Lightmare

Hmmm...

Suicrat said:

And to the dude with the long post, obviously Metroid Prime 1 didn't do enough to encourage the player to do any experimenting because YOU CAN KILL THE CHOZO GHOSTS WITH SUPER MISSILES.And there was nothing at all bad about Metroid Prime 2, except the way new areas were opened after boss fights, they need to find a more organic way of having boss fights open up new areas of the game."

"If the next Metroid does turn out to be an FPS once again, I hope they revamp the shooting mechanics. When shooting your energy attacks in prime, it never really felt impactful. It felt like some really weak weapon. I say revamp that by changing the look of the energy shots to something more powerful looking and adding more controller feedback (rumble).Something I would really like to see is a redesign to Samus's Power Suit. Not a total redesign, like keep the color and basic structure but add more detail to the suit. Though, I think the arm-cannon totally needs to be redesigned. Given that Samus's right arm is on-screen so much, a new arm-cannon design would be nicely refreshing.Both just small nit-picks I guess."

Hmmm...

First post here. It's been a while since I've posted on a gaming forum.

In terms of Metroid, Retro need to find what made the original Prime so good, (and the prior 2D releases. And concentrate on that formula), as opposed to going in, what could be considered a tangential direction. So lets talk about what worked in the 3D games.

I myself have no qualms about the first person view, (myself being raised on FPS shooters), but Retro needs to be more obvious about the direction the game is intended to take. I first tried playing the original Prime upon release, and promptly put it back down again. From an outsiders perspective, (as I was at that point), I was expecting a First Person Shooter through and through, and it did my head in something chronic that the lock-on system worked the way it did. It took a second attempt to get into it, at which point it became one of my favourites. But I know of others that have had the same problem I had, and couldn't work around it. It isn't a 1st Person Shooter, but the shooting elements can flavour your opinion unless you're capable.

Now, as has been pointed out, exploration is one of the keystones of the Metroid formula. Something it has been ever so slightly been tearing away from since Prime. The subsequent games, 2 and 3, made it significantly harder to explore. they ramped up the difficulty of the enemies, as so that you'd find yourself fighting battles, often unnecessarily, to go to even the most basic of areas. Come to think of it, the first examples of that I remember are in Prime, the chozo ghosts, who would haunt you at any room of the ruins, were immune to all but the weakest firearm, and took longer to kill than often the patience of the player would endure.

Upon mentioning this, the problems with exploration are linked to an overall shift in direction by Retro. The game spawned enemies that were difficult, time costly, or even just a pain in the arse to kill. The game wouldn't let you bypass these fights the first time through in a lot of places, and the enemies could always annoy the hell out of you, (war wasp I'm looking at you.)  This outlook is significantly different to the original concept, with which enemies were more of a "thing to avoid", (unless you went to a spawn pipe for health.)

All in all, the conclusion is fairly obvious at this point. The Prime games went for a more action-y feel, more so with the sequals (2 had that blasted ammo system and 3 was, well, 3). This is something that needs to be rectified, should the game wish to stick to it's own formula. If it doesn't, we're ending up with Metroid Prime: hunters.