the second cup. Rest assured, the tracks in the third and unlockable fourth are exponentially more difficult.

The heart of the matter, though, is if the difficulty is so intense that it degrades your enjoyment with the game. Some might say it depends on your threshold of pain, but even if you tend to become extremely frustrated when faced with a tremendous challenge, you don’t have to experience that side of F-Zero GX if you don’t want to. That’s the beauty of difficulty levels. Expert difficulty, and especially Master, are supposed to be almost insurmountably challenging. What good would it be if Master difficulty was just, you know, a little hard? You should have to be masterful to compete in it. If it frustrates you too much, then stick with Novice and Standard—that’s what they’re there for. It’s not as if you’ll miss out on much if you don’t take the game to the higher difficulties, either—every track can be opened without ever having to go beyond Standard difficulty. In the end, you really can’t knock F-Zero GX for its challenge. It would be misguided to hold your frustrations with the higher difficulties against the overall quality of the game.

With that said, there is one area of the game where difficulty does destroy any notion of fun, and that’s the Story Mode. In Story Mode, you play through 10 chapters as the series’ mainstay hero, Captain Falcon. Each chapter has a race, but with an interesting twist, such as having to avoid falling boulders or having to destroy a rival before reaching the finish line. Unfortunately, a simply ridiculous level of difficulty has rendered what could have been a cool little addition completely useless.

You want to make it difficult, sure, but you don’t want to make it so that 95% of the players will never be able to finish it. You especially don’t want the difficulty to spike before you’re even halfway through the chapters, too. Only the very best of the best of the best will even make it past chapter 4. How much harder does it get after that? I wouldn’t know. If the same difficulty levels that are present in the Grand Prix mode were extended towards Story Mode, there would be no reason to protest. As it stands, it seems Amusement Vision just didn’t want people to ever finish all the chapters.

Graphics - GX truly is a showpiece title for the GameCube, and it’s ironic that the biggest reason for complaint with F-Zero X has become the biggest selling point of its sequel. GX is visually fantastic, both technically and artistically. As previously mentioned, the sense of speed is incredible. What’s truly impressive, though, is how much detail has gone into each track.

While there are some tracks with a bit less going on in the background (mostly the later courses, such as Trident and Phantom), almost all have something incredible to marvel at. Be it land sharks and sand tornadoes in the Sand Ocean tracks, towering skyscrapers in the Aeropolis tracks, or the ambiguous machinery and giant R.O.B robots in the Port Town tracks, there’s always something going on in the background of each race. There’s also plenty of particle effects to enjoy, specifically coming from your (and everyone else’s) craft whenever it boosts.

There’s so much going on at any time, in fact, that at first it almost seems too distracting. But the more you play, and the more you become accustomed to the world that F-Zero GX presents, eventually everything—the speed, the details, the visual effects—just blends together and you enter a sort of meditative “zone.” Not once does the frame-rate ever falter during even the most hectic races, and the loading times are almost non-existent.

Sound - The sound in GX is good, but not great. The music isn’t as good as in F-Zero X, but it’s still more than passable. It’s mostly new, but there are a few remixed tracks from past F-Zero games. The sound effects are mostly new as well, with seemingly none being reused from F-Zero X. They’re entirely fitting with the action, as your hovercraft whistles through the wind at top speed. The announcer seems to have much less to say this time around (you won’t be hearing “Let on! You’re way out in front!” anymore), but whether or not that’s a negative is hard to say.

Overall Value - There’s plenty to keep you busy in F-Zero GX. Beyond the four cups in Grand Prix and the impossible Story Mode, there’s a time attack mode, practice mode, and vs. battle mode. Unfortunately, while vs. battle mode can be played with up to four people, including AI competitors is not an option.

There are also 30 hovercrafts to unlock (by way of purchasing them with the tickets you earn by completing races), but the coolest new addition is the ability to create your own custom craft. Crafts are created by using a body, cockpit, and booster parts, and the more races you complete, the more parts you can purchase in the shop. There are a huge variety of combinations using all the parts in the three types, and crafts can be further customized by adding up to four emblems onto it. You can even draw your own emblem with the rudimentary paint program. Noticeably missing, though, is the ability to name your own craft—the name is decided by combining the names of the parts that you use.

Overall, F-Zero GX is not a huge leap from its predecessor, as it simply offers more of the same. That what it offers more of was incredible to begin with, and that it offers it in a much, much prettier package, with more gameplay modes and options, makes F-Zero GX the kind of “rehash” that you want to savor every bit of. F-Zero GX is easily the best racing game on the GameCube.

Review by Kris Pigna