Topic: Metroid Prime: Blast Ball Multiplayer Impressions

[Jonnyboy117]

An outspoken Metroid fan sizes up the franchise's latest take on competitive multiplayer.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/hands-on-preview/40510/metroid-prime-blast-ball-multiplayer-impressions

This competitive, sci-fi sport appears to be a bonus mode, compared to the more expansive, cooperative campaign of Metroid Prime: Federation Forces. As the only portion of Next Level's 2016 online shooter available for us to play at this year's E3, Blast Ball is an enjoyable twist on the online shooter formula. The huge ball, shrinking goals, and easy lock-on feature ensure that the game never devolves into shooting each other. In fact, a better strategy might be to drive the ball into your opponents, as it's very harmful to the touch. There's an inherent balance in proximity to the action, since it's much easier to shoot from up close, and yet you are taking on more risk of being rolled over.

Playing Blast Ball for myself, I found it to be exactly as expected from watching a few matches at the Nintendo World Championship. It's novel, fast-paced, and immediately involving. I was glad to see that dual-stick controls are supported for the New 3DS (and probably for Circle Pad Pro). However, the action here bears no resemblance at all to the Metroid franchise, and the demo presented so far is probably too simplistic to engage fans of that series for very long. The arena is just a caged oval, and your character doesn't do much but move and shoot at the ball. Jumping did not have an obvious tactical utility in this demo. My team was able to score easily, so the best-of-three match was over within a couple of minutes.

Nintendo's recent embrace of modern online features is the biggest difference between Blast Ball and something like the goofy soccer mode in Excitebike 64. I like what I played, but this mode definitely feels like something extra in a spin-off game already focused on multiplayer in online missions that surely have far more depth. Federation Force may not be the Metroid game we wanted to see after five years in the dark, but it looks ambitious in its own way. Blast Ball, in contrast, feels like a diversion, and so far, it shows less depth than previous multiplayer Metroid experiments in Prime 2 and Hunters. I'll be curious to see whether Blast Ball is expanded with more arenas, abilities, and rule tweaks in the final game. Regardless, I can't see many people embracing Federation Force just for this mode, and Nintendo hasn't yet given us a chance to try the cooperative missions.