Metroid Prime

[Mendon]

I played Metroid Prime when it first came out but never finished it because I got frustrated in a couple areas and figured I'd put it up and come back at a later time. Well, I decided the time was right last week so I began all over again from the beginning and was enjoying the game until I got to Magmoor Caverns and had to perform a double jump in morph ball form to get a secret energy tank. After maybe 50 tries to get it (and if you miss you fall into lava and take damage) and being ready to heave my controller against the wall , I finally successfully made the jump and got the tank.

 

Did anyone else have problems with the double jumps in the game? Are there many more area's in the game where double jumps are required (Gads, I hope not....)?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Mendon

[tmont]

http://www.metroid2002.com/home.php or http://www.metroid2002.com/forum/viewforum...bae2cc1e0f01bfa

[sebastius]

In time, even tripple jumps are required... Just like the original Metroid games. Prime is a fine game, I'm stuck in the Pirates area. Really annoying.

[BydoEmpire]

I finished it with help from GameFaqs. The game was brilliant overall, but there were a number of overly frustrating and difficult parts. I preordered Prime 2, but never picked it up because all the reviews said it was even harder and more frustrating (poorly placed, insufficient save points, etc). I just don't have the hours of free time these days to play the same level or boss over and over and over again. Not fun anymore. Still, as much as I can complain about MP, it was very memorable, very well executed and definitely worth playing.

[classicgamingguy]

I also experienced problems with double jumps and whatnot. It did end up causing the game to be shelved for a long period of time, and since Metroid Prime 2 was harder, I didn't even bother to give it more than a glance. At this time I have no console systems, just my trusty PC.

 

Steve

[Dones]

Yup. Metroid Echoes has a harder, unbalanced difficulty. While you are exploring it's all good: you go at your own pace, discover things leisurely as you go. Then you encounter a boss and you get the phazon kicked out of you. Be assured you will die many times before figuring out what to do. Even when you do, most boss fights are a matter of being lucky enough to hold out longer than your enemy, not smarter. Frustration is unnecessarily aggravated by lack of save points. A common situation is that you encounter a boss without knowing, get killed and your last save was made 30 to 60 minutes ago. You will still have to repeat all the scanning on the trip back. It can get very annoying. I recommend playing Echoes with a boss guide. At least it will help reduce the frustration (and hopefully avoid a few cheap deaths).

Edited October 27, 2005 by Dones

[AMG]

Metroid Prime is a solid game overall. A lot of fun at times. But I stopped playing when I got to the Phazon Mines. I just lost interest in it. Which is sad because I've been a Metroid fan since the NES.

 

I have no interest in MP2.

[JB]

Personally, I loved both games.

 

I timed the bomb jumps off the bomb animation. The glow effect on them imploded before they detonated, and you had to plant the next bomb right as it started to cave in. Or something like that. The POINT is that they provide a visual cue for bomb jumps.

 

 

 

I enjoyed both games greatly, personally.

...

Except for the climb to the Metroid Prime's chamber. THAT was a bitch and a half.

And not a fun kinda bitch either. The stressful, nerve-racking, scream profanities until you're hoarse kinda bitch.

[Mendon]

My oldest son has played both Metroid GC games and beaten both. He said he enjoyed them but he faced frustration factors beyond any game/s he has ever played. He also said that after spending about 2hrs playing Echo's that he had to go out and buy the strategy guide as "...there is no way thru that damn game without it".

 

I'm really enjoying Prime but agree with him 100% that it does have a high frustration factor at points. Seems you'll be going along fine for quite awhile, then hit a WALL and find yourself making constants long runs from the last save point back to where you've just died. Only other problem I've had is that I've found it very, very easy to get lost in the game. But that might just be me.

 

But I intend to finish the game one way or another. Despite my frustration at that one double-jump point, I really let out a loud "WHOOP" of joy & success when I finally got that energy tank!

 

Mendon

[BydoEmpire]

This is an interesting question to me. Neither MP nor MP2 sold "mass market" numbers. MP broke a million, but we're not talking multimillions (a million units is great, but not the sales milestone it was ten years ago). Certainly Echoes did much worse. Do you think these would have sold much more had they been more accessible and forgiving? And could this have been accomplished with minimal change to the gameplay? I believe so. I know I would have bought Echoes had it not been reviewed universally as much harder and more frustrating than MP. I think adding a few more save points, toning down the difficulty of the bosses, making the scanning less tedious, etc would not have significantly changed the game, but would have made it more fun for more people.

 

The problem is that many old-time Metroid fans (like me) are older now and don't have the time and/or patience for extremely difficult and frustrating games. If it's to the point where it basically requires a strategy guide, then it's too freaking hard. Now, it seems like a lot of people complain games these days are "too easy." I think games have evolved to the point where almost everyone should be able to enjoy them. Especially since games are way more complex than they used to be, regardless of being easy or hard. The hardcore fans (i.e. people with lots of time) should be able to play on a harder difficulty (like Halo), or go all out to get 100% complete and recieve an extra bonus for their efforts.

 

Thoughts?

[Room 34]

I had lots of problems in general with morph ball in both games. I think the absolute hardest part in either game for me was the Spider Guardian fight, because it was all morph ball finesse... of which I have none! (I DID eventually beat it, but MAN was it a pain in the ass!)

[liveinabin]

I must admit, after really liking the early levels, I got annoyed with it and gave up because of two really crap things - (1) respawning enemies that you have to battle through every time you want to get back to where you died because of the (2) crappy save points.

 

Let me save where I died damn it! There's nothing to prove by having me beat sections of the game that I've quite obviously ALREADY beaten to get to where I got pasted.

[Room 34]

Let me save where I died damn it!  There's nothing to prove by having me beat sections of the game that I've quite obviously ALREADY beaten to get to where I got pasted.

956719[/snapback]

I think save points are fine... but they did seem to be especially cruel with the placement of some of them, especially the ones before the Chykka and Spider Guardian boss fights.

[Jasoco]

In Prime 1, I'm stuck right on the final boss. Well, not stuck, but I died once and well, after all the work I went through to get to him, I decided, fuck that, too much work.

 

So I started on MP2 where I am now stuck on the three headed worms. Damn. Guess I'm never finish either.

[Room 34]

In Prime 1, I'm stuck right on the final boss. Well, not stuck, but I died once and well, after all the work I went through to get to him, I decided, fuck that, too much work.

 

So I started on MP2 where I am now stuck on the three headed worms. Damn. Guess I'm never finish either.

959257[/snapback]

Three-headed worms? I don't even REMEMBER that. Man, it's amazing how huge these games are!

[Room 34]

Well, with all of this talk about how hard the Metroid Prime games are, I just want to remind everyone that (at least for me) these games are a cakewalk compared to the original NES Metroid!

[Dones]

In Prime 1, I'm stuck right on the final boss. Well, not stuck, but I died once and well, after all the work I went through to get to him, I decided, fuck that, too much work.

 

So I started on MP2 where I am now stuck on the three headed worms. Damn. Guess I'm never finish either.

959257[/snapback]

It's not very obvious, but you got to bomb the monster while inside of it. Roll into a ball and let it suck you up. Watch your energy or you might not last long enough to bomb all three heads.

[JB]

In Prime 1, I'm stuck right on the final boss. Well, not stuck, but I died once and well, after all the work I went through to get to him, I decided, fuck that, too much work.

 

So I started on MP2 where I am now stuck on the three headed worms. Damn. Guess I'm never finish either.

959257[/snapback]

It's not very obvious, but you got to bomb the monster while inside of it. Roll into a ball and let it suck you up. Watch your energy or you might not last long enough to bomb all three heads.

959592[/snapback]

And if you're going for scans, make sure you get both the combined form and the seperated form.

[Jasoco]

Maybe it's not a three-headed worm. Maybe more three worms? I dunno. It's three.

 

And yeah, I know what to do, it's just so damn hard to pull it off. The game got way too hard way too fast. I hate games that do that. It pisses me off. So many games start off so fun so easy, then BOOM! It's a nightmare. It gets shelved for 5 years. 5 years later I pick it back off the shelf and try again. I hate that.

[Room 34]

In Prime 1, I'm stuck right on the final boss. Well, not stuck, but I died once and well, after all the work I went through to get to him, I decided, fuck that, too much work.

 

So I started on MP2 where I am now stuck on the three headed worms. Damn. Guess I'm never finish either.

959257[/snapback]

It's not very obvious, but you got to bomb the monster while inside of it. Roll into a ball and let it suck you up. Watch your energy or you might not last long enough to bomb all three heads.

959592[/snapback]

 

Oh right, I remember that now. Isn't that the mini-boss you fight the first time you enter the temple?

[Dones]

And yeah, I know what to do, it's just so damn hard to pull it off. The game got way too hard way too fast. I hate games that do that. It pisses me off. So many games start off so fun so easy, then BOOM! It's a nightmare...I hate that.

And that's only the beginning. The game's unbalanced difficulty will deliver hours of constant frustation and lost progress. If the game hadn't been printed with the name "Metroid" on the cover, it would have gotten harsher reviews.

[JB]

Maybe it's not a three-headed worm. Maybe more three worms? I dunno. It's three.

 

And yeah, I know what to do, it's just so damn hard to pull it off. The game got way too hard way too fast. I hate games that do that. It pisses me off. So many games start off so fun so easy, then BOOM! It's a nightmare. It gets shelved for 5 years. 5 years later I pick it back off the shelf and try again. I hate that.

959669[/snapback]

It's 3 worms that all attach their butts to the same egg.

 

While attached to the egg, they scan as a diffrent creature.

 

 

And personally, I never thought it was excessively hard.

 

 

My problem bosses were the spider ball guardian(I'm not precise enough with my bombing and rolling for the last room or 2), the maintainence droid in the glass tube(shoots sparks on the floor, has magnetic raling on the side, I didn't know you were supposed to boost ball across the tube to hit it), the flying wasp thing (Chykka?), and Emperor Ing(just too damn tall to shoot easily, espeiclaly the 3rd form).

 

 

Prime 1 I had trouble with the Incenerator Drone(hey, it was the first one in the game with any complexity) and MechaRidley.

The Prime itself I had most of my troble with the trip TO the fight. Damned respawning fission metroids.

 

Prime 1's chozo ghosts and fission metroids, while not bosses, get honorable mention.

You can't hit what you can't see, and until the x-ray visor, the ghosts aren't there for a good bit of time. And they have that annoying EMP attack that knocks your weapons offline for a bit.

The fission metroids were just... extremely irksome. Kill one and you get 2 metroids, that have to be killed with either beam weaponry or your VERY limited power bomb stockpile.

 

Many of Prime 2's security droids got honorable mention. The Hulk wannabe and the 2-part spider thingie, specifically. They were just pains in the ass.

The comptuer virus one, though, I loved. The reboot sequence made me laugh my ass off.

 

 

 

 

Many of the other bosses that are commonly labelled hard I just found damned fun.

 

Omega Pirate = biggest letdown in history. Only redeemed because I got to unload a super missile into a team of 3 power beam pirates and watch them go flying like ragdolls. For a "ZOMG HARDEST BOSS EVAR!111" he went down pretty fast.

 

Quadraxis = just plain fun, perhaps becaue I didn't have his difficulty hyped to the heavens in advance.

[Room 34]

Prime 1's chozo ghosts... while not bosses, get honorable mention.

No kidding... the whole Chozo Ghost experience was extremely well-designed. Those things freaked me out so badly that even once I was powerful enough to knock them off easily, I was still scared to go into areas where I knew they were, and I'd get chills when their music would start.

 

The comptuer virus one, though, I loved. The reboot sequence made me laugh my ass off.

Yes, that one's great. Although I have to admit, MOST of the beasties in the Sanctuary Fortress creeped me out almost as much as the Chozo Ghosts from the first Prime!

 

Quadraxis = just plain fun, perhaps becaue I didn't have his difficulty hyped to the heavens in advance.

I think Quadraxis was the only boss in either game that I found to be MUCH EASIER than I had expected coming into the fight. It wasn't TOO easy, but it went down without much trouble.

[JB]

Prime 1's chozo ghosts... while not bosses, get honorable mention.

No kidding... the whole Chozo Ghost experience was extremely well-designed. Those things freaked me out so badly that even once I was powerful enough to knock them off easily, I was still scared to go into areas where I knew they were, and I'd get chills when their music would start.

Mmmm... the ghosts having their own music helped the experience a lot.

 

Taking a hit with the x-ray visor up was kinda creepy too. Samus reaches up to shield her face and you can see her bones.

 

Think the first time I flipped out for a second. "WTF HOW'D IT BLOW MY HAND OFF?!?!?! Wait, x-ray. DUH!"

[Mendon]

Not sure if I'm at another of those FRUSTRATION points or not.

 

Just made it to the Ice Temple where you get the Ice Beam. Took out the 4 little dragons (can't think of their names at the moment) with no problem when Big Momma dragon comes storming in. Died 3 times fighting her and not even sure if I was hurting her at all. If I hit her anyplace except the head it didn't seem to do anything and you can't lock onto her head using the L shoulder button.. you have to use Free Aim. She'd glow red when I'd hit her in the head with a missiles but I still can't tell if I'm really hurting her or not.

 

Frustrating part of this (so far) is its a loooong run from the last save point back to the Temple. So while I'm experimenting with how to kill her, I've had to make that long run 3 times now and scan the statues (trying to keep up with scanning everything I find) every time I die.

 

Still enjoying the game.. but that may change If I have to make the Ice Temple run for the 50th time

 

Mendon