It’s time to take a look at the little Star Fox special that Nintendo came out with to promote the new game. Unfortunately, the game was rather underwhelming, but the special is fairly good. It’s short so there is only time for one real battle, but this was more of a promo than anything else. It’s only around 15 minutes so there is naturally not much of an opportunity for it to drag on or have any real negatives while its potential is also limited as well. It’s a double edged blade in the end.
The Star Fox team must try to protect Corneria from the invaders or all hope will be lost. Luckily Fox is here and when he is around the group knows that everything will ultimately be okay. Unfortunately, the government is keeping secrets from Fox. Gee, what else is new right? He’s saving their lives on a daily basis and that’s how he is repaid. The secret is explained in the game and you have to wonder why it was kept a secret the whole time. Naturally, the special ends abruptly since you are meant to play the game to see how it all unfolds.
The animation looks fairly sharp, but unfortunately that only really applies to the backgrounds and lasers. The actual characters use very odd designs that really don’t work very well. They clash with the rest of the effects on screen. Maybe the animation company was experimenting with a new animation strategy, but I can safely say that it did not work. Sometimes going for something new and original is simply not the smartest strategy. Sometimes you just need to play it safe.
There’s not a whole lot more to discuss from this advertisement. There is a “This villain’s too cool!!!” moment that the special tries to sell you, but it will all depend on whether or not you can take the guy seriously. The villains are mostly comic relief so it’s safe to say that you won’t find them to be all that intimidating at this point. Slippy’s new voice actor isn’t quite as epic as the old one, but he still tries his best. At least he is likable unlike the old pal from Fox’s dad’s crew. Fox and Falco are easily the two best members of the crew even if there isn’t a whole lot of differences in their personalities. That will come with time I suppose. When you get down to the nitty gritty of it all, this special has all of the aspects that you want in a short. It has a nice battle scene and a decent background theme with no really bad characters. I definitely give it a pass and would recommend checking it out. After all, it’s not very often that Nintendo steps into the animated world. I still long await the day that we get a proper Super Smash Bros TV show or movie. That could have the potential to be one of the all time greats after all. Well, until then I suppose!
Overall 7/10
I’m still working on completing the PS4 Knack game, but in the meantime I decided to go ahead and try out the mobile version. This little app game allows you to gather pieces for the gadgets in the PS4 game so you can send them along and save yourself some time…in theory. This is helpful since the gem system in the PS4 game is rather tedious. You only get one part per treasure chest and you can only find them in story mode. Even Level Select doesn’t have them. It’s impossible to get all of the pieces in one playthrough and you could end up playing the game over several times without getting everything. That’s essentially why this game was made. If you play it long enough, you can eliminate around 80% of the grind. It’s a great concept and unlike other free to play games, there is no waiting period to tempt you into buying stuff. It actually plays out like a real game and has a ton of replay value. I could play it for hours easily since it’s like Pokemon Shuffle, but without the “Play 10 times and then wait an hour” rule. Unfortunately, no free game can be perfect at this rate as this one runs into some rather large issues.
Before I get into that, I’ll explain the gameplay. It’s your average mix and match title. You have to connect 3 or more gems of a certain color to get points. You rinse and repeat until you clear the level. You have to work fast or you’ll lose and you won’t keep any of the gems. Also, once you’ve charged enough energy to fill up 3 Sun Stones, you can use a super attack that destroys all of the gems of a certain color. (You choose the color) The game doesn’t tell you this so it’s a good heads up although you’d eventually find out about it while playing the game. The Stones charge very rapidly so you’ll be tempted to give them a whirl at some point. Each level has 3 phases and once you’ve beaten them all you move on to the next round. I believe that there are around 6 chapters so it is a fairly short game. I beat it in 2-3 hours I’d say.
After you beat the game, you unlock Unlimited Mode where you keep on earning points until you lose. It’s great for racking them up as I actually got over 999999 during one run, but I teamed up with my Mom to get that. It’d be incredibly hard to do that on your own. To earn a piece for the PS4 game, you only need 20000 at first, but eventually it’ll get to be 300000 or more. To get around that, you can delete the app and then reinstall it. You’ll keep your parts, but the requirement for a piece will go back down to the 20000. The only downside is that you’ll lose unlimited mode until you re unlock it, but I’d say that it’s definitely worth it. After all, Unlimited Mode’s one drawback is that it has a lot of load times every minute, which can get very annoying after a while.
This sounds like a positive review right? The gameplay is a blast and it’s why I look up to Free to Play games a little. The gameplay is always simple, but addictive. The problem is that this is all nullified by the game’s main problem, which literally breaks the game and destroys the score. It is simply a broken game. The app will constantly crash after almost every level and forget about looking at your pieces. Just clicking on any one of them will crash the game and a lot of times this means that the app won’t send them to the PS4 game…defeating the entire purpose. It will also crash during a game at times so you’ll lose whatever gems you may have just acquired. This would be fine if it was once in a while, but it’s constant. The game crashed on me dozens of times. I’m happy to say that I still got my time’s worth as I got around 2 dozen pieces, which has helped me quite a bit, but after a while it is simply not worth it. I don’t understand how this game can be so broken. Maybe it’s just a mobile problem. I read somewhere that IOS games that were ported to mobile are typically not very good. It explains why Madden Mobile had the same problem, albeit it was to a far lesser extent.
That’s really the only negative that I’ve got, but it’s a doozy. The most annoying part is naturally the fact that the crashing will prevent you from transporting your pieces half of the time. It’s also a waste of time to have to constantly open the app once again after it crashes. There is really no excuse for having such a broken product on the market and I’m certainly glad that it is free. It may look very useful on the outside, but it will ultimately start to get on your nerves by the end. At least the graphics are fairly good. The game is nice and bright. There is a lot of recycled footage of course, but it seems like some effort was put into this section. The soundtrack is basically nonexistent though.
Overall, I’d recommend taking a pass on this game. It’s simply not worth the time and patience that the game crashing will cost you. The gameplay is excellent and would have guaranteed the title a 7, but I can’t give it anything above a 5 since it is completely broken and glitched. I highly doubt that any patch will be coming to fix this issue so the game will likely stay in this state forever. If you want to play a free to play title, you’re better off with Pokemon Shuffle or Madden Mobile. Whatever you do, just don’t buy Knack’s Quest unless you really need the parts. If you are in that situation, then just play it for a little to get the quick parts and then get out of there!
Overall 4/10
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