F-Zero GX

Not just the best F-Zero game but possibly the greatest racing game of all time. I always wanted to play this one because of how gorgeous it looks, and now that I finally did, it hasn't aged one bit, and fortunately the gameplay is on par with the graphical representation, which makes the game a very special existence.

The main gamemode of the game is Grand Prix, which consists of cups where you play 5 different tracks back-to-back trying to become the champion. Completing this mode gives you tickets you can spend to unlock other driving machines, parts to make custom vehicles with, or new chapters for the story mode. The 2 easiest difficulties are basically there for you to learn the tracks, but to beat the Expert and Master difficulties you kind of need to know the tracks to beat them, and if you get stuck the Time Attack mode helps a lot.

While the entire game is basically better on every aspect compared to X, what stands out the most in comparison is the driver AI, as on X your rival basically always finishes either first, or 2nd if you win the race, making it very hard to win the cup if you do badly on one track, but on GX the races are simulated more realistically so basically anything can happen on the leaderboards and you usually only need some 350 points to become the champ, which is nice since you can strategize with the vehicle picks; for example if the cup favors max speed vehicles then you can pick one and dominate the fast tracks, and then sandbag the one track that is better to be played with vehicles specializing on cornering.

By unlocking vehicles and their corresponding pilots, you get to check their profiles from the menu and from here it's easy to see how much love was put into the game; Every single pilot has their own soundtrack that is only played on this particular page and you can read their background story giving you the lore of the F-Zero universe. Additionally if you win the Grand Prix with any pilot, at the end of it you get an "interview" where you can choose one question to be asked of multiple choices which further makes the pilots' individuality shine. This aspect of the game makes unlocking new characters exciting instead of them just being there in X and you not knowing what they represent.

What makes GX cool is that there are 2 completely different ways to play the game - When you choose a pilot you are given a choice to select on how to balance the vehicle by choosing between acceleration or max speed. Most people simply set the graph at maximum speed and go, or if the track is complex in turns then lowering it some to give the vehicle higher turning radius and this is the normal way of driving, but if you choose to put the graph all the way to maximum acceleration instead, you can absolutely destroy the game with the combination of advanced driving mechanics, where "snaking" is the base of it all; by alternating between left lean and turning left and right lean and turning right you can gain speeds that are simply unobtainable by driving normally. Why it's called snaking is because you are simply doing "S's" all around the track when drifting from one corner to another repeatedly. You can even use this strategy on the story mode which uses Falcon's vehicle which is cool, although it being less effective than using Black Bull or custom vehicles which excel at it.

Whether you choose to play with max speed or delve into snaking one thing is clear; This game takes months if not years of dedication to fully master and you can always lower your time because the skill ceiling is so high. Even casually you can dedicate a lot of time into this game; Personally I only finished the story mode and unlocked all of the base vehicles and all 25 tracks by finishing cups on Master, but you can even finish the story mode chapters first on "Hard" and then on "Very Hard" to unlock more vehicles, unlock special ending movies for each of the 39 pilots if you beat Grand Prix on Master with them (but if you are sane person you probably just watch them off YouTube), or try to beat the "Staff ghosts" on Time Attack which are infamously difficult if you don't do snaking.

Aside from a completely bonkers story and equally cringe Voice acting, this is hands down the series best entry and is what feels like what X was trying to pull off. Can get pretty damn difficult at times but it still holds up exceptionally well both in game-play and graphics. One of the great collaborations between Sega and Nintendo and am patiently waiting for Nintendo to stop sitting on their hands and give us a proper re release.

Wow. I'm typically not one for racing games, but this one has almost everything I could ever ask for in one. The rush and adrenaline associated with playing F-Zero GX is truly palpable, unmatched by the vast majority of games out there. There's so much content in this game, and the only thing holding it back from being essentially perfect is that the game's story mode is notoriously, furiously unforgiving. And that's one of the main things you need to understand about F-Zero GX. Although it's an extremely polished experience, it absolutely refuses to hold the player's hand - the skill ceiling is very high, and they make use of it. Even though I've given up on ever beating story mode, I feel that I was able to have a full experience sticking mostly to Grand Prix and time trials. This is far and away my favorite arcade racer, and I've only scratched the surface of all it has to offer. I highly recommend this to fans of the series, fans of the genre, or even fans of the Gamecube in general.