Nerd Mentality

Metroid Prime: Hunters

Posted May 20th 2006 by Jordan Mammo.

Ever since Metroid Prime: Hunters was revealed back at E3 2004, the single player mode has been the game's biggest question mark. In the long wait leading up to Hunters' release, Nintendo and the developers at Nintendo Software Technology never exactly let us know what we were getting. At first the game was going to be more like a mission-based first-person shooter, and the demo that came packed in with the Nintendo DS backed this idea up; the trial version showed off the game's unique control scheme and played very much like an action-oriented shoot-em-up.

However, as Hunters got delayed in order to incorporate online play, we were told the single player portion was also becoming more and more sophisticated. When asked about it, NST said to expect a game on par with Metroid Prime's length that would take advantage of Samus' ship and her ability to travel from planet to planet fighting other bounty hunters. All Nintendo had really shown off publicly, however, was the multiplayer aspects of Hunters, and whatever portion of the single player that was shown didn't really indicate anything one way or the other. Basically, we had to take their word for it.

So now that the final version of Hunters has been released, has it really changed all that much from its early demo? Would it be a traditional first-person shooter in order to take maximum advantage of the game's new touch-screen controls, or would the developers at NST manage to craft a faithful 3D Metroid on the DS hardware?

We might as well get this out of the way right now: Hunters isn't what we've come to expect from a Metroid title. Heck, to call it "Metroid-lite" is to give it more credit than it deserves.

At the same time, I don't think NST ever really tried to make that type of game. I think they tried to cover up the type of game they made with what we expect from a Prime-style adventure, but actually making a Metroid game was never in the cards. Of course, I have no direct proof of this, but as the saying goes, "the proof is in the pudding," and Hunters isn't a very tasty batch.

Take the scanning for instance. One thing I noticed while playing through the game is that there are times when you scan an object and are told that it suffers from structural weakness. Pretty typical stuff for a Metroid game; holes can be blown into walls and the like. The scan says there are weak points, but when you actually shoot the structures, nothing happens. Why? Because you aren't supposed to be able to. Power-ups that are generally hidden are many times just left out in the open for you to collect. The levels in this game aren't built with destructible hidden passages in mind; they're built for FPS-style mayhem, and it's during battles when they really work.

I guess that's also why some of the big rooms in the single player are just levels ripped straight from the multiplayer. Go figure!

So since the worlds weren't really made with scanning and non-linear exploration in mind, taking the time to scan things just bogs the otherwise fast pace of the game down. Scanning things for clues and storyline details as was done in Metroid Prime works pretty well, but since there isn't much story to extract out of Hunters (and also seeing as whenever scanning really comes into play it's mostly for finding switches in order to drop a force field), you're pretty much scanning objects for the sake of it. Almost as if you have to because, hey, you're playing Metroid! Eventually, I found myself just running through the levels with little regard for scanning anything, and during this time it felt like I was playing the game the way it was meant to be played.

Something that many expected when they reached the end of the original Metroid Prime was the escape sequence that the series is famous for. To everyone's surprise, however, there was no such thing. "Sacrilege!" is what I imagine the staffers at NST screaming when they discovered this, as they have apparently tried to make amends for Prime's lack of escape sequences by including one in every single mission of Hunters. So each time you kill a boss you're forced to run and fly off of the planet within minutes, and you're treated to a cut-scene of Samus taking off which shows absolutely nothing happening. Why the rush? Did the planet explode? Probably, you assume.

But wait!

After you finish the fourth mission, you have to fly back to all of the planets that you've already assumed have exploded so you can open up some new door. See? Backtracking! It is a Metroid game after all! This just makes me wonder why you're forced to run off the planet as fast as you can if there's nothing wrong in the first place. As of now, I suspect that NST are just big fans of escape sequences. Unfortunately, that doesn't make them very suspenseful.

Alright, so some of these Metroid aspects aren't very well-executed. What about the action? After all, Hunters was meant to be more of an action game anyway, right? Regrettably, even once you get past the scanning and morph balls, the game is just not very fun. Thanks to boring enemies and little in the way of puzzle variety, levels become formulaic and unexciting. It's true that in past Metroid titles Samus would spend much time fighting native animals and turrets, but it doesn't exactly make for exciting gameplay in a title such as this. The game's solution to this later on is simply to toss you in a room and throw a ton of these enemies at you at once, even using gauntlet-like generators that create more of said enemies after you kill them. This answer, though not really creative, certainly helps ratchet up the tension level.

The largest bright spots in the combat, however, are the encounters with the bounty hunters roaming the planets, because, well, they at least try to put up a fight. Featuring alternate forms and unique weapons, they'll run across the level's obstacles, forcing you to learn their patterns and use the level to your advantage. Though not especially difficult, these encounters do show that the concept behind Hunters does hold some promise, even if it doesn't really come together as a whole.

Surprisingly enough, one of the bigger disappointments is not the fact that most of the enemies are boring to fight, but the fact that a Metroid title has managed to recycle two bosses across eight missions. Given the classic encounters seen in Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, it's very hard to stomach the idea that you must fight the same two bosses four times each en route to the final confrontation. Even tougher to deal with is that very little changes between each battle; your opponent may gain a new attack or become vulnerable only to one weapon type. In the end, these battles only become tired and drawn-out, and by the time I reached the third versions my desire to march onward had all but disappeared.

Luckily the game looks so damn good that it really helps the solo player go down smooth, or at least smoother. In fact, what's most striking at first glance are the graphics; no other DS title pushes the console as much as Hunters does. Though the combination of 3D, first-person action, and dark environments can be murder on the eyes when looked at on such a small screen, no one can deny that it all looks great, and the title remains surprisingly faithful to its GameCube relatives. The music, meanwhile, doesn't stand out as much as Kenji Yamamoto's amazing Super Metroid and Metroid Prime soundtracks (and he himself only served as a supervisor on Hunters), but it's still rather impressive and helps set the mood really well.

Hunters' most interesting feature, however, is its innovative control, and in fact it's the new touch-screen controls that even make a lot of the single player bearable. It's almost unfortunate though that the DS had to be the way it is now, because whether I'm playing traditional games like Mario Kart or new, touch-screen-centric titles like Metroid, I can't seem to get away from the console's hand cramp-inducing design. Maybe it's just me, but I fear that by the time the DS' lifecycle is over with my hands will be permanently damaged. The only positive way of looking at this is that most of the injury caused by this game will be by its multiplayer and not its mediocre solo campaign.

It's not even that the controls are bad; it's just that they hurt, especially when you first start playing. Eventually you'll get used to it, but during the more intense sequences you can feel your hands cramping up again. None of this is to say that the control scheme doesn't work, because it does and it works extremely well. Strafing, turning around, and aiming can all be done with ease, and NST even allows you to adjust the sensitivity settings for the touch screen (though the default worked just fine for me). As someone who's absolutely horrible at dual-analog FPS, Hunters is the first shooter I've enjoyed actually controlling since Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 (well, minus the hand cramps, that is).

Slight Pulse - If you don't have Wi-Fi or friends, you might want to save your money. To buy friends.

Let's not kid ourselves here: the reason to own Metroid Prime: Hunters is for its multiplayer. It's that simple. The multiplayer has been the main focus since development started and it really shows when you start playing solo. Clinging onto series traditions, the single player fails to make good use of them, eventually bringing down even what it does do well – the action. A play-through is worth it to unlock new maps and new characters, but if you can't go online or enjoy the multiplayer mode, there's not much here for you to enjoy.

Posted in: Reviews

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