Miister X's adventure in [redacted] Part 2

For part 1 click here

I kept myself warm throughout the night by thinking really hard about fire but in spite of that, my stay in the museum bathroom was hardly comfortable. I was more than ready to leave this dump of a town, but I'd given my word, and as I said to Johnnii Knoxville "when I say I'll do something, there's no turning back" (I ended up with a broken arm that night).

The museum didn't have a bathroom, what was I supposed to do?

I felt in need of some coffii (this is getting out of hand ~ Ed) so I stopped into a cafe I'd seen yesterday called the Roost. I watched the bird brain behind the counter badger one of his customers (an actual badger) into downing his coffee while it was still boiling, and considered leaving, but my craving for coffee was too much.
I placed my order and then the owner asked me for 200 bells. This threw me. Did bells mean dollars? Cents? I pulled out a twenty dollar note and asked if this would cover it. He looked at me with utter confusion and then said "we don't take that sir". I did a little prying and learned that [redacted] was part of a network of similar towns which used the bell as their only currency. Another wonderful surprise from the Moustaches! The hipster dog who told me this then started raving about how all these towns were the same, right down to the owners of the shops and how in every town, a young boy or girl is made the mayor against their will, as part of some kind of elaborate experiment into how children deal with responsibility. I pretended to have to answer a phone call and left.
I've heard my fair share of conspiracy theories in my time, most of which are clearly wild fantasies (except the ones about Sean Connerii's attic, those theories are actually less crazy than reality) but  I had to admit that there was something about [redacted] that put me ill at ease.

Like this guy, I don't know what drugs he must have taken-

-or what his "school desk" referred to but I gave him a wide berth.

There's just something not right with these villagers. I would later learn that their town was one that rewarded any and all work with ludicrous amount of money, but none of them seemed to be aware of this. Are they all trust fund kids for whom money is not an issue? Take Lily the frog for instance. I was really stuck, having learned that the post office refused to deal in anything other than bells, when Lily approached me and asked if I could bring her some fruit, specifically a perfect cherry, specifically a perfect cherry just like the ones hanging from a tree right behind her! Not wanting to disagree with her (I was at this point convinced that the entire village was on drugs) I fetched a cherry, and in return she gave me a washing machine. An entire washing machine! I'm not even sure where she got it from and I was looking right at her as she somehow pulled it out of her pocket.

This was my chance, I thought. I'd find a buyer for the machine, and use that money to find a place to stay. I found a local shop willing to buy the machine, but what was more surprising was that they were willing to buy a cherry I hadn't given to Lily for 600 "bells". What's more, they said they'd gladly pay the same price for more fruit. My eyes were opened to how easy it was to make money in this oddly fruit based economy. The money was out there, if I picked it up it was mine. I ran to the nearest orchard and started shaking (both the trees and myself as it was very cold).

I think I broke some of them.

.......no

Before long I had run out of room in my pockets for money (bells are not a portable currency) and the fire of capitalism wasn't doing much to keep me warm so I invested in some warmer clothes.

I think Charlii Sheen once told me about a very similar dream.

What does that even... Wait are they code words? Is "badges" what these people are on?

Eventually, the shops closed (at the time I suspected they were closing forever having just realized that they had traded all their liquid assets for perishable goods) so I had to find a place to stay. A quick inspection revealed that [redacted] had no places for outsiders to stay at except for the still occupied campsite. Fortunately, I'd come up with an alternative to squatting in the museum store room - squatting in the show houses!

Fortunately security was lax

"Sleeping on a pineapple bed with a painting of a yellow carrot man beside me in a show house, how did it come to this? Also, I've seen no sign of this lighthouse, but it's supposed to be opening tomorrow"

Will the village ecosystem be able to recover from such a thorough harvesting of its resources? Will the local store smell of rotten cherries for years to come? For answers to these and other questions you're out of luck because those questions can only be answered after a lot of time has passed and  the protagonist of our tale has long since left the village!

Tune in whenever is convenient to you (this is the internet after all) to see if money brings Miister X true happiness in the concluding part of this series!

Brought to you by McGarnagle's cleansing dental liquid!

Steam World Dig

Steam World Dig: A Fistful of Dirt isn't the game I thought I'd be playing. In my head I'd envisioned a game about finding your way through the environment and creating well structured mines. Confusingly, it doesn't seem to be the game its creators still think it is, judging by this interview with Image & Form's CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson. Mr I'm-not-even-going-to-try-to-spell-that-again seemed very interested in talking about the story which never felt like the focus of the game. You step into the shoes foot pieces of Rusty, a steambot/graverobber who arrives in the ghost town of Tumbleton to claim his uncle's mine. Exactly how steambots can have families is never expanded upon. It turns out that Joe's died in the mine. In the middle of an empty room. Which, truth be told seems a little suspicious. Since Tumbleton's entire economy seems to be built around the mine, you take over the head mining duties. As the game progresses, Rusty explores the increasingly technologically advanced layers deep in the mine, uncovering what's left of the human population as well as powerful technology that is suspiciously easy to find. While the story and setting is engaging enough I would never call it the focus of the game and it can easily be ignored. In my opinion, the real story of the game is not Rusty's character development (which there is precisely none of) but Rusty's power development. What new weapon or ability you'll unlock next and how it will change the game are the twists that keep you playing. 
The bulk of the game involves steaming, wait, no .... digging, I knew it was one of the words in the title I couldn't remember which , working your way up and down the shaft to see what stuff you can bring to the surface hang on.... Along the way you encounter what I'm calling challenge mines which either contain one of the necessary powerups or valuable resources such as orbs. Unlike the main shaft, these rooms aren't randomly generated. These chambers often challenge you to get to a certain point without fencing yourself in and a closely resemble the game I thought I'd be playing. Steam World Dig is a game about exploring, speedruns and going from a relatively weak robot to a force of destruction in the space of seven hours.
While seven hours may seem short, the game is clearly geared towards repeat plays and that seven hours is expertly paced. The time spent between obtaining each new power is just long enough to get the fun out of the previous one as well as suck your mind (bear with me on this one) so that it can later be blown when you unlock the new power. Even something as simple as the steam jump (a charge jump) feels like a revelation after working without it for so long. The one misstep is the TNT ability which I found to be of little use. I suspect it was intended to be used to kill enemies, but in practice its throwing arc was too slow and short. This brings me onto my first problem with the game, the enemies.
The games assortment of armadillos and Golllums reminded me of the enemies in classic Zelda games, which I've never been able to see the appeal of. Defeating most of them involved twatting them with the pickaxe until one of you dies. The challenge mines sometimes provide you with a clever way to defeat enemies, and later enemies can influence their environment in ways that can benefit crafty players, but in general they're a frustrating drain on your health. Of particular annoyance are the Creeper-esque enemies that show up later in the game. Once they see you, they fly toward you and explode soon after, in a way that seems hard to escape.

These enemies are quite easy to deal with using the powerups obtained as the game goes on, but these tools are constrained by a water meter that even with upgrades feels a little to small. This constraint frustratingly limits your ability to act as the force of destruction I mentioned earlier. This is odd considering that the games other attempts at resource management all work quite well.
As I've alluded a number of times earlier, but am only getting around to discussing now because of a lack of planning the game is clearly designed with repeat plays and speedruns in mind. Tutorials or long dialogue sections are never forced on you and the game tells you how long it took you at the end of the credits. Sadly, all this thought seems to have been wasted, as the only way to do a speedrun seems to be by (would you believe it) doing everything quickly, rather than approach the game from a different mindset. After my first thorough play I decided to try to prioritise dig speed over other traits and quickly dug myself into a hole (literally). If you don't take the time to collect the orbs, the game becomes very difficult very fast.
This relationship between patience and difficulty is another miner geddit? concern with the game.If you take your time, dig around enemies and make frequent returns to the surface deaths become extremely rare but the game becomes quite monotonous.
One of the game's critics is the site God is a Geek, who rightly call out the game's wall jump as being an overpowered tool that discourages careful digging in all but the challenge mines. He and others have said that they really like the graphics, and while I thought they were nice they seemed oddly blurry whenever Rusty wasn't in motion. They also rightly praise the soundtrack and 3D effect.
Now let's take a look at what other detractors said. From WiiUbrasil:

A picareta é a sua ferramenta inicial e usá-la é instantaneamente recompensador. O som do instrumento batendo na rocha e as rachaduras que vão se propagando pelo material até que ele se quebre propocionam um retorno imediato e satisfatório para a ação realizada. Da mesma forma, quando Rusty tem acesso a uma perfuratriz, o ronco do motor é fundamental para que a ação de cavar seja atrativa e se mantenha assim durante o jogo. 

I'll be honest, I don't know what that means, but I know their score of 60 is wrong.
SWD is good, the main shaft lets you see how powerful you've become, the challenge areas provide puzzles, though it must be said the former wears out its welcome at times.

8

Why would they advertise their low population?

Miister X's adventure in [redacted] Part 1

For part two click here.

Hey, it's mii, Miister X. You may remember from such roles the King, the Prince and the Princess in Streetpass quest. I don't need to tell you, I'm a pretty big name in the Miiverse. So when Ivan and the other one were putting together their plan for a games blog, they'd the right idea asking mii to be their mascot. In the negotiations they insisted I do promotional work for them and write at least one piece, because when you're both a champion tennis player and an ace pilot, people want to know what's it like in your head. That's why I wrote my book, "Miiverse-us the World". I was in a bad way financially at the time because of my skiiing injury, so I couldn't say no. I did manage to talk them into letting me do the article about the promotional junket mind. With the contract signed, the Moustache guys said they'd be in touch when they had the junket arranged. Four months later, the other one remembered that he was the mayor of a small town called [redacted] (I didn't call my town [redacted], by how I wish I did. ~Ed) which thanks to a lack of checks and balances he could pretty do what he wanted with. He arranged for mii to spend a few days there promoting the blog, culminating in a speech at the opening of the the town's lighthouse. This is that story. A story of making the best of a bad situation, of fixing problems when no one will help you and absolutely terrifying snowmen.

The other one recommended I explore the town and check out the sights on my first day there, so I had a wander around. The first thing I noticed was weeds, lots and lots of weeds.

Also, tropical fruits.

Not funny. At all

One of the sights I'd been encouraged to check out was the local museum. This proved to be another mystery. The place had a number of extremely valuable paintings (the Mona Lisa to name but one) but clearly no security, seeing as most of the exhibits had been stripped bare.

My leg had healed nicely, so for the first time in weeks I was ready to shake what my Miimaker gave me. I rolled up to club lol (or is it club 101, I couldn't tell), told them who I was and.... nothing. I was pretty mad at the Moustaches for this, how the hell am I meant to promote their duff blog if no-one in the town's heard of me. But this wouldn't be their only mistake.

A frosty reception

Disappointed, I made my way to the other one's house where I'd be staying. At one point, a talking wolf asked me to sign a petition to ban anchovies. I tried to make a "get stuffed" "stuffed anchovies" based pun. I failed and then awkwardly continued on my way. Then I encountered this...

Something about it gave me a feeling of unease,so I kept my distance.

The other one had told me that he'd hide a key under the mat. With that in mind, can you see what's wrong with this picture?

The red light district.

Finding myself without a place to sleep, I headed straight for the mayor's office to see if the other one had made other arrangements.

This bitch was no help

The mayor's assistant seemed to have some repressed rage towards her "blow in, absentee boss" (something to do with having the same uncompleted paperwork on his desk for 6 months)which she took out on me. She told me to try the campsite and then threatened to release the hounds (her cousins). Sadly, the facilities at the camp site proved to be.... lacking

Who leaves a perfectly good picnic go to waste like this. These people are animals. ANIMALS!

You know what mate? Go quack yourself!

Night at the Museum

Things looked bad. It was winter time and I needed a place to sleep. As I wandered the high street looking for shelter, an idea occurred to me. The museum was open all night, and with such lax security I could probably find a quiet exhibit or store room and sleep there. 

Sure enough one of the store rooms was unlocked.

I wasn't too keen on the totem pole, but I once slept in Sean Connerii's attic, and, well, 'nuff said.

Will Miister X get a good night sleep? Will the petition to ban anchovies be a success? Will he ever forget the things he saw in Sean Connerii's attic? And what of the sinister snow gentlemen? For the answers to these and other question tune in next week whenever this blog gets updated to find out!

QR Codes

Hey you! Do you long for style? The kind of style that says "yeah, I'm the face of a games blog that's read almost as infrequently as it's updated". The kind of style that starts to look disheveled over time because you only packed one set of clothes. The kind of style claims to resemble that of Gordon Gecko just because of the suspenders. The kind of style that isn't sure if the previous three sentences should have ended with question marks.....?

Well now you can have that style!

Waaa, blogging is hard

It's been about month since I started writing this blog and so I've been reflecting on the experience. The first thought to spring to mind is how moronic it was to start blogging in the middle of exams, the second is that it turned out to be easier than I thought, and yet at the same time, much harder. These conflicting feelings are best explained by describing my goals for the blog. I'm going to leave out the standard "lack of fulfillement" and "desire to prove I'm good at writing" reasons that I suspect are at the heart of why many start blogging and focus on my initial ideas of what the blog was going to be about. Like Batman, the Eyemoustaches origin story begins during childhood. 
When I was younger, I loved games magazines, arguably more than I liked games. Magazines such as Nintendo Official Magazine and the sadly closed down NGamer provided me with hours of informative coverage, and much more importantly genuine laughs. These magazines had the perfect mix of humour, creativity and journalism and when I was younger, the notion of becoming a games journalist did pop into my head. I never pursued, possibly because the Sunday Times already had a games review guy and I knew of no other Irish jobs in the business.
This changed when I stumbled upon the website Old Man Murray. Old Man Murray was and still is well regarded for its occasional genuinely insightful discussion of videogames but to me is first and foremost a humour site built around the topic of games. Their reviews were hilariously vicious but also inventive, such as when in the Rune review they refer to Timothy Gerritsen from the games development team as being responsible for the game's sound throughout the review, a job title they randomly conferred on him early on. For the last couple of years, I've had these illusions of becoming a comedy writer ("I gonna make the best damn sitcom about talking chess pieces the world has ever seen!" ~ Me circa 2010) When I read the line ""What if we get rich slow", I told Mark, "only we do it really fast" I saw the kind of crazy, character driven, narratives that could be achieved within the framework of a videogame website.

And so, a dream was born. I would start a gaming blog, reviewing "games that came out years ago" as a skeleton to add joke muscles and character based organs to. I would emulate the style of NGamer and perhaps one day get a job in one of its Future Publishing affiliates, this blog would be step one on my quest to NGamer Towers to slay the evil corporate overlords! If you're wondering why I use footnotes, its because of the good work NGamer did with them, natch. Alternatively, my career would follow the path of Erik Wolpaw or Chet Faliszek of Old Man Murray, whereby after a few years writing and making games about  alien psychic child predators who are also astronauts I would get a job working at Valve (my knowledge of their pre-Valve careers may not be entirely correct). There, I would write Meet the Team videos and Portal (it would probably have to be some kind of gritty Christopher Nolan-esque reboot, where GLaDOS is the head nurse of an insane asylum and the portal gun is powered by dead kittens).  Hell, by the time I joined the company, they'd probably be ready to start work on Episode 3! *reclines back in chair and prepares to bask in the warm glow of the internet gaming community for making a "Golly isn't Episode 3 taking a long time" joke* I found a post on another website that I disagreed with and I was on my way.

No sooner had I set foot on the yellow brick road to Gabe Newell's emerald city then I was blinded by the glare and fell over. The article that inspired my first one no longer seems to exist. Part of me is tempted to claim that the writer was so convinced by my arguments that he removed his in fear of shame, but I know that's not the case. You see, one of the first things I realised as I wrote the piece was that I hadn't the stomach to be genuinely vicious. This is even more clear from the apology in the footnotes of the Star Fox review. I've since come to wonder whether this is actually a bad thing, while they're very funny, some Old Man Murray reviews resort to personal attacks and insults and I have to wonder if that's taking it too far. At the moment I'm genuinely considering not publishing this for fear of invoking their wrath. A whole month's worth of hindsight has also led me to wonder if they are perhaps dependent on the shock factor. The realisation that "moustaches" probably looks wrong to an American  (as does "realisation") didn't help my confidence. The difficulty with saying mean things doesn't just come from my being a wuss however.
The games I play are another factor. As I've said elsewhere my choice of Star Fox 4D 36 as my first review may have been a mistake. The best Old Man Murray reviews and some of the better NGamer reviews were fueled by rage and spite. But as an avid reader of games magazines, most of the games I play have received positive reviews. Without any major flaws, there's nothing to get fired up about. I'm considering buying games on eshop without researching them in the hopes that it will give me some material.
Another problem is with the idea of reviewing "games that came out years ago". Put simply, I'm not sure I can remember them well enough to do a thorough review. For example, I had planned to tear into Paper Mario Sticker Star for being such a letdown compared to the rest of the series, but only a year later I can barely remember it (that sentence is arguably harshest thing ever written on this blog). I'm thinking of doing a roundup of mini reviews to get around this.

But to return to the problem I alluded to in the introduction, my major finding is that reviewing games is actually much easier than I thought, the humour is the hard part. For every post I've made, I've had a moment where I finish a paragraph and then realise that I've just given a sincere, factual opinion of the game. That's not what I set out to do, let other people who know more about what makes a game good do that, I'm supposed to be cracking wise, not talking wise. A good example of this is the Mario 3D Land review which has three lines I was really proud of.

 But it's not just the use of the 3D that impresses me about this game. I also like it's use of the third dimension! I've always found the recent two dimensional Mario games (the New series) to be kind of flat.

What I like about these lines is that they're amusing, but they also contribute to the structure of the review, they're not a Family Guy-esque humour tangent. The rest of the review's fine, but it's a little dry.
That being said, I find one part of reviews to be especially hard to write — the introduction. For some reason, the only one's I can think of seem to involve stating an obvious fact, and the sentence usually starts with the game's name (or it's doppelganger: "This game..."). This is a problem I've noticed on the games review subreddit also. The introductions I'd like to write would be like the cold opens on Breaking Bad. These openings are often strange and it can be difficult to see how it'll feed into the episode/review to come, but you know that somehow, they will.
As I mentioned when I talked about Old Man Murray, I found their use of fictional and semi fictional characters to be inspiring. I especially like how the writers often depicted each other and their lives. I had planned to write this blog as if it were the work of two people to facilitate this kind of humour. In practice however, thinking up two distinct voices to write as proved harder than I thought and that idea may have to shelved. I do intend to create some stories about Miister X, Eye Moustache's miiverse celebrity mascot.
To conclude, writing this blog has proven challenging in ways I had not foreseen.
Edit: Some appalling grammar errors

Super Mario 3D Land Review

Hey Blogger.
Listen you're great and all, but, God this is difficult, I'm not ready to settle down just yet. I still want to play the field, you know. See what's out there. For all I know posts on other blogs might be able to get hits without posting links on reddit. I'm not sure how that fits my dating analogy. The point is, remember that time I posted on Wordpress? That wasn't just a one time thing (although with Wordpress it might be, my post obviously didn't matter to Wordpress,stupid Wordpress thinking it's too good for me), no please don't cry! It's just I'm young, not ready to be tied down. I know your seeing loads of other people, and I mean, some of those guys? What do you see in them? Do you just have a thing for the really religious people? The point is, I've posted the Super Mario 3D Land review on tumblr. It's happened, you have to accept this.

Watchmen with Space Animals

5 Reasons Why Star Fox 64 Is Darker Than You Think

Star Fox 64 tells the tale of a group of anthropomorphic animals who defy the odds (and their natural desire to kill and eat each other) to defeat a monkey who threatens the galactic peace. There is some darkness on the surface of this story, Andross (the aforementioned monkey) is responsible for the supposed death of Fox's father and during the course of the story, the team encounter a pig called Pigma Iscariot, who betrayed the original Star Fox team to Andross. But if you delve deeper, you find a much darker layer to the game that is only hinted at.

1: The Cornerian Army is Dangerously Dependent on Freelancers

This one is the most obvious, in fact, one of the first lines of the game is "you're the only hope for our world". According to the Star Fox Wiki " In earlier times the original Star Fox team, led by James McCloud, protected the world as mercenaries, with the help of the Cornerian Army." Surely a team of mercenaries should help an army, not the other way around. In the first level, robots appear to knock over entire skyscrapers and it’s suggested that the whole planet of Corneria is under attack, yet there doesn't seem to be a force on the entire planet capable of fighting the invaders off. In another mission, they need Star Fox to defuse a bomb, in their own base. 

It should also be noted that the military force necessary to turn the tide of every single battle witnessed in the game consists of four Arwings one of which is piloted by Slippy Toad, another by an aging veteran. The bar is pretty low and they can't even reach that. When General Pepper implores you to "be reasonable" about going to Solar, his concern is if anything understated. Fox's decision to take an extremely risky route to Venom simply because his map allowed him to endangers not only himself, but the safety of the entire system.

2: The Army's Leadership is Shockingly Incompetent

In the prologue we're told that years ago, General Pepper sent a team to Venom to investigate strange activity. This team was promptly captured by Andross and Fox's father James sacrificed himself to help Peppy escape. To summarise, the team were sent to investigate strange activity and found it. Pepper proceeds to do absolutely nothing with this information. As a result, a few years later, Andross launches his attack. Well done General, well done. The fact that at the end of the game he still has his job is something of a miracle. Maybe his personal relationship with the only three capable pilots in the system, and Slippy, makes him too valuable to lose.

Another question raised is why Andross was on Venom in the first place. Apparently, Andross was once a scientist who wanted to help others before developing an insane thirst for power. Whether or not he genuinely wanted this power for himself or just wanted to take it away from the idiots who held it is unclear. Andross destroyed a large amount of Corneria city with an explosion resulting from one of his experiments. This proves to be the last straw for Pepper, who had been suspicious of Andross for some time. Andross' punishment is to be sent to Venom. In other words, death by exile. It later turns out that Venom wasn't quite as desolate as everyone assumed allowing Andross to build an army. Had they taken time to research the planet where they intended to send one of the most dangerous individuals in the system, the entire Lylat war could have been averted. Or they could have just thrown him in jail, which raises the question of whether or not the Cornerians are so stupid that they don't actually have jails.

Of course it's possible that the Cornerian army simply have other matters to contend to. That's because:

3: Corneria is Clearly a Military Dictatorship

Signs that Corneria is a dictatorship are everywhere, from the literal signs showing pictures of Pepper's face on Cornerian buildings (in the 3DS version at any rate) to the absence of any figure of authority other than the General. Pepper is described as having authority over science and research as well the military. Whether or not you can have authority over a military that doesn't exist is up for debate. It's just as well the camera cuts away at the end after Team Star Fox turn down Pepper’s offer to join the army, the following scene in which Pepper explains that in his Corneria, when someone is asked to sign up, they sign up, and has his goons rough up Slippy would have ended the game on a very dark note. The army are so busy keeping civilians in line that they can’t protect against outside threats. But how could the oppressed population be so large that they occupy the army's attention so fully. How could there be that many people on the planet? This leads me onto my next point.

4: This Dictatorship Oppresses a Race of Tiny People 

The buildings in the opening Corneria level visually resemble skyscrapers, but are obviously too small for Fox and Co. to enter. As mentioned earlier, these buildings are knocked over by robots and no-one shows any concern. In fact, apart from a quick remark by Falco, "this is horrible", the death and destruction doesn't seem to have any effect on the team, hell, it's entirely possible that Falco was simply talking about the number of enemy ships the team would have to deal with. Firing at buildings by mistake goes unpunished. I ask you, what sort of monsters could cause and witness so much damage to skyscrapers and their inhabitants and be unaffected? Who could do that?

People/animals who have grown up in a culture where the tiny people are treated as second class citizens, that's who!

Pictured: Anti-establishment protest posters from Corneria

Maybe this is why they couldn't just execute Andross on Corneria, they sent him to Venom to die after all, so killing him was obviously the goal. They had to give the illusion that they were exiling him, removing him as a threat, but without infringing on his rights as a "big person".

Team Star Fox are obviously a part of this horrible culture that permits them to use smart bombs in a highly populated area, it is the norm for them. But that is not the only troubling thing about the team.

5: Team Star Fox are Deeply Troubled Individuals

Behind the jovial (perhaps too jovial?) "do a barrel role", "get this guy off of me" banter something is rotten at the core of this team. We'll go through the more subtle examples in a moment, but I'll start with the most obvious sign of the rot. The team member who most clearly demonstrates the messed up dynamic of the team, the weakest link, the one most likely to get his team killed. Most of you probably can guess who I'm talking about.

The ol' bait and switch. Classic.

Falco is the team's weakest link because he doesn't know how to be in a team. He's a lone (Star) Wolf forced into working with others. His bad attitude and lack of respect for authority threatens the future of the team at every moment. If you rescue him he'll sometimes say "oh great I've been saved by Fox" in a sarcastic tone which suggests some kind of death wish. Can someone like that be trusted? Falco is too unstable to be a part of the only competent military team in the Lylat system.

Slippy is the second biggest problem with the team, but at least he thinks about the team. His team-mates, and whether or not he's safely within their range of vision are constantly on his mind. But Slippy shouldn't be in combat, he's the team's engineer and its weakest pilot, shouldn't he be, oh I don't know, working on a G-diffuser that won't malfunction after running for a few minutes? That Peppy in particular, who has lost comrades before, allows Slippy to join the fight suggests he and the rest of the team are very callous individuals. On the subject of Peppy, his constant comparisons between Fox and his father have an air of manipulation about them. These arguments about how the team willingly endanger Slippy would be mere speculation were it not for the existence of ROB 64.

As a robot, ROB 64 would be well suited to combat, but instead controls the great Fox, despite the fact that as the mechanic, Slippy could do the most good if stationed in the base with quick access to the repair bay. There must be a reason that ROB is kept safe from harm. The members of Star Fox must be replaced if and when they die, because due to military incompetence, this is the only way for the galaxy to be kept safe. The team needs to be structured in such a way that in the event that all the Arwings are destroyed in combat, the member stationed on the Great Fox, i.e. the one most likely to survive can fulfill this task of rebuilding the team. The death of your colleagues and destruction caused by the galaxy's most disturbing individuals would affect even the relatively cold and detached members of Star Fox after a while. But not ROB 64. ROB 64's cold robotic nature reflects the lack of empathy or remorse that piloting the Great Fox and convincing others to join the team, knowing they will die, entails. When Fox is  barrel rolling with the angels, ROB 64 will passively note a vacancy in the team roster and make plans to seek out another adrenaline junkie to take his place.

The team are obviously very damaged individuals, because that is the only type of person who could do what they do, yet they are lauded as heroes across the galaxy. This brings me to my final question, is Star Fox 64 basically Watchmen with space animals?

Or it could just be that Star Fox 64 is a 3D scrolling shooter whose trope heavy plot is there purely for entertainment value, but where's the overly analytical fun in that?

Still haven't scratched the procrastination itch? Then why not read my Star Fox 64 3D review (comes with a free Kid Icarus Uprising review), Super Mario 3D Land review or Steam World Dig review?

Star Fox 64 3D Review (sort of)

In which Eye Moustaches writes a glowing Kid Icarus: Uprising review as he tries to write a Star Fox review

*You don't have to read the footnotes, they're mostly throwaway jokes*

Nostalgia is an odd thing. When others play (deep breath) Star Fox 64 3D I suspect it fills them with fond memories of Lylat Wars¹. However when I play Star Fox 3D 64, I feel nostalgic for a game that at the time of this game's release hadn't even come out yet; Kid Icarus Uprising. This is not a comparison that works well for Star Fox 34 6D². Put simply, Pit knocks Fox's biscuits out, and no doubt yells "yayayaya" annoyingly as he does it.

But before we go into the negative, there is one key area in which Kid Icarus Uprising could learn a thing or two from Star Fox 63 4D: storytelling and voice acting. When Jaz Adams set about recording the now immortal line "Can't let you do that Star Fox" delivered by Wolf O'Donnell (the sort of multi-layered villain Shakespeare wishes he could create³) the preparation he had done was evident in his performance. What couldn't Wolf let Star Fox do? What were his reasons? These were clearly questions he'd grappled with extensively. Equally, his delivery of the under-rated line "what the heck" was so real, one might almost believe that Mr. Adams himself had witnessed his adversary figure out how to do a somersault and deploy it at a randomly timed moment on the battlefield. When Edge magazine writes an article about video games as a storytelling medium, again, they would be remiss if they did not mention this game. The game's story of a talking Fox's battle against his father's killer ⁴is truly a classic⁵.

Every morning, when Nolan North wakes up, the realisation that he is not this man causes him to tear up

In addition, Star Fox 46 D3's levels are quite short, making them better suited to handheld gaming. The game is pleasant to look at, although when Slippy says "I don't see the enemy fleet" that may have less to do with the enemy's deployment of genius tactic of "sneaking up behind them" and more do with a draw distance the length of Fox's nose. And with that I'm clearly through being positive.

It's difficult to convey the way that enemy ships suddenly pop up into view when you get into range with only one picture, so instead here's a picture of Magnitude

The difference that stands out clearest to me is the difference in responsiveness. Kid Icarus throws lasers, eggplants and more lasers at you at a hectic pace, but provides you with the tools you need to respond promptly to these threats. In the aerial sections in particular, Pit instantly goes where you need him to go. Stax For 3D 64 feels slow and sluggish, almost as if Fox is slightly drunk as he pilots the Arwing. Given how psychologically damaged most of the team are this wouldn't be all that surprising.

Some people will tell you that you need photoshop to do this kind of work but they're just shysters looking for a quick buck

Having aiming and movement mapped to the same analogue stick seems like a bad choice. The barrel role move in particular seems to require too much time to be of any use in combat. Whether or not you'll hit objects seems hard to determine, this is especially noticeable in the sun level, where giant waves of... sun... stuff rise up and block out the way forward, leaving you no choice but to brake and just hope. 
This sense of disconnect is most noticeable during the all-range mode battles against Star Wolf. Whether or not you can find them, let alone hit them seems to be based on luck, so most of your time in these sections is spent drifting through the sky or making painfully slow 90 degree turns. I realise that making such turns is difficult with real aircraft, but we're talking about ships that have brakes so realism is clearly not the order of the day. Also: TALKING ANIMALS.

Having to rapidly press A to fire, while it may be the only way, is frustrating.

 Finally, the Landmaster sections are a frustrating experience that really take the fun out of repeat playthroughs. All the complaints about sluggishness are amplified ten-fold when Fox inexplicably decides that in this mission, he won't use his Arwing. The ghost of Kid Icarus yet to come, with its enjoyable ground sections, is especially hard on the Landmaster.

In conclusion, Kid Icarus Uprising is an excellent game, Star Fox D3 46 is enjoyable, but not in the same league.

Score: 7/10


1: Or Star Fox 64 for those of you who aren't required by law to carry a supply of helium on your person. Third ever blog post and I'm already making in-jokes. This bodes well...
2: The sixth dimension denotes the variable insincerity. It describes the insincerity of an inanimate object and is conveyed by mathematicians by piling their pencils and other materials on top of their graph of computer screen.
3: That should probably say wished...
4: The Star Fox wiki describes Andross as a scientist who specialises in bio-technology and space warps, showing a poor understanding of the word specialise. Even from my limited knowledge of biotechnology, it's pretty clear that plasmids and lac operons have very little to do with "space warps". There's no way someone could specialise in these two completely unrelated fields unless "space warp" technology is powered by ethanol and recombinant insulin
5: Incidentally, that paragraph would have an insincerity value of 9, denoted by arranging three biros in a triangle.Cheap jokes aside, the story of Stad Fox 64 3r doesn't take it self too seriously and the actor's performances have a fun, cheesy appeal.