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Croal vs. Totilo - Metroid Prime 3 vs. BioShock
Another round of considered commentary from two game journalism luminaries is now completed, and ready for your consumption. Newsweek's Croal and MTV's Totilo go back and forth on the merits of those 'other' console shooters, the ones without Halo in the title. What follows is a fascinating conversation focused on the titles BioShock and Metroid 3, with a wide-range of topics explored. They touch on the importance of a memorable opening, the sense of empowerment required for a good game, and a few words on what may have been lost in the move to 3D in the Metroid series. 'There's a very real argument to be made that something was lost in the transition from 2D to 3D, which is what the Wii's backers have been happy to talk about. While it's worth exploring why the transition ruined things for some gamers, I think little has been discussed about why other gamers didn't lose touch and what kind of tastes may have developed in those of us who stayed hardcore on both sides of the break. What do such gamers have to add to a discussion that so often deals only with the lapsed 2D gamers and the children of the 3D era, to say nothing of the outsider casuals?'"
While mouse sensitivity is still greater than the Wiimote (at least here, but it is a narrowing margin) The Analog stick kicks the shit out of WASD.
Both are stellar games however, if you own a Wii60, buy both.
my problem with any first person shooter game is when it comes to making jumps count you cant look down and see your feet. In metroid of 2D platform jumping was part of the game. To a degree it is still in the 3D metroids as well. but nothing is more frustrating then trying to make a jump when you have no idea where your feet are and falling because of it.
I enjoy the 2d Metroid games a lot. The 3d games range from horrible (3d on the DS, what the hell?) to "Meh."
In my opinion, the 3d games ruined the franchise. They turned Metroid into Zelda in space.
Zelda itself didn't fare too well in the 3d transition. Playing Minish cap on my Gameboy reminded me just how good things used to be.
Bioshock. That is all.
Based on you saying this, I can only assume you haven't played either game for more than 5 minutes...as a long time first person shooter fan (played them since Catacomb 3D) and as a die hard System Shock/SS2 fan, I can say that BioShock does indeed deserve every outstanding review that it gets...the controls are tight, the weapons are well balanced, the plasmids make for some VERY interesting fights, and the graphics are quite pretty.
As a fan of the metroid series since the very first one on NES was released, I have to say my number one reason for liking the Prime series so much is because of this: even if it is 3D, it still FEELS like a Metroid game...The atmosphere, music, weapons, enemies...even the areas that seem like dead ends but have some small little hidey hole or passage to find are intact. Prime is Metroid, through and through.
Living With a Nerd
I like both too. Bioshock is a good experience for me since I haven't enjoyed an FPS since Doom and Doom II... Bioshock takes it back to the roots of what made an FPS a lot of fun for me, the killing in a new and thrilling environment. You don't have to worry about vehicles, you get most things available to you within the first couple of hours of gameplay, and the rest of the game is spent enjoying the level structure, interesting enemy dynamics and situations unique to this game, an interesting ability upgrade system, and multiple ways to play through the same level. Every style of gameplay is accomodated, so everyone can enjoy the game no matter how they play (RE4 does this too I believe). To me I think part of this often overlooked aspect is due to the fact that there is no multiplayer so they didn't have to balance things for player vs player.
Metroid Prime 3 is an excellent style of game (find upgrades, access new areas, defeat unique and interesting boss characters) taken to a new level with interesting architecture to move around in, especially because jumping and manouvering through the levels in various ways is a focus, unlike other FPSes, which makes it interesting to traverse the levels. The enemies are somewhat dumb but there're lots of them and they're very unique, often not even humanoid. Plus, like everyone says, the controls.
They're both very worth playing.
Twinstiq, game news
Guys... why do we need to hate games. Why not just play and love both.
It's not so much a matter of that for the preliminaries. You need to also look at the people who are critiquing the games. MTV and Newsweek. Companies who have no real grasp of solid console and/or computer gaming beyond anything that doesn't require much intellecet. MTV has a demographic of indecisive, low attention, fickle viewers. The value of any critic on their staff for video games can't and shouldn't be taken seriously versus any other critic from a gaming site or group that does what they do for a living (yes they're even biased but at least they're not from a former music station or newspaper company, either of which never really started into gaming in the first place). In short, there's no point arguing which is better based on the sources that argue for or against either one. Both are awesome games in their own respect. I'd rather hear or read from other groups than MTV or newsweek, groups out of their league in terms of gaming and esp. of critiquing them.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Indeed, a memorable opening is important.
Unfortunately, what was most memorable to me about the opening of BioShock was that, as soon as you gain control of the player, the water splashing up in your face as you swim in the sea leaves drips on the screen, as if it were hitting the glass lens of a camera. There's my sense of immersion destroyed in the first few seconds!
In fact, "Something splashing on the lens, such as water or mud" is listed on Wikipedia's page on breaking the fourth wall as a "technical limitation" that can remind the viewer that what they are seeing is [a film, and] not real life!
Otherwise, the opening was quite good :)
Based on you saying this, I can only assume you haven't played either game for more than 5 minutes...
Pfft, as if you could play Metroid for any length of time and call the motion controls "tacked on". They're integral, and they're better than anything any previous console controller could produce.
5 minutes is how long it took before I swore off ever playing an FPS with dual analog ever again. I bet Bioshock for the PC is fun, but damned if I want to play the Xbox version.
The enemies of Democracy are
I agree... as a fan of Super Metroid (and used to speed run is regularly), I was VERY skeptical of Prime. While it is NOT the same, the feel is certainly Metroid and was loads of fun to play. Also, kudos to Retro for not giving in to excessive Samus eye-candy at the very end (of the first game anyways), it was totally tasteful and believeable and just right.
I have all my old consoles still, and I play them about 25% of the time I'd say, but only a select few games that I just absolutely love playing, like Megaman 2, Metroid, LoZ, Lolo, and a couple others. There's something so attractive and moving about the simplicity of them visually, combined with the superb level design that just touches me in an extremely meaningful way. The music is also something that I love, it's so pure, no overtones and no human elements to make it imperfect, simple sounds juxtaposed against extremely complex musical arrangements; I actually ripped all my favorite NES music into .wav and listen to it in my car on a regular basis (Maniac Mansion gets me pumped when I'm driving). So the original 2D has this dichotomy of simplicity and complexity that makes it extremely unique and highly enjoyable, but the 3D games like Metroid Prime and Ocarina of Time just have so much depth to both the gameplay and the visuals that they just work for me. Obviously it's not the same type of enjoyment as the old ones, but that's why I keep them around. The 3D ones, I feel, have the same attention to detail and reflect just as much effort as the 2Ds, the only difference is that the incredible effort put into them can be directed into more areas of design and with greater depth than before. It's like eating a meal from the best chef in the world made from only 6 ingredients as opposed to a meal made by the best chef in the world with 20 ingredients; they'll both be the best meals you've ever had, but of course they'll be different.
While mouse sensitivity is still greater than the Wiimote
My penis after a week long, methamphetamine fueled masturbation session is more sensitive than the Wiimote.
I don't want to be seen as a Wii hater, so I'll also point out that my penis is more popular than the PS3 and has a lower failure rate than the 360.
I never played either System Shock game, but I'm currently on my second time through BioShock.
;)
I like it a lot. The atmosphere, the story itself, it all just sort of rolls together in a really fun game. I'm not an FPS fan, and BioShock doesn't come off as a typical FPS.
What other high quality games are you talking about?
Lair, Heavenly Sword?
While an analog stick will NEVER be a replacement for a keyboard/mouse combo, all it takes is a little bit of use...after playing through only a couple of FPS with a controller, I found that I got used to it to the point where I feel comfortable picking up a controller and just playing. Granted, as I said, there really is no replacement for a keyboard and mouse, but it doesn't take long to get used to using the controller.
In some ways, I prefer the controller for games like Rainbow Six: Vegas and Bioshock...even with as well as I type and with how long I have played games on the PC, I sitll find it more conveinent to have all the controls right at my fingertips...I don't have to worry about having my hand in the wrong position and hitting a key I don't mean to hit. Bioshock's 360 controls are very well laid out, and it takes only a couple minutes for the scheme to feel entirely natural.
Blasphemy, some might say...but it's simply a different type of Micro...it's just a different skillset that is required. Not to mention if you play FPS on a console, you will find (or at least I did) that my keyboard/mouse accuracy actually increased since I got used to something that wasn't quite as accurate.
Living With a Nerd
What I liked most about Bioshock was how it took those many ideas from all the stellar titles in the action genre: the implant system from Deus Ex (plasmid system), the Gravity Gun from HL2 (Telekinesis plasmid), sneaking and hacking from various "Thief" descendants, and, my personal favourite, the camera from Beyond Good and Evil, complete with the exact same piano notes played when taking a good picture. Despite those many games that served as inspiration, all those elements combine seamlessly and are held together by a narration style that never distracts from or interrupts the game flow. Outstanding voice actors conveying an interesting background story, nice graphics, only very few, minor bugs (that I have experienced, anyway), moral choices that actually matter and a very good balance of suspense and open action. I could go on. It's not a revolutionary game as the usual hype wants it to be, but evolutionary it's darn close to being the perfect shooter of our time.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
"The Analog stick kicks the shit out of WASD"
What a massively absurd conclusion.
Duct tape a paint-ball gun to the hood of golf cart and enter a match. That way you can simulate and appreciate a real-world analogy to playing a FPS with a joystick.
Okay, but we really _don't_ want to hear about the red ring that appeared on it yesterday morning.
In all fairness, herpes is more popular than the PS3, and the Ford Pinto has a lower failure rate than the 360.
A Bioshock review.
You haven't read the vs. discussion then. It's suprisingly deep discussion of game design, and both make interesting arguments.
You PC mouthbreathers need to stop deluding yourselves that you need Macs, or even that you're Mac-compatible at all. Real Mac users don't use Macs for the image, you pencil-pushers--it's not about being cool. It's about finding the right OS for your personality. And sorry to say, but most of you people just don't belong on the Mac.
So, what you are saying is that I don't belong on a mac because I'm not an elitist prick? Gotcha.
Living With a Nerd
when two 'hardcore' gamers get into the same room. Mario, Metroid, and Zelda are different games in 3D. It is unfair to judge a 3D game by the merits of the mechanics of a 2D predecessor. The fact that all three franchises have become critical and financial successes after the switch to 3D suggests that for any great thing that was lost, other things were added.
Too many gaming enthusiasts are ridiculously conservative when it comes to things they love. I can't tell you how many threads I have read angry at changes in X or Y franchises that infuriate the enthusiasts but make the games more enjoyable for others. Get over it, things change. If you enjoy Super Metroid more than Metroid Prime, shut the fuck up and play Super Metroid. Nothing is stopping you. I wished Twilight Princess was more like the Wind Waker, so I played the Wind Waker again. Maybe Wind Waker 2 would have been too much like the first if they had made it.
I, for one, like to be surprised. If there is no change, I get bored. Sure, this means I open myself to surprises I don't like, but it is better than getting the same thing over and over. I wish some would hire video game journalists that feel the same as I do, so I could start to trust reviews.
This argument about Metroid where one person says 3D isn't good because of what it has lost and the other says it is good because it hasn't lost certain things is moronic. What about what it has gained? Why did I, owner of Metroid in 1987, never complete a Metroid game until Metroid Prime? They don't care or they are unable to understand.
He didn't say it kicked the shit out of a mouse (which would be silly, yes), he said WASD - the other side of the equation. I'd certainly agree.
Have these two "game journalism luminaries" played anything beyond a few console hits? I had to stop reading midway through the third article because they couldn't stop talking about Metal Gear Solid.
These articles seriously deserve some commentary from the designers to make them complete. I'd love to hear Ken Levine's response, although he'd probably rather see gamers work these things out on their own.
You know, someone has to say it: The Prime 3 controls are not perfect. They're somewhere between okay and not any better that the GC controls. Locking on for circle strafing is great, but it also re-centers the screen on the object of interest, without your cursor being re-aimed. So in a fast battle, you point at the man badguy, lock on to dodge and fight more effectively, but your aim is way off. There's a setting to fix this so that when you lock on, you're also aiming at the opponent. It's not very good at motion prediction though.
More importantly, the lack of turbo fire on the wiimote kills your thumb in ways NESmaniacs never imagined.
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Open Source Sysadmin
You realize, of course, that your "way off" aim is because you're aiming somewhere else, right? Don't blame the controls for the fact that you wanted to play the game on Pussy and have it do all the killing for you.
Apologies for being harsh - my serious comment is as such - you already knew you could turn that off. Did you think that having the game actually do all your aiming for you would make it more fun? Also, you can switch the firing control to the trigger (and I don't get why that wasn't default) which makes it a hell of a lot nicer. I've fired something like 100,000 shots across two games in the last week and I'm not having any trigger finger issues.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Granted, as I said, there really is no replacement for a keyboard and mouse, but it doesn't take long to get used to using the controller.
:P
It's not a matter of "used to"; I've logged many many hours of console FPS play. Yet it has always been and will always be an inferior input scheme compared to keyboard and mouse. I simply accepted this as the cost of playing an FPS on a console.
Now that I've played Metroid Prime 3, I no longer consider it acceptable. Now even on a console I can have fast, accurate aiming. If only you could turn as quickly as with a mouse, the wiimote would be the perfect input device for FPS. As is, it's only so awesome that I never want to touch dual analog FPS controls again. My Time Splitters 2 GC disk will miss me.
I don't have to worry about having my hand in the wrong position and hitting a key I don't mean to hit.
Yes, the keyboard is in many ways the weaker half of the mouse/keyboard pair. It does allow you to fit all the necessary functions without resorting to things like the L3/R3 buttons on the Sony controller, but has the problem of having roughly 80 unnecessary keys.
This is one of the beauties of the wii, by the way. The analog stick is a great method for moving your character, since you really only need two speeds anyway (full run, and slow cautious), you never need to stop on a particular pixel, and your character is rarely supposed to be so fast that they can run back and forth across a room in a second. Whereas aiming is something where you're inherently supposed to be able to whip the barrel of your gun around to shoot people on opposite ends of a room, since you're not really moving yourself you're just moving the angle of the gun. Analog sticks turn this into basically the same thing as moving your character. Analog thumbsticks suck for aiming, even if you're as familiar with them as it is possible to be. So the wii gives you the best of both: The nunchuck has the analog stick for moving your character, and the wiimote gives you fast and precise aiming that no thumbstick can.
The enemies of Democracy are
no he's been saying to shave your fucking neckbeard and grow the fuck up and stop being a douchebag. Have a nice day.
Looks fantastic. Downloaded the demo off of live, played maybe a little more fantastic. All in all looked like a great single player experience, maybe one of the best, and I've heard nothing to make me doubt this estimation. But it's just a single player experience. I thought gears was a lot of fun single player too, played through the campaign several times before trying online play. But yeah, going up against other people, that's where the real fun is. BioShock not having it makes me really question whether it is worth the money. Ok, 40 hours and then what? Versus something like 100s of hours for Gears.
I own a Mac. I also own a PC. I don't see the point of elitism over either one. It's just an OS choice, you don't need to be rude about it either way. That being said, you've reinforced the stereotype of Mac users being complete and total fuckrods. Nice going, asshat.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Is Bioshock a continuation/spinoff of the System Shock series?!
If so, I may have to pick it up and go to my brother's to hog his 360 for awhile...
The Wii remote will not do good on competitive FPS's though. Try playing counterstrike with a wii remote vs a pc player. You will get pwned all day long. You might want to think about your statement with analog vs WASD...
Well, to be honest, for an adventure game that's not a pure trigger-happy FPS, the control scheme for Prime 1 was close to perfect. Granted, in a mulitplayer combat situation, most FPS fans would find it extremely limiting, but for what's required of the Metroid series, the GC controls are practically superior to a keyboard/mouse control scheme.
Now, however I tend to feel about Corruption trying to become more like a traditional FPS (which bothers me), I'll say that the control scheme was VERY GOOD in that regard. The lock-on may have actually been completely unneccssary. I think that maybe circle-strafe without lock-on would have been the best method, but besides that it was close to perfect. The ONLY gripe I had is that the crosshairs needed to be much more visible. Unlike traditional FPSs, with the Wiimote, the crosshair is not always in the center of the screen, which requires them to be a bit more blatently visible than in other games. First and foremoet, they should never be obsucrred by bloom-lighighting or gunblast effects (which they were in Corruption), they should always sit on a layer above everything else, they should be completely opaque, and possibly even have an outline of another color for added visibility. I can't count the number of times I went "okay, where are my crosshairs again?"
But that aside: Corruption did have the best control scheme of any FPS on a console. I really can't argue against that. Sure, it wasn't "perfect" but it was pretty damn close when compared to Halo, Bioshock, or other duel-analog control setups.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Ive yet to play either but both are games that I am looking foward too. Definatally when I get my new video card, BioShock is top of the list. Its one of those games that seem to stand out in a world flooded with the same stuff. It looks sweet, looks like it handles sweet and if it has stratergy other than running and gunning, it's a good thing. I quite liked the previous Metroid Prime games. The first and second Primes are still to this day my fave 1st person expereince of this decade, I felt it stayed true to the series. Throw in a control scheme that I feel was made for FPS's I cant wait for Corrupion (In australia we have to wait till November). Hunters is fun online but no Counter Strike and I am very disapointed about lack of online multiplayer as Hunters showed it could be done. I personally have not been impressed with what Ive seen with Halo 3, I could be supprised with the final version but I am not expecting much. So far it looks like BioShock and Corruption are worthy contenders for GOTY while Halo 3 will make it on fame alone. Nobody forget we got plenty of AAA titles on the way: Assassins Creed, MSG4, CoD4, Crysis, DMC4, RE5, SSBB
Make SELinux enforcing again!
First of all, I too was disappointed with the 3D DS Metroid. The DS is perfect for Metroidvania games, as the two Castlevanias have shown. Now Hunters is not a bad game; in fact, it is one of the best games on the DS, and the best portable FPS you can have, even winning against a whole bunch of dual-analog FPS with its control scheme. Still, I agre with you: I would have preferred a 2D Metroid on the DS.
However, the Metroid Prime games on the Cube are clearly amongst the best games ever made. In fact, the first Metroid Prime is the third-best ranked game ever on gamerankings, and it deserves that place. It is an awesome, great game; probably one of the best 2D->3D switches ever. No other franchise did it that well; few can even compare (maybe Super Mario, Zelda and Prince of Persia - although the 2D Marios and Zeldas are still way better than the 3D versions).
Yes, it's not a 2D Metroid. Yes, we all want a new 2D Metroid. No, that doesn't mean it's a bad game.
It's in large parts the same team and basically a kind of spiritual sequel, just without the rights to the actual name.