In Depth Metroid Prime 3 Review.
Metroid is a long running series of games starring 7 of them in the timeline so far, with 9 showcased total (pinball, zero mission). Metroid is not your every day shooter, or even one. This subject is even debated upon today, and still with differing opinions. With Super Metroid being the landmark title of the growing series, fans and gamers alike were unsure about a 3D Metroid…
Developed by Retro Studios, and published by Nintendo, you already can tell this is going to be one of the best games made on a Nintendo platform. With that being said, Metroid Prime 3 is best enjoyed by the hardcore gamer, and least enjoyed by your granny.
You don’t need to play the other 2 classic games to fully enjoy, or understand the storyline. Rather, just look up the information on the internet, everything else is explained clearly throughout. Apparently a virus has affected the Federations supercomputers/Aurora Unit. With backed up proof, the Federation knows the Pirates are the one’s who are up to something. With Valhalla already attacked, and Norion, the military base of the Federation also attacked, you and your fellow hunters have a lot of investigating to do on the other planets. The storyline becomes deeper if you scan, which shows you ‘behind the scenes’ of the Federation and Pirates, creating great atmosphere.
Bryyo- The home of golems, Elysia- the futuristic heavenly skytown, the abandoned Valhalla, and other planets all have unbeatable atmosphere. You feel as if your’re Samus, and that you can feel around your surroundings, as well. Prime 3’s level design is better executed than it predecessors. Every room is full of detail, and has challenging puzzles that will require you to think outside the Metroid box. Most rooms have so much depth it’s hard to just leave any room without investigating everything.
Retro decided to take advantage of the Wiimote controls with more combat, without ditching the puzzles. The grapple beam plays a big role in the game, with grappling off pirate shields to jerking off plates and flipping switches and bars. You’ll also be required to turn around some gears, hack bases, push, pull, turn levers, and whatnot. You’ll also be interacting with many of your fancy gadgets in your ship. It all does not sound fun and maybe a bit gimmicky, but once you experience it, you’ll start to wonder why you never did something so often in past Prime’s.
Prime 3 has well thought out bosses, and obviously very fun to fight. They all have the right difficulty thanks to the 3 difficulty options. Great music, diversity, and simply how to defeat them, brings a yet another Metroid game with a living, breathing, world.
On top of that, charged beams all almost useless. The uncharged shot are obviously rapid fire, and are not that far behind the power of your charged shot, so just stick with rapid fire.
As always, you are asked to do the dreaded fetch hunt! Who didn’t see it coming??? It’s a shame, because you’re just about to finish the game, then bam, fetch hunt. It’s easier though, because most of them are required to proceed onto the next area. But still, it’s a pain and will stack a couple hours of boredom. In my opinion, calling Prime a FPS is simply not true; there are too many immersive puzzles and powerups that I would label it a FPA. From the distinctiveness of the morph ball to the immersive grapple, this is easily the best game for Wii so far. If you never liked the Prime formula, chances are this game won’t change your mind. It’s safe to say Prime 3 has evolutionized upon its predecessors, not revolutionized. There are many new aspects in the game, but the goes the same for returning aspects. I’m not tired of the Prime formula, and I can’t imagine how anyone could.
Prime 3 will take you around 15-20+ hours to finish the game on your first play through, a pretty lengthy game. There are 3 difficulties: Normal/Easy, Veteran/Medium, and Hyper/Hard. Some people say this is an easier Prime game; well you’re all playing on Normal! Due to fans saying Prime 2 was too hard, Retro has acted, as well as keeping your preference difficulty, including hard mode. Prime 3 also has achievements that you can cash in for extras, like 100 kills for instance. All of the extras are really nice, and unlike most games, you’ll actually be tempted to keep playing just to unlock these things. You know you want a Mii bobble head and bumper stickers on your ship!
Prime 3 is the first game to really take advantage of the Wii’s engine/hardware, with silky smooth frame rate, gorgeous lighting, and special effects; you can’t see the brilliance in just pictures, but playing, or even watching the game in action. Although they’re not perfect, Wii can handle more than this, but superb nonetheless. Each and every piece of music is nothing short of a melody on the ears. The music fits compfortably in each area, boss battle, and cut scene. All voice acting in the game sounds nothing close to awkward, which is surprising considering it has never been done this heavily. This is only one of the many reasons why Prime 3 has such great atmosphere. The only minor downside is you will hear some top notch Prime 1 and 2 music. Why is that bad? Well, it’s not, but I just rather prefer the soundtrack to be completely new.
You will hear criticism of MP3 because it does not have a deep online experience. In short, Metroid did not get itself where it’s at today because of multiplayer, but because of its quality single player adventure. Multiplayer is nice, but if Zelda can get away with it, why not Metroid?
The good: Atmosphere, bosses, music, graphics, level design, voice acting, interaction, achievements, cutscenes.
The Bad: Charged shots almost useless, not a completely new soundtrack, fetch hunt.
