New amazing F-Zero video on officail F-Zero website

[Tagrineth]

OK, uh... just a few things...

First off, about roundedness in F-Zero GC.

Take a close look at the track in these shots:

And the halfpipe and cylindrical tracks:

And if you want to talk about rounded cars, look at these:

For one thing, it looks like just like F-Zero X, most of the game's poly budget is in making the track itself look as smooth and rounded as possible. I swear, FZX has to be using HOS of some kind...

Other tidbits...

Looks like the yellow things on the track that someone thought might be pickups... are just 3D versions of the good old boost plates, that were just yellow arrows flat on the track in FZX. Also the speculative 'shield' is when the ship is blinking pink, right? That's the good old critical damage indicator When your power is low, a (much quieter than some other games) siren starts up, and the ship blinks... the closer to 0 power, the faster you blink and 'beep'. And the big sparkly effects around the ship are definitely boosts.

Johnny Awesome: You are so anti-Nintendo it really sounds ridiculous.

Sonic doesn't look 7 years old anymore either.

He didn't in the first place. In fact, in Sonic Adventure 2, if you look at Sonic from the side, he looks effectively identical to the old sprites used in the Genesis 2D Sonic games.

There still seems to be an unwillingness to evolve beyond using simple control schemes

Er... so? Who fucking cares? Honestly! Things like saying the FLUDD should have been on the C-Stick.. WHY? You can in fact move one way and shoot another... if you hold L, you strafe, so you can shoot forward while moving sideways, and up and down on the stick let you aim... well, up and down. I bet you didn't even know that.

And actually thinking of async Mario/FLUDD controls, I have to look back at Luigi's Mansion - that game did in fact have a dual-analogue control setup, and quite frankly, it was very, very awkward to use. I tried it for half an hour, it's frustrating. Mario Sunshine would've been basically the same thing - extra frustration for functionality you really don't need.

And finally a former PS2ite friend of mine recently got a GCN because he enjoyed its games so much when I brought mine over. He's currently addicted to Metroid Prime - and OH SHOCK HORROR GODS NO he used to be a big TimeSplitters/2 nut, using dual-analogue in that, and it took him FIVE BLOODY MINUTES to get the hang of Prime's controls. He likes them. I think the big difference between people who think Prime should have dual-analogue controls and the people who like Prime's controls as-is mostly involves whether people actually USE the jump button or not... try jumping a few times in Turok:Evolution, if you want to get a feel for how much it sucks with DA. Even in HALO I stick to the ground, it's just plain awkward to jump with DA controls.

 

[wazoo]

Level 5 did a great job on it, apparently. Aren't they working on DQ8, too?

Yes, and TFO on the xbox.

pretty busy

Dark Cloud2 is not on the same level as Zelda but it is quite good IMO.

 

[Blade]

Tag: Heh, I'm going to have to agree with most everything you typed there.

Jumping in dual-analog games is more difficult than it should be. Considering how much jumping you do in Metroid Prime.. I think it was very wise for Retro and Nintendo to set the controls up the way they did. It works for the game.

Honest to God, I had very very few problems with the game's controls. One or two awkward moments is all.

 

[iscariot]

Overall DC2 has a score of 88.1% and WW is at 96% overall. Both from 8 reviews, that's quite a difference!

'N ' games always rate higher on name recognition alone. I mean SMS rated higher than R&C whch is a complete laugh. That's not to say Celda doesn't rock, cause I'm sure it does. But I've played DC2 for about 7 hours total and the game is s!ck. This coming from someone who hated the first DC with a passion...but hey, you can't compete with anything named Zelda by default, that nostalgia factor always kicks in

 

[Johnny Awesome]

No, they're working on True Fantasy Live Online for Xbox right now.

Ben

I gave Mario Sunshine's water cannon as another Nintendo oversimplification. Also, Halo and SMS are neck and neck, with Halo ahead by a small margin and gaining slowly.

Nintendo should do better and get with the times, both from a control standpoint and an art direction standpoint as well. It's pretty sad when Sony 1st party platformers are better than Nintendo's...

As for Zelda's pre-orders. Big deal. It's easy for Nintendo to sell 1 million Zelda's to the Nintendo faithful, but will it help them move hardware to the masses? I doubt it will help very much.

 

[Teasy]

iscariot

So yet again nostalgia strikes and makes yet another Nintendo game great?

Common, this is right up there with the "these sales figures don't include X store and that store sells more Y consoles then Z consoles which is why Y console doesn't have as good sales numbers as Z console" excuse.

It can just as easily be argued that people's expectations are so high when they see the Zelda/Mario/Nintendo name on a game that the game then cannot possibly live up to those expectations. Eternal Darkness got a lower overall score then Res Evil (90.9% vs 89.5%). Personally I feel that's a total injustice, but I'm not going to make excuses about it.

On R&C vs SMS, you'll just have to except that the majority of reviewers don't agree with you and think SMS is better. Not because of nostalgia but simply because they enjoyed it more.

 

[Steve Dave Part Deux]

R&C had loose controls, annoying mip-popping, and minor camera problems. Also, though it was much better presented than SMS and had infinitely more interesting characters, it doesn't have a fraction of the gameplay variety. IMO SMS is a much better game.

 

[marconelly!]

R&C had loose controls, annoying mip-popping, and minor camera problems.

R&C loose controls? That's the first I've heard about it. And it's minor camera problems certainly compare favorably to major camera problems that SMS has. R&C is just a better game overall IMO. Much fresher, better looking and more interesting game.

 

[Kolgar]

OK, time to chime in.

I consider myself a pretty critical gamer, but while I haven't been very impressed with Gamecube's offerings to date, I have to say that the new F-Zero looks fantastic. Could the ship designs look less cartoony? Yes. But what I've seen so far wows me from both a technical and artistic standpoint. If this thing looks as good on a full-size television, it'll simply be the best-looking futuristic racer to date, bar none.

Let's hope the gameplay rocks. Personally, I think futuristic racing reached its pinnacle with the awesome weapons-based action of Wipeout XL.

Fingers crossed.

Kolgar

 

[CaptainHowdy]

No, they're working on True Fantasy Live Online for Xbox right now.

Ben

I gave Mario Sunshine's water cannon as another Nintendo oversimplification. Also, Halo and SMS are neck and neck, with Halo ahead by a small margin and gaining slowly.

Nintendo should do better and get with the times, both from a control standpoint and an art direction standpoint as well. It's pretty sad when Sony 1st party platformers are better than Nintendo's...

As for Zelda's pre-orders. Big deal. It's easy for Nintendo to sell 1 million Zelda's to the Nintendo faithful, but will it help them move hardware to the masses? I doubt it will help very much.

if doing things any other way is appealing to the masses, count me out, mayeb Nintendo doesnt care about the masses, who wants to appeal to a group who buys crap like DOA, and act like a crappy port of Ghost Recon 2 years later is the greatest online experience in the world...

 

[Steve Dave Part Deux]

Compared to SMS, R&C has loose controls. Ratchet floats across the ground and is simply not as responsive or versitle as Mario. The camera in both games is a minor problem, the difference being that SMS's camera can move on three axes and is considerably more responsive.

 

[marconelly!]

the difference being that SMS's camera can move on three axes and is considerably more responsive.

Three axes? Well, I might be wrong, but I could swear SMS had camera rotation control around two axes, just like R&C did. With the stick left/right you move the camera from left to right, and with stick up/down you move the camera from up to down. Besides, in the options in R&C, you could change the camera responsivenes speed. Anyways, I think both games had quite an inferior camera to what J&D had.

 

[PC-Engine]

The Wipeout series is just too SLOW IMO and can't even hold a candle to F-Zero.

 

[Kolgar]

Wipeout slow? I think the later versions got too ridiculously fast, considering how curvy some of the tracks got.

It's not fun to race fast if you spend most of your time ricocheting off walls at 90-degree angles. Granted, I think F-Zero has generally offered a more fluid and straightforward brand of track design, allowing it to reach speeds not practical in other games.

But after unleashing the pyrotechnic weaponry of Wipeout and Wipeout XL, I just felt like something was missing from the F-Zero games. Everything's better with a little fighting!

Kolgar

 

[darkblu]

Wipeout slow? I think the later versions got too ridiculously fast, considering how curvy some of the tracks got.

It's not fun to race fast if you spend most of your time ricocheting off walls at 90-degree angles. Granted, I think F-Zero has generally offered a more fluid and straightforward brand of track design, allowing it to reach speeds not practical in other games.

But after unleashing the pyrotechnic weaponry of Wipeout and Wipeout XL, I just felt like something was missing from the F-Zero games. Everything's better with a little fighting!

Kolgar

i stand with kolgar on this - wipeout xl normal speed was definitely fast, and even moreso with a speed boost - it was real hard to follow the track. and that comes from a person who has 100's upon 100's of hours playing futuristic racers (dethkarz most of all).

btw, wipeout vehicles were angular too, but they look anything but silly - aggressive comes to mind. unfortunately, i can't see that on the FZ shots (haven't played the game.. yet)

 

[Ozymandis]

Wipeout XL was definitely the pinnacle of futuristic gaming. F-zero has always been a snooze-fest, but when Wipeout gave me some cool weapons to add to (or maybe distract me from) the racing I was hooked. Too bad Fusion doesn't really live up to the standards of the series...

I'm with Kolgar that Wipeout is quite fast enough

 

[Tagrineth]

the difference being that SMS's camera can move on three axes and is considerably more responsive.

Three axes? Well, I might be wrong, but I could swear SMS had camera rotation control around two axes, just like R&C did. With the stick left/right you move the camera from left to right, and with stick up/down you move the camera from up to down. Besides, in the options in R&C, you could change the camera responsivenes speed. Anyways, I think both games had quite an inferior camera to what J&D had.

Up and down on the C-stick in Mario Sunshine results in zoom in/out as well... like it follows a curve, zoom in / shift down, or zoom out / shift up.

Added: Side note, re: weapons, that's really up to the individual taste of the player. I think that a racing game should be just that - RACING. Real-life racing doesn't have weapons of any kind - it's dangerous enough as-is, and I think a lot of people would probably lobby against it if they appeared. The weapons element ends up being cheap and/or just stupid in some games (the entire Xtreme-G series comes to mind)... the only games that really work with weapons are kart racers (a la Mario Kart), since they don't really rely much on the racing mechanics (although in MK64 I can win a couple races very consistently without ever using any weapons; there is driver skill involved, to an extent...).

 

[Reznor007]

Wipeout XL was definitely the pinnacle of futuristic gaming. F-zero has always been a snooze-fest, but when Wipeout gave me some cool weapons to add to (or maybe distract me from) the racing I was hooked. Too bad Fusion doesn't really live up to the standards of the series...

I'm with Kolgar that Wipeout is quite fast enough

If you remember FzeroX, it did have combat. Not weapons to launch, but you had 2 special moves to bump opponents off the track. A regular side check, and a spinning attack. This is an easy way to get past some tracks in 1 player mode

There was also a death race mode, where you have to eliminate the other 29 racers, and the game saves the best time.

 

[Tagrineth]

F-Zero X's attack is also more interesting than pyrotechnic missiles and whatnot... in FZX it's often a risky proposition to attack someone - will you drive yourself into a wall too? Or in trying to knock someone off the edge - will you be able to stay on yourself?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

"'N ' games always rate higher on name recognition alone."

that is hands down the most amazingly stupid comment ever made, the games get high scores because of the high quality, they are just great games, its amazing how many of these people here try to say things like "you only like the new zelda because your a Nintendo fan, your just a blind Nintendo fanboy, you force yourself to believe its good"...
its the other way around in my opinion, forcing yourself to believe the games are not as good as the rest of the world says they are...well newsflash...they are that good.