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Understanding Metroid Prime, why it was the way it was.
- Thread starter Monk
- Start date
Metroid Prime is an excellent game. It's on my Top 3 list of GC games.
But when i play the game i have the instant feel that most people (the mainstream) won't really enjoy playing the game. Why?
First because there really is no engaging story behind it. It is rather retro in that sense. Most games nowadays hold themselves on a consistent story, a good script, and that's one of the reasons that make people interested in games nowadays. Metroid Prime doesn't quite fit in.
Second, because when you're playing a first person shooter (and many people say this isn't one, but they are mistaken), you're expecting seamless non stop action most of the time. The average gamer, when in first contact with the game, will instinctively perceive Metroid Prime as a First Person shooter with non intuitive controls and weird gameplay. That alone may deter him/her from even getting past the first 5 minutes of gameplay.
Third, since Metroid Prime is a first person shooter with a huge exploration component alongside it, you'll end up travelling through corridors and areas with absolutely no enemies, scanning stuff, doing backtracking, searching new hidden paths, and that is tiresome at some point.
But when i play the game i have the instant feel that most people (the mainstream) won't really enjoy playing the game. Why?
First because there really is no engaging story behind it. It is rather retro in that sense. Most games nowadays hold themselves on a consistent story, a good script, and that's one of the reasons that make people interested in games nowadays. Metroid Prime doesn't quite fit in.
Second, because when you're playing a first person shooter (and many people say this isn't one, but they are mistaken), you're expecting seamless non stop action most of the time. The average gamer, when in first contact with the game, will instinctively perceive Metroid Prime as a First Person shooter with non intuitive controls and weird gameplay. That alone may deter him/her from even getting past the first 5 minutes of gameplay.
Third, since Metroid Prime is a first person shooter with a huge exploration component alongside it, you'll end up travelling through corridors and areas with absolutely no enemies, scanning stuff, doing backtracking, searching new hidden paths, and that is tiresome at some point.
The controls are only a problem with close quarters combat, which is relatively infrequent. It takes way too long to turn around when you're fighting in an enclosed space with something, and you also get caught on things too easily. Oh, and the beam switching is unresponsive, which is only a problem when you're fighting MP or colored pirates.
The biggest problem I have with the game is the stupid room before the last boss battle. What is the point of making me climb up a huge tower with god damn infinitely respawing fusion metroids that latch onto you and knock you off your god damn jump line all the time? I only died twice during the MP battle but that room before it was easily the worst part of the game.
The biggest problem I have with the game is the stupid room before the last boss battle. What is the point of making me climb up a huge tower with god damn infinitely respawing fusion metroids that latch onto you and knock you off your god damn jump line all the time? I only died twice during the MP battle but that room before it was easily the worst part of the game.
No, I'd say reviewers liked an easy game that they could easily beat by their deadline, with high production values and a good enough storyline to get serious brownie points for a first person shooter/adventure.
Much like the movie industry can sell any piece of shit to reviewers as long as it has high production values and a lot of polish. I'd say Metroid Prime is the Gladiator of video games, all the quality of an instant classic, but comes up short on substance. In Gladiator its the acting and overdone script. In Metroid its mediocre gameplay, which I'd imagine still counts, what with it being a video game.
Me personally, I think Gun Valkyrie style was exactly what 3D Metroid should have been, with big expansive levels. Many thought GV had a bad control scheme, but once you got used to it you could move very naturally.
I really think the metroid games should be made more linear. Alot of the gameplay revolves around wandering for hours on end. Its not always clear what you have to do to progress sometimes your just stuck there waiting for the help system.
E.g. then the help system after a whole 15 minutes decides to tell where to go. When you eventually get there after a trek you discover you need three temple keys to open the door damn door. And those keys are scattered all over between the dark and light world. You've got one already nearby, the other one is at the place where you were before (more backtracking) :lol and the third you dunno where it is, probably an hour worth of searching to find it.
E.g. then the help system after a whole 15 minutes decides to tell where to go. When you eventually get there after a trek you discover you need three temple keys to open the door damn door. And those keys are scattered all over between the dark and light world. You've got one already nearby, the other one is at the place where you were before (more backtracking) :lol and the third you dunno where it is, probably an hour worth of searching to find it.
SantaCruZer said:
Guess you're right.
I've finished Prime 3 times - normal around 70%, normal 100% (with FAQ) and hard 100% (with FAQ) and that was my first "FPS" on the Cube (played some of console FPS games before on my PS2).
The only boss that gave me quite a headache was Meta Ridley (Omega Pirate was easy, just power bomb him and his minions :lol).
Ridley was insanely difficult, you had to time your sidejump perfectly (so he would miss his charge first...) two times in a row (...then when he turns back and swings his tail around). After getting those timings right he only hit me on hard difficulty with those damned bombs from the sky.
Metroid Prime (the boss)? Piece of cake - first uhh, four forms didn't even scratch me, my younger brother (20 yrs) died two times there, saw Prime's true form only on the third try, I laughed so hard :lol :lol :lol
GSG Flash said:
:lol :lol :lol
The controls didn't suck, but they weren't ideal.
Any game which keeps you in first person and doesn't let you move and look at the same time is already a step behind.
Morrowind wasn't a FPS either, but they understood that they should eliminate as many barriers as they could as far as how the player experiences the world.
The fact that MP had a lot of vertical space made it even worse. In order to peer over a ledge of a platform or cliff for example, you had to walk a little, stop and look down, look back up, walk forward a little more, stop and look down again, nope can't quite see over just yet, walk forward a little more, stop and look down, etc... That was just one of the several irritating consequences of Retro's unorthodox control scheme.
Warm Machine
Member
Prime's level design is amazing. The difficulty in stiching those levels together is immense. You constantly have to be thinking about the state the player is currently in and where they can and cannot reach depending that state. Then putting that all together in a way that offers a challenge, makes sense, and serves the direction and pacing of the game is an incredible task.
The game is not perfectly executed but is amazingly well done especially due to it being a first person title that relies on a lot of platforming. The platforming itself was so good that to the player it becomes 2nd nature after only about an hour of play.
In the end it is a brilliant adventure game with a weaker action game component. Hopefully in the future they can work the action side out to be competitive with the likes of something like Halo yet retain the excellent level design and puzzle solving.
I'm only about 1/3 into Echos and find it a more accesable and visually a step up from Prime.
The game is not perfectly executed but is amazingly well done especially due to it being a first person title that relies on a lot of platforming. The platforming itself was so good that to the player it becomes 2nd nature after only about an hour of play.
In the end it is a brilliant adventure game with a weaker action game component. Hopefully in the future they can work the action side out to be competitive with the likes of something like Halo yet retain the excellent level design and puzzle solving.
I'm only about 1/3 into Echos and find it a more accesable and visually a step up from Prime.
No matter what I do, I can't get into MP:E.
I am about 40 minutes in...and have searched EVERYWHERE but can't go anywhere.
The Hint system isn't even activating...I'm just wandering...find a door that needs a key...wander...find another key needing door.
It's ridiculous.
I've gone to every room possible with no luck...
I loved MP, too. WHY CAN'T I PLAY THIS!!!
I am about 40 minutes in...and have searched EVERYWHERE but can't go anywhere.
The Hint system isn't even activating...I'm just wandering...find a door that needs a key...wander...find another key needing door.
It's ridiculous.
I've gone to every room possible with no luck...
I loved MP, too. WHY CAN'T I PLAY THIS!!!
ocelittle said:
Keep at it, or start yourself a new file, and I bet you'll see it then. Sometimes it takes a fresh start before you can see something. Don't forget to turn on the scan visor every time you enter a new room.
To some of those posters above who said Prime was infinitely better than Echoes, you are either not a very big fan of Prime, or haven't played Echoes. Echoes is amazing. Very atmospheric, bigger than it seems at first, and has some fantastic, highly rewarding puzzles. The bosses are AWESOME. I will concede that I put the game a very slight notch below the first Prime, but it is truly nearly as good as Prime. I think the fact that the devs kind of chose to go their own route in a sense, straying a little bit from a lot of tried and true Metroid elements (beams, keys, etc.) is what people refer to when giving the game a hard time. I also loved the difficulty. I have finished both MP and MP2 on normal and hard, and I really hope the difficulty of MP3 is the same as 2, that is a little harder. I was quite satisfied when finishing MP2, and any fan of Prime should feel the same way if they stick it out. With the exception of how Samus looks at the end, of course.
I don't understand why people have a beef with Metroid Prime.
It plays like Super Metroid. Except in 3D with a first person view. I couldn't give a flying fuck about enemy AI or controls since the game is essentially Super Metroid from a 1st person view.
Everyone loves Super Metroid, so what gives?
It plays like Super Metroid. Except in 3D with a first person view. I couldn't give a flying fuck about enemy AI or controls since the game is essentially Super Metroid from a 1st person view.
Everyone loves Super Metroid, so what gives?
fortified_concept
Banned
Borys said:
I agree 100%.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Pellham said:
You answered that question.
that pretty much sums it up.SonicMegaDrive said:
a lot of people are also upset that Samus "moves like a tank."
Although, you look at any game, any series, any franchise's iterations in 3D and compare them to the 2D ones, the characters will pretty much always move more slowly in 3D.
Yeah, the reason is because 3D games tend to have more realistic physics.
In either case though, if people are going to just bullshit and say "Well it sucks because it's in 3D", then we just need the biggest rolls eye face ever. Since when did it matter if a game was in 2D or 3D if the gameplay was essentially the same?
And if you guys couldn't handle playing the game in 3D, what about the rest of us (read: the millions of people who bought and enjoyed Metroid Prime)?
The only logically reason to not like Metroid Prime is if you didn't like Super Metroid (or you suffer from epileptic seizures caused from playing 3D games). I'm not getting that vibe from the haters here.
Jared Goodwin
Member
Okay, this thread is a bunch of dumb.
Going back to the original post...
No fucking way, an Austin studio is filled with guys with electic experience from a bunch of different developers! Pull the other one!
You can probably do this with any game from an Austin studio; staffers bounce from devteam to devteam all the time there.
Going back to the original post...
No fucking way, an Austin studio is filled with guys with electic experience from a bunch of different developers! Pull the other one!
You can probably do this with any game from an Austin studio; staffers bounce from devteam to devteam all the time there.
yoshifumi said:
sadly, this is correct
Prime 1 is one of the best games ever..
Prime 2 felt.. uninteresting by comparison... still a good game but the worlds didn´t feel interesting to explore..
Torvus Bog was kind of nice though as was the Sancturay fortress..
the dark worlds were really boring though
ocelittle said:
Same with me except I'm five hours in. I've searched every room of every god damn area in both the dark and the light worlds and found jack shit. The game is so bland and uninteristing. I LOVED the first one but the second one does not feel like exploration into a hidden world. Its one giant fetch quest with lame puzzles, easy cobat and a hint system that WON'T FUCKING ACTIVATE. Echoes was overated in the reviews.
Jared Goodwin said:
Um, these guys were there for atleast 3.5 years, check the nintendo.com interview. Do you know the story behind RetroStudios. A guy by the name of Jeff Spangenberg was wooing all these devs with the promise of being the best ever etc. But it was seriously messed up with devs leaving left right and center. Finally Nintendo bought the whole thing out from Spangenberg and sent Miyamoto to fix the mess up, reorganise the place etc. He closed down like 3 of the 4 projects there, on a sports games, an rpg and car combat game. I am sure it was more than Miyamoto that fixed the place up but that's just how the story goes.
Jared Goodwin
Member
Monk said:
I fail to see how your comments are incompatible with mine. Three years of loyalty does not preclude bouncing around from devteam to devteam before the beginning of those three years.
Other than Nintendo playing white knight, the rest of the story is pretty much SOP for an Austin development house.
Borys said:
It's played in First-Person perspective, and through much of the game you're Shooting at things to progress. MP falls smack into the FPS genre. It will continue to do so no matter how many times fans parrot the Nintendo PR line about it being a 'first-person adventure'. Bolting a lock-on targeting system and an awkward control scheme onto an FPS does not magically transform it into some exciting new genre. Hell, between the RPG-style upgrade system, platforming bits, and story-driven gameplay, Tron 2.0 is at least as deserving of the 'first-person adventure' title as MP, yet you won't see anyone here insisting that it's not an FPS. I suspect the reason for that is because Tron 2.0 uses a more conventional FPS control scheme, so nobody has to try to come up with weak excuses to justify it being 'different'.
Pellham said:
are you fucking KIDDING ME? The two games play nothing alike. If you think the only difference is the move to 3d then you clearly haven't played enough of either game to make that judgement. What happened to the speed dash in 3d? The ability to speed-duck-jump to high heights? The freezing enemies to use them as ledges to jump higher? The space jump? And that's just the power ups, not to mention how differently the game plays (compare how high you jump in super metroid with the jump boots to the jump in MP - it's not even close), not to mention just how much faster the game moves in 2d. This is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard.
Gantz said:
spin attack/wall climb was in Metroid 2:Echoes, and it actually worked pretty damned well
the only things missing in the 3d metroids are really
- freezing enemies and jumping on them (however that WOULD look kind of wierd in a 3d game with real physics, so I understand they left this out)
- speed boots (you get the boost ball instead, doesnt really matter to me at least)
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Did they fix the guns? In Metroid Prime I hated how you had to charge every freakin shot if you wanted to do any damage, it just slowed the game down. I heard this new one had limited ammo *shudder* for some guns, but I guess that would be ok if it's not too hard to come by and it speeds things up.SpokkX said:
Tellaerin said:It's played in First-Person perspective, and through much of the game you're Shooting at things to progress. MP falls smack into the FPS genre. It will continue to do so no matter how many times fans parrot the Nintendo PR line about it being a 'first-person adventure'. Bolting a lock-on targeting system and an awkward control scheme onto an FPS does not magically transform it into some exciting new genre. Hell, between the RPG-style upgrade system, platforming bits, and story-driven gameplay, Tron 2.0 is at least as deserving of the 'first-person adventure' title as MP, yet you won't see anyone here insisting that it's not an FPS. I suspect the reason for that is because Tron 2.0 uses a more conventional FPS control scheme, so nobody has to try to come up with weak excuses to justify it being 'different'.
I didn't find the controls 'awkward' at all, just different. Nothing seemed bolted on. In my playtime it gelled perfectly, be it fps, fpas, or whatever the fuck people want to call it. Does that make me a parrot? Forget I asked.