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Quasar

Metroid Prime 3

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So what are opinions on the final Prime game like around here? So far I've not seen a single review give it less than an 8 out of 10, and some of those were from people who didn't care for the first two games.

I bought a Wii just to play this, and it was worth every dollar.

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Metroid Prime is probably one of the best games ever made.
Metroid Prime 2 falls short quite a bit but is still much better than most other games for the system.
Metroid Prime 3 is better than the second game in the series, but the lack of exciting boss battles, in my opinion, keeps the game from being as good as the first one.

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I would say that it's better than the second and almost as good as the first. It was a great game, but the only problem was that it was too easy. I managed to get 100% on my first run through the game on Veteran difficulty without any problems. I haven't tried the Hyper difficulty yet, so maybe that's a bit more of a challenge. The controls were excellent though. They made the game a lot more fun.

Overall, it's one of the best games out for the Wii right now, and I would definitely recommend picking this one up if you own a Wii.

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Fredrik: I stopped reading that as soon as it suggested 3rd person. 3rd person in Metroid would be incredibly stupid. I cannot even begin to imagine how you would aim your gun at things, aside from locking on being the only option available. The gameplay in MP3 is far superior to that.

As for which game is the absolute best of the three, it's hard for me to say. I like all three, but I guess the original still sticks out just for being the original ;) It's hard to ever surpass the first game of a series when it was done right. The only way it could be made better in a hypothetical update would be for Samus to be more fully animated like she is starting with 2 and continuing in 3. That and maybe addition of some weapons and moves from the later games, and of course new enemies to go along with them ;) Hell for that matter maybe even an entire new bonus area! But I'm getting carried away :P

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Quasar said:

Fredrik: I stopped reading that as soon as it suggested 3rd person. 3rd person in Metroid would be incredibly stupid. I cannot even begin to imagine how you would aim your gun at things, aside from locking on being the only option available.


Ever played Max Payne? or Alice? or GTA3/Vice City/San Andreas? (SA had the best 3rd person aiming system of the 3)

All those games had usable 3rd person weapon aiming. Max Payne's and GTA:SA's were excellent.

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Actually I have not. It would be interesting to see a well-working 3rd person aiming system in action. But I still don't feel like it would have worked for Metroid. It would ruin that sense of being there, in the suit, as Samus herself. Metroid Prime was awesome precisely because of how it put you into the game world. I just wouldn't get that feeling from a chasecam. It would be too much like Zelda with guns. Of course that's what Metroid started out as, so I can understand why the 2D hardcore fans feel it would be more natural. I just disagree.

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Quasar said:

Actually I have not. It would be interesting to see a well-working 3rd person aiming system in action.


Max Payne (2) on PC.

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I've not finished it yet since I've been too lazy to even play it in the last month. However, the 10 hours that I did play were great, although most of it was a bit too easy (should have set it to hard). The bosses on the whole didn't seem to pose much of a threat and I didn't have the fear of death while fighting them as I did with Prime 1.

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Mindless Rambler said:

Oh come on that was simple, spider guardian was the bitch of a boss fight...

Yeah, true. That one was just ridiculous -_-

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Tango said:

Yeah, true. That one was just ridiculous -_-

The Amorbis is the easiest of them all. Plus, the number of missiles and energy units sitting around by the last third of the battle is ridiculous itself.

I haven't played MP3 yet, but from what I've seen I believe I would dread the Mogenar battle regardless of how early it is.

...and the Helios battle music is disturbing.

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You probably have to play MP3 on Hypermode for the bosses to be anywhere near comparable to those in the first two games. I certainly know that on normal level, I never died in a boss fight because of something the boss did directly. This is a far cry from MP2 especially. On my first run through that game, I died vs. Jump Guardian once, Boost Guardian at least six times, Spider Guardian twice, Alpha Blogg once, and Emperor Ing twice. I'm going to try a veteran run soon. I hope that it offers at least token challenge :P

I did die twice fighting Gandrayda however, because she does something interesting to the environment during the battle which, if you are disoriented or not paying attention, can kill you virtually instantaneously. I felt really stupid after figuring out what was going on, though ;)

The main problem with this game's balance is Hypermode. The rest of the weapons pale in effectiveness compared to it, so you'll be using it as much as you can without killing yourself. It's like playing Doom with a temporary god mode and super weapon DEH patch that you can turn off an on (mostly) at will. It's pretty cool overall though.

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Quasar said:

Jump Guardian
Boost Guardian
Spider Guardian
Alpha Blogg
Emperor Ing

Noting that Retro Studios' talent for naming things is representative of their general design accomplishments, I think that list pretty much sums up everything that needs to be said.

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Uh yeah, this wasn't supposed to be a Retro-bashing Metroid Prime flamewar thread, fredrik. I can respect the fact that you don't like the games. I'm also entitled to think some of the reasons you don't are crappy, though. Picking on the names of bosses in Metroid Prime 2 is pretty weak. They're named that way because they're stronger versions of normal enemies which "guard" those particular items, which were stolen from Samus by Dark Samus and the Ing warriors at the beginning of the game. Beside that, the major bosses have quite original names. Amorbis, Chykka, and Quadraxis. Do you have some criticism for those as well? They're hardly any less original or witty than Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain.

If you haven't even played Prime 3, what are you doing in this thread other than trying to troll? You usually operate at a much higher level than that, so I'm surprised if that's your aim.

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Fredrik said:

Noting that Retro Studios' talent for naming things is representative of their general design accomplishments, I think that list pretty much sums up everything that needs to be said.

They did that for a reason. None of the bosses in the first Metroid Prime or the third one are like that, if I recall correctly.

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Yeah, in the first game you had the two Drones, Beetles, Chozo Ghosts, Flaahgra, Sheegoth, Thardus, Phazon Elite, Elite Pirates, Omega Pirate, Meta Ridley, and Metroid Prime as mini-bosses and bosses.

In Prime 3 you have so many fights I can't really remember them all, but they're all with very unique and uniquely named enemies (you do get to fight several Berserker Knights and Lords, though). The main bosses there are Mogenar, Helios, Omega Ridley, Dark Samus, and AU 313.

I see no lack of creativity here. Prime 2 just had a consistent theme going with the item guardian mini-bosses. It may have been a drab naming scheme, but keep in mind that all of those bosses are totally different. Bomb Guardian is a Sandigger worm, Jump Guardian is a Warrior Ing that can create shockwaves on the ground and leap really high, Boost Guardian is a Warrior Ing that acts like a crazy pinball, Grapple Guardian is a Grenchler (an enemy similar to the Baby Sheegoth from Prime 1), Power Bomb Guardian is a giant Sporb (a plant), and Spider Guardian is a Pillbug (Did I leave out anybody?).

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Quasar said:

Uh yeah, this wasn't supposed to be a Retro-bashing Metroid Prime flamewar thread, fredrik.

You did bring up the previous two games; from what I've seen and heard, the third one is more of the same. And I think you're misusing the term "flamewar".

I can respect the fact that you don't like the games. I'm also entitled to think some of the reasons you don't are crappy, though. Picking on the names of bosses in Metroid Prime 2 is pretty weak.

The biggest problem with Metroid Prime is that pretty much all of it (plot, settings, pacing, boss battles, ...) was copied straight out of Super Metroid without regard for what would make a cool new game. MP isn't actually a bad game, but I found it thoroughly disappointing for various reasons.

Metroid Fusion was released at the same time and almost everything in it was better (the linearity being a notable exception). It did a brilliant job recreating the immersive atmosphere in Super Metroid while at the same time having a fresh design. By comparison, the environments in Metroid Prime (although superficially copied from Super Metroid) look sterile and the soundtrack mostly consists of bland, generic ambient-techno.

The dynamic plot in Metroid Fusion was also awesome and even an improvement over Super Metroid. When I played it the first time, I felt like there was a big mystery that I had to solve (the same feeling was present in Super Metroid, but much less pronounced). Metroid Prime was all routine: collect item, backtrack, backtrack, fight boss, backtrack, backtrack, collect item, backtrack, backtrack, backtrack, backtrack, backtrack, fight boss, collect item, backtrack. (Did I mention MP has too much backtracking?)

I know there's supposed to be a storyline in Metroid Prime, involving Chozos, Phazon, Space Pirates and something like that. The difference from Metroid Fusion, aside from MP's story being too predictable and generic, is that Retro Studios didn't take advantage of the medium to tell it. If they'd had a little imagination, Retro Studios could have achieved much more than a weak SM rip-off. Metroid Fusion in 3D with the replay value of Metroid Prime; that'd have been awesome.

There are many more or less superficial features that I find seriously damage the experience, like the completely useless visor overlay that covers 60% of the screen. I can also see why Retro Studios decided to go for a first-person perspective, because the Samus model is awful (especially the animation). Some things that make sense in 2D, like the door/room system, don't fully make sense in 3D (even Doom has greater variation in the ways rooms are connected to each other than MP); things like those ruin the feeling of realism induced by the technically very accomplished graphics (I'll give Retro Studies that much).

That said, I mostly don't mind the gameplay in MP; in fact, I think the controls are quite comfortable, shooting at stuff works excellently, and most of the platform-jumping elements are fine. There's way too much backtracking, however.

As for MP2, that game just old-fashionedly sucked.

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Fredrik said:

The biggest problem with Metroid Prime is that pretty much all of it (plot, settings, pacing, boss battles, ...) was copied straight out of Super Metroid without regard for what would make a cool new game. MP isn't actually a bad game, but I found it thoroughly disappointing for various reasons.

All I ask for is some qualified criticism, and you have provided that, so I am satisfied. I suppose it does try pretty hard to follow in the steps of its predecessor. I can't say that was a *bad* thing to attempt since as I think we agree, Super Metroid is one of if not THE best games ever, period. Oft imitated but never duplicated. Honestly, nobody will ever duplicate it. Not even the same team has been able to again achieve that same level.

Fredrik said:

Metroid Fusion was released at the same time and almost everything in it was better (the linearity being a notable exception). It did a brilliant job recreating the immersive atmosphere in Super Metroid while at the same time having a fresh design. By comparison, the environments in Metroid Prime (although superficially copied from Super Metroid) look sterile and the soundtrack mostly consists of bland, generic ambient-techno.

Here we disagree. Fusion, at first, just aggravated me with its sharp learning curve, hand-holding computer overlord (a feature that has unfortunately been reborn, albeit in a less annoying way, in Prime 3), and some of the worst sprite art to ever grace a Metroid game, especially for Samus, who looks like technocolor puke and walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Fusion engine's physics are shallow and have none of the momenta, rotational velocity, etc. that were implemented in Super Metroid. It felt cheap to me, and though my opinion of the game has improved dramatically after many play-throughs, it still doesn't thrill me.

Prime on the other hand was easy to get into, let you roam totally free of ANY direction if you chose to do so, and had the best atmosphere I've ever experienced in a game. It was quite the same feeling I got when I first played Doom.

Fredrik said:

I know there's supposed to be a storyline in Metroid Prime, involving Chozos, Phazon, Space Pirates and something like that. The difference from Metroid Fusion, aside from MP's story being too predictable and generic, is that Retro Studios didn't take advantage of the medium to tell it. If they'd had a little imagination, Retro Studios could have achieved much more than a weak SM rip-off.


The story arc is perhaps a bit convoluted, but overall I liked it. The presentation of story primarily through scanning was good, IMO. Instead of Fusion which stuffs so much text down your throat in long, boring, unskippable dialogs with that infernal computer, Prime allows you to choose how deep you want to go. I can't imagine watching kip's 1:03 ruined by him stopping to scan everything, just as an example of why this is nice IMO.

Fredrik said:

There are many more or less superficial features that I find seriously damage the experience, like the completely useless visor overlay that covers 60% of the screen. I can also see why Retro Studios decided to go for a first-person perspective, because the Samus model is awful (especially the animation). Some things that make sense in 2D, like the door/room system, don't fully make sense in 3D (even Doom has greater variation in the ways rooms are connected to each other than MP); things like those ruin the feeling of realism induced by the technically very accomplished graphics (I'll give Retro Studies that much).

The visor overlay can be reduced to near-0% opacity if it really bothers you that much. Samus's model and animation *were* one of the low points of the first game, but this was largely corrected in the second installment and only further improved in the final one. The door thing was clearly retained because it is a Metroid hallmark, and frankly I don't think it ever made that much sense, even in the 2D games. I've always thought it was cool, though. The doors are, oddly, one of the things that captured my imagination the most when playing the original Metroid as a kid. If you want to see a game with a really horrible implementation of door/room, check out Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. You will bleed Bloody Tears after an hour of that ;)

Fredrik said:

As for MP2, that game just old-fashionedly sucked.

I love Prime 2 :) It's dark, spooky, adds some awesome new powerups, and expands Samus's character by showing how selfless and determined she truly is. It also showed how dangerous Phazon really is, which lead well into the third installment. Dark Samus, while not a totally original concept (SA-X was first), was the best villain she's faced so far IMO. Not just a mindless killing machine, but a sly, wicked thing bent on Samus's destruction.

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fascinating stuff, I dont have a clue what you are all on about but fredrik makes a good case. I am seriously thinking about giving that super metroid a go after reading his comments, if I can find a version for the pc that is.

Some people (Im not pointing my finger at anyone in particular Quasar) really need to get out a bit more. Getting all riled up just because someone doesnt like your favourite game is a bit silly especially if you do it in public, it all looks a bit juvenile. I see that a lot on forums (not just here) and at first it makes me chuckle but then I start to wonder what those folk are like in real life or if maybe they are just extracting the urine.

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Plonker said:

really need to get out a bit more


I'm sorry but everytime I see someone mention this, you gotta remember your on a forum for a game that's almost 15 years old now.

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harbringer said:

Heh, I still speed run Super metroid. The quickest time for me is 4:56 at 70%.


pretty good. I got the rom the other day and played it for the first time in a long time. in 2 days I finished it at 5:32 with 85% items. kinda suprised me how much I remembered and how fast I got thru it.

BTW, I thought prime 3 was great. a bit easy at times, but fun and it looked great to boot.

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4:56? 5:32? You're kidding right? When I first showed Super Metroid to a friend and his girlfriend I accidentally got too wrapped up in it and beat in a little over an hour with 70%, even then my fastest I've ever been was 0:56. Are you guys not sequence breaking or what?

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