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[Guiber]

Hi everyone

Last night I dusted off my Gamecube to "study" F-Zero and started a new game. It's been ages since last time and despite the definition, I've got to say that i was really impressed by how it looks and feels nowadays.

Well, I started a Grand Prix in Normal difficulty to pretty soon realize that either I really suck or the game punishes way too hard every player's mistake. I mean, c'mon, one thing is challenge the player and a different one make him start over because he took wrong a curve. "Ok, maybe I should try Novice difficulty". But as soon as i started "Emerald Cup" I realized that it really wasn't a difficult issue "per se". I think it's level design's fault.

I've noticed that every "sudden death point" is near the end but not near enough to my taste. I think after three laps, sweating and with almost a nervous breakdown, punishing the player THAT hard makes the experience very frustating and not replayable.

What do you think, guys?

PD: Excuse my english, I'm spanish :$ I know there's no excuse but hey, I'm on it.

[gimymblert]

Made by sega ... ... wait didn't these guy have the same problem with modern sonic ?

[Bree]

It was made specifically by Sony's Amusement Visions team, which also made the deceptively difficult Super Monkey Ball series. And no, it is not your fault, F-Zero GX is a stupidly hard game. I couldn't even get past the first damn mission in the Story mode.

[static]

I loved the game for the very reasons you don't seem to like it. The tension is so intense in that game!

The first lap is just a warmup, after that the real race begins. You have to use your boost effectively, balancing the risk to your ship with the need to use up all your boost before the next recharge strip. The end of the race is the most intense, because every other ship will use the rest of their boost all at once. I've rarely felt such tension as when I'm pressing the boost button as fast as I can only to get struck by another boosting racer, sending my charred wreckage of a ship bouncing towards the finish line to. Just. Barely. Make 1st place!

It's also worth mentioning there's no cheating AI in the game. While there are a handful of racers that generally do well, it's rare that they'll do well in every race in a prix. I've completed prix's (what's the plural for prix anyway?) in the game without breaking into the top 5 in any race, but still won overall. Other games teach you that <1st is losing (I'm looking at you Mario Kart), but it's rare that you'll get 1st in every race in a prix since few racers are well rounded enough to accomplish that.

The game is pretty masocore and has extremely sensitive controls (there's even a section in the options to fine-tune your particular controller) but like other masocore games, there's so much joy in succeeding. I beat all five grand prix and story mode on the hardest difficulty, one of my favorite gaming accomplishments ever. Basically, it's good but it does take practice, so it's not everybody's thing.

Protip: Try taking out racers next to you in the beginning of a race. Since they're probably ranked close to you, if you hit them successfully they'll earn 0 points for the race, effectively taking them out of the running overall. It feels damn good when you knock somebody out of first this way.

[rek]

F0GX was a rarity at the time – a Nintendo franchise game that didn't hold your hand. It has a steep learning curve (often in the form of an actual curve in the track) and some really difficult levels, but it is winnable.

I loved building my own ship too, one that suits my style of racing (which admittedly doesn't suit every level).

[Bree]

I didn't mind the races, those felt tough but fair like you said. I just mean the Story Mode events, like the cliffside race against Goro. It's only the second event in, but it was insanely hard- maybe I could handle it better now, but dear lord steep doesn't even begin to describe it.

[s0]

f-zero gx is the best f-zero gam and the APOTHEOSIS of the futurstic flying car racing game subgenre.  

also i cant even fucking tell whats going on half of the time when i play it. i've never really tried the story mode because story modes in racing games tend to suck.

[SundownKid]

I beat the entire story mode of F-Zero GX and you're right, it's incredibly, ridiculously difficult. It took me many, many tries to beat the last missions. The final one has no guardrail, nothing, nada, you fall off, you lose instantly. The actual story makes no sense, but whatever. There are also additional challenges to get the extra vehicles, some of which are ludicrous without doing things like "snaking". The whole game is quite difficult, but that's what makes it interesting.

[Xion]

I got completely stuck on the third story level, that shit was so impossible.

[copernicus]

I do believe F-Zero GX could have improved design.  But those flaws are present in many video games.  It's really a style I refer to as "Death Gaming."  In death gaming when a player makes an error they die and have to perform the task again.  Eventually they can perform the task correctly and proceed.  It might be frustrating, but it is a way of training accuracy.  If you don't want to die when you fall off the track you can go play Wipeout.

[XRA]

"DEATH GAMING" I like that 

[Guiber]

Its not about not wanting to die. It's a matter of how long is the task and the will of the player to repeat it. In Super Meat Boy if you die, you gotta start over, but it's not frustrating because the balance between difficulty and length of the level let you try again and again.

  In F-Zero, after two really hard tracks(not laps)completed, if you fail in the third, taking wrong a single curve, you loose everything, the entire Grand Prix. That's simply not fair. For me it's not the best way to provoke tension or at least an "enjoyable tension".

[DavidCaruso]

I fucking loved this game. Wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the best (and fastest) racing games ever. I don't see anything wrong with forcing the player to do a bit of pattern memorization; it's something that's present in pretty much every half-decent action game to a degree, and given the speed of the game it would be impossible to avoid completely without making the races boring. In a great game you actually want to have to replay levels instead of just breezing past them in a few tries anyway, in order to try many different strategies and learn the game's system more. Speed should be a reward, not something that you can just get handed without any effort. So yeah, I pretty much agree with static on this one, except I don't think the game is "masocore" by any means; it's very manageable and even fair. It's just a matter of practice.

Also Super Meat Boy doesn't evoke an enjoyable tension, it evokes almost no tension at all. Especially compared to the games it imitates and namedrops in cutscenes. I really hope it doesn't become some sort of holy grail for "challenging" level design amongst the game development community, I see it mentioned a lot in threads about challenge and fairness lately.

[gimymblert]

Fzero X had superior driving model and tracks design 

[Ooops]

I couldn't even get past the first damn mission in the Story mode.

As many reviews correctly pointed out at the time, unlike in most games, story mode was NOT the place to start. Grand prix on easy/moderate difficulty level was much more approachable.

[Fallsburg]

The story mode is probably one of the hardest things that I have ever played, but the standard races are probably the best that I have ever encountered. 

[s0]

Fzero X had superior driving model and tracks design  

what

fzx is the worst f-zero and the tracks were boring as fuck.

at least from what i remember. i was a huge fan of the original snes fz and x was a sore disappointment at the time.

[gimymblert]

You must be kidding

I admit I had to let the track grow on me (my cousin help me because it was the only Fzero he played at that time and had blank state approach to learn the intricacies) because it was too much of a departure from Fzero Snes (no more bounce abuse, I expected more fidelity not a rethought of the concept) but once you understand the philosophy (fully 3D racing, ie up/down/roll are important THREAT to negotiate too, unlike GX where tube are hardly a threat anymore) it put at shame many racing game. FGX feel flat against it and mostly rely on cheap difficulty trick.

But the philosophy is mostly deport to opponent more than the track themselves. My conclusion is that all Fzero (minus gba one I didn't play in depth but they have their quirk too) focus on a different aspect of driving so it's not objectively "better" than others but different. All Fzero have very dedicated fans with driving tips for each game that span many pages.

I do prefer X and snes more ...

[Headless Man]

Fzero X had superior driving model and tracks design  

what

fzx is the worst f-zero and the tracks were boring as fuck.

at least from what i remember. i was a huge fan of the original snes fz and x was a sore disappointment at the time.

GX is just X with worse music, better graphics and a messed-up physics engine that allows you to essentially break the game, rendering much of much-mythologised skill requirement pointless.  GX follows the X template very closely, but gets some critical stuff wrong.  Way to expose yourself as a charlatan, tsk tsk.

[s0]

i was 10 the last time i played f zero x