Why I Loved Metroid Prime 3

Well, it has been a few days since I beat Metroid Prime 3 and so I figured it was time to post my review.

One of the reasons I like the Metroid model is that it reminds me of Zelda - you start out with just the basics. Over the course of exploration, you (bounty hunter Samus Aran) encounter enemies and ultimately bosses. The boss fights always require you to do specific things to be successful (like employ a new upgrade or technique), and at the end, you get a shiny new toy. Some examples:

• ice missiles, which can freeze enemies so that a shot will shatter them, or can freeze molten rock to let you jump on it
• plasma beam, an upgrade to your gun that can burn enemies and melt certain rocks and metals, allowing access to new areas
• spider ball - Samus uses her morph ball technique )where she turns into a sphere that can roll around) and can attach to magnetized tracks that can loop around, up walls, across ceilings, etc, allowing access to upgrades and new areas

Also throughout the game you can find missile expansions (each increases the number of missiles you can carry by 5) and energy tanks (each increases your life energy by 100). I like this system because you don't have to find all of them to beat the game, but it is a challenge to find them all. I printed out a checklist from the internet so I could keep track of my progress, because my goal was to find 100% of the power-ups, which I did.

The Wii controls for the game are so much better than when the first two Metroid Prime games were on Gamecube. You use the nunchuk joystick to move forward, backwards, or side to side, while the Wiimote is used to aim, look around, and guide yourself. B jumps, A shoots. You can lock on to targets but still have to aim well enough to score the hits. Basically once you master the controls, you have a lot more freedom to move and shoot than in previous incarnations. There were some fun additions to the control scheme that added a nice touch - a flick of the Wiimote makes the morph ball jump; using the grapple beam to pull something requires you to cast the nunchuk forward and then pull it back.

One criticism of this game was that the boss fights were too easy. Well...I disagree. I didn't mind that I beat some of the bosses on the first try; some fights took up to three attempts, and the final boss took me four. I thought that was fabulous - I don't want to get so frustrated that I have to throw the Wiimote down and turn off the game before an aneurysm strikes. Besides, there are two additional difficulty modes you can play through the game on, so why make the easiest one impossible?