F-Zero Maximum Velocity ReviewAh F-Zero, you always seem to amaze me. The aspect of having no power-ups yet having hazards and helpful stuff on the track gives victory to the skilled, and the skilled alone. You can't be unlucky with a blue shell, nor can you hope for mushrooms to win you the race. If you lose, then that is because of you, not because of the controls or the unfairness of it or how the CPUs work, it's just you need to get better, which makes the F-Zero games so great. It's basically the racing equivalent of Contra. That is normally the case, however, I have a bone to pick with this game.
The story takes place 25 years after F-Zero X. Then something about the market not getting supplies due to space pirates or something ike that. The story doesn't seem that good, and doesn't change how you look at the game, so it's almost irrelevant. You can choose between three spaces, and can enter the name of your choice. Then you can either enter the Grand Prix, do some training, or verse other who have the game (or don't, as is supports a one pak vs. mode). Later, you can unlock the Championships circuit, which is just there for time trail purposes. You can choice between four hover cars to begin with: The Hot Violet, The Fire Ball, the J. B. Crystal, and the Wind Walker. I decided to do some training first of all, and found that the only really good one was J.B Crystal due to excellent steering. The rest were a little too slippery.
You can choose from three different classes, Pawn, Knight and Bishop. You can unlock a fourth called Queen later. Each has a difficulty setter, Beginner, Standard, and Expert, with Master unlocking after clearing Expert of that class. As you race, you fill find that there are purple arrows that will speed you up, dirt that will slow you down (not sure how that works when the car is hovering...), and some green rack that will fill your power bar. If you get hit, your power bar decreases, if you hit the sides, it decreases, if it decreases all the way, you explode and you lose the race, having to start from the beginning of that race again.
A nice touch - although really annoying on the last lap if it were to happen - is that when your power bar reaches a certain point, your car will malfunction. The more damage done to it, the slower it'll run, so it's important to keep it green if you can. There are other hazards such as jumps (missing them will kill you) spinney things that turn you around during a race, ice (again, how does that make a hover car slippery?), and conveyer belts. After every lap, you get a boost. By holding down the L and R button, you can preform this boost. You can hold up to three at a time, and there are five laps to a race. The boost duration and speed depends on the car.
As I race, however, I find that even having the car with the best handling that I had at the time, even with banking, could not get past all corners, and I have to brake and bank in-order to make the turn without getting hit by the wall, yet I see other cars make the turn sharper and faster than I. "That is unfair! How is that possible?" I asked myself. I tried banking, but that was too slippery, and I thought that banking was nearly useless. I found myself playing pinball with that walls, which sounds amusing, but is probably one of the most frustrating things to happen in a racing game.
So I decided to look on the internet for some advice, and I found something that will make you 200% better at the game, and it's really simple. All you have to do is tap the acceleration button as you turn, and you'll turn far better than as you would when you held the acceleration button down. Works really well without banking. Apply this to banking and BAM! The more you tab the acceleration button, the sharper the corner you can cut, to a certain extent, of course.
Which reminds me, this game probably has the most different types of controls it has to offer. There are six different types of controls. Count them, six! Each changing where you can activate the boost, or what breaks and accelerates. It's almost ridicules. You might as well have custom controls. The graphics are really quite something, due to the high speed nature of this game and the placements of the hazards, you can't really admire the background properly. There isn't much of it, but is a nice touch to the scenery. It also has that flat charm that makes the graphics almost annoying, yet they are pretty cool. Crash Nirto Kart tried this, and somehow failed, just making it annoying.
The music is decent for the most part. At a few tracks, however, the music is awesome. It isn't very fitting, but still awesome none-the-less. The game is very hard to begin with. Yet, you will get better quiet alarmingly. Beginner is a good place for beginners (duh), yet standard eems a little easy for its difficulty. When you get to expert, it's a nice challenge, if a little hard. When you try master, however, that takes the cake. Everyone is faster than you, make one mistake and I can almost guarantee you will be in third place in seconds, and overall seems rather unfair. Master is there when Expert seems all to easy.
Overall, I give this game a 8.6/10 At first, it was annoying, frustrating, and I hated this game. But when I found out some techniques to cut corners faster, I could control my car better and it was a lot of fun to play. It's worth a play and differently gives that high speed aspect that we expect from F-Zero games.
Graphics
8 Sound
8 Addictive
7 Depth
8 Story
1 Difficulty
8
User Notice 
