Some choice quotes from players of Adventure Mode:
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Nothing against johnny I totally see where he's coming from but I wasn't at all disappointed in the single player mode
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while I agree that the adventure mode doesn't include the same level of depth that past games have had, at least Samus didn't have the sequence where she's hit with an explosion and loses all of her gear...AGAIN!
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Yeah, basically the adventure mode isn't up to par. It's still pretty fun, but only when I need a break from the faster action of WiFi
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That being said I do agree with the review but I still had fun.
Sounds to me like a few, just a few, are confused. Did they agree with the review or not? Do we like this game in single player or not? We say we agree with Jonny's comments, but we also really like the game. Something's wrong.
Clarification?
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ONce in awhile it would feel Metroid-like and then other times it was just a straightforward fps game.
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Hunters as Im understanding it is more like doom with guns instead of keys, which doesnt mean is not fun and the truth is Im a bit tempted to try it, but it also means that its not a Metroid game.
And from Jonny's review:
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Hunters is strictly a first-person shooter and has more in common with Quake and Unreal than it does with the Metroid Prime games, much less with the original Metroid games.
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You can slap these characters on whatever game you want, but no one is arguing that Mario Party and Mario Baseball are real Super Mario games.
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So we can talk all day about how great Hunters is, and I will, but don't tell me it's a Metroid game just because it has Samus and her morph ball.
Here's what we're missing: a true definition of Metroid. I call on someone, particularly Jonny, to define clearly what this is. I do not wish to be antagonistic, but rather hope we can come up with some definition of what makes a game a particular type. I will pre-emptively make a few points.
1) Is upgrading really that important? It's apparently so important that we have to keep re-gaining the same abilities every game. It's gotten stale. Why is Metroid locked into this pattern? There are only so many times I can gain the Spider Ball then backtrack to Spider Tracks before I see that the actual content of this game is not what I'm doing, but when and how I'm doing it. Ergo, this world and its enemies, the aesthetic qualities and sense of exploration, space travel and villains, these are the keys. Samus' persona, her life of danger, the ever present Metroids, these are the keys. Upgrades play into exploration, but Hunters is an offshoot, poorly marketed as canonical which has gotten everyone into an uproar. If it had been titled Metroid: FPS OffShoot then you'd still complain, but you'd be less defendable. It's Metroid. I felt like Samus, I saw new things. Deal.
This is not to say that Metroid is only aesthetic, that it must "look" like Metroid and the gameplay structure can change at any time. But if we recognize that Metroid is action and exploration oriented, then the nitty gritty from there can and should change. From this point on, I only want to upgrade to abilities I didn't have in past games. Power Bombs are boring. Spider Ball is boring. Missile/Charge Beam Combos? Waste of effort. Let me fly, or climb on walls, make the world more interactive. I also cannot ignore the fact that upgrading is important - it's just not as important as stated. Metroid games are based on clever progression; gaining new abilities as you go is a large part of it. I do hold that Metroid can exist without it, though, as progression can be taught in different ways. If Samus' suit was reinvented every game, a la Link, we might be able to get by with the upgrade style of game progression, but Nintendo still sticks with the
same old items even for Link. I suppose I can't hope for much from a Metroid game that takes place before the existing 2-D ones. As soon as they're set in the future, let's pray we get an entirely new Power Suit. If not, upgrading to progress is a dead system, and we are all guilty of fanboy devotion to a corpse of a game.
2) We're so obsessed with our idea of "Metroid" that we've forgotten that innovation, not nostalgia, is the key to new experiences. If I cannot enjoy a game unless I've played all the others in the series, it is faulty. If the first Metroid was the Bible by which all other Metroid games were based, then the Prime series would not exist. The innovations of story-telling through Log Book, first person, lock-on, the scan visor's added functionality, and others would have been shot down. Why cannot the next Metroid game surpass our lockstep ideas of game design? Why cannot this game utilize the basics of Samus' relationship to the universe as its guiding force, rather than the basics of past Metroid's gameplay structure? When Samus flies her ship into a dogfight in Metroid: Prime 3, no one will complain. It's a necessary extension that has been avoided, and any other new thing Retro comes up with should be embraced, so long as it is true to
Samus, not Metroid.
3) Hunters is Metroid Lite. It's an offshoot. Samus has a gun. Why not shoot it? Samus explores worlds uninhabited and dead. Why not some rivalry? Samus is Samus in this game. It is more linear, but it is also a 3-D handheld, a new experiment. I find this mode of gameplay to fit my DS, even though it isn't perfect, or even outstanding. It's not full, but it is only one half of the entire game! What would've made it better? More linearity! Stop with these doors that close just to lock you into battle with a hunter. Make the entire world Quake-like! Why cannot Samus visit a place totally unlike any other environ she's seen thus far? An abandoned office building? I would love to visit a fully populated city planet in MP3, but you can't fill that world with Spider Tracks and Purple Doors.
In summary: Hunters is a good game. I like to play it. I actually had some excellent times with the single player, mainly because I was Samus and fighting some awesome guys. The worlds have visual and emotional depth, the music is good. I was immersed, though on the whole it tries too hard to match its bigger brothers. Nintendo: Why not let this game live its own life? Players: Why not enjoy it for what it is? Is it fun? Did you experience something new? We are not disinherited fanboys, we're just privy to an experiment that fails in some ways and succeeds in others. Multiplayer in Hunters, after all, is very much like Metroid in its mechanics, yet I'd bet that too counts as merely a Lost Book in this infallible Holy Text.
Topic: REVIEWS: Metroid Prime: Hunters (Read 21298 times)
