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[Radix]

I thought Echoes was alright, just that the atmosphere sucked and it felt like a level pack for Prime 1 more than anything.

I can't remember whether I finished Prime 3. I've had that problem with a lot of console games lately.

[Valter]

Huh. Fusion is my favorite, followed by Zero Mission and then Super Metroid.

Fusion had much better atmosphere. I felt more involved somehow.

Plus I was shocked that Zero Mission allowed and encouraged people to play the 15% or less items run through. It was the last true hardcore Nintendo game 

[alspal]

Is the original Metroid Prime much different to the Metroidprime Hunters on DS?

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Is the original Metroid Prime much different to the Metroidprime Hunters on DS?

hunters is horrible and ya it's way different

[Aquin]

Valter:  Not only did it encourage you to do an item-less run, but you got a better ending depending on time for that one too!  I think you could do 11% in less than 2 hours or something for the best ending.

Overall, I think there were 9 different screens for endings.  Crazy stuff.  It truly was great.  The game WANTED you to sequence break as much as possible.

[alspal]

Is the original Metroid Prime much different to the Metroidprime Hunters on DS?

hunters is horrible and ya it's way different

sweet, I might play it. I own the gamecube version for a few months, but haven't really been bothered to play it.

[Lukas]

A friend of mine and me just bought Metroid Prime for 9 bucks last week and play it through so hard right now. It's so good. I don't know if I kinda "love" Super Metroid more, though.

Anyways... what's wrong with MP2? It's a good Metroid and hence a fantastic game.


BaronCid

[Overkill]

what's wrong with MP2? It's a good Metroid and hence a fantastic game.

Weeell, you mistake that MP2 was good, and no amount of brand loyalty fixes that. >_>

My previous post briefly describes a few things wrong with it. Also, let's not forget that entire game was a lame linear fetch quest to collect all the keys so you could enter the Dark Temple and then ANOTHER fetch quest to enter the Sky Temple. Roughly. I never beat the game due to boss difficulties. It could've been forgiveable if it weren't for that.

[John Nesky]

In my experience, Metroid 2 had terrible flow. Of course it's one of those things where your mileage will vary, and you could argue that I just didn't play the game the right way, but I frequently found myself needing to repeat stuff over and over, either because I died, or I had to cross from one end of the world to the other to pick up an item. The portal transition/loading screen also seemed to be more common and less visually distracting than the elevators in other games, so I spent of lot of time twiddling my thumbs there. And the combat was the weakest part of both MP1 and MP2, and MP2 had much more focus on combat, which is analagous to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within having more combat than PoP Sands of Time: it's just not what the series was good at.

All this results in a game that I consider not particularly good for any series, let alone Metroid, despite the fact that it has just as high production value as MP1. It just goes to show how important the gameplay details are.

[Radix]

Anyways... what's wrong with MP2? It's a good Metroid and hence a fantastic game.

I agree that it was a good game, but it wasn't a fantastic game.

Because it was a good game it didn't feel like a waste of money, but because it's trading on the Metroid name, any problems that other games in the franchise don't share are going to make it feel like a let-down. That's kind of a danger with franchise games and ultimately it's the impression that's important rather than the objective quality of the thing.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I played metroid prime 1 over the weekend and metroid prime 2 right now (just got power bombs and stuff so now shortcuts are finally open for me)

I died once in MP1 for being stupid and trying to go through phazon when I knew i couldn't. Besides that, the difficulty was about perfect. I kept barely beating bosses without dying (it's a great feeling to barely squeak by), energy tanks were common enough to pick up on the journey naturally, the whole level felt like one huge connected world for you to explore (much like super metroid), the artifact hunt was pretty decent cause of all the alternate paths opened up with all the items on hand, and you got to get all the powerups you missed on top of that (I had 88% without doing much sidetracking), the beams were fun, and it was an overall great game. The sectors of the world each had a different mood and temperature to them and it felt good overall (fire, ice, industrial, jungle, underwater, ruins were the areas of the game)


MP2, according to wikipedia, "Producer Kensuke Tanabe later revealed in an interview that the game was just about thirty percent complete three months before the strict deadline Nintendo had set for a release in the 2004 holiday season.". It's a shame too, because about 30% of the game is fantastic. They improved a few control things from the first game (boost ball is much easier to use in halfpipes, of course they kinda messed up in making it used as an attack against the drones). Other than that, the world feels much like an overworld with 3 "dungeons" on it. You mostly exhaust all the powerups in one temple, kill the boss, grab the energy, return it to the light temple, and repeat for the others. It wouldn't be all bad however, if they didn't occasionally require you to return to previous areas for a powerup. You get used to the temple layout and then walk around aimlessly till the game tells you "go back to the wastes" or whatever, without opening up a new shortcut there or anything. There's no indication to return to other areas, since nothing in the old areas catches your eye like the areas in MP1 (geothermal core, this place seems interesting...).

Then there's the fact that the "dungeon" layout means everything is connected through the overworld, not with eachother, so backtracking is an absolute pain as you really do just have to retrace your steps, and there's not much new to discover as you go either. Most of the passageways and secrets are hidden with power bomb doors, which is one of the last powerups you get. The areas in this game, compared to the (fire, ice, industrial, jungle, underwater, ruins) collection of the first game, this game has a much less varied and interesting set (rocks, desert, bog, underwater, cyber, dark counterpart). The dark counterpart is the same for everything: dry and purple. Granted, the "cyber" area (the sanctuary) is great, but that's only about 30% of the game, and it does have the spider guardian, one of the most frustrating minibosses ever.

The pacing of the game is slow too. It takes forever to get the visor which lets you track those damn dark pirates, and even longer to get the suit which lets you actually not die in the dark world (it's like at practically the end of the game). I'm nearing the end myself, and I barely have half the energy tanks. At this point in MP1, I would have only been missing about 3 or so. All the energy tanks are way off the beaten path, same with the ammo expansions (ammo system has no place in the game). Save points are too far away from the hard bosses, I actually had to beat a boss again cause I died on the way to save after killing it, from a normal enemy who for some reason refused to die.

The game's not bad though, it's just frustrating and it definitely feels patched together in parts. i almost wish they delayed it till 2005 and cut the dumb multiplayer part so they could make the game amazing like it should have been.


The third game I played when it came out. It was fun. The action was better than the other 2, but the exploration lacked cause they split the world into 3 planets and like 2 mini areas which weren't interconnected. If they had layed out all the areas on a single planet, the game might have been as good, if not better than the first cause of the controls. Of course now that they updated the first with Wii controls it make that point null. MP1 is fucking brilliant and possibly the best transition to 3D any series has ever made

[Hinchy]

Oh, we're ranking the Metroids now? OH BOY!

^^^ BEST ^^^
Metroid Prime [my favorite game. ever.]
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes [aside from some questionable design changes, it's pretty much more of the same from the first one, which is not a bad thing in my opinion]
Metroid: Zero Mission [amazing - the gameplay of Super Metroid combined with the world of Metroid makes for a game better than either in my opinion]
Super Metroid [amazing, though sometimes frustrating due to the world design]
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption [sorta like Prime-lite but still fun]
Metroid Fusion [sorta like Super-lite but still fun]
Metroid [too dated, too frustrating, too disorienting; Metroid Zero Mission pretty much replaces this in my eyes]
Metroid II: Return of Samus [while it did introduce some interesting powerups and mechanics, the main gameplay is too dumbed-down for the primitive Game Boy platform]
vvv WORST vvv

Metroid Prime Hunters doesn't count. It's a decently okay FPS game but it doesn't even try to be anything like a Metroid experience - it's a spinoff, through and through.
Metroid Prime Pinball is surprisingly good for a pinball game though it wasn't worth $35 when it came out. My recent find of it in the bargain bin, though, made the game a neat surprise.

[AdamAtomic]

TIER 1:
Metroid

TIER 2:
Super Metroid
Metroid Prime

TIER 3:
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Zero Mission
Metroid Prime 3
Metroid Pinball

TIER FUCKING 200:
Metroid Prime 2

UNVERIFIED:
Metroid 2
Metroid Hunters

[John Nesky]

Fun fact: I used to have a lot of arguments on the Metroid Database Message Board with a guy who thought Metroid Prime 2 was significantly better as a Metroid game than Metroid Prime 1.

[GregWS]

I actually talked to someone once who said they liked MP2 because the atmosphere was more like Super Metroid than MP1 (and they were massive fans of Super Metroid).  I didn't disagree about the atmosphere, but for me the atmosphere was one of the reasons I didn't like MP2, so I couldn't really argue.

I'm actually proud to say that I've won every single Metroid game; I think that it's the only game series I can say that for (yes, including Pinball).  Prime 1 is my favorite by far.

And I don't really get what all the Hunter's bashing is about; it's really not that bad, and as a DS FPS it's great.

[John Nesky]

Yeah, that was basically the argument the other guy had too. He said that MP2 and SM felt otherworldly, whereas MP1 felt too familiar. I sort of understand, but I had a different emphasis: SM and MP1 had bright, colorful environments, whereas MP2 had bland, depressing environments.

[William Laub]

MP3 felt more like an afterthought than an actual full game. "Oh, by the way, here's how it all ends." I know that it wasn't actually shorter than the other games, but that's how it felt.

So I put both MP1 and MP2 above MP3.

[Stargoat]

Super Metroid (Although it loses a lot after the first play through.)
Metroid
Metroid 2
Prime
Zero Mission
Fusion
Prime 3
Prime 2
Hunters

Aside from the decent attempt of metroid-in-3d that was Metroid Prime, Retro kind of sucks at making Metroid games. I get the feeling that Other M won't impress either... I hope I'm wrong, of course.

Metroid is about trudging through damp caves, beating up space aliens, being confused, and finding missile expansions. Prime 3 felt like it was trying to be Halo. The lack of any real back story enhances the feeling of delving into the unknown. Other M seems to be setting its-self up to expand the story of Samus. I think this is a bad thing. The mystery is compelling.

Edit: Hinchy, you put Zero Mission above Super Metroid? What the hell?

[poorwill]

My ranking:

Super Metroid
Metroid Prime
.
.
Metroid Zero Mission
.
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Prime Pinball
Metroid Prime 3
Metroid Prime 2
.
.
.
Metroid
.
.
.
Metroid 2
.
Metroid Prime Hunters



The rankings so far:

poorwill
.
.
Glaiel-Gamer
.
.
Hinchy
.
John Nesky
.
AdamAtomic
.
Overkill
.
.
.
.
Stargoat

[John Nesky]

Okay, I'll bite:

Metroid Prime 1
Super Metroid
Metroid Prime 3
Metroid II
Metroid
Metroid Zero Mission
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Prime 2

I ranked the classic games higher than zero mission partly due to nostalgia, but also partly because Zero Mission felt too... artificial. Like, I felt more like I was solving puzzles that some clever designer had inserted into the map with only a few solutions, than like I was forging through some strange alien cave where I could improvise solutions to problems as they came up. Otherwise, Zero Mission has a lot going for it.

And Metroid Fusion is only fun the first time you play. Adam Malkovich totally breaks flow.