Retro-spective

With the recent news of Nintendo releasing "Metroid Prime Trilogy" which encompasses Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and adds Wii Play controls to the first 2 of those games since Corruption already has them. It just made me remember the original game, Metroid Prime.

Now I wasn't a Metroid fan growing up, never really played it on the NES, or SNES when I was a kid. But in the run up to when Prime was coming out, it looked like a pretty sweet game. And as a guy who hates most FPS, looked like a game i wasn't going to hate playing. I even pre-ordered it online pretty early...and forgot about it. So when I was at my house and got a early morning delivery one morning the day it was released. I saw my name on it and had no idea what it was, opened it and was pretty freakin' excited. Of course I only had like an hour to play cause I had to go Class...and then work.

The game was great it focused on exploration of this detailed world, which wasn't totally flooded with enemies so I wasn't afraid to get killed by a million enemies every possible second. Had the Zelda-ish lock on feature that let me enjoy the combat. And was fun to play, gaining abilities, and as I said before exploration and discovering the story of WTF happened to this planet. And actually a bit of horror for the game cause you never were entirely sure what was going to pop up, and especially when the Metroids showed up. I played that game a lot but I must confess, I never beat it.

I got to the last area, final boss fight, I gained all the power-ups defeated every other creature in the game. The final boss was too hard for me, I couldn't manage my 3 visors, and 4 beams quick enough to destroy that thing. So I hung my head in shame and put it back on the shelf. (Thanks Youtube for allowing me to see the end)

When the next Prime game came out, Echoes, again I was all over it. Received it as a X-Mas gift, and dove right into it. The Game was significantly more difficult than the original. Added a Dark/Light World Mechanic, and paired down the beams to a Ikaruga-esque system. And a bit more focused on combat. The horror element played up a bit more, with some genuinely creepy foes. It was hard a TON of back-tracking. With this game I made a good dent in it, and one boss battle ended up relying entirely on Morph ball mode. *Sigh* Again the frustration built. After many attempts I had to give up, and put it back on the shelf.

Then we come to the third game, Corruption, those other games were Gamecube releases, this was a Wii release game with brand new controls. point and look, very interesting. But to be honest to me it seemed very imprecise, unless you have a really big TV. But the game requires you to be precise , things with multiple targets you need to switch between on the fly. But again I will be honest, I rented the game, didn't play very far. Then I got it as a X-Mas gift again...and havn't put it in my Wii system. I want to like it....and thats where I am today.

But hearing people reminisce about those games now that this new edition is coming out, makes me want to play that game again, the old version. And also makes me think how much the new play controls make me not want to play it. Cause I hate FPS and just seems like its gonna make them all play imprecise and infuriate me. But I still have the old ones I might go back and enjoy them.