I traded them up last night, so before my memory is still fresh I thought I'd share what I thought about Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Hit the jump for the full writeup.

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Oh right, I don't have jumps...

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Fuck...

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So, Phantom Hourglass. In short, this game is almost perfect. Aside from rolls and doing a spin attack under pressure the controls work perfectly. Aside from the Temple of the Ocean King (more on that in a second) the dungeons were all brilliant and ended in some really clever boss battles. The inventory while limited was very well balanced and every item saw frequent use.

I do have to say that the sea travel really wasn't as enjoyable as it was in Wind Waker, which at least was pretty to watch. Customizing your boat is fun (and of course gives you health bonuses), even though the tiny DS screen doesn't really let you admire your handiwork and I'm sure it would have taken friggin' forever to get all the parts. The fishing is disturbingly addictive as it always is of course and shooting seagulls with your cannon never gets old. However it really could have done with a land overworld, larger islands or at least day/night and weather effects.

There is one thing that is very wrong with this game though, and I'm pretty sure anybody who has played it knows what I'm talking about: The frickin' Temple of the Ocean King. I swear that I almost stopped playing the game 3 times because of that godforsaken place. Take forced stealth, make it lengthy, add indestructible enemies, remove the ability to save midway through, put it all on a timer and force the player to replay the same floors up to SIX times and you have a recipe for frustration. I'm still fuming about it...

I can't really say much about the multiplayer, as I was only able to get my roommate to play with me for 5 minutes before he said it sucked and went back to whatever RPG he was playing at the time. What little I did play seemed pretty fun though. ^_^

It was an awesome game overall, but that frickin' temple really drags it down and is the reason I traded it in because I would never play it again.

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Metroid Prime 3... I can best sum it up in four words: disappointment and wasted potential.

First of all, this is the third Metroid Prime game. You think they would have fixed that glitch where every third time you shoot a door it takes half a minute to open. Seriously, in a game where backtracking is as encouraged as much as it is in Metroid anything that hinders travel like that is a big no-no. I assume there's some bullshit excuse about load times and such, but I'm not buying it. If there was any optimization done when developing this game clearly it wasn't done here...

Second, this whole hyper mode bullshit. The whole corruption mechanic is kinda cool and of course is the backbone of the story, but a little more warning before I instantly get a game over because I wasn't shooting this god-damned phazon fast enough - which I didn't even want but a pirate threw a phazon grenade at me - would be really nice. Especially when I lose an assload of progress because backtracking to save only means I don't have to do the scans again (Yeah, I'm a completionist...). I know there is a meter at the top of the screen and all there but it's kind of hard to focus on when I'm taking fire and trying to aim to get the most out of being in hyper mode - which I didn't want in the first place.

When enemies go hyper mode it's even better, because all of a sudden they have ten times the health, do like double damage and fire a thousand shots a second at you. At one point I went into a small room with no cover at all and was ambushed by four of those robot tank things that all immediately went into hyper mode. I barely managed to finish them off when four more tanks came into the room and also immediately went into hyper mode. Fun times...

Before you think of this as a big hate on I should mention the good points. As all Metroid games do, the game looks absolutely amazing and the art direction is superb. The controls take a little getting used to, but work really well. I found that I could never keep track of the aiming reticle, but disabling free aim when locked on easily solves that problem. The story is good if not a little overly complicated for a game that size, and while the first several hours didn't feel like Metroid (seriously, you TALK to people!?!?) it was still pretty enjoyable.

I never finished the game (stoped shortly after I got the hazard shield) but I've heard the last several hours is groin grabbingly transcendent. Shame I never got that far...

Despite everyone else hating it Prime 2 is still my favourite Metroid. It just did everything right and I absolutely loved the game world.