Originally posted by Knight Templar
Seriously, what do you guys like so much about Metroid Prime?
From the day that I watched my friend play it, yah, it looked cool, but half the game seemed like it was just random tasks to get back your equipment and whatnot.. with lack of any actual continuing story. That and the lack of friendly interaction of any sort made the game seem rather boring to me.
If you played the other Metroid games, you know that the Prime story continues the story outlined in them. However, if you don't read the messages and examine objects in the world regularly, you will miss that story completely. The story is there, more completely than any other Metroid game. In all the others (except Fusion) the story is only told at the beginning and the end. With Fusion, you get story snippets here and there, with the Samus-X and the cutscenes. But with Prime, you get the story through cutscenes, terminals, scanning creatures and objects, etc. Ask your friend to show you the game log so you'll understand the story better. It contains every bit of text in the game.
What I like about Metroid Prime is that its faithful to the original NES and SNES game. It retains the feel of the old 2d platformers. However, it updates the look and sound of the game by making it 3d. They could have gone for the run-and-gun stupidity of games like Quake and Half-life, but they chose instead to stick to platform jumping and item collection and clever level design. There are some places where 3d allows the game to transcend the originals, however. 3d lets the level designers hide toys like missile packs and the like more cleverly. Jumping puzzles can be more complex and interesting. Item usage is extended in interesting ways. One puzzle that comes to mind is unlocking the plasma beam. You use two different ball effects, the grapple, bombs and the space jump. All the classic Metroid tropes remain though, so the player never loses the feeling of the older platformers.
You mention a lack of friendly interaction and extended item collection as complaints. Did you not play the previous Metroid games at all? There was no real friendly interaction in any of them (there were the birds and fuzzy things that taught you to use the power jump and the triangle jump, I guess, in SuperMetroid and they show up in Fusion). You might consider the computer in Fusion 'friendly', but I wouldn't. More importantly, Metroid has always been a collect-the-toys game, so this isn't a valid complaint about Prime. From the first Metroid on, there was a certain minimum amount of toys you absolutely had to collect to finish the game. Prime is no different in that regard.
Originally posted by J3Vr6
Metroid prime looked incredible!
Metroid Prime is not a First Person Shooter. Its a first person game, and you shoot things, but that's not the point. Its a First Person Platformer. If there was more run-and-gun stuff in it, not having a mouse and keyboard might matter, but the fact of the matter is that the game is about running and jumping more than anything else.
