One thing that's nice about Star Fox is that each difficulty level is a completely new experience. It's not just the same levels with faster enemies and more bullets or something like that. So if someone were to say you haven't beaten Star Fox until you've beaten all three paths, there's some truth to it. But if someone were to seriously say you haven't beaten Star Fox until you've gotten 100% on every level (which is impossible on most versions due to a glitch, anyway), I'd lob a grenade in their general direction.

I also wanted to ramble a bit on Dark Savior since I'll be reviewing it soon. I mentioned that the Working Designs critic played only the first (and worst) parallel and then gave the game a negative review. In some ways, I do fault the game. The first parallel should have been just good enough to motivate you to want to play the others. (Star Fox's first path is a good example of something that's good enough to make you want more.) I can imagine someone playing through Dark Savior's first parallel and thinking, "WTF was that??" I made a post about the game earlier when I reached a difficult spot in Parallel 1 (P1) and said something like, "Wow! This game's gotten difficult really fast!" But that was it! After that, nothing was challenging, anymore. Now, P2 is significantly better. It contains the best part of the game - the Silver Castle Clock Tower, as well as one of the game's two Mine Cart rides. This game probably has the best mine cart sequences of any game I've played. (I thought the ones in Alundra 2 and Young Merlin were really annoying. Young Merlin especially, since I never got past the third one.) But there are still problems.

What they really should have done is scrapped the entire Parallel system and made one grand-spanking good adventure. Taken all the best parts of each Parallel and put them into one game, and taken all the best parts of the story and focus on them. All the parallel system does is:

1.) Create a first parallel that's not very good.

2.) Force you to redo areas, sometimes without any challenge. Example: In Parallel 1, you have to do the Egyptian Tomb, but you're solving puzzles the whole time. You do this area again in P2, but this time, the puzzles have all been solved already, so you just run through the area, doing nothing.

3.) Create a bunch of haphazard storylines that go nowhere. This "prisoner revolt" issue comes up in every single Parallel and I kept expecting it to build up to something, but it never does. And the whole idea of the "Dark Savior" comes out of nowhere at the end of the third parallel. The game seems to throw tons of clues that Bilan is the "Dark Savior", but then none of those plot threads go anywhere.

But in the interest of not sounding like a complete crabapple, I do still like what's good in Dark Savior. It's just that it feels like only 75% of a good game. (Thankfully, Climax learned their lesson with the Alundra games.)
I Crawl and 1000
My site - Flying Omelette's Kitchen
My ezboard - Port Saiid Forums
MIDI of the Month - Monster Party Title
"Everybody's restless
And they've got no place to go
Someone's always trying to tell 'em
Something they already know
So their anger & resentment flow" - Warren Zevon
"I'm betting that I'm just abnormal enough to survive." - The Tick