Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

[I-n-j-i-n]

Um..... Games never were in any trouble from lack of creativity. I think there's almost too much of it now with games being too ambitious for their own good.

Also, I'm somewhat split with the Prime games. They were a really well done, experimental trilogy of sorts, but the 2D is definitely where all the best Metroid games were. Also Metroid with a plot is almost like defeating the purpose of solitude of the games, though MP games really are like that except for a few hunter excursions here and allusions of the Federation there.

Even with Zelda games, who really cares about the story? You just go through dungeons and kill things. That is where most of the fun is.

[JackKieser]

Sorry man, but that's not what... most studies about game releases and sales say. The highest number of games being sold are in the categories of 'E Rated', 'Licensed', and 'Sequels'.

The fact of the matter is that we as the more immersed and hardcore of gamers see all sorts of great games. But walk into a Gamestop or EB and look at the shelves. Tell me how many games you see there that aren't BLATANT attempts at putting out a game for the sake of putting out a game. That's what is usually fueling the debate about the current relationship problems between designers and publishers; publishers only really want to greenlight projects that they feel have the least risk, which equates to things they've seen sell before. Hence, no drive for creativity.

Or rather, the designers WANT to be creative, but between publishers who tell them that creativity is too much of a risk, and politicians who try to scare designers into thinking that if they are too creative or out there, they might get scapegoated for something, they just don't see it as worth it anymore.

Game Informer did a great article about it, but I can't remember which issue.

[/offtopic]

--Jack Kieser

EDIT: Just read the last part about 'who cares about the story, anyways?' Um... anyone who has pioneered for either the ethical treatment of games as an art form or anyone who has fought Clinton or Lieberman about game regulation. We focus so much on technical stuff, like how pretty a game is, that we neglect the fact that, like it or not, games can tell stories, and damn good ones, now. Not to mention the fact that stories drive... many major titles these days. GoW anyone? Brutal hack-and-slash adventure game... that was driven by its story. Story can be very important if we let developers know that they are worth the time and effort.

[dsx100]

One thing that people seem to be missing about the story...

Spoilers

Thats what I think Metroid Prime 3 did very well. They don't make it very obvisous, instead they make you pay attention and figure it out for yourself. Also on an added note, the reason why Samus doesn't seem to have much personality and show much emotion is because she is not supposed to. Samus is the classic, used often, silent video game protaganist. Game Designers make these characters this way for a reason. They avoid giving these players large personalities and voices so that you can feel more like your the hero, your playing the game, your in control. Its a way of making the game more immersive. Other hero's like Samus include: Link, Mario (Sometimes), Gordon Freeman, The Doom Guy, Jak (in the first game), and many others I can't think of right now.

And just for the record, Fusion abandoned this character type (which kind of sucks). What this means for future Metroid Games, I don't know.

[Aninymouse]

Bravo, Jack. I have to say I agree.

This is totally off-topic, but regarding what Injin said about Zelda story being secondary: as for me & my two sisters, whenever a new Zelda game comes out, we pretty much know what the gameplay is gonna be like right off the bat; it's a Zelda game, therefore there will be dungeons and treasures and bosses with sidequests. No, sir, the story and the art style, I would argue, are indeed the MAIN reasons to buy a new Zelda game, since they have carried a trend of being inter-related ever since the first two. Twilight Princess was a solid game, but it was things like character developement (Midna) and her mysterious past that drove me to keep playing. Trust me... after 9 dungeons that all play similarly, some other factor has to step in besides hack-n-slash.

Now then, getting back to Metroid... So far I've gotten so far as to destroy the first huge generator on Bryyo. I was just about to head to the Thorn Jungle area when I read ahead in a walkthrough how much crap I'd have to do before even reaching the boss, so I let it rest for the night.

I've noticed that after three days of using the advanced control scheme, my percision and skill with the wiimote has greatly increased. On my first day, I kept hitting C instead of B, + instead of -, I'd be waggling all over the place and I'd forget I had to turn by looking to the right or left. It'd been a good while since I'd seriously played a first-person game. Once I've gotten the hang of it, though, the freedom in the control scheme and the speed you can react is fantastic.

[Effector]

halp people? plz?

[spoil]

I'm fighting the Mogenar in the Bryyo Seed (on Veteran)... anyone have any pointers to make this fight more fun than a kick in the balls? I've tried three times already, and I'm really frustrated with it. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to use nearly a whole energy tank per orb to overload the Phazon - and that's if you get it perfect. Half the time, he'll just shut the cover on it and you end up having to discharge it because you waited too long. Giving an energy tanks per orb leaves me not enough energy to account for the misc damage I take just fighting him. D: Also, any tips for blowing his "shoes" off? I take horrendous damage trying to do that, from getting hit by his shockwave to running up against/getting trapped between his feet.

[/spoil]

So, thanks. I'm not totally sure Veteran isn't making it a little less fun to play this awesome game.

[Red Shadow]

that was the only part i've died at so far. i proceeded to get really angry and devise the following strategy:

i don't know if youre doing what I think you may be doing, but you don't have to be in hyper mode just to break his balls (hah). you can chip away at them with regular beam shots. first time around i would break one down, enter hyper and destroy it, and then get rushed by him.

take your time and break all of them first, then go ahead with the hyper beam attacking (also for whatever reason i took out the one on his back early the second time around, and things went a lot more smoothly). when he extends his hands to get new orbs, i'm sure you know you can destroy them before he pulls them back in.

as for the feet, timing is your best friend. right when he charges, you should be in morph ball form. run around behind him, blast his feet, and immediately unmorph so youll be ready to jump. key thing is to not be afraid to get too close. what ultimately killed me the first time is i was afraid of getting hit and none of my bombs ever did anything to his feet

[Effector]

I just got past it - I don't know what I was doing wrong. I basically followed the same strategy that I was before (but I handled the morph ball sections a little better). I think it was just one of those things that you just have to take a break from before you can come back and do it easily.

I did the orbs one at a time. Hypermode took more out of my energy tanks than the boss did, obviously. He was kind enough to use his grabby hands a lot, which drop a lot of energy. I did run low enough on energy to not be able to activate hypermode when trying to overload the orb on his back, but I was patient enough to power back up to two full energy tanks before enabling it to kill him.

I think Veteran is about the right difficulty (for me at least). Difficult so I don't breeze through, but not so much that I can't play without getting frustrated.

[Imagist]

just beat Rundas and the only bad thing about this game so far is that missiles look retarded

[Eten]

I'm on Hyper Difficulty on

Mogenar right now. He regenerates his unbroken orbs very quickly, and taking no damage is very vital because the requirement of using Hypermode.

I found something neat while fighting him, as I was trying to use more missles on the unbroken orbs to speed things up before he regenerates them all. If you hit him with an Ice Missle anytime he has is mouth open for any reason(laughing, phazon beam, etc) it freezes him temporarily, giving you a good bit of easy shots on the orbs.

Hyper Difficulty makes for a good challenge, especially if you are playing for speed. You are REQUIRED to go into Hyper mode because of the rate and frequency that creatures/space pirates go into their phazon empowered form, and how much damage you'll suffer w/o Hyper mode's immunity. A few things I've learned to make things go faster- you can knock a space pirate off of a ledge and into an abyss to kill them with the knockback on missles or charged shots. You can get a "charged" shot with very very little holding of the fire button, even though it doesn't hold the power of a fully charged shot, it still looks and acts like a charged shot. This allows you to use rapid charged shots to throw a pirate over an edge very quickly. It is much faster to use three rapid charged shots to kill a pirate over normally killing them on Hyper Difficulty. Rapid charged shots are also very useful for clearing debris and opening large canisters quickly.

So far, it's really fun.

[Vortex]

Ok, am I doing something wrong?

I'm having lots of trouble with

Mogenar on veteran difficulty. How many energy tanks should I have for this? I have 4 right now but I'm always completely out of energy after the 3rd orb slot is destroyed, and it seems like the replacement orbs he pulls to his body only drop energy if I'm below 99. The only way to damage him is with hypermode shots in an empty orb slot, correct?

[BigBoss]

god people that frickin boss ain't that hard

[Effector]

god people that frickin boss ain't that hard

I know, I feel silly for having trouble the first time. I came back to it, beat him with plenty of energy left.

Vortex - take it slow. If you don't have enough energy to use Hypermode safely, just wait until he uses the grabby hands on you - shoot them to get some energy. Also, you know can get energy from the orbs when we goes to replace them. The basic pattern is:

• work on a single orb (follow it when he swaps them around) with the power beam rapidfire.
  
• Once the orb is destroyed, shoot at the glowing phazon orb there in Hypermode.
  
• When he gets his shoes, wait until he charges, then go morph ball and blow his feet when he stops at the far wall.
  
• Repeat steps 1-3 for the other two orbs on his front.
  
• Once he loses his shoes for the third time, he'll focus more on charging you. Dodge around him and shoot the orb on his back, then overload it from hypermode like the first three.

Like I said, if you're low on energy, don't rush. Get energy from the orbs and from the hands. No hurry. I had four or five energy tanks when I did it - you're not missing anything major.

[KWarp]

I have Prime 3 sitting on my shelf unopened. I just beat Super Metroid today so I'll get to it in a little while.

In the meantime, I've heard issues of Prime 3 corrupting people's Wiis (pun intended).

Like in-game lag and not letting other discs play and stuff. Anyone experiencing that? Any official word on the issue?

[Vortex]

The issue I'm having is nothing drops energy unless I'm below 99 with 0 tanks left. I sat and fought him for a good 20 minutes with only the orb on his back left, successfully dodging all his attacks, but I could never get over ~110 energy because his hands would ONLY drop energy once I was in the danger zone, and usually just a purple +10 at that. This goes for both the hands he shoots at you, and the hands that grab orbs from the side of the arena. If I have a full tank, even if I'm at 0 energy, no power ups will drop. This happened in two separate attempts before I called it quits for a little while. I'm not making any huge mistakes or anything, it just seems like I'll never have enough energy to finish the fight with the required hypermode uses unless energy powerups drop, which seems like it should be happening but it isn't.

On a sidenote I thought both the other prime games were FAR too easy, I don't think I died a single time while playing either of them through the first time, so I don't know why this is giving me so much trouble.

[Lemonectric]

god people that frickin boss ain't that hard

Compared to the other two Leviathan seed thingy bosses (not sure if there are going to be any more, since I'm not done with the game quite yet), that boss is rather irritating. Most of the others are fun.

I have Prime 3 sitting on my shelf unopened. I just beat Super Metroid today so I'll get to it in a little while.

In the meantime, I've heard issues of Prime 3 corrupting people's Wiis (pun intended).

Like in-game lag and not letting other discs play and stuff. Anyone experiencing that? Any official word on the issue?

I haven't put in any other disks so far, but once in a while the screen goes all weird for a split second when I go to the Wii menu. And the music sometimes goes a little glitchy, but not often. I dunno. XD

Vortex: No idea. I didn't have that problem.

And zomg is the Nova beam not the coolest thing ever? It's so pretty. And the battle before getting it...hilarious. I drew the battle out just so I could laugh at the space pirates getting sucked into the machine. The different shooting sound is nice, too. Feels more fluid and stuff.

[L.T.W.]

Yay, I finally beat the game

96%

Im only missing 1 missile, 1 life tank and 2 ship missiles.

[spoilers]

I think that the animation of Dark Samus echoing herself was pretty neat.

[/spoilers]

Very Cool game! I enjoyed it a lot.

I hope that any other FPS on the Wii, from now on, will have as good control (or better) as MP3

[sephfire]

You know those 5 classic notes that play every time Samus exits her ship onto a new world? I want a little speaker that plays that every time I get out of my car.

[Eten]

Vortex.

Be sure to suck the energy in with the charge beam, and hold it. You might be missing the energy, not because it drops, but just because it is hard to see. I don't remember what, but something else in that fight can drop energy too.

[Antipode]

You know those 5 classic notes that play every time Samus exits her ship onto a new world? I want a little speaker that plays that every time I get out of my car.

Hahaha, that's a great idea. Or like whenever you walk out of your front door.

[Effector]

Vortex.

Be sure to suck the energy in with the charge beam, and hold it. You might be missing the energy, not because it drops, but just because it is hard to see. I don't remember what, but something else in that fight can drop energy too.

I think it's the vertical beams - when the rocks break off of the ground, then land and smash, I think they drop energy. At least, I found some energy orbs after he did that attack.

You know those 5 classic notes that play every time Samus exits her ship onto a new world? I want a little speaker that plays that every time I get out of my car.

I lawled. Maybe when you get out of bed each morning? (ie, load a saved game)

[L.T.W.]

You know those 5 classic notes that play every time Samus exits her ship onto a new world? I want a little speaker that plays that every time I get out of my car.

ROFL

Thats an incredible idea!

Ill try to do it too

[The Damned]

For that matter, you should get a keychain that plays th "found an item" song from Zelda, so when you lose your keys and then find them again...

[friendlyHunter]

Oh, wow! "You found your keys!"

While we're on this topic: Mario pipe noise when you flush the toilet - somebody, somewhere has probably done that. I wonder what Shigeru Miyamoto's house is like....

How about novelty fire alarm sounds? Ridley theme from Super Metroid!? Nah, that's going a little too far.

In the meantime, I've heard issues of Prime 3 corrupting people's Wiis (pun intended).

Like in-game lag and not letting other discs play and stuff. Anyone experiencing that? Any official word on the issue?

It won't let me play any other Wii games. Every time I try playing another game, before I know it I'm playing MP3 again. It might start working again once I beat the game though.

god people that frickin boss ain't that hard

I have to agree... perhaps only because I beat it on the first try. I thought maybe I wasn't going to make it, but then it started dropping a crapload of health powerups. Here's another hint for anyone who's "stuck":

Rapidly firing your non-charged regular beam I found was a VERY effective way to kill the red spheres. Also, the morph ball part can be very painless - get in, drop your bombs, get out - and if he's gonna jump, morph out of ball mode way ahead of time.[/end spoiler] But yeah, it really isn't that hard.....

On a sidenote I thought both the other prime games were FAR too easy, I don't think I died a single time while playing either of them through the first time, so I don't know why this is giving me so much trouble.

I think it's because it really is harder (though, I haven't gotten very far yet so I can't really say for sure). The reviewers who said "easier than 1 and 2" probably didn't play on Veteran, or somehow assumed "easier controls" = "easier game", or are just plain mistaken. I think it's about time I've gone from no longer skimming game reviews to completely ignoring professional game reviews as a whole.

[I-n-j-i-n]

This is totally off-topic, but regarding what Injin said about Zelda story being secondary: as for me & my two sisters, whenever a new Zelda game comes out, we pretty much know what the gameplay is gonna be like right off the bat; it's a Zelda game, therefore there will be dungeons and treasures and bosses with sidequests. No, sir, the story and the art style, I would argue, are indeed the MAIN reasons to buy a new Zelda game, since they have carried a trend of being inter-related ever since the first two. Twilight Princess was a solid game, but it was things like character developement (Midna) and her mysterious past that drove me to keep playing. Trust me... after 9 dungeons that all play similarly, some other factor has to step in besides hack-n-slash.

There is nothing wrong with buying Zelda for hack and slash alone. The atmosphere of the game is great and yes, the story was actually sorta good with Twilight Princess, but it still is more of the same. Like most franchises, that is both a good thing and bad. Mostly good with Zelda games though. As for Metroid, if another Metroid game that comes out with ZERO story and ZERO dialogue, it'd still be a Metroid game that millions will play and enjoy regardless.

[JackKieser]

Look, we all play games for different reasons. Whether the story is meant to be secondary or not, for Injin it seems, at least for Zelda, for instance, the story comes secondary. There's nothing wrong with that; we all play games for our own reasons, and to each his own.

But, if a game is deliberately developed with story as a major point, like Twilight Princess or MP3, it's kind of a kick in the balls to the developer NOT to take the story seriously and give it a little consideration during gameplay.

Along that line, though, if story is meant to be a large part of the game, design wise, then the developer should also take care and make sure it is up to the highest standards of storytelling, or else it's a kick in the balls to the people playing, as if their standards come second to the designer's. If they don't want to do that, then its fine to just not put any story in. Look how many frigging GREAT games have little to no story at all.

It's all a matter of perspective and balance.

--Jack Kieser