The Flaws of the Metroid Prime Trilogy

[theRepublic]

MTZehvor said:

theRepublic said:

MTZehvor said:

1) The artificial blocks I'm talking about are the Ingworms; there will frequently be a completely blockaided section of territory that is totally invulnerable to all weaponfire. Ideally, the difficulty of navigating the Dark World should come from having more fearsome enemies and a dangerous environment, not because the game will occasionally decide to throw an unpassable roadblock in front of me.

To illustrate, take the Sky Temple keys fetch quest. Instead of being able to jump into the dark world once in Temple Grounds and navigate my way around it looking for keys, I have to go to enter a portal, look for the temple key in a small, cut down, dark world chunk of the Temple Grounds, then exit via the aforementioned portal and go off looking for the next portal so I can repeat the process twice more. It's incredibly time consuming and makes transitioning around the dark world, particularly at the later stages of the game, a chore, and it also makes the dark world feel like it was stripped down just to force the player back into the light world. 

3) Then, at the very least, the option should still exist for players who don't find that immersive (and there are quite a few) to turn them off. Personally, for me, the games I get most immersed in are the ones where I almost find myself forgetting that I'm even holding a controller, and consisntently forcing me to waggle the wii remote back and forth to shake off Gandrayda or pump some fuel cell doesn't help that cause. It certainly wouldn't have taken any more effort on the developer's part; just make pressing the "Z" button an automatic grapple beam usage and have the silly pump action energy cell stuff go on its own once you press the A button.

1. That is exactly what I was talking about too.  If you could navigate the same areas in the light world and dark world, then what is the point of the dark world?  Might as well get rid of it altogether.  The way they did it made me actually have to think about the way I moved about the world.  It made things a bit more maze-like, instead of just being able to take the same paths I did through the light world.

3. So you would rather these be done by context sensitive button actions, which, for most games pops up a button icon on the screen.  The single most immersion-breaking thing that can be done in a game.  Any game with a half-decent control scheme has me forgetting about the controller.  A button icon on screen is the easiest way to remind me of the controller in my hand.  Which, to be fair, still happens in the Prime games.  But they did some damn cool things with the motion controls that I wish would find their way to more games.

1) The point of the Dark World is, as mentioned before, having a familiar environment that is more dangerous and "fear inducing," so to speak. Ideally, a dark world is creating a more oppressive, twisted version of places you've already visited. Navigating should be made more difficult by the more dangerous enemies and hazardous environment, not by setting up artifical roadblocks.

3) A context sensitive button pops up whenever you interact with context specific motion controlled actions outside of grapple beam (which I would leave the same as is; just press a button whenever you see the symbol), so that point is moot regardless.

Since immersion gets broken either way; it's more about the degree to which immersion is broken. I'd much rather a quick, momentary break in immersion rather than seeing the same button, and then having to wave my hands back and forth (and, by extension, extending the immersion breaking process for another 5 or so seconds).

Ideally, none of these things context specific actions would exist in the first place. I get the sense (considering they're unique to Corruption) that they exist for the sake of showing off the Wii's motion control abilities, which is a shame.

1. What you are suggesting (a much more dangerous dark world), gamers would actively avoid, especially if there is no difference in navigation between the areas.  Just getting in and right out of the dark world as quick as posible.  With the portals too close to goals, and players have no incentive to explore the dark world.  Making the portals too far from goals would just create unnecessary difficulty spikes that players would hate.  If you want an entire dark world the exact same, it would be better achieved with just one world, and then some sort of global event which changed the entire world to "darkness".  That would then be something gamers would have to play through, but also when they are more powerful and experienced later in the game.

The way it was designed maintains the difficulty curve, maintains the incentive to explore, and makes the player think about what they need to do to achieve their goals.

3. With motion controls, I am actualy involved in the game.  A button press followed by a player character performing a series of actions (like replacing energy cells) is basically just an immersion breaking (short) cut scene.  I will take the motion controls over that any day if the goal is to maintain immersion.

Ultimately, your point on this was that losing immersion was bad.  Personally, I don't care if a game is immersive.  I care if it is fun.  I had a ton of fun with the motion controls on this game.  The grappling beam was especially satisfiying.  There is nothing inherently wrong with context specific actions.  They allow some of the coolest actions in games.  Resident Evil 4 springs to mind.  Jumping through windows, kicking open doors, and kicking or suplexing enemies where all awesome things done through context sensitive controls.  They all broke immersion to do it, but it was a heck of a lot of fun.