My now almost 20 year old complaint for Echoes is that the enemies are designed around twin stick shooting where the P1 they are designed around the limits and strengths of the control scheme.
I also hate all motion controls that aren’t Folklore.
2 Likes
metroid prime on gamecube is still nearly perfect. I replayed it last year… it still owns. the tank controls rule, but they also make it seem like an excellent candidate for VR.
it almost makes me wonder if the developers of prime 4 had the same realization and it’s being delayed to release with whatever nintendo’s take on VR is going to be. I guess it’s possible that nintendo just… might not do a VR thing at all, but I feel like they have been dipping their toes in that water all way from the virtual boy up to the labo VR kit.
it’s funny for as hated upon as the wii is, it really did lay the groundwork for modern VR technology. and the prime games were all uniquely good fits for wii controls. idk. much to think about.
8 Likes
kinda baffled by this. what goldeneye DNA does prime have other than being in first person?
you called?
never got around to finishing the last area but i will happily call it the best of the trilogy. such a deliciously gamey game
I hated Samus’s Shitty Friends. I hated how it was extremely linear but filled with Fun Coming Soon Signs. Kept trying to explore to a dead end.
Also hatedddd the motion controls. Could probably dig up an SB1 post fillled with venom and rage.
4 Likes
In both Prime and 007, movement on the stick is forward/back and turning. Holding R in both games gives you a free-look. Goldeneye pioneered that set of controls and Prime hung onto it and added Ocarina’s lock-on and combat dodge even as Halo was releasing and other games like Timesplitters and Alien Resurrection had moved towards a more PC-esque twin stick control scheme.
3 Likes
OK, fair, but this is just the default control scheme. there are like 8 in goldeneye, including twin-stick prototype schemes that use two pads. i don’t think the default scheme is particularly intrinsic.
i also consider goldeneye and prime so mechanically and structurally different that it’s hard to just look at “the R button makes you aim” as meaningful. but point taken!
I was specifically on the subject of Prime’s GameCube controls. I love the Honey control scheme of Goldeneye for multiplayer, but the default scheme of 007 does rely on a lock-on, albeit one set by the game and not a button. Combat in both Prime and 007 emphasizes attacking one enemy at a time, whereas in modern shooters the controls allow you to be agnostic with your targets.
If you’ve ever played Goldeneye Source, it’s clear that the levels were not designed around a mouse and keyboard. It’s similar to turning off tank controls in the HD port of REmake and zigzaging around zombies.
2 Likes
sorry my post was crankier than i intended, i apologize
are you talking about auto-aim? that’s a distinct mechanic from lock-on. anyway the lock-on would already be covered in this DNA idea by zelda. all the control schemes in GE have auto-aim, it only differs in degree depending on difficulty if i remember correctly
i think mp also has auto-aim even when you aren’t locking on? or maybe you hold down partway to increase auto-aim?
my larger point is just that when thinking about goldeneye and mp it is a fascinating perspective to think about the mechanical lineage when what comes to mind first for what i would imagine most people is how extremely starkly different they are despite surface appearances
eta: just for the record because i am not good at communication i think you’re right and i think that’s an interesting perspective
1 Like
ah, the controls are my favourite thing about it. not the input method per se, but the fact that all the basic actions have been tightened and sped up - running, charging the beam, switching to ball form (especially noticeable when entering tunnels). missiles are nice and chunky again like they were in the 2D games. the grapple manoeuvres are fairly satisfying to use and don’t feel as forced as i was expecting?
bear in mind though i played the game in Dolphin using a mouse lol
it did also just feel like an ambient improvement to the action that you actually had to aim at enemies for once. there are a lot of encounters in Prime 1 that boil down to waiting for an enemy to give you an opportunity to retaliate (for an insect to stop whizzing around your head, or burrowing under the ground; for an armoured fish to open up and reveal its weak spot), because, i’m guessing, they would otherwise be trivialised by the autotargeting.
valid criticism. it does seem like you should commit all the way to one or the other. though i think when it’s apparent a game has a script it does make me curious in what order the things i’ve seen are going to roll out. in a way that’s actually more uncertain than leaving the choice up to me, because i’m probably just going to go for whichever unexplored branch is nearest.
the plot and characters are so goofy and forgettable they pretty much went in one ear and out the other for me. outside the boss fights and like two squadmate sequences (one at the beginning, one near the end), the bulk of the game is still solo exploration so it didn’t register as more than background noise. i did like however that Samus never spoke; in fact the atmosphere on the federation ship at the beginning (both the glaring ethereal lighting and the murky soundtrack) really made it seem like she were an outsider there, not used to formal interaction or trusting others.
2 Likes
Ah.
2 Likes
definitely think prime 1 is the best metroid after metroid II tbh. though i guess today prime 3 is the one i’d be most interested in revisiting, but i’d probably have to do it on wii i guess
wait, i guess gyro could probably work ok, right
ok yes put it on switch
1 Like
GitHub - shiiion/dolphin: Dolphin fork intended to give Metroid Prime Trilogy mouselook controls PrimeHack!
4 Likes
Yeah my memories of the controls may be a little off. The lock-on is the Ocarina element, and Goldeneye has auto-aim. Both mean that your focus in combat is on specific enemies at a time. The later stages of Prime like the mines ramp up the difficulty by mixing up enemy types in groups, forcing you to frequently change targets. I guess what I’m saying is the controls in Prime are a mix of Zelda and Goldeneye, and that reflects itself in the combat.
Miyamoto produced Prime, and pushed the team to switch to first-person, he likely had a large hand in the controls, as he did in other producer roles on Star Fox and Excitebike. I can see why he would use Goldeneye, a N64 game jointly produced with Nintendo, as the basis for first-person controls.
Edit: I just remembered that many of the original Retro Studios team worked on Turok on N64, so there’s some kind of a design family tree going on.
3 Likes
Noooo that’s just like my tank controls analogy nooooo
i should also mention that i haven’t played the original Prime with a gamecube controller, so if that’s a crucial point of praise i’ve unfortunately missed it
Obviously the Steam controller is the ideal control method for Metroid Prime - motion and dual stage triggers and analog and
2 Likes
I actually found the motion controls in Prime 3 pretty intuitive/easy to use, but I didn’t like that it put an emphasis on aiming. Every other FPS is about aiming I liked when Prime was doing its own thing.
1 Like
idk why but I love FPS games that are all about movement but not about aiming (Prime, Doom, Mirrors Edge) and shooters that are all about aiming but not movement (Time Crisis, House of the Dead). Not huge on that middleground, unless it’s multiplayer.
11 Likes
moving and shooting is fucking hard to do well