The Flaws of the Metroid Prime Trilogy

[theRepublic]

MTZehvor said:

theRepublic said:

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.

1) I'll take these in turn.

Gamers would actively avoid it: Probably yes, though most people tried to actively avoid the dark world up until the end of the game so that probably doesn't change much. With that said, though, there's still plenty of incentive to explore; there are powerups, items, and temple keys to find in the dark world exclusively. The game actively forces you to explore there, at the very least, to find the temple keys. You can't simply just sit in the light world forever. That doesn't change here.

Difficulty Spike: Obviously there would need to be a balance here of sorts; I'm not advocating for a dimension where everyone can one shot kill you or something. What I would advocate for is a world where enemies, for instance, simply do more damage or something, as opposed to the game's usual method of just beeing their health bars up. Force the player to learn how to deal with harder enemies inside a dangerous environment. Who knows, it might even help balance out some of the notoriously big difficulty spikes that already exist in the game (*cough* Boost Guardian *cough*) by preparing the player better for tougher situations. Prime 2's difficulty curve wobbles all over the place to begin with, so if anything could stand to be renovated it's probably that.

Dark World Being the Same: I don't want the entire dark world to be the exact same; I'd like it to contain the same area (generally speaking) with the actual changes coming from the different enemies, atmosphere, and hazards. You know, how an alternate dimension that is supposed to be a "twin" of Aether would work. It's worth noting that just sectioning off various areas of the dark world doesn't exactly make it drastically different either, just more obnoxious to traverse when looking for keys.

Make the Player think about what they're doing: Honestly I laughed a little at this. As the game stands currently, there's almost no strategy or real thinking involved in figuring out how to transition around the various worlds. With the exception of maybe one case, it's extremely obvious at nearly every juncture which portal you need to go into to reach an area in the other world. Artificially blocking areas off doesn't make players think any more; it just means you add an extra 5 minutes of unnecessary walking to every trip.

3) And that's fine; if what you're here for is a game that merely strives for being "fun," then that's cool. Problem is, that's not really what Metroid's ever been. Metroid is a game series that revolves heavily around immersion and atmosphere, sometimes sacrificing "fun" (if you truly consider shoving a wii remote back and forth in the air to be fun) for a greater sense of connection between player and character. I like crazier games like Resident Evil 4, but they are not what I would want a Metroid title to be, or what a Metroid title should be. Most of my critiques are based on an understanding that there is a certain style of game which Metroid is aspiring to.

For example, Metroid: Other M's core gameplay is actually quite fun, yet it's not something I would ever want to see in a Metroid game again, mostly because it turns what's meant to be an at least semi thoughtful combat experience into a fray of button mashing. Is it fun? Sure. Is it Metroid? Not really. Games meant to just be "fun" are great, but if that kind of fun means going against the core principles of the series in the first place (and yes, immersion is definitely a core priniciple of Metroid), then it's probably worth considering sticking it into a different game or an entirely new IP altogether.

Haven't had time to properly respond to this.  Even this will probably be shorter than I would like.

Echoes difficulty spikes only because there are a couple of rough bosses, that in my opinion, were not properly play tested.  They were just too difficult compared to the rest of the game, and really just too dificult in general.  Making other parts of the game more dificult is not not going to help that.  What you were advocating for would actively introduce difficulty swings into the game.  I believe that to be poor game design.

Games with light and dark worlds do not just copy and past the maps for a reason.  It is copy and paste design, and it is boring.  Retro would rightly get trashed for that.  Just no need for a dark world if you are going to do that.  Even if you are changing the enemies and atmosphere.  Like I said earlier, better to just do it as a global event halfway through the game that you get forced to play through.  Would be easier to balance the game that way anyway.

Not sure why you would laugh at the truth.  It is much more difficult to figure out how to travel to where you need to go in Echoes than either Prime or Corruption.

Metroid has always been fun.  Nintendo has always been about making fun games.  A non-fun game is what we also call a bad game.  Fun is first and foremost what a developer needs to strive for.  But games can be fun in different ways.  You brought up Other M.  Yes, it was a fun game.  I also think it was a bad Metroid game.  The reason?  It didn't feel like Metroid.  The Trilogy sure as hell did.

Basically you just missed my entire point there at the end.  I was saying that I don't care either way, as long as the end result is fun, or cool.  What you said, was you prefered the least immersion breaking method.  But that is controlling what is on screen, ie. motion controls!  Pressing one button and watching a bunch of stuff happen is the opposite of immersion, but then you said you prefered it.  You are trying to take both sides on this one.