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?'"

Re:Metroid Prime 3 vs. BioShock. Play both, be hap

[HalAtWork]

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.

Memorable openings

[Dr. Stavros]

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 [wikipedia.org] 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 :)

I still play both styles

[IceCreamGuy]

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.

It's been posted before, but it deserves attention

[Glytch]

A Bioshock review. [escapistmagazine.com]

Re:3d ruined Metroid

[Jackmon]

I have to strongly disagree. The 3D transition wasn't really a transition. It was the beginning of a totally different franchise. The 2D Metroid games were great (and they still are). There's just nothing in Metroid Prime like the arcade-style simplicity and precision of control that 2D allows. 2D games just have a certain appeal that can't be achieved in 3D no matter how many pixels or Gflops you throw at them. Nevertheless Metroid Prime was such a perfect combination of 1st person shooter and puzzle-solving/exploration. The subtleties of mood and sense of wonder the 3D Metroid games are able to convey is so far beyond anything in 2D Metroid games that I just don't think they can be compared. Honestly, it blows me away that anyone could play MP and come away with a "meh" reaction. But to each his own.

I feel the same way about the Zelda franchise. It's really 2 franchises. The puzzle-solving/power-ups/exploration is shared between both. But games like Minish Cap are just too different from something like Twilight Princess to truly deserve comparison. (I'm a big fan of both btw).

Re:3d ruined Metroid

[grumbel]

Metroid on DS was plain awful, the Primes weren't that bad, but I don't consider all that great either. I don't blame this on 3D, but mainly on the first person view. When jumping is a central part of the gameplay it just flat out sucks to not have a body. Which not only makes jumps annoying (even so Prime was always rather tolerant in that aspect) it also, and this is far more important, makes them uninteresting. In the 2D Metroid you had way more possibilities when jumping, you had the ledge-grab, walljumps, screw-jump and could combine them more or less freely, in the 3D ones some of that is still present, but its degraded to a special gimmick that you use in a few special places, not everywhere you want.

I would love to see a 3D third person Metroid next. While 2D is fun, they also tend to just be clones of SuperMetroid. A third person Metroid would give the freedom to do something new without losing the core of the 2D ones.