Awesome Story!Keep it up!Can't wait till the Update!

Nicely written story. Good to see James taking a active role in this fic, and I hope he continues to do so.

Keep up the good work.

I’ve finally managed to review your story, V-Starfox! I have to say that you’ve shown yourself to be a talented beginning author, and you should be proud to have constructed such a good start for a story such as this one. Of course, you’ve still got lots of things to work on, but I can tell that you’ve got the potential to grow quickly as a writer and I’m sure that you’ll soon find this story to become one excellently written piece of work! All you need is just a little help from us, your reviewers. Let me get started with the review for you, and mind you, it’s rather long!

Well, I guess I’ll start from the beginning. Now, I know that you’ve improved vastly with every consecutive chapter, but the best resource an author has is his (or her, in your case) previous writing. Let me point out a few things from the chapters and show you how you could have improved (it will also help if you plan to rewrite this):

Here’s our first example:

“Fox couldn't get to sleep.

I wonder who kidnapped Krystal and why? At least she managed to contact us and give us info on where there taking her. I miss her so much. It's really weird. When I'm around her I feel so happy. It's the weirdest feeling. What if I'm in... no... it seems to soon, but that's the only thing I can think of why I feel like this.

Suddenly a wave of drowsiness washed over him and he fell into a light, dreamless sleep.”

Normally, people aren’t able to get to sleep, think for three seconds, and fall asleep. You could have pulled a LOT more out of this little section. Really get into your character’s heads; make the reader think along with them. The brain processes hundreds of thoughts at a time, and your characters do exactly the same thing. Elaborate: why does Fox always feel weird around Krystal? Flash back to a memory of Fox’s that shows this.

“Suddenly the barrels started rolling down the hill as they always had done before.”

Watch your canon. No, not the one that shoots the black cannonballs. You have to make sure you think about the game you’re basing your story on. The Sharpclaw were no longer evil after Adventures, and so the barrel scene would more than likely not happen. It’s still a good idea, but used the way you have, it’s unbelievable. What I mean by that is: the reader can’t really understand why the barrels are rolling down the hill, besides the fact that they did in the game. Make sure to elaborate on why things are happening so that the reader isn’t reading along and thinking, “Well that was a random event…”

““Can we just go,” he whispered trying to stay out of earshot of Fox who was pacing around impatiently waiting for the argument to end. “Can't you two see that he really wants to save that girl and you aren't helping by arguing and wasting our time. They could be doing anything to her.” Bill continued trying to get on with saving Fox's “girlfriend” as he thought.”

If your girlfriend was taken captive, would you have waited patiently for Falco and Katt to stop arguing? I didn’t think so. Fox isn’t the type of person to sit around and wait. Though the argument is a good idea (hooray for Falco x Katt…uuhh, did I just say that? XD), it would have added more (using SF Ghost’s vocabulary here) verisimilitude to your story had you altered the plot to have Fox want to march on with saving Krystal. Essentially, you’ve taken the whole arguing concept a bit too far here; you want to make sure you watch out for that, because it’s easy to overuse something and forget that Fox is on a mission, and nothing is going to slow him down.

“Krystal gulped”

Aw, man, come ON! You totally could have done more with that. What does her cell look like? Is it dark and scary? Or is it painted all pretty with rainbows? You can’t get a good effect on the reader unless you can portray the character’s surroundings properly. Krystal doesn’t just gulp because of what her kidnapper said. You gotta give us more than that! Is it a torture chamber? Does it smell bad? Is it eerily quiet? Give us the proper atmosphere, and you’ll be sure to make that one line up there that much stronger.

One thing I noticed while reading is that you continually refer to the Star Fox team and the inhabitants of Lylat as “animals.” This is an annoyingly picky thing, but the proper term is “furs.” They aren’t animals in the literal sense; they’re anthropomorphized. So, you can’t call them animals, and they’re certainly not humans, so the accepted term is “furs.” Of course, you may choose what you like, but it adds lots of (awesome word, I tell ya!) verisimilitude if you choose “furs.” On the flip side, though, you’ve used terms such as “paws,” “muzzles,” etc., which is very good. It drives me crazy to no end when people refer to furs as having hands and mouths. Kudos to you!

““Why didn't we check for cameras when we snuck in?” Falco asked yelling at himself inside of his head for being so stupid.

“Because this is a primitive planet and primitive planets aren't supposed to have hidden cameras.” Katt answered Falco's question.”

Now THIS is verisimilitude! (Word of the day, sorry.) You’ve done a perfect job with this little excerpt. It shows your logical reasoning for the plot in your story, and it explains why the team had to hide behind the pillar in a good way. Also, it’s slightly humorous, so you were able to keep the reader entertained at the same time. This is a great example of how an author explains his (or her) plot, and you’ve included three other aspects as well (getting into a character’s head, keeping it humorous, and describing an aspect of their surroundings).

“The vulpine father was running for all he was worth towards the courtyard. He needed to warn his son, Fox, and his team about O-Donnell's plan. He had been hiding in the room and had heard everything. He was lucky to have been able to sneak out of the room.”

OK, THAT is random. Of course, it’s an interesting plot twist (though clichéd), but you haven’t really carried it out very well. Give us description, blast it! What does he look like? Why isn’t he dead? What is he thinking besides “save Fox?” Get the reader into this scene. You’ve told us about James, but you haven’t shown us. Show us what the surroundings look like through his eyes. Show us what he’s thinking by getting into his head. Most importantly, give your story some well-deserved verisimilitude by delving into your character’s past.

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Oh yeah, and

“- - -“

Don’t EVER use separators like you have in a story. Most of the time, you don’t need them, because there are hints in the story that show the reader the point of view is changing. Don’t use the separators like you have, they really slow a story down.

“barren, deserted planet, Venom”

Alright, this is very clichéd. Do you know how many people have described Venom like that? C’mon, you gotta give us better description! How barren? Why deserted? You can’t bring a reader into the story by telling us it’s barren and deserted. Show us! Also, right after that line up there, you went on to describe pretty much the exact same story at the beginning of SF 64. Not good. Don’t do that, if you want to go into history, you have to really expand and explore into it. When you described the original Starfox invasion on Venom, though, that was fairly well done.

Chapter 6, on the other hand, was a bit better than the previous one. I noticed improvement in your writing, and it was also a longer chapter. There were, however, a lot of grammatical errors in this chapter, which I wasn’t too enthusiastic about. I caught a lot of misspelled words and left out ones, as well as some sentences that needed serious revising. Make sure to proofread every single chapter very carefully! Even the smallest grammatical error vastly takes away from the (surprise!) verisimilitude of your story. Readers hate to be distracted from the description and action by a typo or confusing sentence. Try proofreading your chapter at least three times before you post it, and you’ll notice a significant reduction in errors. You know you’ve proofread enough once you get totally sick of reading your chapter!

““We saw Falco injured (when this was mentioned Falco rubbed his wing, which was wrapped in a bandage) and ran over to him. It turns out that the arwing that we saw at the entrance of the base was my dad's arwing,””

So, Fox was talking, and in his speech, he described how Falco was rubbing his wing? I don’t think so. You never want to do that with dialogue; any actions you want to describe must be done either before or after the character speaks. This particular example could have been done multiple ways. You could have made reference to Falco before Fox was talking, after he was talking, or you could have broken up Fox’s dialogue and put some description between it. Dialogue isn’t meant to have description or plot action in it; that’s called “dialogue-led.” Whenever a story is told almost completely told through dialogue, then it’s a dialogue-led story, which is a bad thing. Make sure you don’t let that happen. Keep your action and description separate from your characters talking.

Chapter 7 was even better than chapter 6. I noticed you started to pay more attention to details. That’s great! But you could still get a little more out of it. Try describing your character’s surroundings in absolute detail; you could have given us a much clearer description of the base if you really, really tried at it. I can tell you’ve certainly got the talent to go the extra mile. When you’re in doubt about how to write good description, the best advice I can give is to simply paint a picture with words. Bring us into that base with the team! Show us what everything looks like with every step they take. On that same note, you could have also gone a bit more into the character’s heads. Make sure you have us think along with them! This particularly goes for Bill and Katt; if you explore their history, you’d add only that much more (guess what) verisimilitude to your story. Also, keep that ever-weary eye out for grammar, though I noticed extreme improvement in this chapter in that department.

As for chapter 8, there were lots of miscellaneous things that you could have worked on, but I’m not going to bore you with them now. You’re probably tired with this review by now! Since I’m caught up reading, though, I’ll be able to help you out chapter-by-chapter so you can get a much more detailed review and understand a bit better what exactly it is that I’ve been talking about all this time. The same thing goes for chapter 9.

So, let’s sum it up!

1. Great start for a story!
2. You’re improving with every chapter.
3. Remember to avoid dialogue-led writing.
4. Bring your readers into the story by showing us detailed description.
5. Add character description by getting into your character’s heads and thinking about their history.
6. Don’t forget to keep your story’s plot consistent (the verisimilitude!).
7. Beware the grammar! Proofreading is essential.
8. Don’t use separators anymore.
9. Mind your terms (furs vs. animals).
10. As in the words of GamerJay, “Never stop writing.”

Good job! I’ll be looking forward to your next update. Also, you’ll be pleased to hear that you’re certainly gonna get listed at the KA! =)

Brilliant Story, I'm glad you brought James Back. keep it up. When will the next bit be up? I notice that you haven't added to it since April. (9th of July 2007)

I think it was a good idea to bring Fox's dad back. Let's not make him evil , shall we?

Small Bonus:
There was a unreleased game called StarFox2 for the Super NES. The rom is available today.

"FAV"

Very nice, weird how my Alert didn't tell me of this chapter, but now i return with postive review vengence.

*waves banners and lets loose party poppers*

The confrontation with Katt and Falco near the end did make me U-Turn and re read, just to make sure i saw it right, mind you i was grinning all the way through it, t'was good ^^

Keep up the good work, maybe i'll finally release my next chapter at some point *stares at his dusty laptop* heh...maybe.

Again Good Chapter, now moving swiftly onto Chapter 10 :D

Hm...Just to let you know, this review is going to be pretty repetitive, compared to (most of) the previous ones. About every review before this one has said "Good Job" or "Nice Work" and/or "Here is what you can do to make this story of your's better". But, that's what we all want to see right? Positive constructive criticism. =D

*Ahem*..."Good Job" XD

Your story is one of the Star Fox stories that (most) people can look at it and say/think "Huh...For a first fic, it's pretty good!"

Your plot is very well played out (though it can use more detail) and the character's dialogue is decent, though it can use more detail and the use of more complex vocabulary words would be nice. I'll type out an example for you, so you can see what I'm talking about. (I take the next part from your fic)

*“Now I’m ready,” she said, smiling. Fox grinned, and started up the motorcycle.*

What you could have done to make it slightly more interesting is...

"Yeah, now I'm ready." she said, smiling and squeezing Fox's waist slightly. Fox grinned softly, and turned the ignition key to start the motorcycle.

...Yep, it could have been like that; though it is ok the way it is now, it would have been better if you added a few more descriptive words.

So, all in all, this fic is a good fic for a first try, though it can be improved. I like it. Seems like many others like it. Some others don't. Improve your fic to make those others, if you can, like your story.

If I did a "grading scale" (which I don't most of the time), I would give this a 9.1 out of 10. Very good job =D

Keep up the excellent work!

Very impressive. Well I spent the last three hours reading this whole fic up to this chapter and I must say I'm hooked. Great job with the story, you've got a lot of talent. Make sure relationships progress, keep all the cahracters dynamic, and don't stop writing!

Mystery-Fox

Alright, short and as simple as possible: Not bad.

This is really good so far! There are some minor mistakes in some places, but the story is incredible.

W00t! Return of James McCloud! I wonder how he lives... This story has kept me in suspense. Some parts confused me, like the part about Krystal's father and that whole chase after him. I need to know what happens next! Keep up the good writing.:)

Hm... It seems things are moving along nicely. Keep it up.

Very cool. Though, it would be nice if there were a bit more detail. I found myself slightly confused at a few parts, like when he and Krystal got off the hover-motorcycle. I understood it going up slightly when Krystal got off, but you never said anything about when Fox got off, or him even turning off the engine. Other than slightly lacking detail, very good.

Very cool story so far. I still have another chapter to read, but I found a tiny problem with your dinosaur part. When you were trying to put 'they', you accidentally put 'kxoo' which is 'thee', instead of 'kxo0'. Remember, in dinosaur language, a the #0 replaces the y. You have to be careful about that.

The same goes for Fox's father opinionwise.

I am sad to say that I do not thoroughly enjoy this "father" of Krystal entering the picture. He will not be here long, will he? (when you answer this, you do not have to use the quotation marks in my name.)