So, after sitting all day at work, with a little white box of joy sitting in my truck taunting me viciously, I get home and pop Metroid Prime 3 into my Wii. Sweet, it only takes 4 tries before it actually reads my disk (my Wii has issues, my doctor prescribed penicillin), and I'm off and motion-controlling. When I finally get control of Samus, what am I greeted by? FUCKING VOICE ACTING MARINES!

Holy shit, lets rewind here for a second.

I'm put Metroid in my Wii, right? My Wii didn't magically begin to play xbox games and I'm all the sudden playing Halo 2, right?

A trademark of the Metroid series has always been the complete isolation. The crushing desolation that Samus faces as she ventures alone against an entire planet bent on her destruction. This feeling for me is completely summed up in probably the best piece of game art I have ever seen that has been featured here before (credit to transfuse of deviantart):



Samus, all alone in the dark, with only the light from her arm cannon for comfort. That is how the original Metroids felt, and part of what made them so compelling. So why the hell am I all the sudden running around chatting it up with flag officers? Even better yet, the first 'level' feels just like a canned and reprocessed sci-fi shooter. Baddies boarding your capital ship, marines dying left and right, ships getting lanced by huge frickin' lasers out the windows, you know the drill.

The other thing that made me feel 'off' about MP3 so far is the ease of item acquisition. I haven't played a whole lot (*POTENTIAL SPOILER* I'm moved on to the 2nd planet *END POTENTIAL SPOILER*), but I've gotten 3 energy tanks, all of which required nothing interesting or challenging to do. They were just lying around, and I happened to come across them. *POTENTIAL SPOILER* Same thing with the grapple beam; its just sitting at the beginning of a level, waiting to be picked up *END POTENTIAL SPOILER*.

Power ups, especially energy tanks are usually hard to come by. Sure the games will throw you a few bones now and then as way of ensuring you have a base amount of health/missiles to survive. But I'm two hours into the game and I already have 400 health. Not to mention every other enemy seems to drop red energy pickups. At this point, I have never even come close to losing 1/8th of my health, which doesn't feel right for a Metroid game. This bad taste in my mouth might also be due to starting with the morph ball, bombs, space jump and charge beam; but it sure as hell feels like I've been given too much stuff off the bat.


And this was one of the easier ones to get

But maybe I'm being too harsh, I say. I press on. The wiimote controls actually do more or less live up to the hype. Being able to free look while moving. what a novel idea! These controls are a very welcome change to the series, and I think at least initially make the game slightly harder; battles are no longer just a spasm of hitting the lock-on button while churning pure energy out of your arm cannon. Now you have to actually aim for once, which certainly makes the game feel more interesting and frantic when 50 headcrab things are swarming you at once.

Now the question, and the point of this blog. Does any of this matter? Am I a lone whackjob who is the only one muttering to himself about the original NES metroid and the 30 health/short beam you start with? At what point is changing some of the core ideas behind an IP refreshing, and at what point is it detrimental to the feel of the IP? Am I just wearing horrendously bitter shaded retro goggles?

I'm still very excited about this game, and after getting past the first true boss battle (which is complete EPIC WIN), the game has gotten much lonelier. I think it will definitely wind up being better than MP2, but probably not MP1, only due to the sheer awesomeness of hearing original Metroid sounds while playing in luscious 3D.

So, how do you guys feel about the different direction MP3 starts out on? Yay or nay?

P.S. On a side note, we should petition Niero to add [spoiler][/spoiler] BBcode tags to black out text. Would make writing blogs about newly released games a lot easier, because I sure as hell would have said more (maybe not a good thing)

Well, we got our last two sneak peeks at Metroid Prime 3: Corruption before the game is released. Apparently the phrase, "Save the best for last" is unknown by those in charge of the releases.

The first video is a little snippet on Dark Samus and her connection with the Space Pirates. What's amazing though, is for all the cool graphics and words, you really don't learn anything new. No 'Holy Shit' moment like during the Aurora video or anything. To make it more interesting, I've imagined learning Dark Samus' motivation: she is merely angered at the ongoing state of segregation in the galaxy, and the privileges light Samus receives based on the color of her suit:



The battle video is Samus in a new suit (modified-Varia in rough appearance, probably her corrupted suit?), slaying mofos like it ain't no thang. The battle takes place in a circular room with tall pillars, and actually does a good job of showing how effective the controls can be in fast-paced battle.

Check 'em out, then put your Wii back into hibernation until you get your hands on the game. I'm still completely amped about this game, but I was really hoping for some huge revelation in these last videos, like seeing Kraid brought into 3D as a boss or something like that. Oh well. Now if only I wasn't leaving town for the weekend, I could finish Bioshock before picking up MP3....

It would appear that some young idiot decided that the proper way to cool his 360 was to cool its external power supply. By wrapping it in tape and plastic, and submerging it in water. WHILE STILL PLUGGED IN. Maybe he took the Toaster in the Tub achievement from Bioshock too literally and didn't realize you were supposed to do it in game. Or maybe he is just genetically inferior. You decide!

It's times like this I'm surprised that humanity has gotten as far as it has.

[Via xbox-scene]

Two new videos on the Wii Metroid channel to check out.

Video one, Valhalla, shows an inspection of a galactic federation ship after being attacked by space pirates. The narration notes that space pirates have never hit a capital ship of this size before, suggesting improved tactics and mobilization. It all hits the fan when it is determined that the space pirates stole an Aurora computer (which we all know to basically be another version of Mother Brain). At that point the camera is assaulted by Metroids, and the feed is lost.

Video two, Bowling, shows some morph ball boosting goodness. The morph ball is used to power-up and orient a morph ball cannon, which then launches Samus across a chasm. Samus un-morphs, runs through a door, where what appear to be space pirates materialize in front of her. She lets a missile fly which takes care of one pirate, then morphs and boosts into the remaining pirates, obliterating them.

This more or less confirms what we all figured, that at some point you will end up with a Mother Brain-esque fight at some point in the game. Other than that, not a lot here to blow my skirt up. What about you guys?

Two news videos up on the Wii Metroid Channel for your viewing pleasure.

The first has to do with a phazon exoskeleton enhancement marines have been field testing. My money is that you have to fight corrupted marines at some point that are consumed by the phazon (somewhat obvious from the last scene, and it almost looks like you fight one among the space pirates in the next video)

The second clip shows a fairly intense battle against space pirates being airdropped into the scene. However, we don't see too much new in this video.

Check em out.

For those of you who haven't checked their shiny new Metroid channel on the Wii, it would appear we have two new videos to check out, one for the 'Aurora' computer (wonder what that could be) and one on the Spider Ball. Enjoy!

The spider ball video shows a fairly awesome looking level, but more or less standard morph-ball game play.

The Aurora video....well I don't want to spoil it.

Edit: And looks like we will have two new videos on 8/16