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[StoOgE]

So, I have had a big time gaming backlog. For my birthday last year (October) I got Metroid Prime 3 for my Wii. There it sat while I played through Bioshock, Halo 3 then Super Mario Galaxy. I’ve been making my way through the backlog and decided to play Prime 3. Then decided that I should experience the trilogy in order, so ordered the first two games off of eBay, and went through the entire trilogy over the last 3 weeks or so. The series was of course very well received last gen, but I missed it not owning a gamecube, so I decided to experience the awesome.

What a mess of a series. The boss battles are generally fun but a little easy, the exploring and backtracking is pretty good stuff (but fatally flawed), the puzzle solving is pretty hit or miss (physical puzzles good, making me find and scan 4 random things hidden in a room = bad).

Then the controls. Metroid Prime 3 luckily really fixed this problem for the most part, but this lock on system is horrid. It worked for platforming and for killing the stupid enemies that just walk around in place. Where it got bad was space pirates. I’m supposed to kill things that are jumping and flying all over the place with very little precision and aiming… on top of that the gamecube controller had me either pulling up the map when I meant to go into the ball mode or visa versa. That could just be my inexperience with the gamecube controller though, so I wont hold that against the game.

The real problem for me though is the handholding. I’m used to the Metroid series making you search for the next place to go, and it feeling like a real reward once you get there. Things like remembering “oh yeah there was a place that had a ledge I couldn’t reach before, lets head over there and see where that goes”. This game instead of letting you figure out where to go and actually solving puzzles decides to have a blinking warning that says “hey, press this button and go to this part of the map”. Ugg. What’s the point?

So what I am left with is a series of games that have some fun boss battles, some pretty good platforming (except for that stupid underwater section of the first game, UGGG), pretty bad controls, isn’t much of a shooter and has hit or miss puzzles. On top of all that, the thing the series is known for, exploration is pretty much stripped of it completely. The only thing that is really left for you to explore for is missile expansions and life bars.

I’m not saying it’s a bad series of games, it’s pretty solid, but it feels like they kinda missing the point.

 

[Crescendo170]

The real problem for me though is the handholding. I’m used to the Metroid series making you search for the next place to go, and it feeling like a real reward once you get there. Things like remembering “oh yeah there was a place that had a ledge I couldn’t reach before, lets head over there and see where that goes”. This game instead of letting you figure out where to go and actually solving puzzles decides to have a blinking warning that says “hey, press this button and go to this part of the map”. Ugg. What’s the point?

Turn off hint-system. Problem solved.

 

[StoOgE]

Turn off hint-system. Problem solved.

Wait.. what? I didnt have instruction books with the first two games and never bothered to read Prime 3's

Son of a bitch. Well, I pretty much had one shot at doing this without the hand holding.

AHHHHHHH. Oh well, I think I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more though.

 

[master15]

Just a question regarding what you consider 'hand-holding' issues, are you playing the games with hint system on or off? If so the former, it certainly kind of points you where to go and what to do next, which obviously some like as it repeats and limits the backtracking but in your case may extend the enjoyment.

Also have you played Echoes? Unlike the original I felt it pretty much after the short opening stanza just dropped you into the massive world and let you fight and fend for yourself with little or no help. The mixture of puzzles that sometimes had to be partially solved in the light world or finished in the dark world (Or vise versa) was often a pretty complicated and hard process not to mention the game at parts had a pretty steep difficulty curb.

Edit: Beaten, looks like someone already pointed this out to you. I actually didn't use hint system in the original, but used it in Echoes, mainly because with the two dimmensions it minimased (But didn't completely negate) some pretty reptitive moments, trying to figure out what to do next.

 

[Azure J]

Wow, did you ever fuck yourself over. Prime 2 without hints is the man's way of doing it right. :lol

Honestly though, the hint system wasn't terrible in Prime overall, there were just a few moments where it was like you didn't want to know what you were getting next and then:

PRESS Z HERE I TELL YOU WHERE L33+N3SS IZ!

This was mainly in Prime 1 if you forgot to turn off the hints though...

 

[Linkhero1]

Just a question regarding what you consider 'hand-holding' issues, are you playing the games with hint system on or off? If so the former, it certainly kind of points you where to go and what to do next, which obviously some like as it repeats and limits the backtracking but in your case may extend the enjoyment.

Also have you played Echoes? Unlike the original I felt it pretty much after the short opening stanza just dropped you into the massive world and let you fight and fend for yourself with little or no help. The mixture of puzzles that sometimes had to be partially solved in the light world or finished in the dark world (Or vise versa) was often a pretty complicated and hard process not to mention the game at parts had a pretty steep difficulty curb.

Prime 2 took me the longest to finish out of all 3. I think it was 22 Hours in the end. :lol

 

[Crescendo170]

Wait.. what? I didnt have instruction books with the first two games and never bothered to read Prime 3's

Son of a bitch. Well, I pretty much had one shot at doing this without the hand holding.

AHHHHHHH. Oh well, I think I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more though.

Lol, that sucks. Because I think they very much hit spot-on what makes Metroid so good(Corruption excluded), much more so than the dumbed down GBA-games. A tip is to wait a few months until you've forgot most of it and go play them again. I'm sure you will enjoy it alot more.

 

[Azure J]

Prime 2 took me the longest to finish out of all 3. I think it was 22 Hours in the end. :lol

:O :O :O

Holy shit, I'm a game monster then. It took me something like 12 hours on normal and 10 on hard.

 

[RockmanWhore]

Even with the hint system turned off, there's too much hand holding. Basically, when you enter a new location and see something fishy, you just scan it and they give you the exact instruction about what to do. You don't think about a puzzle, they just give you instruction, which is my definition of hand holding...

 

[Linkhero1]

:O :O :O

Holy shit, I'm a game monster then. It took me something like 12 hours on normal and 10 on hard.

The first one took me 12 hours and the third one was I believe 13 hours. I don't know what happened in Prime 2. I probably slacked off :lol

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Metroid Prime is the best of the three, because of its 'explore and see what happens character' which is closest to Super Metroid.

 

[NEO Frog]

I am getting my a$$ handed to me by the Omega Pirate (80% complete) in Metroid Prime.

Is this the hardest boss in the game? I effin' hope so. I have been using X-Ray to find him and then roast him with the Flamethrower but can only take half his life down. Any tips? I read you could use a power-bomb to knock his shields off, but it is not true it never destroys them so I have to knock all 4 off manually.

 

[TheGrayGhost]

Best series in gaming. Love it so much, I wish I had a Power Suit.

 

[master15]

I am getting my a$$ handed to me by the Omega Pirate (80% complete) in Metroid Prime.

Is this the hardest boss in the game? I effin' hope so.

First time I played through he definitely is one of the most difficult, then again I had equally as many deaths with

Spoiler

Ridley and Metroid Prime near the end. Especially the former as the fight is in quite a contained little area.

Nothing close to the frustration faced by the spider-ball boss in Echoes though. Oh dear...

 

[Christine]

I am getting my a$$ handed to me by the Omega Pirate (80% complete) in Metroid Prime.

Is this the hardest boss in the game? I effin' hope so. I have been using X-Ray to find him and then roast him with the Flamethrower but can only take half his life down. Any tips? I read you could use a power-bomb to knock his shields off, but it is not true it never destroys them so I have to knock all 4 off manually.

Here is the trick to rocking Omega Pirate's world.

In his room there are three pools of Phazon on the ground that he uses to regenerate his armor. They are in a rough triangle.

First, use rapid-fire Plasma to knock off his armor. Charged shots do more damage, but when you combine the reduced rate of fire with the odds you might miss any given shot, it's definitely better to stick to regular Plasma unless you are supremely confident in your timing.

After you've removed his armor, he'll go invisible and summon troops. Do your best to kill these, because they'll fuck you up if you ignore them. But after about 10 seconds or so, OP will move to one of the Phazon pools and begin regenerating. You want to be in the X-ray visor and looking for him so you can shoot him as soon as he appears.

The trick is that he will never appear at the pool you're nearest to. Figure out which pool is "yours", then get the other two in your field of vision. He'll appear at one of the other two pools. Shoot him with as many super missiles as you can. He'll disappear again, and assuming you're still next to "your" pool, he'll be forced to appear at the other of the two far pools. Shoot more super missiles at him.

This may very well kill him if you're not on hard mode. If it doesn't, just rinse and repeat.

I don't know about knocking his armor off with the power bomb, but if you're a badass you can boost over to where he's regenerating, drop a power bomb, exit morph ball mode and wear the X-ray visor so that the power bomb explosion will damage him.

 

[Frank the Great]

I always just ignored the Pirate Troops when facing the Omega. He kills them anyway with that shockwave attack.

 

[chemicals]

oh come on now... I LOVE LOVE LOVED Prime 1 and 2. I plan on renting prime 3 and playing it on my sister's kids Wii someday.

 

[Crescendo170]

Even with the hint system turned off, there's too much hand holding. Basically, when you enter a new location and see something fishy, you just scan it and they give you the exact instruction about what to do. You don't think about a puzzle, they just give you instruction, which is my definition of hand holding...

There could be definitely be some less handholding in Corruption, but I think it's fine in it's predecessors. I agree that most of the puzzles are more about executing the solution rather than figuring it out, but that doesn't make them any less satisfying to complete, nor make them any less clever for that matter. Imo, a puzzle don't have to be overly complicated to be great, and Echoes especially is filled to the brim with great puzzles and clever-as-fuck boss-battles. In addition, I found myself studying maps for long periods of time trying to figure out where the hell to go next based solely on memory and equipment, comparing logs and clues to find out where artifacts are hidden and such. I even think I busted out pen and paper at one occation, and I seriously never use pen and paper.

So yea, I would say that the Prime-games(Corruption excluded) are way more demanding than any other Metroid-games post Return of Samus, both in regards to difficulty and patience.

 

[NEO Frog]

Here is the trick to rocking Omega Pirate's world.

In his room there are three pools of Phazon on the ground that he uses to regenerate his armor. They are in a rough triangle.

First, use rapid-fire Plasma to knock off his armor. Charged shots do more damage, but when you combine the reduced rate of fire with the odds you might miss any given shot, it's definitely better to stick to regular Plasma unless you are supremely confident in your timing.

After you've removed his armor, he'll go invisible and summon troops. Do your best to kill these, because they'll fuck you up if you ignore them. But after about 10 seconds or so, OP will move to one of the Phazon pools and begin regenerating. You want to be in the X-ray visor and looking for him so you can shoot him as soon as he appears.

The trick is that he will never appear at the pool you're nearest to. Figure out which pool is "yours", then get the other two in your field of vision. He'll appear at one of the other two pools. Shoot him with as many super missiles as you can. He'll disappear again, and assuming you're still next to "your" pool, he'll be forced to appear at the other of the two far pools. Shoot more super missiles at him.

This may very well kill him if you're not on hard mode. If it doesn't, just rinse and repeat.

I don't know about knocking his armor off with the power bomb, but if you're a badass you can boost over to where he's regenerating, drop a power bomb, exit morph ball mode and wear the X-ray visor so that the power bomb explosion will damage him.

Cool tips bro. Camping by one pool so I can sight the other 2. Not charging my plasma so I get more shots in. Super Missles instead of Flamethrower. I'll try them all!

 

[Christine]

I always just ignored the Pirate Troops when facing the Omega. He kills them anyway with that shockwave attack.

Plasma troops like to jump up and cling to the wall, they can stay there more or less indefinitely. It's not so much that the pirates are hazardous in and of themselves, but they can hit you hard enough to trigger the shock/pain animation that cancels your weapons, and they can knock you into OP's melee range which really hurts.

For me, it depends on which difficulty I'm playing and which color of troops spawn. On normal I ignore them a lot more frequently, but on hard I almost always take out at least one - OP takes a few seconds before he starts to regen anyway and it's not like you have anything better to do in that time. Power and Wave pirates are the ones I'm least likely to kill, because they don't do that much damage and it takes longer to kill them. I usually go after Plasma pirates because they're obnoxious and the Plasma is my default beam for the fight anyway, and I almost always kill Ice pirates because they die so fast and their damage output is so high.

 

[_Alkaline_]

The real problem for me though is the handholding. I’m used to the Metroid series making you search for the next place to go, and it feeling like a real reward once you get there. Things like remembering “oh yeah there was a place that had a ledge I couldn’t reach before, lets head over there and see where that goes”. This game instead of letting you figure out where to go and actually solving puzzles decides to have a blinking warning that says “hey, press this button and go to this part of the map”. Ugg. What’s the point?

facepalm.gif

:O :O :O

Holy shit, I'm a game monster then. It took me something like 12 hours on normal and 10 on hard.

Metroid is my favourite franchise and as such, whenever a new one comes out I always take as much time as possible and savour every moment. Then, once I've completed the game, I'll start doing speed runs, sequence breaking and such.

First time, I took 26 hours in Prime, 29 hours in Echoes and 24 hours in Corruption. Loved every second of all of them. Amazing series.

 

[Red Scarlet]

Power Bombs will kill Omega Pirate's armor on the PAL version (and maybe Japanese) version of the game only. You can hurt him with Power Bombs on the US version after the armor is gone, but it's tricky; you gotta use the PB when you are right next to him while he's recharging, then after setting the PB you have to unmorph and put on the X-Ray Visor so he is visible and gets damaged by the blast.

You can kill him within 1 recharge (before he fully recharges his armor) with various combinations of Plasma shots/charge shots and normal beam shots/missiles/Super Missiles.

Flamethrower is a really crappy weapon to use, though.

Stooge: try without the hint system. Missiles kind of home in and as such are not bad to use against pirates. Charged Wave Beam does too, and just go up to them if you have the Plasma or Ice Beams. Samus is more of an up-close shooter and not really a sniper.

You could also try to do stuff out of order/early to mix things up and give the game a new feel.

 

[tzp2gameknight]

I have a lot of the same feelings that you do about this series. I eat up the 2D Metroids but have yet to finish all three of the Primes. They are great games but I couldn't get into them for some reason.

 

[NEO Frog]

I am now at Meta Ridley with 12 energy tanks, 8 power bombs, and 190 missles. I'll let you know if I need help killing him.

 

[Red Scarlet]

I thought he was really hard and it took me a bunch of tries to. Good luck!

 

[beef3483]

My favorite games of all time. All the Metroid games are of the highest gaming pedigree. The Metroid series has the unique distinction of having the both the greatest 3D and 2D games.

 

[fistfulofmetal]

I never finished Metroid Prime. I got to the part where you get the nigh vision visor thing and have to face those enemies that can only be see with it.... and I stopped there.

Maybe one day in the next few years when I can get a used Wii on the cheap I'll go back and finish Prime and play Echoes and then Corruption.

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

You should have made this thread BEFORE you started the games. Way to ruin the experience.

 

[conman]

So...

I've played through Prime 1 & 2 two times each and I never realized there was a hint system. I'm glad I didn't know about it since it sounds like it gives away way too much, but

 

[Darkpen]

while your complaints are fairly valid, I still don't think the hint system was good enough to help people who might have set the game aside for a while, only to return and be totally confused as to what the player was supposed to do next, despite seeing a cursor on the map screen pointing at your next objective.

But yeah, you could have turned the hint system off, like the first reply said :/

I mean, I guess you're just not the kind of person that messes with the options menu much?

As for the ball/map mixup, maybe you really just aren't used to the controller or something, but if I recall right, the ball button is either X or Y, and the map is Z. Z is next to the R trigger; how in the world could you have gotten the map when you were trying to turn into a ball?

 

[Death_Born]

I never finished Metroid Prime. I got to the part where you get the nigh vision visor thing and have to face those enemies that can only be see with it.... and I stopped there.

Maybe one day in the next few years when I can get a used Wii on the cheap I'll go back and finish Prime and play Echoes and then Corruption.

Riddick uses night vision. Why can't you!? :lol

 

[Laurentius]

rhIpq

 

[nightez]

Metroid Prime Echoes had tough bosses but at least none of them were cheats like Omega Pirate was.


..

 

[NEO Frog]

I thought he was really hard and it took me a bunch of tries to. Good luck!

I died many times but kept experimenting with different weapons. He goes down easy if you have lots of missles. Here is how I killed him easily.

Burn his wings off so he lands with the Plasma Beam. When he can't fly anymore and he has his mouth open too breath fire on you use the Wave Buster over and over on him and he dies really fast. You need a TON of missles though. I used up nearly all my 190 missles on this secondary weapon to kil him. But it is probably the easiest way to kill him.

 

[firex]

I still don't really like the Prime sequels as much, but I can explain what it is that I don't like about them:
Echoes - incredibly tedious backtracking that you pretty much have to do at the very end of the game to hunt for those final keys (you might find like 3 of them before you're told to get them, but a lot of them are annoyingly hard to get and require most of the upgrades), ammo system with the light/dark beams
Corruption - really dumbed down puzzles, and higher difficulties break the combat and make it incredibly tedious

I feel like the Prime series overall has awful combat, although Corruption is ok if you play it on normal so it doesn't take forever to kill things, even in Hypermode. In the original, the different beams are pretty well balanced and you get the super missile at just about the time when you might be getting frustrated with the damage of your beam weapons. I think the original does a good job of nailing the Metroid aesthetic, and it's pretty good at the exploration (though some of the secrets are really weaksauce) but the sequels are pretty boring/needlessly ruined with sequelitis's need to add more features.

 

[The Hermit]

Power Bombs will kill Omega Pirate's armor on the PAL version (and maybe Japanese) version of the game only. You can hurt him with Power Bombs on the US version after the armor is gone, but it's tricky; you gotta use the PB when you are right next to him while he's recharging, then after setting the PB you have to unmorph and put on the X-Ray Visor so he is visible and gets damaged by the blast.

You can kill him within 1 recharge (before he fully recharges his armor) with various combinations of Plasma shots/charge shots and normal beam shots/missiles/Super Missiles.

Flamethrower is a really crappy weapon to use, though.

Stooge: try without the hint system. Missiles kind of home in and as such are not bad to use against pirates. Charged Wave Beam does too, and just go up to them if you have the Plasma or Ice Beams. Samus is more of an up-close shooter and not really a sniper.

You could also try to do stuff out of order/early to mix things up and give the game a new feel.

Eh, in this Metroid discussion your avatar randomizer showed me the Metroid avatar, cool!

Anyway, I remember when I got to Omega Pirate in the US version shitting in my pants becasue everyone said he was oh so strong and I beated him in one or two tries...
Meta Ridley was hell though

Damn I miss MP... one of the best game I´ve ever played.

 

[Red Scarlet]

I died many times but kept experimenting with different weapons. He goes down easy if you have lots of missles. Here is how I killed him easily.

Burn his wings off so he lands with the Plasma Beam. When he can't fly anymore and he has his mouth open too breath fire on you use the Wave Buster over and over on him and he dies really fast. You need a TON of missles though. I used up nearly all my 190 missles on this secondary weapon to kil him. But it is probably the easiest way to kill him.

You got him? Neat. There's a very fast and easy way, but I didn't want to say what it was (didn't know about it until after I beat him).

Anyway, I remember when I got to Omega Pirate in the US version shitting in my pants becasue everyone said he was oh so strong and I beated him in one or two tries...
Meta Ridley was hell though

Yeah? I think it took me probably 5 for OP. :lol
Pretty sure Meta Ridley took me more tries though.

 

[NEO Frog]

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh. Kill one Metroid Boss then they throw yet another at your with no health regen. It's almost like they want me to hate this game and smash it into a 1000 pieces.

 

[Christine]

Probably the most dangerous thing about Meta Ridley is the tail sweep he does after his lunge.

NEO, the final form's first attack will destroy some stone pillars that drop Ultra (100) health. Use the charge suction and grab as many as you can.

 

[NEO Frog]

Probably the most dangerous thing about Meta Ridley is the tail sweep he does after his lunge.

NEO, the final form's first attack will destroy some stone pillars that drop Ultra (100) health. Use the charge suction and grab as many as you can.

Those will fill entire energy tanks?

 

[Frank the Great]

This topic inspired me to play through Corruption again. I'm a few hours in, and forgot how good it is. The controls are flawless - I would buy Wii versions of MP1 and MP2 with enhanced controls in a heartbeat.

 

[brainzelda]

For the first hour of Metroid Prime 3 I absolutely hated the controls and couldn't get a hang of them, even on advanced. After they grew on me though, I don't think I could ever go back.

And even though I'm betraying the Metroid spirit, I actually liked MP3 the most due to its streamlined level design and lack of ridiculous backtracking. I just felt that I was always moving forward and accomplishing something, other than running around in circles. Not to mention that there was so much action in this one compared to the other two that going back was always fun.

And for some reason I always hear complaints of the "fetch quest" at the end of MP3. In my playthrough I never even had to do anything when the game asked for the required items. By simply exploring the levels thoroughly throughout the main story, I picked up everything I needed and never felt like I hit a stupid fetch quest.

Regardless, MP3 is the best game on Wii and MP is my favorite series after Zelda.

 

[Christine]

Those will fill entire energy tanks?

Yes. It's usually possible to get at least five of them, which should go a long way towards seeing you through the fight. Umm... let's see, you can be pretty blase about the metroids she spawns until they switch over to hunter and fusion-type. The absolute best way to get rid of any of them is the hyper beam, but don't hesitate to use your remaining power bombs if you can't get to phazon or you've used it all up.

Also, the visibility cycles happen in a fixed sequence, it helps to know that. And the proper way to use the hyper beam is to hold the fire button down - don't tap it.

 

[140.85]

Disagree on pretty much every point. Man I gotta get this game again. So brilliant.