Looking at the conclusion to the Phazon Thematic trilogy, and answering the question... just what is the price of accessibility?
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Sources:
Wii Sports: • (TAS) Wii Sports Baseb...
Fusion: • METROID FUSION - The C...
Halo 3: • Halo 3... 9 Years Later
Doom: • WTF Is... - DOOM ?
Jak Trilogy: • Yelling About The Jak ...
Devil May Cry 4: • Video
The rest of the footage was gathered by me.
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Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. Analysis. Retrospective. KingK. Wii. Review. Critique.
stop requesting other m
KingK are you not doing other m? Its fine if you don't I'm just curious
KingK what about another Dad?
What about Prime Pinball? Can we get Prime Pinball?
KingK How about you pick a favorite series of yours KingK.
KingK Can we see Prime Pinball? It's rich in story and I'd like to see how you do with it.
While I have played them all at this point, Prime 3 was actually my first. In fact, I remember I wanted Other M because it was new, but the Gamestop employee advised me to get Prime 3 because it was cheaper for my parents to buy. Boy do I realize how good that advice was now...
Papa N. I'm just hoping you bought the Prime trilogy afterwards, rather than Other M
Eh I actually really like other M. People give it wayyy too much crap
Yea I got the trilogy. Rented Other M and couldn't get very far. The game couldn't hold me like the rest of them.
Other M is utter shite
Papa N. Haha i remember being a 10 year old kid, this one employee at the fnac (multimedia and book store in belgium) saying i should take twilight princess where i really wanted to take a ben 10 game. Zelda has been my number 1 franchise ever since, it got me into metroid, made me rediscover mario... if i could ever find that employee again, i would thank him so much, he literally changed my life
Can we just talk about the death screens for the Prime games? It’s terrifying
They definitely are lol
Especially in morph ball form
Link's AMV. What's a more effect message to tell a player? "Oh, you died, reload last save, and you're good" or, "Oh shit, you just got Samus Aran killed and it's not even a dignified or painless death and now the whole planet is screwed! Don't die again, you idiot"?
When I was a young boy, I got a game over in Metroid Prime 1, I was terrified and never played it for years after that.
okay listen i was 6 but i used to think that the death screen was showcasing a sock in metroid prime 2 XD go back and look at it
"If you turn off lock on/free aim you can't lock on and freely aim"
Love him or hate him he do be spittin straight fax tho
Honestly this part of the critique just felt like he wasnt very good at the game lol
@@spencergallucci5309 lmaoooooo imagine not being very good at Prime 3
To be fair, with the way the game is designed I think it could have benefited from a way to toggle that on the fly, i.e tap Z to lock-on with locked cursor, or double tap to lock-on with free aim. There are situations where one is more helpful than the other in quick succession, so it doesn't make sense to only be able to change it through the pause menu.
I really like Metroid Prime 3 because they tried to do something they hadn't done with the franchise in a while, and expand its universe and lore. Keeping the games insular and lonesome might mean they are tighter packages, but when you get another game where Samus has a solo quest on a mysterious planet it might just be more of the same. The dialogue in MP3 was quite sparse compared to most games these days, thank goodness, it got the job done.
Also, Sky Town is one of my favourite locations in a Metroid game.
The issue I have with that is Metroid (like many games) has bland barely serviceable pulp sci-fi story, but excellent exploration gameplay. It seems backwards to sacrifice something these games excel at for something else that will at best be mediocre, especially compared to the plethora of far better stories out there. I think this loss of focus on the exploration and passive storytelling that made the series work so well is part of the reason the franchise began to fall in popularity and success. The series became bland sci-fi action that was always going to play second fiddle to more successful series, like Halo and Star Wars.
Skytown is the most boring level in any Metroid game. It's cool for about 30mins, not 3 fucking hours
The dialogue in MP3 was written by a 6 year old child and voiced by homeless people.
@@DMcGrannIt sounds like you didn't like Fusion, Other M, Samus Returns and Dread if you think that a higher emphasis on action is a bad thing. With that in mind, it honestly sounds like your preference of favorite type of Metroid gameplay is the one that isn't like these 5 games, one style isn't better than the other, it's just different. I feel it's important to put your personal tastes aside before judging something instead of saying it's bad because it isn't your cup of tea.
What did you think of the GFS Valhalla Ship? That was probably my favorite level from MP3. going around and scanning the corpses of all the dead soldiers and pirates to try and figure out what had happened and it also had an amazing atmosphere that felt like you were not welcome there.
And then you have a god awful fetch quest
It was awesome but terrifying
Its like a Metroid Dead Space
“Metroid Prime 4 was announced this E3” Me watching this video almost 4 years later - “Don’t remind me of the pain I feel everyday”
5 years later, still not even a screenshot in sight 😭
f
@@Road_to_Dawn we do have that one screenshot or I guess it’s more like artwork
@@Road_to_Dawn ▪️ It's right around the corner. 🟥
6 Years now, coming up on 7, can't wait until it gets the BOTW and I have to play the switch version or buy a new console to see it at more than 15 fps@@Road_to_Dawn
Wow I can't believe TheGeekCritique got two Prime videos out in a week. Good going Josh. Wait a minute...
HAHA WHAT A COINCIDENCE, IT'S NOT LIKE WE'RE THE SAME PERSON OR ANYTHING HAHAHAHAH...
Yo, Dr. Madd! Ever since I started watching your Bionicle vids I've seen you pop up across youtube. It's like you're stalking me, from the future.
Dr. Madd I was gonna say
Mayeur000Donz Well the logical explanation would be that we just have similar interests but I like your version more.
KingK *glares* HMMMMMMMMM
I'm going to disagree or at least dispute pretty much every point on here. -It's unreasonable to expect that Samus couldn't get through the door before the Pirate Seed by herself. I'd argue it's perfectly reasonable, or, at the very least, no less unreasonable than the dozens of other barriers that couldn't be broken earlier in the series, Power Bomb or otherwise. I'll reference Metroid Prime 2 since it seems to be a game you're fond of; remember the Ingworm? Samus was literally unable to access anything beyond those bunches of fleshy mass regardless of firepower. Does a bounty hunter with something as powerful as Power Bombs being restricted by a wall or dead worm make sense from an outside perspective? Not really, but it's no less sensical than it has been through the rest of the series. -Diverse areas don't fit as well as they do in Echoes. I don't believe there was a ton of explanation given as to the why here, so all I can really say in response is that I disagree. It seems to me that having multiple planets with diverse climates is far more believable and fitting than a single planet which has a swamp, desert, and cliffside biome all within walking distance of each other. Not that that's a particularly game breaking issue, but I do think Corruption handles it better. -Having Samus' ship need to be upgraded is silly and shows how weak it is. Sure, but is it really worse than, well, Samus herself doing the exact same thing throughout the course of the Metroid games? Yeah, it doesn't make sense for a gunship to literally not have its guns attached, but again I don't think it's any worse than any one of the times Samus is sent on a mission to kill Metroids and doesn't bother to show up with the ice beam, the only weapon that can kill them. It's an unfortunate plot hole in the series, but I don't think it's any worse than it's been at previous points. -Backtracking in Skytown is annoying, largely due to a lack of landing sites. I'm not really sure how backtracking in Skytown is any worse than, say, something like Super Metroid, where (barring sequence breaking) you're required to travel up from Norfair to red Brinstar (Power Bombs), then all the way to the lowest part of Upper Norfair (Crocomire/Grapple Beam), then all the way back to Crateria(Wrecked Ship), in that order. Or, heck, the end of Prime 2 where you have to backtrack to all three major areas of the game to locate keys. Backtracking between areas has, well, kind of been a staple of the Metroid series, and sometimes that means a lot of walking. I suppose you can argue that there's a missed chance here to cut down on some of those issues, but it doesn't strike me as worse than the rest of the series. -Travel time in shots makes combat a clunky and less enjoyable affair because enemies, and in particular bosses, move too quickly. I would again disagree; it certainly dissuades relying on charge shots, but regular beam shots, missiles, hyper beam, charged hyper beam, and hyper missiles are all fast enough to easily catch basically every enemy before they can dodge, and if you really want to use charge beam it's just a matter of closing the gap between you and the enemy you want to hit so there's less travel time (like you did with the Metroid Hatcher beforehand). It's more of a nerf to the standard charge beam than an alteration to the entire combat system. -Your only real options for combat are beams or missiles/Hypermode is a god mode option. I think this undersells the implementation of Hypermode significantly, and I think this becomes much more apparent on the game's harder difficulties. One really unfortunate aspect of this game, in my opinion, is that "normal" mode is, in reality, easy: Veteran mode provides the level of challenge in the series' other two installments. In the harder difficulties, smart usage of Hypermode becomes paramount, turning the strategy in combat into not only avoiding attacks and aiming, but also being smart with when and how you use Hypermode. The real meat of the combat centers around the strategy with Hypermode, not just directing shots towards your enemies. Failing to use Hypermode intelligently on Hypermode difficulty where a single charge shot takes off more than 50% of an energy tank, especially in boss fights like Mogenar, will result in game overs very quickly.
MT Zehvor yes I agree completely
Nah. Hyper mode is broken on any difficulty. The only exception(s) is the final fight on phaaze
i couldnt agree more
get laid kid it's just a video game and a weaker one at that, prime was just better, i guess the critics agree with me, too bad for u kiddo! NEXT!
this guy in the video just complains too much. criticism is fine, but he goes way beyond that... when it's a game he didn't generally like but totally excuses same criticisms on the ones he does. that forces me to doubt anything he says. plus i've seen multiple videos where he points out things and is just flat out wrong or i'll be WTF is he talking about?! anyway, i'm about done with his overly negative videos.
Okay, there's a couple of things I *really* don't agree with you on here. "Samus should have been on Phaaze the whole time instead of visiting different planets, because then you would be *constantly* being corrupted rather than just getting more so after each major boss" But visiting different planets allows the game to have more exotic settings and a greater sense of discovery. As for the corruption thing, the game uses it as a barometer for the level of drama. It gets higher after each boss to build tension and set up a dramatic arc for Samus and the other hunters. If you spent the whole game being slowly corrupted, either corruption would stop feeling important or there's no realistic way Samus would survive it. You don't see Lovecraft stories where the protagonist is staring into Cthulhu's face the whole time. "Why can't Samus blow up the wall instead of having to escort GF soldiers?" First of all, it gives the game some variety. Samus blows several smaller things up on her own, and if this was just another instance of that it would feel anticlimactic. It's justified in-game because this is a massive fortification and one person just couldn't carry all the ordnance needed to destroy it. Also, these people are army engineers; it makes sense both that they would need protection and that they know how to use bombs better than Samus, whose talents are in reconnaissance and person-to-person combat. Samus is a badass, but she can't do everything. One thing I liked about this game was the sense of teamwork and camaraderie between Samus and the GF. "Going to different planets and parts of planets, gimmicky set pieces and enemies, and the Wiimote controls distract from the core strengths of Metroid and are inferior to the classic feel of Metroid Prime and Echoes" I think this is the core of my disagreement. A lot of these changes are not just "inoffensive", they're actually fun. I enjoyed using my Plasma Beam to fuse blown circuits, and flying through the air on a zipline while shooting obstacles like a better version of Bioshock Infinite, and sneaking around the Pirate Homeworld while looking for a trapped GF soldier. You seem really interested in the *balance* and *refinement* of core mechanics, but there have already been several Metroid games that displayed that refinement to great advantage. What has always interested me more about Metroid is the *atmosphere* and the sense of discovery, which this game has in spades. Corruption is the Super Paper Mario of the Prime Trilogy. It made several sweeping changes and threw a few things out while mostly preserving the charm and unique personality of the series. I don't understand why fans rejected Super Paper Mario, because it was fun and engaging for me; this is the same deal. And I think it's worth pointing out that the knee-jerk rejection of *this* kind of change has encouraged Nintendo to go for the *other* kind of change, i.e. focusing 100% on mechanics and ignoring flavor text, world design and uniqueness. That's the attitude that gave us Other M and Sticker Star.
Thank you. I was just going to type exactly that, but you've done an excellent job.
Cinnamon Noir I wholeheartedly disagree this is a good change in the same way as Super Paper Mario. I still think it's good, nowhere at all did I say it's bad. I think it's fine to dislike something because it isn't like Metroid. If it did the new stuff well, I would enjoy it a lot. That's why I adore Super Paper Mario, but am not a huge fan of Corruption. Both of them did stuff differently, Super Paper Mario probably made more radical changes than Corruption, but it thought through those changes with a story consistent with the quality of the previous two games. The strengths of Metroid for me are that Samus does everything mostly by herself, and that feeling of isolation is unrivaled in other games. That's why I come to Metroid, and while I'm not opposed to them introducing new characters, I really don't think the troopers were necessary. The door they were blowing up looks no different than anything Samus has had to deal with in the past, on her own. I'm not trying to lay down strict guidelines for the Metroid series to follow, but some changes here weren't working for me. I didn't feel like they contributed anything that other Metroid games did far better.
I don't see how Samus doing everything by herself is a "strength". That's just a setting detail; it works with some games and it doesn't work with others. Stories need more than one developed character in order to work. Most Metroid games basically don't have a story, which is fine; it's actually the only way they can work the way they do. But the Prime series was self-consciously made as a *trilogy* , which implies a story structure. In the first and second games the story was relegated to the background, but *something* in the way of plot needed to happen at some point, and I think the third game was left picking up the slack. I love the original Prime and Echoes, but I also love the story of the trilogy as a whole, and Corruption does more to tell that story than its predecessors. Echoes basically cheated on this aspect; it's the middle part of a story, but the events in it are almost entirely unrelated to the overarching plot. If the third game had been another Echoes, then calling it a "trilogy" would be ridiculous, because it would just be three separate stories connected by a MacGuffin, more like chapters from a comic book franchise than an independent story. They could not have developed the themes introduced in Metroid Prime without creating a game with the basic structure of Corruption: objective-based rather than exploratory, character-focused rather than world-focused, and emphasizing plot developments rather than acquiring tools. I say this even though Corruption is not my favorite of the trilogy; Echoes is the one I've replayed the most and had the most fun with, and the original Prime is the strongest in terms of exploiting the potential of the Metroid premise (since Echoes is much more linear than a "classic" Metroid). But I think Corruption stands *with* them, not below them. All three are among my favorite games.
If your point is that they didn't need to make it a trilogy to begin with, then I would agree with you that it wasn't strictly necessary. They could have made as many Prime games as they had ideas for, and the upcoming Prime 4 shows that Nintendo certainly intends to do so. But I think Retro was strongly tempted by the evocative nature of their own story and wanted to develop it into something interesting. They chose variety over refinement, and I don't think that's wrong.
By the way, I hope you don't take my comments personally. I actually like your channel a lot and take your opinions seriously; if I didn't, I wouldn't be spending time on this. There are too many disagreements on KZhead that descend into personal attacks, and I don't want you to think this is one. I'll be looking forward to your next video.
Whatever issues the Prime Trilogy had as a whole, they are still much better than the entirety of Other M's story
no one is disputing that, believe me lol
@@KingKlonoa I mean they are few. I've seen some of those weirdos.
dont you mean "other M as a whole"?
@@legrandliseurtri7495 I've seen some people saying that what they did to Samus was good for her character because they showed a "less battle hardened Samus", and it's fun cause Other M is just before Fusion, the last Metroid game in chronological order lol
there are some videos blaming the shoddy translation for the bad story, arguing that it's actually alright in japanese.
I think Prime 3 needs to be viewed from a larger picture perspective. In Prime 1, this is the first time anyone has encountered Phazon and lived (that wasn't a space pirate). Prime 2 finally has the Galactic Federation somewhat involved with the idea of Phazon, with it's troops going to a planet that just happened to have Dark Samus there. Chances are that this is how the Federation found out about Phazon. By the time we get to Prime 3, the Federation is now aware of Phazon and the threat/risks/benefits it posses to them and the universe at large, and it just so happens that the main bounty hunter they've commissioned in the past also happens to be experienced in dealing with Phazon. It makes sense that Samus wouldn't be tackling this issue alone from a narrative standpoint.
Honestly? I found using the motion controls in MP3 to be a very immersive experience, one of my favorite ones I ever played, rivaled only probably by Red Steel 2. I'm kind of sad that since the wii control scheme is so unpopular as a whole that I wont ever get more games of that kind probably.
You weren't constantly annoyed at the aiming mechanic? I literally could not be immersed less in a game. That being said, the controls weren't why P3 was bad. Everything else just also happened to be dog shit.
I only briefly played it back when it first came out (my best friend brought his copy over for a while since I didn’t have a Wii at the time and he knew I was a big Metroid fan), but I remember really loving the motion controls in this game too. I thought it was pretty fun how you would use the controls to twist the sockets or yank enemy shields, or how you could look around the ship’s cockpit and poke at the console interface buttons. It makes me wish I could fly Samus’s gunship in VR.
The controls are still popular. They've just evolved. try some vr
@@themangastand8475 I don't have the kind of money to drop on a vr setup.
I agree the wiis IR aiming made this game and the trilogy more fun and immersive
"Blew up an entire planet and will soon blew an other all by herself". Uh, you might have mixed things up a bit. At this point she hasn't blown any planet yet. Planet Phaze is the first one. At the end of Zero mission, Zebes is still there. it's just the pirate ship who blew up. It's only after the Prime series, in super that she blew up Zebes The order of planet Samus destroy is this -Planet Phaze (Metroid Prime 3). -Planet Zebes (Super Metroid) -Planet SR388 (Metroid Fusion)
leGUIGUI God fuck timelines. Anyway, the fact that she practically destroyed another dimension is good enough for me. She's also GOING to blow up a planet by herself several times not too much later so.
She blew up Dark Aether. She knew taking the energy from it would cause it to blow up, so she did it knowingly. Not that that was a bad thing of course, the place needed to go. In Super Metroid she isn't really responsible for Zebes blowing up...the pirates blew it up via a failsafe when she destroyed them (which she had to do). She is absolutely responsible for blowing up SR388 at the end of Fusion. So yes, she does blow up 3 planets by the end of the series.
It is more like a shooter, but it is still far off from being a shooter, there are many sections where exploring is more important than combat.
No matter what you think of the game, Prime 3 has hands down the best fucking title screen music for any game.
As the conclusion of its respective trilogy, the title screen theme can't be beat. But I find myself humming the MP2 title theme a lot more often....
I like echoes music better hehe
Not only are you wrong, you're stupid.
Ironic you chose footage of Halo 3 for the speech about hitscan. As 3 is the one Halo where every weapon in the game shoots projectiles. Even the BR.
not to mention most of the alien weapons in any halo game are not hitscan either.
Been a while since I played this, but I remember loving the controls actually. Same with Prime 1 & 2 for Wii. The motion aiming simply is much better in my opinion.
Real1Gaming Completely agree
Yh only kids or.noobs would find motion controls shit
It also helps with emulation. Mouse and keyboard is wonderful on the dolphin emulator.
True mouse and keyboards settings in a console... or as close as you can get, especially when you put the controls on "Advanced" mode.
I completely agree. If there is one game in the world where motion controls work, it's the prime trilogy. This series is best played on a wii/u
I got the feeling that most of this video was "90% of what Prime 3 did new should never be done again" and on a surface level I don't like that... but most of KingK's critiques were legitimate. I don't want Samus to be a mute (also she's been "talking" since Super both in the games and outside material so it's not like Samus was like Link until Other M happened), I don't think adding new characters is bad but some of that stuff does take away from the isolation that the series is known and adored for. The fact that KingK's only real positive criticism was "The mugguffin hunt at the end wasn't as bad as the last two games" sounds horrible since I LOVE Prime 3. I love it's controls and prefer them over the original GameCube controls (I played Prime 1 and 2 when they were new, but that's just me since plenty of people prefer GameCube controls for their own reasons), I love how Prime 3 expanded on the use of the Grapple Beam and made it a worthwhile upgrade that isn't rendered 100% superfluous once the Space Jump or Screw Attack (for the Prime games anyway) is in literally every other Metroid game the Grapple Beam has appeared in. I like how Prime 3 expanded on the lore of Metroid as a whole with the Aurora Units, how people treat Samus, the Bounty Hunters and so on. I like how Samus' ship is useful and not something you use 2 or 3 times maximum throughout every Metroid game where Samus' ship can be used to restore health and save the game. I like the tutorial section for Norion considering what the game is about. Phazon has gotten out of control and Samus can't 100% beat this threat on her own since it isn't contained to one planet where she can hunt it down like in previous games. Part of what Metroid Prime 3 does, the stuff that's more action packed shows that Metroid can do stuff outside what is expected from the series and have it work. From what I've gathered, most of what people say is bad about Prime 3 is the stuff it does that isn't what is expected from a traditional Metroid game, aka most of what Prime 3 did new. What Prime 3 did new can definitely be improved upon but saying it should never be done again is ridiculous. Some of the most memorable moments and characters in Metroid are from Prime 3, particularly Rundus. As much as I love them, every Metroid game from here on out can't be 90% like Super or Prime 1/2. The series will get stale otherwise. The real question is how can Metroid meaningfully progress without going stale?
He does the same thing with Breath of the Wild. He hardly focuses on positives, and when he does he points out the ways it could have been better, making it seem negative.
Did you guys even read the title? "Metroid Prime 3: The Price of Accessibility", in King's video the increasing accessibility was a detriment to the game overall because it was implemented really poorly.
I know, and I admitted that most of KingK's critiques were legitimate. However, this is still how I feel after watching the whole video.
I agree with King's points against Prime 3, but I still like Prime 3 overall. It's a cool game, and I do give Retro credit for wanting to make the series easier for newcomers who want to try a Metroid game. Prime 2 may have been great, at least I think so, but if you're not a fan of the type of game Metroid is, didn't play/didn't like Prime 1, or if you're not into tough challenge, Prime 2 was gonna shy some people away from trying Metroid.
Well said and right on. ps. the motion controls were/are friggin' awesome, also replaying the previous games.
Personally I just like not being totally alone in this game I know a lot of people think being totally alone is part of what makes metroid metroid but its just what I prefer I remember playing this as a kid and just hanging out in the federation base because I thought it was awesome just to see other people
I love your videos. I’ve gotta be honest though, this is my favorite Metroid game! It’s hard to explain besides the fact that it was my first Metroid game, and the “accessibility” means that it’s the only Metroid game I’ve been able to easily complete without googling anything.
Would you ever consider looking at Hunters?
Perhaps.
and the federations soldiers? in game they can kill militia space pirate and deal with the space pirate soldiers
It's fine I didn't want to sleep tonight
Bruh
Excellent work! No idea how you're able to pump out so much content so fast. You mystify me!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
KingK are you human?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think it's because he was gonna have Prime 2 and 3 be one video
Salokin - trying to learn the mysterys of life. I am the eggman With the master plan I am the eggman Its what i am I am the egmman I got the maa aaa ster plaaaan
It's kind of funny to think that the whole "corruption" mechanic in Hypermode was supposed to be a penalty, when in actuality it's nothing but a benefit since it refills your ammo. Think about it this way; if I was already planning on dumping the entire Energy Tank into Hypermode, why not let the corruption process begin and get an additional 3/4 of a bar of Hypermode for free?
Yup! That's what I did almost every time I used hypermode. Initially I thought hypermode was going to be a cool, risky way to play. Turns out it was just the OP exploit way. What a shame.
You could also use hypermode to not take damage too, so all those rail sections in Sky Town, you could just cheese.
here's some advice, if you think hypermode is to op ply on hypermode difficulty.
I think of it this way. How much damage will I take fighting this enemy normally vs the amount of energy I will lose to using hypermode. Also, since you can end hypermode early to return all of your unused energy, using hypermode can be a good trade-off. You cannot return this energy if you let the corruption process take place, so it really is another trade-off. Do I regain all unspent energy, of consume the whole energy take to utilize corruption mode? All these trade-offs create many ways of playing.
@@annietheshadow5952 It is still overpowered, combat just becomes tedious if you don't use it.
The travelling and ship never bothered me. I enjoyed walking around on each world and feeling the difference between them all and feeling like the universe of the game was quite large, being able to travel to different planets made it feel bigger than any other Metroid game and I liked the sense of being a space bounty hunter, literally travelling between worlds. I felt this game was more mmersive compared to the previous installments
There is a single instance of a hitscan weapon in the prime trilogy (two, if you count Hunters on the DS) >The Annihilator Beam missile combo (Sonic Boom) reaches a line-of-sight target instantly upon being fired. >The other is the Imperialist, the weapon used by Trace in Hunters, functionally that game's "sniper rifle."
This game is SO FUCKING GOOD.
While Prime 3 does have its issues, its the accessibility of it that got me into the Prime series. I do remember the Aurora Unit helping me out in rooms where I really was legitimately trying to progress where I couldn't possibly do so at the time. That being said, Prime 3 is probably the most disappointing for for the veteran Prime player for some reasons you stated in the video. I'm one that doesn't necessarily mind the heavier focus on combat, while I do admit some scenarios would have been better if you had more combat options. All this being said, I still have a very deep love for Prime 3, but to most people I'd recommend it as the starting point for someone who hasn't explored the Prime series yet.
I remember enjoying the time on the world of Bryyo the most. To me, it had about the best lore, felt the most Metroid-like, of all the planets toured in MP3.
Great video in all regards, but I just wanted to make a quick note: Corruption's combat only really makes sense in Hypermode difficulty. It makes a huge difference because enemies hit much harder and they take literally ages to take down without the use of Hypermode, since they also enter Hypermode faster and more often. I very rarely use Hypermode on the lower difficulties, but in the hardest difficulty, it really transforms the game's combat and it becomes a powerful tool with actual strategic impact.
Your content is consistently my favorite on the site. Thank you for doing what you do.
After replaying Metroid Prime 2 I think it's now my favourite Prime game. It takes everything good about Prime 1 and improves on it, location, isolation, weapons, morph ball puzzles, bosses etc. 2>1>3
Indeed
Same Echoes>Prime>Corruption Funny how Echoes has really aged the best.
I just played the Metroid Prime trilogy for the first time and, honestly, I liked Echoes the least out of the three of them. It was still good, but I honestly think 1 > 3 > 2.
prime 2 had my most favorite metroid level. the one thats in torvus bog i think its called, the submerged really mechanized place in the lower regions with the remixed brinstar playing. christmas 2004 i was playing that 1000 year door and mgs3, good times they were
@@jakedover5301 Yes I love that level, the music was so good too. I want to replay them again but have a feeling they're coming to Switch soon enough.
Shame there's so much criticism on Prime 3 going around. It's actually my favorite Metroid game. For one, the Federation actually helps you in your mission instead of just waiting around for you to do everything. They carry the kind of respect MANGA Adam showed Samus. They know she can do everything, but they know that the best outcome will come from working with her. Plus, for me, the motion controls and atmosphere immersed me into Metroid more than any of the other ones (besides Fusion). Something else I have noticed is how Metroid has shown an ability to be flexible. Prime 3 being different from other Metroid games isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, Zero Mission feels more like a fast arcade shooter, Super is slow and creepy, Fusion is story driven, and of course, Prime 1 went 3D. It also expanded the galaxy better than Prime Hunters by actually showing what they told instead of vice versa. Don't get me wrong, liking Prime 3 is pretty opinion based (whether you like it or not), it all comes down to what you value. I HATE getting lost for long periods of time, and that seems to be the definition of Prime 2's gameplay style, but I value being able to see Metroid literally from Samus's perspective, and Prime 3 does that better than any of them.
I thought I was the only person who likes prime 3 (it's also my favorite)
Is there? All I ever hear are people saying it's their favorite game ever or they love it but one of the other 2 are their favorites. Prime 3 is a sack of shit that 12 dogs peed on. Fuck Prime 3. It actually deserves to get more hate. No troll, I think it's as bad as Other M.
@@will_of_europa 4 years later and this is what I see? Nah but seriously, I can't think of a reason why Prime 3 would be as bad as Other M. If we hypothetically say Prime 3 railroads as much, warps Samus's character as much, made enemy hitboxes as unfair, had as much trial and error, said the music was as bad, locked doors behind you as much, and had as meaningless of an ending as Other M, it'd still be better. That's because there's more than two options in combat scenarios, the Federation aren't idiots that target their only ally, we know the plot of the game before fighting the big bad Metroid boss (you literally kill the Queen Metroid in Other M before you know who Madeline Bergman is, who literally dumps half the plot on you), you actually get to defeat Ridley, Samus takes advantage of life saving equipment when it's needed, the Admiral of the Federation is actually commanding his army instead of joining some spec ops force so he can be easily assassinated, Samus's friends die for understandable reasons, all the plot points get satisfying resolutions (insert Deleter joke here), it doesn't just copy the plot of another game that came before it to the point where Samus learns the same things twice in a row, it doesn't have a dozen instant-death traps, you can use an analog stick to dodge stuff instead of tapping the D-pad repeatedly in a 3D action game...Pretty sure I don't need to go on, I mean I didn't even mention the scan visor. Maybe the only similar thing is how our resident Mother Brain is mind controlled by a metroid. Dark Samus steals an aurora unit and controls it through Phaaze, and metroids imprint themselves onto Melissa Bergman to make her protect them (I believe that's more clear in the Japanese version, not the American one). I can't really say one is better than the other. Funny thing is at the time of my original comment I didn't play Other M. Now I have so I guess this was decent timing. I went in knowing how bad the story and soundtrack was but figured I'd at least get a simplistic but crisp action title out of it. I was really shocked to realize the gameplay wasn't that good, and the story was even worse than I thought. In fact just to be clear the Ridley scene wasn't as bad as I expected, but the ending and Adam's death were significantly worse. ...Oh crap I should answer your original question, sorry for making this comment so long. At the time of KingK's review there weren't many reviews of Prime 3 in general, and the ones that were there were split. Some looked at it how you describe, great game but not the best of the 3. Others maybe didn't hate the game but would place it at the bottom of Metroid's quality. A few more have cropped up to support the latter, but I would say there's a greater majority that follow the former these days. ......Screw it. Don't read this part if you don't care. I misinterpreted your comment and typed this but I didn't want to get rid of it lol. Just me gushing about Prime 3: When I first played Prime 3 I thought it was the most immersive experience of all time and while it's not alone on that pedestal now it's still up there. There's so many Wii games and it's such a popular console that I think it's reasonable to expect the player to take to the controls fairly naturally (and if not then that person probably hates Punch-Out, wii sports, and the wii zelda games too). The controls made me feel like I was moving Samus's arms and of course we see through her eyes but with the Wii's hardware I think the visor was handled even better than in the GC Prime titles. The ship is a novelty but it's little details like that which complete the experience. I love all the characters and being able to talk with others in the world makes the universe feel more realized. Although Federation Force really dropped the ball, Prime 3 really gave the Federation a strong foundation for their own game, and we also got a more in-depth view of the Space Pirates, as well as new insight into the Chozo. The combat itself isn't the best, but there's definitely some highlights (personally am a big fan of Mogenar), and I love how great the scope is, like completing multiple Metroid adventures in one. All of this culminates in getting to live as Samus, experience jumping from planet to planet, taking job after jobs, exploring one civilization after another, and combine that with all the superb 1st person immersive tactics of the other Prime games.
As a young girl, Samus was always someone I really looked up to. I played all the metroid games, and beat every single one, multiple times except other m. I'm not a reviewer/critic and am thoroughly blinded by nostalgia, but I LOVED how powerful I felt in prime 3. I just felt it was a good theme, rather than losing all your powerups and being almost helpless, I felt powerful, like had just finished the last adventure. I steam rolled everything, as samus probably would. Gameplay wise, it's probably terrible, but having played all 3 right in a row, getting to that last game and being a badass just felt so right. This is also probably from a youngminded perspective of viewing it all as metroid prime, rather than individually as metroid prime 1, 2, and 3. either way, nothing but love for the series and more hype than is healthy for 4!
Gealach MacCumhail I know right? I always felt empowered when I was young too. I WAS Samus. it was great.
Same here I loved the feeling of being so powerful. But which game is your favorite in the trilogy? Mine is prime 2.
Ben2099-1 Ummm.... actually? my favorite is the second game. it just clicked with me on a deeper level. but my favourite Prime game out of them ALL?? IS prime Hunters on the DS. what about you, Honey?? 💜💜💜
Ben2099-1 Now my favourite METROID game OF ALL TIME? is the new Remake for my 3DS. it's just.... perfect. 💜💜💜
I agree that MP3 did one thing right and actually start Samus off with only her entry-level abilities, and make *zero* attempt to explain why she wasn't loaded with all the gear collected in previous games. MP1 started you off with a significant number of upgrades - only to lose _every single one of them_ in a random accident near the end of its opening level. MP2 started you off with a good number of upgrades - only for the Ing to _steal most of them_ near the end of its opening level. (Is there an echo in here?) . . . and we don't like to talk about Other M. _Samus Returns_ started you off with only your missile launcher - not even the Morph Ball. But it at least didn't try to invent some hackneyed excuse for it.
WHAT IS THIS GUY BRABBLING?!! THE CONTROLS WHERE WAY AHEAD OF IT'S TIME!! THIS WAS AN AWESOME EXPERIENCE !
I actually really loved Corruption, it was Echoes I found hardest to love, personally. I think it might have been the constant dark palate of everything, I really enjoy a bit of diversity in my environments.
Corruption environnement might have been diverse, but most of them are plain ugly. Olympus, Norion, Bryoo fire, Bryoo Thorn jungle, Skytown houses... If these areas at least had good music, ok, but they don't even have that... Even Pirate homeworld was...uh.
Francis Thompson I disagree the music is really good I never really found the environments 'ugky' most of the time
Congrats on getting through the Prime trilogy!
Nice with the audio fix. FYI the action scene at 7:20 was part of the E3 show floor demo, so there's a bit of cause/effect going on for its "Halo-like" existence. I'm also wondering if I planted the 1-beam < 4-beams criticism in my comment on your MP2 video because I've never seen anyone else agree with me on that change or bring it up like it's a big deal. I personally thought it made a simple weapon system even more oversimplified. I mean, it was at least cathartic to switch to that "it's super effective!" feeling in Prime 1 when you choose the right beam. And in Prime 2 it was cool to learn to use at least 2 different styles of projectile depending on the dimension (charged light beam had burning scattershot and dark beam had freeze effects). Also the multiple-planets thing was good in theory but in reality they were no bigger than the biomes in Aether/Tallon/Zebes so instead of 1 complex planet it was a few Star Wars planets. The aiming controls were a tad uncomfortable for me on an exploration basis. I didn't enjoy turning my wrist or forearm all the way to the right just to get to the border of the screen to turn Samus. It also disabled me from playing the game proper in various lazy couch potato positions because I always had to point the IR remote to the screen in order to walk normally. Sitting upright and alert makes sense for boss fights or online shooters, but a Metroid game comes with mostly down-time and I'd rather not have to worry about spazzing Samus out for shifting around....but maybe that's just me. Many wii games used the motion gimmicks to add that "extra bullet point" in the commercials or back cover art, etc. So I think Retro might've begrudgingly been told to add more shooter/aiming/grapple elements by Nintendo at some point since the game was to be one of the few AAA Wii titles. Not to mention the relaxed difficulty, which was MP3's greatest weakness for me. It was so obvious in 2007 what all Nintendo franchises were fated to follow after the Wii casual market was found to be a proven gold mine (even if those beginners never get halfway through campaigns like these anyway, they still purchased it). Prime 3 was the end of a trilogy, so on one hand it should expect veterans to have gotten through Echoes and be Metroid-smart, but on the other hand it was trying to be newcomer-friendly on a new console for a newbie market. It didn't help that Echoes received visible criticism for its toughness/complexity, 5 years before Demons Souls made it "cool". The game was still great, but like you implied, it compromised itself in direction, and was the weakest for anyone who played the primes in order. I think it'd be a great easy starting point for people, but I'm also against starting any kind of trilogy/story backward just to play the "newest one". -Also the 4th/5th revival of Ridley and Aurora Unit Brain final boss were unnecessary nods to imagery from the classics, but with no bite. Metroid needs to stop recycling villain assets in worship to the 2D games, especially since there's a whole galaxy of aliens out there and Ridley/MotherBrain effectively have no character worth reviving like some comic book series.
It has been observed that in the official Metroid timeline, each of Ridley's reappearances between original Metroid and Super (all three games) show him with a decreasing amount of cybernetic components each time, to the point that his organic body is fully regenerated in Super. It's interesting from a lore perspective, but beyond that I agree -- Ridley is almost becoming Metroid's version of Dr. Wily (or Bowser, or...) by now. Villains become less intimidating the more times you beat them down.
While it is neither a fantastic shooter nor a good representation of a Metroid game, I found this game was the best of the 3. only sligtly above 1, only because of the fact that it had the balls to do something new and because Prime 1 borrowed some of its themes from previous games. Prime 3's strength is in its progression and presentation. There are so many awesome moments in this game and the pace is fast and engaging. The environment looks fantastic and there is a huge sense of urgency, something Prime 2 lacked entirely. The fact that the federation customizes Samus' suit to the point where it could literally kill her at any moment and she doesn't even complain about it and just takes it as it is, the moment where you had to shoot a federation troop's corpse to get access to a terminal and the moments where you have to murder your own friends make this game so much more exciting than the 2 games before. You obtain powerups at a consistent and relatively fast pace which is a massive improvement over the agonizing tedium that is Prime 2's staggering progression and key searching. While the planets feels segmented and I too prefer Prime 1's map layout, it makes a lot of sense for the story, since that is where the Phazon's nature led us to. It's a constantly growing threat, from Prime 1, where it was just a mysterious ore that drains the life out of the planet, to Prime 2, where it almost consumes a planet, now to one that infects multiple planets at once and gets used by the both sides as superweapons. It's a game that has the balls to sacrifice one of the components its predecessors are known for to end it with a bang and I can appreciate that. And besides, there is a super missile in this game, at least for combat. The seeker missile can be stacked up on one enemy, so you can fire up to 5 of them at once, which is effectively the same
Wait...haven't I seen you somewhere before?
The super missile is easier to activate and is as strong as 6 missiles.
Nah I really disliked Corruption. It just tries to be shooter like blockbuster while disregarding the central strengths of Metroid.
Everything you just said was wrong. Get your taste buds checked.
@@will_of_europa this comment is 4 years old my dude
I feel that the best way that they could’ve implemented Hypermode is to make it cost 3 whole Energy tanks and when you defeat enemies in Hypermode you get absolutely no Health drops at all
Also make it completely optional as a last measure sort of thing, because some bosses absolutely require you to use hypermode, and most enemies take years to kill with your normal weaponry.
Sorry about the long comment earlier, but I had a lot to say about this game. It's still a contender for my top ten games of all time on the strength of the set piece variety and world design alone. I do agree with you that the story can feel like it's leading you along at times, and that the AU is not a good addition. The game could have worked without it. But this game tried so many new things, and succeeded at making so many of them interesting, that I can't help but admire it.
I feel like the puzzles was a huge part of this game, every planet is like 1 giant puzzle.
The fact that Samus has a "support team" and that the Federation are so deeply involved this time around serves to emphasize the dire situation at hand. The threat of the Space Pirates *has reached a peak so high* that Samus alone can't do the job, and now requires the help of several additional bounty hunters and the military *all doing their individual tasks* to solve the crisis at hand. *This, in my opinion, gives a great sense of the massive scale of the situation,* which serves as a fitting end to the Phazon chapter. If Samus solved the entirety of Prime 3 by herself, it would GREATLY undermine the scale of this finale. It would be no different from the scale of Zero Mission or the Tallon IV incident where she single handedly won. Prime 3 shows that the Federation finally has some competence instead of relying 100% on Samus. They keep the main Pirate forces at bay on other sections of the planet when she escorts the Bomb Troopers. The fact that you defend the bomb troopers still maintains the feeling of Samus being a powerhouse badass. I honestly don't understand your complaint about Samus not having Power Bombs. *She conveniently loses most of her equipment in EVERY game.* Even if she did have Power Bombs, they are not all powerful. Did Power Bombs in Prime 1 manage to break through the Impact Crater gate? Or break into the boss rooms of Prime 2? I agree that Prime 3 is the most easily accessible as a result of the console it launched on, but its story and narrative should not be viewed as bad traits cuz they helped expand the Metroid universe and close the chapter on Phazon.
elvampe13 My complaints are that the troopers can somehow do a job she could always do on her own. It isn't about the power bombs, not REALLY. I know it's a staple and she has to lose them somehow, and I'm fine with that. I just wasn't a fan of what the troopers added (or didn't add) to the game. I feel the narrative started reaching a little too far. It's one thing to more closely involve the federation on Norion, in fact I love that opening precisely because everyone is working together. I always thought that was enough, and everything else with the aurora unit and the admiral were stepping way too far in a direction I feel uncomfortable with for Metroid. I'm glad it worked for you, I simply prefer Metroid when it's attempting to create a sense of isolation. Nowhere did I say it should be an ironclad rule, it just shouldn't reach too far in another direction.
+KingK I wholeheartedly agree that the Aurora Units hand-holding you and saying where you should go next was stepping in too much. Indeed, I also wish there was an option to turn that off. I didn't mind the Admiral's dialogues, probably cuz he hadnt spoken as much as the AUs and his respect was appreciated. Concerning the Federation's involvement in battle, if you enjoyed the intro when they defended against a Pirate attack, I dont see why the same couldnt be said of the opposite in which the Federation attacked the Pirates' homeworld. If you look back, the Federation was getting severely beaten since the beginning of Prime 3 with: - the disappearance of the Valhalla and their AU 313 - the forceful shut-down of the entire AU network - the surprise attack on their fleet - the invasion of Norion - their #1 bounty hunter put into a coma for several months - loss of territory in Bryyo and Elysia - the gradual loss of their lesser bounty hunters The Federation invading the Pirate Homeworld with Samus is a fitting and just comeback for the organization after all the above. If they did nothing while she went into the heart of enemy territory, they'd be a great disappointment overall wouldn't you agree? As for the Bomb Troopers being able to destroy a door that Samus cannot, its not impossible in-universe considering they've made a few technological achievements such as creating the useful P.E.D suit which led to her survival, or creating Norion's orbital gun capable of destroying Leviathans (something the great Chozo and Luminoth were seemingly unable to do). Indeed, it is a departure from the usual sense of isolation felt in prior Metroid games, but for a good 80% of Prime 3, Samus is still venturing on her own, collecting items and piecing together planetary lore, like she did in Prime 1 and 2. It is not the best in the Trilogy, but its a satisfying conclusion :)
As someone who's favorite parts of any video game are the world exploration, easter egg hunt for hidden "gems", and solving my way forward, with a general dislike for most combat (as it always feels so repetitive to me), I also found Echoes to be my favorite of this trilogy, but I did really like Corruption. Looking back, I think I felt how amazing Corruption COULD be with just a few very minor improvements to the design. It could've been the best of the 3D Metroid games. When I played the game the first time, I remember finding the Screw Attack without anything telling me to, so I thought I'd managed to find it earlier than necessary. That felt really good. When I got back to where the main mission was though, and found that I actually needed the Screw Attack immediately, my heart kinda sank a little. It wasn't early, it was right on time. I'd just gone to get it before they gave me the actual prompt. It cheapened my success. One of the great things in the best of the 2D Metroid games had always been that, while a naive play would always really follow the same path, a player with a good eye for detail (or memory from past playthroughs) could find items and explore in new directions, doing things differently. The lack of this in the Prime series is its greatest weakness. The ability to go to several different planets right after the prologue, with multiple landing zones in each, could've really facilitated this quite well if handled better. If one player goes to Skytown first and another goes to Bryyo first, let them both progress for a while, but have the resulting kind of Samus be a little different. Let those bosses be done in either order. Let the upgrades on each world flow separately. Yes, of course give good reason to come back to each with the other planet's abilities, but there's no reason to force the player to ping-pong. Perhaps the player that chooses one gets more combat ability, while the player that chooses the other gets more utility/mobility components and health. Going back and forth could be the way to have a balanced Samus that's good at everything, as in one case your firepower gets amazing, but you crumple too easily when hit a few times, & in the other you can do a lot and tank more, but as the enemies are increasing in power, you're having to spend more & more time to dispatch them with your little Power Beam. (Or you can use your utility abilities to ignore about half of them, tanking just a few hits.) Samus's ship has been shown to be controllable with a few taps on her arm cannon. A great improvement to this game would've been to allow her ship to pick her up from any outdoor room as a command on the map screen, except in certain situations. For example, when Ghor is going to town on your ship & you have to backtrack through all of Skytown, that really wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't been doing so repeatedly. Then it would've been more like a tour, as you go back through all these areas you already know, more powered up than you had been the first time. This would not completely eliminate backtracking, as you can still only land in a few places, but it would allow you not to need to do so much of the game so many times each. The game is big enough not to need the extra padding. Perhaps with the right combination of upgrades, in the very late game, these can become drop-off points as well, with Samus leaping out of her ship mid-flight and Screw-Attacking to a nearby platform, adding to how badass she feels as you find her upgrades. This could also give more reason to have anti-aircraft guns in more places that you need to take out, perhaps with a radius around each that you cannot fast-exit from, forcing a very short backtrack if you need to leave without getting to the gun. Stick one AA gun just after each boss (aside from the Phaaze shards) so you can't just leave mid-boss fight. For Ghor's fight it's not needed because he temporarily disables your ship use anyway. I forget what the actual name of this powerup is, but when I saw what it could do, I immediately named it the "Metroid Beam" in my head. It grapples onto and enemy and allows you to siphon their energy into your health, which is exactly what a Metroid does. I found it to be very awesome conceptually, but it had a few major flaws. The first is how late in the game you get it. I'm not saying it should be easy to get early, but having it at around mid-game would've been pretty cool. It also doesn't work on every enemy as you can't grapple every enemy. Once you get it, you should be able to lock on to every enemy, and even have lock-on points on things like power generators so you can top yourself off now and then. It'd be really cool if using this beam on a power generator to charge yourself dimmed the lights around you until you released it as an awesome ambient effect. I don't think enemies should be able to break free of it so easily. Perhaps have it break only if you take damage, similar to using power bombs to dislodge an attached metroid, and have the enemies that have projectile shots fumble a bit while they try to aim at you. How quickly they manage to aim at you and fire would increase with each time you latch on to that particular enemy (individual, not enemy type) as they've learned what to do. It shouldn't take many times to kill them unless you're trying to do this with too many of their friends around outside of cover. I'd also halve enemy health to put the focus back on exploration, and double the rate that the Metroid Beam's use recharges your health to make it a little more worthwhile. Move lock-on points to enemy weak spots, put the homing back into the beam weapons (like you said), etc... As much as I hate when things are too combat heavy, on the Space Pirate Homeworld it feels right to have more combat like it does, but aside from there, the prologue, and the bosses, most combat should feel more like a nuisance, like it does in most other Metroid titles. I also dislike the "wall" enemies they threw in for the motion controls,especially because of the backtracking. If they were at least each one-offs, they'd be fine. Give permadeath to the spinning blades on Skytown's rails and those shield enemies that only have one non-shielded enemy at a time, ecept for one small one somewhere so you can't permanently miss their codex entry. For the part where you have to protect the Federation Troopers, I think instead of simply blowing up a door, they should've had the climax of that be something more. Perhaps they set up an AA gun of their own that allows them to provide cover fire to a ship of theirs that swoops in to nuke something the Space Pirates were trying to protect. Functionally, it's the same. It's a fancy kind of door, but it would look awesome, and that feel would make all the difference. Also, being able to lock on to them with the Metroid Beam to refill their health bars to keep them alive by sacrificing some of your own health would've added something else cool to that section. The Space Pirate Homeworld is more challenging than the planets you can initially visit. Keeping with the more open-galaxy feel I mentioned earlier, what if it unlocked more like Mass Effect's Virmire? After you've defeated the boss of ONE other world, find the data right there in the other bounty hunter's things as to where the Space Pirate Homeworld is and unlock it. Sure, it'll be way too hard without doing more elsewhere first, but some people like that kind of challenge. Perhaps the most direct route through the Space Pirate Homeworld could require upgrades from both Bryyo and Skytown, but with either's upgrades alone you could take a much more winding path through their planet's bases, with the other set of paths as a good reason to return after getting the other planet's upgrades. If you're going to focus so heavily on ship upgrades, why not add an area that you need to fly the ship through to explore and find some hidden content? Aim the ship's weapons the same way as you aim Samus' arm cannon, use the control stick for up/down/left/right facing, and change the "jump" button to be "accelerate forward". Don't make this area too big, but make it interesting. A similar design to that damaged frigate you need the power cells for would work, as it's not too big a section, but each time you visit with more powerups/cells, you feel like you can progress a little further. Perhaps it's at the end of this section that you get the upgrade required to have your ship drop you off in any open-air room you've been to. That Skytown chamber that puts all the powerups on your map? It's too specific. Telling you there's Chozo tech and how much isn't bad, but putting them all on your map is kinda terrible. Maybe it could instead add numbers to your map screen for the section, like "Chozo Artifacts: 37/58", and highlight rooms that are good landing spots for the remaining upgrades, with numbers on those. This would get more specific when combined with the upgrade to drop directly into any open-air room you've been to, as all open-air rooms then count as landing sites so the numbers get spread out more evenly & bring you even closer to each powerup, but it's still not telling you precisely where to go.
Instead of sacrificing an energy tank to power up your new corruption mode, have a separate meter for it that fills when you collect health while already being at max health. If this new meter is full, you can enter corruption mode. Have it take 250 units of energy to fill (instead of one energy tank's 100), and halve health drops. This would take away the ability to spam the ability as the meter has to be full to use it and you need full health to start to refill it, which is less likely in the middle of combat. Quitting it early would retain the remaining percentage of the meter. When you go into phazon overload, the excess phazon could slowly chip away at your health until you finish expelling the excess, with a special game over screen for if being in this state kills you. While in this mode, the health refills should reverse, refilling the corruption mode bar first, and only if it's full refilling health, but since the corruption mode bar is slowly decreasing, that becomes unlikely. As a sort of bonus, they could add a "Corruption" difficulty mode that removes your ability to exit this state. Whenever your corruption bar runs out in this mode, it would eat an energy tank of power to refill itself, making you constantly have to hunt for health, but you're also constantly shooting out phazon so enemies are so much easier to kill. This drain would, of course, pause during cutscenes and refill whenever you enter your ship. Since energy would become so much more important, once you have the Metroid Beam, deciding whether to kill enemies quickly with phazon shots or to lock on to drain their energy despite it taking longer to do so becomes a strategic choice. (Since some things require things that aren't phazon to open or pass, like ice missiles to freeze the lava flows, for example, these qualities would combine with your phazon equivalents.)
I’m not gonna say that Prime 3 is flawless, but I loved it for the most part. It has the best designs and art of the entire series imo, and I actually liked the addition of the other characters (even if I don’t want it to become a series norm). Hypermode could’ve been better-executed, sure, but I like the idea.
Loving P3 is fine, but saying it had the best designs and art is a sin. Prime was written, voice acted, modeled, and designed by a 6 year old child. All the enemy designs look stupid and biologically impossible. P3 is more of a trope than a game. P3 is just barely better than Other M and only because Other M used stock sounds for everything.
@@will_of_europa Thank you, very cool
Wow, I just finished watching the Prime 2 video, and this appears on my feed! Are you spying me?
🤔
Great video as always. I'm curious what settings you used for the pointer Sensitivity though. I found the difference between the default and Advanced was night and day, and playing with Advanced I had absolutely no issues with the pointer controls, accuracy, or turn speed, and actually vastly prefer it to twin stick FPS controls.
oh god that opening theme gave me uncontrollable chills~
The ship and GF soldiers make perfect sense actually. For the first time, we see the troops doing something useful. It makes the Federation more believable. How can an entire army be useless? As for the ship, what makes far less sense than upgrading it is why Samus never used it before. Prime 3 feels like a real galaxy with massive worlds, security protocols, and other hunters. Echoes feels more like a hub and Prime has always focused on immersion. Prime 4 should refine 3 and not 2. Echoes was creative and clever, but unnecessarily difficult and not as expansive as the others. A game should be able to be enjoyed by more than one type of gamer.
I'm going to play the meme card and suggest that Prime 4 be the Dark Souls of Prime games. Think about it.
In regards to Samus never using it before, in the 2D games, she's generally indoors, but you definitely have a point when it comes to the Prime games.
comparing halo to metroid is stupid, especially the hit scan. That projectile travel is what seperates it from the rest of the generic fps's
Err... I feel almost the entire video focused on your criticisms of the changes to accessibility. Not neccessarily a problem, but I think in addition to showing off Wii hardware and being more accessible, I think the game also set out to prove that the Metroid franchise can convey effective narratives without always following the same formula of isolation and horror elements. This also extends to things like fleshing out the ship and federation; stepping stones for giving the series options to avoid stagnating. What I'd love to see in Prime 4 is even more developed narrative elements and NPCs, but multiple areas (some optional) where that sense of isolation is utilized for considerable periods of time. For despite the series' horror and isolation themes, they stem from the presence of other people in the universe, and Samus being more than just an avatar. You learn a lot about a character through their interactions with others (take note Other M), so, even if optionally, I'd like the series to continue experimenting with that.
I didn't have much trouble with the aiming. You use the lock on to keep your camera focused on the enemy, then use the pointer to shoot more precisely.
Though it can get disorienting if the enemy is moving fast and at close range. That's a fault of camera-lock-on systems in general. People complain about the controls in Star Fox Zero a lot, but I found it much more approachable when I set the in-game option to 'limited' motion controls. That allowed me to aim initially by flying the Arwing to point at it (as in older Starfox games), then once I started shooting, refine the aim with the gyro aiming. Though it did often feel like your targetting had way too much field-of-view...
Sad to see that you didn't talk about the music for this game. Most of the music is either too repetitive, or non-existent, but Elysia had the best music over almost all of the other Metroid games combined! Plus, main theme/end credits music was not bad either. If you play all three Prime games back to back to back, the End Credits music of Metroid Prime 3 starts to really sink in, and it becomes more meaningful (even with the barely audible narration in the middle of it). Overall, this game was a fitting end to the Prime Trilogy! Hopefully, Metroid Prime 4 has had enough time to learn from the mistakes of the previous games (and Other M), and will be the best 3-D Metroid game so far!
My favorite Metroid game
Er, really? Why?
Hah, It's the only one i ever finished. Prime 1 and 2 i never finished.
@@Diminisherrr the fetch quest is lame but prime 1 is amazing
Pointer/motion aiming is far better than analog for me, i still can't get used to anolog stick aiming again after the wii, call of duty was a perfect example of good controls on the wii.
So you're a noob or a maladaptive idiot? The tank controls of P1 and P2 are literally easier and better balanced.
Hello KingK, I just wanted to say a few things. First, I'm really impress by your videos. I was born in the early 80's, I've played all Metroid games since the very first one (I skipped federation force) and I replay Super Metroid every year around Christmas since it came out. I almost agree with everything you said in your Metroid analysis. Of course we all have different experiences playing games and they are a few things I wanted to tell you about. Metroid Prime 1 to me is a classic. The ambiance alone was enough to make it my favorite Gamecube game. Metroid Prime 2 was really confusing to me. The different connections took alot of time to become clear. Navigation between the dark and light world was way more painful to me since I really did not have any direction sense back then. Also, I was not a fan of the ammo system but it was not such a big deal, it just made Samus feel weaker to me. Metroid Prime 3 was a bit of a gimmick to me. In the end, I think the main thing which made me love that game was the creepy factor where you could see the corruption spreading from the reflection of Samus's face in her helmet. This alone made me want to see the end of the adventure. Dark Samus was also a factor, but I was never really a fan of having a Clone Nemesis in any game. As for the balancing, you are right. It was an easy game for sure, but here comes my point: Should every game be challenging? It's an honest question, not some clever way of making me look cryptic. I think because the game was easier, I was able to just kick back and feel like Samus is a total badass. Also, it was easier to just visit the different planets and take in the details. The bounty hunters were also a big part (the main focus even) of the game to me. It's almost like Metroid Prime 3 is not a very good adventure to me... but more of a deep look in the Metroid universe. As for the rest of your points yes I agree. The marketing of the Wii remote, the areas are disconnected, the adventure is easy, the damn city in the sky is empty and a pain to navigate in succession... But to me, the last fight was truly fun. The overall experience was so different from what I was expecting. I really enjoyed it. The level design is not the best across the series, the narrative is even worst sometimes but I will keep good memories of that game. Something that did not happen in any other Halo than Halo 1 and Halo Reach. To me at least, I never speak for the community. Anyways, I've now watched all of you Zelda and Metroid videos and I will look into the rest of what you have for sure. Thank you for the hard work, I do hope Metroid Prime 4 gets what this series deserves.
This whole issue of trade-offs between camera control and free aiming is fixed in Federation Force... no seriously. Federation Force allows you to Lock on to and then intuitively use tilt controls to target specific areas of an enemy. It makes every enemy encounter as strategic as something from Skyward Sword, or not. Really you can be as strategic as you want, because if you just lock on and shoot, you'll hit your enemy, but if you want to you can tilt to aim freely. This works much better then holding a Wiimote that has no neutral position the way that holding a controller/handheld does. This is why i have to disagree with anyone who hates even the existence of Federation Force. Nintendo is committed to experimenting with their franchises and this actually leads to real discoveries. If nothing else, Kensuke Tanabe got to try something out that I sincerely hope gets incorporated using the tilt controls of the Switch on Prime 4.
What the actual fuck Federation Force did something RIGHT?
@@AstralPhnx it really does. It’s not a bad game, just released at a bad time. It was made by Next Level who also did Luigis Mansion 3. They make solid titles. I’m not saying it’s perfect (the difficulty for single player is completely off balance) but it’s worth a look if you’re inclined.
@@CheddarBayBaby Yeah; Federation Force really was poorly-timed, though for me, it wasn't poor timing in the sense of being the first Metroid game since Other M (since I had never played a Metroid game), but that it came at a time that the 3DS was being given a ton of fluff placid-at-best multiplayer spinoffs of established series; perhaps most notably The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes. Honestly, the premise of a Metroid game where, instead of Samus, you play as an ordinary Federation soldier could've made for an interesting single-player game: imagine a Metroid game where you play as a random Federation soldier who ends up on an investigation mission that goes south, leaving the player character the sole survivor who has to save the day despite being far less physically and technologically capable than Samus and just generally being in over their head. That could've made for a compelling Metroid game.
I love all 3 of the games :o they’re all absolutely phenomenal! SO HYPED FOR PRIME 4!!!
It's been years dude, I hope after Prime 4, Prime 5 and 6 don't take 7 years to release
Hm. I can definitely see the point you're making, and I was totally thinking through a lot of my playthrough that A) the game would be much improved if it weren't trying to be Halo and B) The fact that all the upgrades seemed to be linear improvements that didn't really give you more options but instead just made the options better... wasn't really great. On the other hand, I didn't feel like Hypermode was as broken as you said it is, and I found myself really getting to low health on most of the bosses, making the fact that your extra damage source and health were tied together a compelling mechanic for me. Maybe I'll play it again and see if that still holds. However, I think you really did this game a disservice by not mentioning the strong atmospheric and emotional impressions it leaves. This game departed from series tradition of having Samus by herself for a the whole or most of the game, but I think Retro really did an excellent job of showing that the Metroid universe could be used to tell other kinds of narratives as well. I'm not just talking about the other hunters, which I thought was interesting because it was happening in the Metroid Prime universe and it gave me something to think about, but otherwise wasn't really anything that hasn't been done before, but there were some incredible setpiece moments in this game. Watching Samus suffer the effects of corruption, most notably the scene where, after taking down a boss, she removes her helmet--something we only see her do in triumphant endgame screens, really, or rarely when she's safe--and vomit some phazon liquid. Not only is this a unique side of her we haven't seen before, which made me feel a new emotion toward this character--worry--it's part of a payoff we've seen them set up for the whole trilogy. Just as the music in the Kingdom Hearts series becomes more powerful the more you play it as it becomes attached to other memories and emotions you've experienced, I feel like our relationship and understanding of phazon becomes deeper as the story goes on. We've spent two games running against its effects and how terrifying it is when the space pirates take it for granted or try to exploit it only to suffer the consequences, and we've seen the destruction and pain it can cause to peaceful civilizations--even its signature sound cue, that static gurgle, instantly puts me on edge. The whole game has this sense of anxiety once you realize it's inside you, that you've become contaminated and there's no way back--it feels much the same as being stuck on a planet in that your only option is to go forward and destroy phaaze. But nothing I've ever done in a video game has ever felt as wrong as standing in a puddle of liquid phazon and *regaining health*. That shit had me squirming in my seat, and I feel like I was wary of hypermode the whole game because I understood the consequences of relying on phazon's power. Perhaps it could have been tied into the gameplay mechanics more, but it didn't need to be to elicit that reaction from me. And the trip onto phaaze, when you've truly reached the point of no return, had my muscles cramping at the end because I was so tense. That planet was so weird and beautiful, but had this yawning feeling of doom opening up as I went inward that I've never experienced elsewhere. Similarly, the Valhalla is one of the best environments I've ever seen. I'm a grown-ass woman, but sitting in my basement in the dark playing that level, I was not just nervous, or tense, but actually scared. I've played horror games that didn't have that impact on me, because they were experiences meant to scare you. I can't even do that place justice in words, but it had this raw feeling that things were and had gone horribly, horribly wrong and I was never meant to be there. Even on repeated visits, especially because little things changed, it never got better. No matter how strong Samus got that place scared me shitless because it wasn't just about threat to my character. All the dead people, the red light from the nearby cluster of cosmic matter, the darkness, the hundreds and hundreds of metroids flying around outside, that *music*. After experiencing that section in SkyTown where you release all those metroids and have to walk through them, which was itself an expert horror section, this place just got worse to go through. I'm in awe. At the end of the day, I feel like video games are most rewarding when they're giving me an experience I can't have in real life, something unique and special. And while I feel that Corruption was definitely the least solid game in the series in terms of a cohesive identity and presentation, it gave me some moments I cannot forget, and I think that makes it pretty special.
I cant express how fun these videos are, thank you for doing these.
It's weird how many people prefer Prime 2 over Prime 3 and vice versa. It's either you hate 2 love 3, or hate 3 love 2. I have only played prime 1.
If you like prime 1, youd probably like 2. Its a good sequel.
@@markjackson2924 I just played the whole trilogy for the first time fairly recently. I liked 1 the most, and I honestly prefer 3 over 2. I liked all three of them, but the lack of interesting areas in Prime 2, as well as some of the bosses (namely the spider ball guardian) really bring it down.
Outside of fusion when I first played it. Prime 3 was the hardest Metroid game for me to get into compared to the other games. But that's mostly due to the controls. It was something I eventually got used to. The backtracking and linearity never really harmed my play through. And the ship didn't really bother me too much. But it was pretty pointless
Seeing as this is the first ever Metroid game I played... wow, this is a loaded video. Very well explained, but loaded. Personally, I've never been controller person when it comes to FPS games. I was raised on the mouse and keyboard, so the Wii controls felt like a nice compromise between a controller and a mouse. I can't really comment on how the Gamecube controls were like though, since I've barely had any time with a Gamecube at all, let alone the controller. As coincidence would have it, the only two Metroid games I have ever played as of writing this comment is Prime 3 and Prime Hunters. Being the assuming type, I kind of just assumed that this was how a Metroid game was structured - multiple different worlds, all linked with a common end goal, but all very different from each other in the little details. I never had the point of reference of the ever-revered Super Metroid or Prime 1 to give my views on Prime 3 any perspective about how, generally, Metroid games have been structured before it. I always thought travelling around to different planets was a cool mechanic - you get to explore so much more than 1 planet, you get to explore a galaxy almost! As a quick side note, I think the map works better with overall smaller areas in mind, like those found in Prime 3. Just my speculation from viewing other's perspective about the map in Prime 1 and 2. (And yes, the Elysia area which reveals every single secret is a little bit cheaty with the first two Prime games in mind, but I personally liked it, since it made so much more convenient getting that satisfying 100% completion, and I think I would have been a little turned off the item hunt for my first couple of playthroughs had this not been in the game at all.) I do have have to agree on the point of difficulty - even on Veteran, I have had no trouble keeping my health at maximum at almost all times, only getting a little close for comfort maybe once early in the game. Health drops are soooooo common. And this leads to the Hypermode criticism - on top of the generally easier time you're having, it's being made even easier with an over-powered godmode that's fueled by health, which is of little consequence due to the shear number of health drops! The fact that you mentioned that the developers added Hypermode as an afterthought lines up well with I perceive the game - it was not balanced with Hardmode in mind. Had Hardmode never been added, Prime 3 could have had at least some semblance of difficulty during later sections of the game. Hardmode trivialises many things, even the situations that Hypermode was specifically designed for. That being said, I enjoyed Prime 3 thoroughly. Easy as it was, I ate it up, all of it. Once I started a playthough, I couldn't help but take it to its natural conclusion, picking up every single item along the way. The fact that it was so easy meant I could just have fun being an over-powered bounty hunter with a beam gun, without needing to worry about imminent death. Another quick side note, I'm kinda sad that the Nova Beam/X-ray visor combo is obtained so late into the game. That could have been used to much greater effect had it been obtained, say, around when you get the Plasma beam. Also, as a random question, which of the three normal beam weapons do you prefer, on a design and sound front? I've personally always liked how the Power Beam and Nova Beams are designed - just the right combination of beefiness (or lack thereof for the power beam) and sound design. The Plasma Beam, however, has always rubbed me the wrong way... is the sound design? The layout of the cannon? The colour? The fact that it's arguably the beam you'll see the most of? I just can't put my finger on it. Thus ends this ramble of a comment. Great video! I look forward to the next one.
Just found your channel yesterday evening, I've already watched 9 of your vids when I should have been studying lol. Great content man keep it up!
This was my first Metroid game. Rundas dying ruined me, and I fell in love with the lore ever since that immersion. I fucking adore it, regardless of it objective flaws. Fuck those Skytown ziplines though.
Despite not being the best, I just want to say that I love this game. It is also the first Prime game I played and im now looking into buying the other teo for the gamecube sine I like to have the feel of playing the original and Prime Trilogy will cost me between and im not lying € 50 and €100.
You can emulate gamecube games on a PC at 1080p. Trust me... it's worth it. Prime is phenomenal at higher resolution. Use gamecube controls. Not because they are better, but because the game was designed for it.
This was my first metroid game so I loved it. Had no idea what a metroid game was like, so interactions with the Aurora unit and federation were cool to me. Still are.
Interesting how KingK talks about design choices in Prime 3 as though they are drawbacks when I consider it to be Primes 3's strengths. Most notably the mix of shooter and adventure. Prime 3 is my favorite Metroid game in the franchise simply because its an accessible and often 'very easy' power fantasy. I enjoy it on the same level you might enjoy a Kirby game rather than something more challenging like Mario.
Despite Prime 3's many deviations from the core of Metroid, I can respect the game for coming up with new powerups. Hypermode and its powerups integrate the phazon and hypermode that have been in every Prime game thus far (in Prime 2, it's Dark Samus that enters hypermode), in a way, it only seems natural for the finale of the phazon arc to use the phazon in this way. I also do appreciate the new powerups involved with the grapple beam. Previously, it acted as an inferior screw attack. Made extremely clear in Echoes where you can sequence break to get the screw attack before the grapple beam, and never need to use the grapple beam for the rest of the playthrough. I appreciate this because the grapple beam, like the spider ball, has the most potential for utility in a 3D environment - it is Metroid's hookshot, after all. Removing shields from enemies is pretty badass, and using said shield to drain their energy is basically skipping a step in the "fight enemy to get energy pickup" process. It's also eerily similar to how metroids drain life energy from their victims, which is thematically appropriate, if nothing else. I can go on and on, the nova beam + x-ray visor combo is a very natural fit to Metroid combat progression that also naturally integrates the pointer controls, in addition to giving your supplementary visors a combat use other than 'being able to always see your target'. Using your beam as a soder is honestly pretty cool and a nice touch of variety in the things Samus does. It honestly would have been really neat to use this function to soder upgrades into Samus's ship. Speaking of which, the attempt to integrate Samus's gunship into the progression, with its own upgrades so it can grow with Samus. It would give something like a companion cube for the player to get attached to, like Argo the horse in Shadow of Colossus. Also, and this is something I really respect about Prime 2 and 3 considerably, new suits for Samus so we're not always ending in the same dang purple Gravity Suit aesthetic! After AM2R and Samus Returns both ending with the Gravity Suit, I'm kinda sick of the thing, to be perfectly honest, haha.
At least _Samus Returns_ redesigned the look of the Gravity Suit... That's one huge issue I had with Metroid Prime 1, in that there were simply no new looks for Samus (the "Phazon Suit" was literally a palette swap of the Gravity Suit, which itself was a palette swap of the Varia Suit...) . Echoes still did the best for giving Samus a completely new look.
I liked the idea of grapple beam having more function, but in the end hypermode is so strong that those abilities end up being just a key to progress, no better than the translators in prime 2. For the plasma beam, those motion control things are fun the first times but get boring real quick and for combat it's basically useless. The nova beam is good for a few things more but it's still weak. Since we are on the topic of underused items, the ship upgrades are useless. Prime 2 admittely reskin most of the items from prime 1, but at least they were often slightly improved. Creativity vs efficienty I guess.
Just found you channel today with your sonic 2 retrospective and immediately binged a ton of your vids, and I'm surprised how long it took for me to find you! These are awesome!
Metroid Prime 3 is the best of the series. I love the interaction with the Galactic Federation and the other Bounty Hunters.
I remember getting this game on launch week, I was really excited to get to play it only a year after I got my Wii and coming back from the experience that Prime 1 and 2 were for me, I was hoping for a great game and closing of the series, and I did get it, yeah. Maybe it wasn't perfect, I get the points the you're trying to make, even the bad ones, and for better or worse those weren't things like I even considered bad, back in the day. I was like maybe about to turn 18 during that time and I wasn't nearly as critical as I am now, and seems I have always struggled with the game part of what do or where to go next, also coming from a actual and almost pathological disorientation when traveling to places, I felt like I was getting lost and then when I started to figured things out and finding secrets or abilities or pickups I found it incredibly rewarding, but in the end it turned out to be way easier for me than my time with Prime 1 and 2, I remember beating the game on my first try with 100% ratio, I found it incredible, even for me and it was because of what you said, the clues and pointers to pickups are all there and despite getting to deal with its boss fights I remember only struggling with 3 of them Roxas, The Giant robot thing (not the hunter) and Ridley other than that I found it way easier than Echoes, and that's a lot to say. This a Great retrospective on the game and you made me feel like I was playing the games again, despite that I haven't done it in quite a few years and now I know I have to do it again. So for that, God Job!. 👍🏼
Trying hard to push this out before The Geek Critique, I see. :p
I had this in the works since July, but watching his video through Patreon was actually what got me so motivated to finish mine because it got me thinking about the games again!
Funny that you mention how much the game revolves around your ship, since there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Retro had more plans for the ship that didn’t make the cut. Doesn’t it seem odd that there are so many ship missile upgrades when you can only use ship missiles in a few areas? Why can you put up your shields or deploy your guns while in the ship? This seems to indicate that the Command Visor might have once been able to call in air strikes wherever you had open space, and that there may have been dogfights planned while traveling between planets. Whether this would’ve been better for the game, I don’t know.
The biggest hurdle back when MP3 was new was the lack of shoot em up games for the Wii. I understand why you'd compare it to an Xbox FPS but as far as the Wii went for futuristic FPS content either Metroid prime, "Dead space on Rails", "The conduit" or a "Call of Duty" game was it's options. Nintendo really let us Teenagers aching for a good firefight to go to other consoles for the content we wanted. Yeah i agree this game did not hold up to echoes, Ridley battles where dull kind of felt like James bond saying: "How many times do I have to kill Jaws..." If this game centered itself as a Planetary escape with Samus and a downed Gfed crew helping each other out of a tight spot -without a single Escort mission- I believe this game would have felt much better, more organic. along with a worthy online multiplayer when Call of duty franchise was in its prime with Cod WaW and black ops Nintendo really left the fans down with this installment and the ones that followed. :/ My favourite part of MP3: first walking into Valhalla Starship, Epic. your review was spot on again dude, i find myself going back through your work and remembering when i had played these games 10-7 years ago and wishing i had the outlet we have today, back then... Games i'm anticipating your reviews: Star fox(I can't wait to hear your reaction to Starfox Adventures even if it's just a minute of horrible disgust), Bomberman64 & Smash Brothers64!
Great analysis! I'm guessing you would like control ootions. Like being able to switch motion controls on and off for Prime 4. Perhaps something akin to Doom for motion controls.
Fuck you. Motion controls were a wii gimmick and nothing more. You saw how poorly received Super Mario Party was. Metroid deserves better than to be the guinee pig for shit design.
Lol my favorite thing about corruption is the ship 😂
Same. I hope Prime 4 also utilizes the ship.
I think most of Corruption's issues can be explained by five things: 1) Being designed to sell the Wii. You talk about this a lot in the video, so I don't really think I have to elaborate. 2) An extreme response to the criticism of Echoes. Echoes reviewed well - a 92 on Metacritic - but the public reception wasn't nearly as positive. It was pretty strongly criticized for its difficulty, its confusing level layout, and its extensive backtracking (you know, all the specifically Metroidy stuff that they doubled down on from the first game), and after the disappointing sales figures failed to break a million, Retro listened. But instead of going back to the first Prime, they went back to the first game and then went hard in the opposite direction, with smaller, more linear areas, using the ship as basically a universal elevator/fast travel, an objective system that you can't turn off, and a God Mode you can activate whenever you want. 3) Ideas that sounded good on paper, but didn't work out in practice, or maybe things changed later in development but other parts of the game didn't adapt to the new changes. I can practically read the design document that spelled out how the morph ball, grapple beam, and ship were all going to see more emphasis and even have their own unique upgrade paths. And I can also see in things like the energy transfer and ship missiles that these ideas didn't work out as planned. "You'll be able to latch your Grapple Beam onto an enemy and drain its energy, or even push your energy into it to overload it!" "You'll be able to summon your ship from the sky to take out your enemies!" Neat concepts, again, on paper. Give the player more combat options since this game is so heavily focused on combat. But in practice, they're almost entirely useless since they're so situational and Samus is so powerful without these things anyway. Outside of using the grapple energy transfer to open a few gates or turn on a few elevators, there are maybe 3 or 4 enemies that you can use it on, and they can all be taken out way faster with Hypermode anyway. And outside of a handful of things you have to bomb, the ship missiles can be used in like 3 rooms in the entire game, where they're useless because they don't contain enemies that you can't destroy quickly with Hypermode. The fact that ship missiles have limited ammo, and there are pickups to restore this ammo and upgrades to increase the capacity, is one of the most bizarre design decisions I've ever seen in a game. 4) Listening to fan requests. Things like being able to travel to different planets, being able to use Samus's ship, and going back to the combined beam system of Super Metroid were things people frequently asked for after the first Prime came out, and Retro finally listened with Corruption. But it turns out, planet hopping makes for a less focused game, and beam switching would've worked well in a more combat-focused game. And the ship wasn't implemented in the "actually fly it around and shoot stuff with it" way that people wanted, but that probably wouldn't fit anyway. 5) Trying to have more mainstream appeal, i.e. copying Halo. More cinematic and story-focused, more setpieces designed to be memorable and "epic" (the intro, riding the bomb on Norion, the escort quest), and hell, Gandrayda and Rundas bear more than a slight resemblance to Cortana and and Elite. Despite its issues, I still love the game. As a one-off attempt at a cinematic, epic-scale, multi-planet grand finale to a trilogy, it's, you know, it's fine. If it had come out after a massive drought of Metroid games, that would've been less fine, but it came after a five year span that saw five other Metroid games, so it was fine to have one that experimented with a different direction. But it absolutely shouldn't be the direction the series as a whole adopts, and Prime 4 should take very little inspiration from it outside of music and environmental design.
Kevin Stevens That's a perfect summary on how listening too much to fan request can make a game worse. It's design by committee with a different committee. It's fine to listen to the general sentiment, but focus too much and you implement stuff that might not work so good. Add the fact that retro was under the casual Nintendo committee of the Wii era and you get a good but not excellent game
nah I disagree I liked it having a epic and badass plot and characters honestly the ship made travelling less have a hasile and was cool
@@fluffy_tail4365 eh...I'd say it's excellent so what if it was the "casual" era not only for the wii also for ds...I'd say most of the stuff they implemented was done well and arguably executed better overall for the most part then prime 2
… honestly from my first playthrough I enjoyed the beginning portions of the game… instead of an exposition dump you actually got to play through the setup of the games main narrative… then after that opening section the game settles into the usual Prime gameplay…. as far as the motion controls, I get that they were very specific functions that didnt really add anything..but in adding those moments it connects her character to the environment beyond her jumping and shooting at things which is always a welcome addition to any game
Prime 3 is a rather interesting game for me. On one hand, it's as far removed from a Metroid title it can be while still being good, but at the same time it's a fun game with great music, gameplay (imo) and exploration (even somewhat linear). I like to think of Prime 3 as a big war phase. Like, Metroid 1 was an infiltration mission, Primes 1 and 2 were side missions that introduced a new threat, and 3 was the culmination of it. As much as it's different from a Metroid title, I also like the difference, as it creates a new and interesting experience. It's also why I like Fusion so much. Zero mission, Super and Prime 1 are great don't get me wrong, but I feel if every Metroid game followed the same formular, it'd become just another game you run around in. Fusion acts like a horror game almost, and Prime 3 is a big war. Of course, these should be exceptions, not rules, so I wouldn't want too many more like this, but I just can't help but enjoy the similar but new gameplay.
20:27 The enemy shown there was not a Space Pirate. It was called "Reptilicus." Just saying.
Whenever I think of Prime 3 in comparison to the previous games in the trilogy, I feel like Prime 3 is a step backwards in every way. Now, don't get me wrong. I like Prime 3, but it's my least favorite of the Prime trilogy. I find the game to put too much emphasis on action (yes, I know Fusion emphasized action too, but there's a main reason why it worked in Fusion and not so much in Prime 3), some of the motion controls feel too gimmicky and repetitive (ripping off enemy shields specifically), and Hyper Mode makes the game too easy. While Fusion emphasized action and linearity more than the previous Metroid games up to that point, there was still the challenge of the previous Metroid games. Fusion is one of the most difficult games in the series IMO. With Prime 3, since the game gives you so much health, going into Hyper Mode isn't really a big deal. Hell, the game encourages you to use Hyper Mode a lot of the time not only because of the Hyper Mode upgrades you can get, but some enemies have their own Hyper Mode, thus making "Go into Hyper Mode and blast the enemies to hell," the only real viable option. Prime 1 is my favorite of the Prime trilogy, despite its weak bosses and safe area aesthetics. While Prime 2 might not be for everyone, I consider it to be the best Prime game objectively, and I love how much Prime 2 expanded on the ideas that made the first Prime so great to me. Prime 3 may be easier to get newcomers into the Metroid series, and I do consider it to be a satisfying end to the Prime trilogy, but I could have done without some of the decisions made for it, mainly the overemphasis on Hyper Mode.
are you saying linear levels,gimmicks and scripted events arent prime quality???!
Hub Pie stfu motion.control was far better then that shitty gc one.stick anlogy stick kid
Aiming's fine. I have no problems with that since it does improve on the controls from the GameCube versions of Prime 1 and 2. With Prime 3, it got tedious having to constantly rip enemy shields.
Dude, first off: chill. Second, the game encourages you to use Hyper Mode whenever there are enemies who have Hyper Modes of their own. Since there's really no drawbacks unless you spend too long in Hyper Mode, you can abuse it all you want.
Hyper Mode is one of the few things I didn't like about this game. It makes regular encounters too easy and gets you used to corruption so it doesn't feel threatening. It's directly at odds with the story, which wants you to treat corruption as *the* bad ending you're trying to avoid. I'd like to see a version of this game entirely without the feature. I think it would be better.
My perspective on the trilogy, is that neither game is *intrinsically* better or worse than the other; each game has its own respective trade-offs that make it less or more favorable to different types of gamers depending on their likes and dislikes (except for Prime 1 since it sets the precedent; any perceived trade-offs it has are purely in hindsight). Echoes gains more difficulty ceiling and better puzzles at the cost of the more naturally-pleasing environs, flavor text, and show-don't-tell storytelling of the prior game. Corruption gains a more "socially"-oriented Metroid themed FPS campaign with an incredibly exciting and outright cool story that fleshes out the GF and other bounty hunters and lets you travel to other planets, at the cost of linearity and lack of difficulty & skill depth. In short, to each gamer his own, for each purpose.
I remember getting both 1 and 2 on Gamecube, then getting the collectors edition of all 3 on Wii. And you better believe if they re-release all 3 along with the upcoming 4 on Switch, I will buy them all again.
Like i said in another video: somecallmejohnny really needs to do some revisiting. He's some of the "Big Boys" of "Metroid Opinions" and his bias to "Other M" and disregard towards "Prime 2" really hurts the general view of what makes the franchise so cool. I'm actually super afraid of his "Samus Returns" Review...
As someone with just a passing interest in Metroid who has seen all of his reviews, it hasn't hurt my view of the series at all. Progression and exploration are a big part of what makes Metroid so loved, as is it's atmosphere. His biggest gripe with Prime 2 seems to have been the backtracking and less interesting environments. He liked Other M's combat but thought pretty much everything else was dumpster fire (mostly the story) IIRC. Neither one of those puts the series as a whole in a bad light. I still mean to get around to playing Fusion and finishing Super Metroid because I know there's a lot of good in the series. Thanks in no small part to his reviews. No series is perfect. Hell I love Deus Ex but it's got a patchy history. One great game, one really iffy game, one that almost lives up the the great, a dumpster fire, one that was clearly half-finished. I still love the series though, and even when it's at it's worst the elements that I like about it can be found. At the end of the day it's opinions. No matter how important people perceive Johnny to be his priority has always been honest reviews. He isn't going to shy away from stating his issues with something even if that means turning some people away from a game. Besides he gave most of the series glowing reviews and sites those games as an example to follow when criticizing the others. The series reputation isn't going anywhere.
Ah, my favourite Prime game.
that's sad kid, metroid prime is much superior lol at the new gen z gamers
@@khav11 1990? If that's your birth year you are noone to talk down to someone like that.
@@kiwisoup that made no sense whatsoever, did you drop out from 7th grade stupid?
@@khav11 Wow. You're stupid AND nasty. Some things school can't teach you. Like how to not be a cancer on society and a complete dbag.
@@kiwisoup edit more your comments you confused dumb little kid lol! NEXT!
King k I just want to say you do an awesome job with these videos and I've always been kind of a Metroid fan I beat super when I was 9, and I beat zero Mission on its release however I've never beaten any of the Prime games and your videos have really made me want to go back and check them out so if nothing else your videos have tipped at least one more person into playing the Prime games so thank you, also I really loved your Legend of Zelda retrospective videos fantastic stuff man keep it up!
I never hear anyone talk about or really include Prime Hunters for the DS when mentioning this series. that game was fantastic.
I have to disagree, this being my favorite Prime game.. but fun video to watch nonetheless!
why do people make these non-comments?
I agree. MP3 is the one Iwant to replay the most! MP2 is by far my least favorite. Everything people complain about in MP3 I think are improvements so I've never really understood it.
@@khav11 Nobody said MP1 wasn't a masterpiece. Learn reading comprehension. You're trying way too hard. Stop pretending you know shit about people. You can't make a decent argument and haven't said anything to support what you think so you just blindly attack people. It's sad and pathetic. I think you should seek professional help because you clearly have anger management issues. I'm sorry for whatever happened to you too make you the unpleasant and abrasive person you are today.
@@kiwisoup i see i hit a nerve when was the last time you got laid loser?
@@khav11 I would say you behave like a kid, but that would be an insult to kids.
I haven't played this game, but I'm not a big fan of Metroidvanias and don't plan on playing it anytime soon, so I'll just go ahead and watch it because it's Kingk Also: what's the next Sonic game your going to do a retrospective on?
Sonic CD my friend.
KingK k, I'm gonna get on playing that
It will be interesting to see what inspiration mystery developer takes from Retro for Prime 4.I'm sure they will they take familiar things from the series and include them but what will be taken out or changed completely?I look forward to seeing the project and what this development team have to come up with in the next few years.
I hope that we get to use the ship for moving around objects again in Prime 4. One of my favourite puzzles in Prime 3 was needing to unlock a shortcut at both ends in order to connect two disconnected areas in order to have the ship move a giant object from one of them to the other.
Awesome analysis. Did you study game design?
I find the argumentation of not having a "real metroid" really boring. What is a "real metroid" game? When people bring this up I only think about Super Metroid and maybe Metroid Prime. Every other game even Other M gives the metroid formular a new interpretation. I liked the crisis mangament in Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime 3. There´s a massive crisis going on and the G.F. is your ally giving you informations while you do the fighting. I like the idea of having other characters working WITH you. It shows also that the threat in this game is a bigger thing. Samus needs the help of the G.F and the G.F. needs Samus.
I agree . I think the definition of a real metroid is a game that that relies heavily on exploration and backtracking with a sense of growth and a good dose of combat added to the mix . Exploration being the main focus and combat only adding to it . It's the formula the franchise is built upon . Sometimes other teams wanna shake things up , making combat play a larger role (like in corruption ) or easing up the exploration bits , making the experience more linear . Like you , i see this as another interpretation of the formula . Does it make it more accessible ? Yes , but Prime 1 and Super are hardcore games at their core and not every game has to closely follow their footprints to be a real metroid game . Look at Echoes for example , it took these points to the extreme , so i think it relies more on the balance of said design elements than following a blueprint and demanding every game to be the same.
This was my first Metroid Prime game, so i thought it was great. Then bought the first 2 since the Wii plays GameCube games. Whoa did those 2 games blow me away, especially 2. So now MP3 for me is the weakest one in the trilogy. Still a good game, but its certainly a step down.
Echoes is my fav
I can play Metroid Prime 1 & 3. I have the hardest time going through Metroid Prime 2, never even beating the game. What kept me going for as long as I did in Prime 2 was the story and setting (I consider it the best plot in the Prime series.) How I go around in Prime 2 has killed my drive to move further. I am having a hard time seeing how Metroid Prime 3 took the worst elements of Prime 2 if I went through the game with not much difficulty. Prime 2 hinders my exploration to point of quitting. What bothers me in Prime 3 was the lack of exploration considering *Samus is free to fly wherever she wants.* I also heard Retro originally wanted Samus to capture real bounties, accepting and rejecting side missions, but Sakamoto was completely against this, thinking of Samus as a "hero" instead of a bounty hunter. Apparently Samus is more of a government employee of the Federation than the free bounty hunter the vast majority of fans think of her as.
As much as I'd like a Nintendo worker seeing these videos and implementing some of these thoughts into the game, I know that the japanese developers tend to be very isolated in a way. That's why we haven't got any Paper Mario like the first two lately. (Although, I know in that case it was because of the European surveys on SPM, but that game did have more text than the others, and in a platformer.) I think we'll have to have faith in the younger developers or that they contact Retro for supervision/opinion, even if most of the Prime team has probably left. Really, really great videos, btw! I have been marathoning your channel for the last couple of days while working on my stuff and it has really kept me engaged, like playing the games once again. Your catchfrase at the end is also awesome because sometimes I DO forget to enjoy myself, haha.
Metroid Prime 3 is in in my top 3 best games of all time. This game fixes all the problems that i have with the other games that you dont see, and your complaints about this game are almost all complaints i can argue.Thanks for the video.
"When does a sequel fail." When it's Prime 2: Echoes.
MP2 it's the best of the trilogy.
@@juancarlosrodea9743 No, it is not. Each of the three Prime games has its own strengths and weaknesses to the point where a "best in the trilogy" can't really be declared except purely as a matter of personal preference.
To be honest I never played the Gamecube version of these games. I bought Metroid Prime Trilogy a few years ago after being hooked to Metroid very late in my life (I'm on my 30's) However, while I agree in general with the sentiment you express here, I absolutely adored the whole package... The whole trilogy as ONE huge game is amazing. Prime was a great introduction into Metroid 3D with awesome new mechanics but also flawed. Echoes was a huge improvement, and it was the most memorable for me. Corruption was quite different, and I can see how this will bother longtime Metroid fans, being such departure, but in the age were Halo was king, an accessible Metroid was not a bad idea, and the reliance on gimmicky mechanics such as the grapple hook for a lot of stuff was actually enjoyable as it immersed me more into the character of Samus. The same goes with the button interaction, levers and pumping (except for that part inside the ship, which should have had more significance than it did. For me the final boss on Corruption was the hardest of the trilogy, and finally beating it was a great feeling of epicness. Anyway loved your take on this series.
Prime 3 was my introduction to Metroid, and it certainly did the job well. Might not be the greatest in the trilogy or the series but it started my love for Metroid so it'll always be special for me