Admittedly, Metroid Prime wasn't so bad for the first half the game. But after you fight the Chozo Ghosts the first time, and then explore the wrecked ship, every fucking enemy in the game--even in rooms that used to have original enemies--gets replaced with either pirates or ghosts. So its like fighting a fucking miniboss in every room.
And then there was backtracking to find all the artifacts, and how the boss fights tend to be pattern-centric like a Zelda game (something that's out of place in Metroid), and so on and so forth.
Prime was a game I wanted to like. I even beat it twice just to prove to myself it was better than I thought, and both times I thoroughly despised it.
As stellar as the game is, the Chozo Ghosts seriously challenged my resolve to complete Metroid Prime 1. Since their only weakness is the Power Beam, they take ages to kill, and the music is unlistenable. I'm not sure why they decided that the entire Chozo Ruins area had to be "cursed" after you explored the ship - as punishment for what? Why would they attack someone wearing a Chozo-created power suit, anyway? I would compare them to the Crawling Shadows in Deadly Premonition, except you only had to fight those once each.
As for the final boss, it was perhaps too epic for its own good. The fight just keeps going on, and it grows fatiguing to the point of boredom. If you fail, you have to climb the hellish stairway full of Fusion Metroids to retry every time. Prime 2's final encounter was even worse.
Chozo Ghosts go down quickly with a couple of super missile hits. You don't need to spend days plugging away with your regular power beam.
Metroid Prime is a bloody marvellous game. Echoes is flawed and often frustrating (whoever did the whole searching log entries to find key locations needs a punch). Corruption is the nuts though.
CMoon wrote:
I think I sat down with 3D land and played for 30 minutes and turned it off, thinking it was ok, pretty nice. Next time I sat down I pretty much ended up playing until my battery died. I couldn't get off it. I bombed through the entire thing (both legs... you'll see) in 2 days.
I put a couple hours into it today, and if anything the first world is too timid, and that's why it is play #2 where you start realizing the game is a very good one. When I first got the propeller power-up, the game suddenly took on a new dimension. It's funny all this crap talk about Mario...honestly I think the main series has just kept getting better. Even potential missteps like Sunshine were pretty creative and tried something new. If I've got any problem its with the NSMB games...not that I've played them, but I'd rather have the series keep changing. I'd rather have Zelda go forward like this than the way it has been--now that's a series that has grown stagnant.
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
3D Land snowballs very quickly into a game that ends up glued to you, and you rocket through it. There are some real skill teasers in the finals sections and the secret ultimate stage is crazy hard - didn’t beat it before I was separated from my copy in expatriation.
On other things, I do enjoy people who slag off Nintendo games in probably the same wry way Yamauchi would have done while bathing in his bathtub full of money. It's so easy for western gamers to marry notions of Mario with 'kiddie' and trite, while nothing could be further from the truth. Japan has never been dumb enough to levy such unwarranted discrimination against first class software, but then they've always had distinguished taste in the industry they built.
Edmond Dantes wrote:
TransatlanticFoe wrote:Hey Nintendo, how about releasing or even announcing some WiiU games?
Old school Zelda is always welcome but seriously how long can Nintendo keep going on the strength of Mario/Zelda?
People love shit.
I mean, look at Metroid Prime. You know, the game where you fight the same. Three. Enemies. IN. EVERY. GODDAMN. ROOM!
Considered one of the best games ever and a worthy successor to Super Metroid.
gamers have no taste.
Metroid Prime is shit now is it?
Perfect post, feels like the last line is a summary of your own comments.
Another way of framing things: New Super Mario Brothers sold more than Super Mario Brothers 3. Which one? Pick whichever you choose.
It's likely one day the franchise will release a game that outsales the original. The one bundled with every console. Back in the days when Nintendo ruled the world.
Just understand that churn means someone is tired of something, and that someone has to be somebody. It's normal and healthy. Might as well be you.
(Really this goes back to genre maturation curves, with the New Thing, Clones A Plenty, Niche phases and all that. Rising complexity (read: expense of development), higher barrier to entry, market saturation, lower sales, all the things that have pretty much killed off one of our favorite genres.
This is just my long winded gripe that I'd enjoy a hard as shit Mario/Zelda game very much.)
Personally I think Nintendo's steam has diminished. Iwata isn't the iron fist that Yamauchi was, and those differences have affected first-party output imo.
New IP's are slim to none, and what's there isn't hugely noticeable bar the enormity of Professor Layton. Otherwise, they are guilty of falling back on the old guard, and probably too often: but within all the Mario spin-offs there are still gems, such as the Galaxies, 3D land etc.
It's been obvious for some time that Zelda hasn't managed to maintain the killer form of the instalments we used to have to wait 3-4 years between, so I just gave up playing them. But the 3DS has got something about it: a dash of the old Nintendo flair, and that's why this LTTP2 looks so promising. As someone who considers retro gaming to be vastly superior to current gen, I have no issue with them using the 16bit game as a template and sticking to it rigidly. If it comes anywhere near the beauty of the original LTTP, it will be a heaven sent charm amid an industry that's turning so horribly ugly.
Moniker wrote:What're the other must-haves for the 3DS? I haven't really been keeping up. Just aware of: Mario 3D Land, NSMB2, Fire Emblem, EO4, and ports of Z:OoT, Starfox 64, and SSFIV.
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is pretty great. I'm enjoying that game a lot, in between my EO4 sessions. I probably won't even be getting to Soul Hackers, until I finish those two games.
Perfect post, feels like the last line is a summary of your own comments.
Hey, if you like fighting the same three enemies while backtracking to far reaches to look for some completely arbitrary "artifact" that doesn't even give Samus a powerup [at least in the original trilogy, finding new shit rewarded Samus with new abilities or something] just so you can fight bosses that take an hour per boss to defeat....
Yeah, give me Super Metroid or Devil May Cry over that shit anyday.
Metroid Prime is as close to vanity project as Nintendo's ever stepped. I wish I liked it better. Having said that, it seemingly spawned some serious speedrunning movement, so... mission accomplished I guess.
Last edited by Obiwanshinobi on Mon Apr 22, 2013 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
I think if Pretas can miss something like the effective combo for killing the Chozo ghosts, it should be admitted that Nintendo's estimation of their audience - who they want to have complete the game, after all - cannot assume that everybody should know everything. I think some of the apparent derision being thrown at Nintendo titles is misplaced, because they clearly emphasize an emotional experience and journey through places, rather than a trial of difficulty; they also want things to be approachable (i.e. easily comprehended) enough that people are less likely to miss things.
If I recall right, I might've used some online hints to get through a few bosses quickly in Metroid Prime. I've never been a huge fan of the usual implementation of puzzle bosses in 3D games, but it wasn't done badly.
The usual sealed-corridor format for Metroid does tend to limit fights to a few different enemies per room, but given the relatively limited system capabilities, I'm not sure what we could expect there. Enemy fights often are missing something engaging in comparison to, say, Resident Evil 4, but that's true of many games. Still the enemies aren't the real apparent focus of the game; the world itself is meant to be the focus of most of your attention.
I believe that if a game is meant to be played for speed, it should be more fun to race through. Exploration should be more enjoyable (I found that spark I crave only in the Morph Ball bits).
Same can be said about games of free roaming (see Wind Waker). In 2D Zeldas of yesteryear travelling was at least fast paced. No such luck in 3D.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
I think the total feeling of the world of Legend of Zelda was better realized in the 3D games (at least the early two on the N64) than on earlier systems. With Metroid Prime, I don't know how much thought they seriously gave to speedrunning. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean. Areas with puzzles can be rushed through pretty well if you remember the steps and have some skill - and luck, I think the controls for Prime games are a bit finicky at parts, if that's what you mean. The games are long enough that trying to do them in one sitting is beyond me really. If they were closer to arcade length or had chapter restart / clear points maybe I'd understand it, but the structure of the games don't really facilitate that.
Last edited by Ed Oscuro on Mon Apr 22, 2013 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ed Oscuro wrote:The usual sealed-corridor format for Metroid does tend to limit fights to a few different enemies per room,
Which isn't the problem here. I mean, if you want "this platform has blue fuzzy things circling it, there's a zig-zagging thing above that platform, and some sort of porcupine-slug is going through the pipes" that's fine, in fact, could even be interesting.
It's when every single room consists of miniboss monsters (even ones that formerly didn't) that it becomes an issue.
I liked Metroid Prime. The level design is very solid and boss fights are great. Echoes does everything worse in comparison, not to mention the enemies take forever to kill, and you'll be fighting those same enemies in the same rooms again and again...
Edmond Dantes wrote:It's when every single room consists of miniboss monsters (even ones that formerly didn't) that it becomes an issue.
Weren't you just saying the game was too easy?
The only real problem I have with the enemies is that repeat visits to rooms don't mix things up enough to be interesting, and many critters simply aren't interesting to fight.
Obiwanshinobi wrote:You don't need to fight the enemies every time you enter a room, do you? Many of them can be easily ignored.
Yes, especially after acquiring certain suit upgrades that give you more speed. Personally I couldn't be bothered with scanning everything, so just got on with enjoying the atmosphere, adventure, and superb design work. Prime is still a very impressive game.
Ed Oscuro wrote:This sounds pretty self-inflicted - choosing tedium over "interference" (if it is a way to be better entertained, why not go with it?).
By that reasoning, if I chose interference and got annoyed by it, that too would be "self-inflicted."
This may or may not be a good time to mention that I have a fetish for women dressed up as Link.
Also: Link suddenly transforming into a 2-frame animated chalk drawing on dungeon walls... I don't know whether I'm laughing or crying, nor whether irony is involved.
