You may find the title of this post somewhat confusing. I certainly do. It doesn't seem quite right somehow. But that is the length of time according to the Wii that I have been playing Metroid Prime Trilogy.
Now, a fair amount will be taken up with navigating menus, browsing extras and leaving it paused whilst you go for a sandwiches or whatever, but still. Do the maths. Thats nearly 3 working weeks. All spent playing video games. THREE video games.
AS you may have guessed from those statistics, I fucking love me some Metroid.
I bought the game back in January. It's one of those ones I'd been meaning to get for some time, but was just waiting for the price to go down a bit. Then the announced it was limited edition and they'd stopped making it. Like a twat I immediatly rushed off to panic buy it, and ended up paying far more than I should have. Specifically, I got it online for £45. When I was down the town a few weeks later and saw it for £20 I was, as the saying goes, not amused. But you know what? I don't really mind, because I've enjoyed it so much. ONE HUNDRED HOURS gameplay. Seriously. You can't argue with that. Less than 50p per hour, and thats only for the first runthrough.
Put simply, if you don't already own Metroid Prime Trilogy and you see it priced at £2o, FUCKING BUY IT. I don't care if you don't even own a Wii. You can get one later. This is some serious value for money.
So, what specifically, do you get? Well, as the title may have subtly hinted, you get all 3 Metroid Prime games. 1st person action/adventure with shooting, puzzles, exploration and all manner of tasty goodness. All look fantastic to me, but I suppose some might complain that it's not all HD-super-shiny-uncanny-valley-and-everything's-either-grey-or-brown-bleeding-edge-of-tedium-whatever-generation, but fuck those guys.
The games are played using the Wiimote for aiming and the Nunchuck for running around, the older portions of the trilogy having upgraded from their steam driven stone age console versions. And it works. It works REALLY well. It's wierd how the Wii is probably the best console for FPS style games when they seem much more prevelant on the other "grown up" systems. Not that Metroid is massively about shooting mind you. Whilst there are obviously enemies to be defeated I personally find the most entertaining parts the exploration and puzzles. The constant search for new abilities and power ups driving you forward. There's always some new objective, and it does get a little addictive at times. You spend an evening working through a section, defeat the boss and get the next power up, which you can then use to access the next section. Only rather than saving, quitting and going to bed like a sane person you remember how there was that room you passed at some point in the distant past that you can now go explore. It's great. Really.
One thing that did strike me as quite odd was the platforming type sections. Because there is no way in hell that any sort of platforming should really work in an FPS styl game (even though they always like to put a bit like that in), but here it really does work well and doesn't get aggravating at all. Well, maybe some of the Screw Attack bits in part 2, but thats only because I'm rubbish at it.
Whilst it's probably a good idea to take a bit of a break between each game I didn't find it particularly repetative, with each part having something to offer of it's own. PArt 1 is obviously the base, with part 2 offering up a march darker themed chapter and expoiting the good old dark world concept, before we move onto part 3 and things get REALLY intergrated to the Wii control system, offering up a host of new options. I'd say that part 2 was probabably overall the harder of the 3, and part 3 is by far the easiest. However that may just be because by the time I got onto part 3 I was rather more experienced. Part 1 seemed to have a couple of the hardest bosses though, oddly. Again this may be in part attibutable to experience. Still, the boss battles were largely exciting rather than aggravating, which I was most grateful for. There's nothing worse than playing through a game you enjoy only run up against some aggravating boss you can't beat until you've memorised it's every eaxact movement through all 27 of it's final forms. I fuking HATE that shit.
I suppose there's only really one major criticism I can state, and that concerns the extras. Now there's a lot of stuff to unlock, which is good. As you go through the various games doing various things you get various credits which you can then spend on unlocking stuff. All well and good. But then we get to part 3 and the green credits. All the really interesting looking extras need green credits. Only you can't actually get them. At all. Because those come from friend vouchers. These you gain like every other credit, only you can't spend them youself, only give them away to people on you friend list.
So, in order to actually unlock all the stuff you must first have at least one friend with a Wii AND they have to be online AND they have to be in your friend roster AND they have to have Metroid Prime Trilogy AND they have to have completed it as well AND they have to be trustworthy enough that you can safely exchange your hard won credits with.
Did anyone else notice the large amount of clauses there?
Now, I like the IDEA of friend vouchers. But why must they be a unique currency? Why not make it so that you can trade tokens of whatever color? You know, so you could help each other unlock stuff rather than requiring it? To say that I was rather dissapointed tto find out that I'm denied access to the extras for the crime of not having any friends with Wiis and the other 6 clauses required was a bit of an understatement, and did in fact rather sour the triumph of finally beating the monstrosity.
That said, the actual GAMEPLAY was fun, and I'd say that the game does have some replay value, since I didn't actually manage to get 100% on any of the various parts. However that is a task for the future, as I really should do something with my life OTHER than play Metroid for 3 months straight.
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