So You think you have what it takes to master the greatest racing game of all time? Well I hope you’re ready for the most adrenaline pumping, extreme intensity of F-Zero GX, the game that makes Forza fans cry themselves to sleep at night because they can’t beat Chapter 7 on normal difficulty, the game where the AI racers risk their lives to murder you and cause mayhem on the most dangerous race courses mankind has ever seen. In F-Zero there is only one rule, cross the finish line. It doesn’t matter if your ship is in pieces or if you had to kill every single racer on the track to get there, if you are the first across the line then you will win, no questions asked. In F-Zero GX, there are no disqualifications, no penalties and in some cases no railings which means that if you drive too fast you might find yourself falling off the track to your death. This is hardcore racing people, the ECW of racing games and I mean that in ever sense of the word because that is exactly what it is.
F-Zero is like sports entertainment and it is important to understand this before getting into the game. Much like in professional wrestling, every single character is a caricature. Not only does every character have their own theme song, they also have a backstory detailing who they are and their reasons for entering the F-Zero Grand Prix. There are also interviews for each racer for those fortunate enough to actually finish a grand prix which is similar to that of a wrestling promo. All of this serves to bring the game’s universe to life which is a far cry from the usual empty feeling racing game universes that many other games have which makes it all the more compelling by comparison. Everything in this game is exaggerated to the point that it is hilariously cheesy to the point that it’s hard to take anything in this game seriously but once the racing starts, it’s serious business, one mistake and you are dead. Put simply if you’ve ever played Shinji Mikami’s God Hand then you will feel right at home with F-Zero GX because it is the racing game equivalent of that game in the sense that it is goofy as all hell but will give you an ass kicking you’ll never forget.
You can even ask for autographs
Unlike God Hand however, F-Zero GX has better controls which is why F-Zero GX is my second favourite game of all time and God Hand isn’t. Navigating through tight corners may appear to be intimidating at first but by pressing the L and R buttons simultaneously, you can drift around them with ease. Want to straighten your machine out? That’s simple, just press either the L or R button to slide into position with greater accuracy at the cost of speed. These simple maneuvers are so effective that you will rarely ever use the brakes, making F-Zero GX surprisingly accessible for just about anyone but if you think that starting with the game’s standard difficulty is going to be a breeze, then you’re in for a shock. F-Zero GX requires you to learn the tracks and learn how your machine works. Every machine is a learning experience as they all feel very different from one another. Some machines slide more accurately than others, some machines struggle to drift until they reach a high enough speed to do so, others slide very loosely, making it harder to line them up with the track. This is where the biggest appeal of this game comes into play in terms of mastery. You might be an expert at driving the Blue Falcon, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to handle the Mad Wolf. So if you decide to try out a new machine on expert difficulty, you might find yourself struggling more than usual. Mastery over your machine is crucial if you want to survive the higher difficulty levels and some machines are better than others, so you will want to experiment with each machine to find out which one is right for you.
Thankfully the game offers a practice mode to test out your vehicle on either a free run or an exhibition race. In practice mode, you start out with boost power so you can immediately test the speed potential of your machine as well as how well it handles before you head into the grand prix. I highly recommend that everyone who is new to this game starts on novice class regardless of how good you are at racing games because doing so will not only teach you the tracks but it also unlocks a set of parts for you to use in the garage mode which can be used to make one of the best machines in the game. Eventually you will reach a point where novice difficulty isn’t challenging enough. Once you try the higher difficulties, you can never go back to the lower ones. It just doesn’t feel the same because the thrill of achieving those close victories is no longer there on the lower ones. This is where the AI starts to become more aggressive and cutthroat so hanging around the other racers for too long will be detrimental. It is important to get as far away from the crowd as possible, ideally ahead of them as being near them puts you at risk of being rammed which can damage your machine. Some of you might be tempted to give the AI a taste of their own medicine by performing a slide attack which can be performed by pressing the X button and either left or right to attack whatever is in that direction. A successful slide attack will kill an opponent instantly but at such high speeds it can be difficult to achieve these kills, however it is extremely satisfying when you kill an opponent during the boost phase. Getting a total of 5 kills will net you an extra life which makes all the difference when racing on higher difficulties where you only have 1 life for a total of 5 races in a row.
There are numerous tracks to race on and they each offer a unique challenge. While the first two tracks in ruby cup are very wide and allow for continuous boosting, Surface slide is a little more complicated as you don’t have as many pit strips, making boost management more important than it is on the previous two tracks. Some tracks take place on pipes and require you to slide your vehicle into boost pads and stay inward for as much as possible, as well as trying to stay grounded to prevent speed loss. These tracks help to keep the racing experience fresh and can be quite tricky depending on what machine you use. Later on in the game you will encounter more challenging tracks that have sections without guard rails where you need to drive really carefully to avoid falling off and dying, whilst maintaining a strong position in the race. The feeling of intensity of racing on these tracks is unlike any other. A single mistake can cost you the race but you have to keep boosting to keep ahead of the crowd. It’s a tricky balancing act that is challenging in itself but it feels so rewarding to pull it off. Of course this makes the later cups a nightmare on higher difficulties where lives are a lot harder to come by as you’ll find yourself falling to your death more often than actually losing a race. You really need to be careful on these tracks or you could cost yourself the entire grand prix if you lose all of your lives. The sense of speed and danger brought about by the game’s overwhelming difficulty will keep your eyes glued to the screen for hours.
Those of you thinking that you’re tough enough to challenge store mode will be in for a nasty surprise, story mode will destroy you, no one is ready for story mode in F-Zero GX. Some would be led to believe that a mode titled “story” would be the easiest part but that couldn’t be any more further from the truth, if you want to experience the full story of F-Zero GX, you have to be good, no, you have to be better than good. You have to be able to beat all the first 3 grand prix modes on at least Expert difficulty if you hope to stand a chance in story mode since it’s relentless. The good news is that if you fail a mission, you can simply retry it from scratch so you don’t have to worry about losing a ton of progress. The thing is, making any progress in story mode is difficult. The first mission seems straightforward enough, just win the race and collect the capsules and it is… on Normal difficulty. What if I told you that Chapter 1 is actually the hardest mission in the entire game on Very Hard mode? Because it is. The missions start getting considerably more challenging in Chapter 2 and onwards, you will fail over and over again until you lose your sanity. The moment you win though, you won’t see it comming, it will come when you least expect it. Story mode is the ultimate test of patience in an arcade racing game.
The story itself is goofy as all hell and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Thankfully it’s very short and is very simple. You play the role of Captain Falcon during the events leading up to and including the F-Zero Grand Prix. The cutscenes are very well made and as goofy as they are, they really do a great job at bringing the F-Zero universe to life, making it feel so much greater than your average racing game. It’s very hard to take the bad guys seriously but Captain Falcon is such a badass throughout that it balances out the goofiness. Put simply Captain Falcon is surrounded by a bunch of idiots, A bunch of idiots that will kick your ass… repeatedly. The ending is not something you would expect but it is very satisfying nonetheless. Overall it is best summarized as being the greatest fast and furious parody of all time, because it is.
Visually speaking, the game is absolutely stunning though considering the fast paced nature of the game, it kinda has to be since you don’t have time to sit back and take in all the gorgeous track aesthetics when you’re racing at high speeds. The gigantic whale bursting out of the sand in Sand Ocean and the huge ass R.O.B in Port Town are great examples of how the game’s aesthetics are striking enough to be noticeable. What’s crazy is that on tracks like Mute City where you’re surrounded by skyscrapers around the track, if you fall off the track you’ll see the entire cityscape down below, which makes you wonder why these huge skyscrapers are in the sky anyways. How the hell did the Mute City council afford to build all of this stuff and what practical reason does a sky city even serve? Oh wait I forgot this is F-Zero GX, logic doesn’t matter in a game where you can drift around corners at 1000 km/h. The thing is, if none of this stuff was there, the tracks would feel kinda bland, a bit like how F-Zero X had a lot of really bland looking environments, even for a Nintendo 64 game. F-Zero GX alleviates this problem and then some.
The soundtrack is equally as impressive as it does a fantastic job at building up the adrenaline that gets players in the zone. While F-Zero X opted for a purely metal soundtrack, the soundtrack of F-Zero GX is more of a mixture of techno and rock, leaning closer to the techno side of things. Now I know that a lot of people would see this as a downgrade but honestly I’d argue that F-Zero GX’s soundtrack is just as good if not better than the one in F-Zero X, however I am aware that I am biased for thinking this because I enjoy both techno and metal equally and the techno music in F-Zero GX synchronizes to the fast paced nature of the game so damn well. What makes F-Zero GX’s soundtrack even better is that the music changes the moment you reach the final lap which helps to build up the intensity for that final stretch of the race and I absolutely adore this. Of course there is a bit of metal music to be found in F-Zero GX too but there is considerably less of it than there was in X. The cover tracks you can unlock for Mute City and Big Blue are fantastic metal tracks in their own right but the same can be said for their techno counterparts. Plus you can’t forget the theme songs for each character, some of which are also metal as well which is also fantastic. Ultimately I can safely say that regardless of your biases towards music, F-Zero GX’s soundtrack is absolutely fantastic and does its job exceedingly well.
Those looking to relax after all the intense racing may find some appeal in the game’s garage mode, which not only allows you to apply custom emblems made in the game’s emblem creator onto any machine in the game, but it also lets you create a machine from scratch using a combination of parts. This adds a layer of personalization to the experience that I can’t help but appreciate as I love being able to make stuff in games and it’s rare for a Nintendo branded racing game to allow for such options, so it kinda took me by surprise to see this feature in the game. Now if you played the expansion kit of F-Zero X then you may have experienced this feature before already but many of us didn’t and it’s really cool to see it return. I love how the music in the garage mode is such a harsh contrast to the rest of the game’s music as it’s so calming and relaxing to the point that you forget that you’re playing the most adrenaline pumping videogame ever made.
Before I played F-Zero GX, I didn’t really think much of it, I came in expecting a generic arcade racing game that just happened to feature a character from Super Smash Bros, I didn’t expect it to be one of the greatest games ever made. There’s so much to this game that it greatly exceeded my expectations to the point that I was absolutely blown away. So many people compare this game to games like Wipeout and the Fast Racing series but honestly those games are nothing like F-Zero GX, in fact those are the games I expected F-Zero GX to be because that’s exactly what they are, just another generic arcade racing game that will hold my attention for about 5 minutes then I’m bored. F-Zero GX is so much more than any of those games ever will be and I do not think enough people truly understand this. Everything you could possibly want in a futuristic racing game is here, to the point that I feel the game has already perfected what the series set out to do. What more could you add to the F-Zero experience that isn’t already there? Sure A lot of people would argue that online functionality would be great but honestly I think having 30 people simultaneously snaking and shift boosting in races wouldn’t be fun to deal with because you know for a fact that’s what it would devolve into. I don’t consider F-Zero GX to be a multiplayer focused experience in the slightest, it’s more of a challenging single player experience. Sure there are tons of gimmicks and other features you could add to the game but let’s be honest here, are any of these things even necessary? To tell you the truth, all I want is more of the same and to me, that’s a sign that F-Zero GX is truly the swan song of the series, because it did exactly what it set out to do, perfect the futuristic racing formula.
With all of this is mind, F-Zero GX is nothing short of a masterpiece that should be cherished by every gamer out there, though if you’re the type of person who gets easily frustrated then perhaps this game isn’t for you because it is ruthlessly difficult but very rewarding. In a way its unforgiving difficulty truly is its only flaw and to fix it would be detrimental to the experience as a whole since the whole game is build around it. Like I said though, there is a novice class difficulty that I think everyone should start with and honestly it is considerably more forgiving than the other difficulties, so if you’re on the fence I’d at least suggest giving it a go just to experience the thrills that F-Zero GX has to offer.
Story/Plot: Absolutely Ridiculous (in a good way)
Visuals: Excellent
Gameplay: Masterful
Music: Excellent
Lifespan: Varies (Story is Quite Short, Grand Prix mode is Decent Length)
Difficulty: Hard (you will die a lot… yes I said, die not lose the race, you’ll find out when you play it)
Would You Replay? Hell fucking yes!
Overall: Masterpiece
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