Metroid Prime 3, A Second Look

Having just completed the game fully I thought I'd give this game another shot on the blog.

Most of my feelings about the game haven't changed, but I thought I'd make a few observations about it that I didn't notice before.

First off, the game exposes you to an area fairly early on in the game that is not heavily needed until closer to the end. While it is nice that they give the player the choice to explore and get a few power-ups early, most of the area is not accessible at first and frequent trips back to the area quickly become annoying.

Another thing that struck me was the lack of enemies in many rooms, especially when those rooms are being re-visited. I am not totally sure whether this is always good or bad, but its a change from the other two Metroid Prime games where backtracking through any area meant fighting most of the same hordes you did your first time through.

Next in line is the exclusion of many long time weapons. Old favorites such as the super missile and power bomb are "replaced" by the hyper missile and hyper ball mode. While I am more than happy that the developers were creative about inputing new content, I must admit that the exclusion of those items from the frequent puzzles and such was a little strange. Its neither good nor bad, just different.

Finally is the final boss battle. Playing the game in normal mode first left me a little disappointed with how the final boss battle went. It seemed way too easy each step of the way and kept me asking "Is that really it??" Hopefully by playing the game through on either veteran or hypermode difficulty will satisfy my hunger for a little more challenge that I seemed to find in the second Metroid Prime.