Star Fox 64

The Good
Quick, pick-up-and-play fun

The Bad
No level select, the "hard" route is the least fun.

The Bottom Line
Star Fox 64 (or Lylat Wars as I knew it as a kid) is a fast-paced on-rails shooter made by Nintendo. The gameplay is extremely solid. Fox’s Awring has lasers that you can charge up for a lock-on, along with limited bombs. Movement is fast and precise and you can perform loops and barrel rolls – the latter reflects bullets.

If you complete levels normally, you’ll go through a really fun route through the game. On top of the on-rails levels, you’ll also encounter “all range mode” where you can fly in 3D. These typically aren’t as “cinematic” as the on-rails levels, but still a lot of fun.

Slippy will get attacked by one of the bosses and will crash land on a planet, here you get to use the Landmaster, a tank that is also really fun to use. You can hover temporally and barrel rolls will now move you across most of the screen.

To get to the credits for the first time, Star Fox 64 is a very short game, but that’s because it’s made to be replayed for a high score, and because it’s so much fun, you don’t mind doing so, trying to get a higher score than last time – but that’s not all of it.

Most missions in the game has a secret objective, complete this and you’ll get “Mission Accomplished” and to a different mission, the “hard route” will take you across some more challenging missions, although personally this is my least favourite route of the games – while all missions but one of the missions in Star Fox 64 are good, I do think these are some of the weaker ones, plus the one bad mission is in this route - The underwater level. It’s slow, plodding and is rather boring. The bombs are replaced with infinite torpedoes which also light up the way, because the level is also dark and dreary. This is easily the worst part of the game, but at least it’s just the one mission.

Some of my favourite missions are in the middle, including the best all-range mission as you fight an Independence Day-style UFO and the second Landmaster tank mission as you chase a train.

Once you’ve played all the levels, there are also gold medals to unlock, which are extremely difficult. A level select at this point would be nice so you wouldn’t have to work through previous levels, but it does provide something to work towards.

Star Fox 64 is a incredibly fun game, and one you can just have a quick blast through every now and then.

The Good
The bosses were complex and difficult at times. The multiplayer mode was pretty fun.

The Bad
It was too easy to beat and not a whole lot of replay value. It'll take you about 3 weeks to beat all three difficulty levels. The game could have a used a lot more powerups and different weapons. The multiplayer can get boring quickly.

The Bottom Line
Rent it once but don't buy it.

The Good
It's incredibly fun, or it is the first time, anyway. Killing enemies, fighting cool bosses, flying in a cool Arwing ship, saving your companions, traveling to Venom, where you must fight the evil Andron. So cool. There's a multi-player mode , too, where you can play with up to 3 other people.

The Bad
To short - after only a few tries you can beat it. Every time you play it's the same and you an beat it easily in less than 2 hours (usually between 1 and 2). The multi-player mode was fun the first time I played this game at my friend's house but there are only two small levels to fight on and it gets extremely boring after like 20 minutes.

The Bottom Line
Rent it or borrow it from a friend. Don't buy it.