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"Pikmin"

I'm a bit sick of Hitman 2 and Harvest Moon at moment, along with my other currently-played games, so I decided to give Pikmin a quick go and really rekindled my love of the thin, odd looking plants.

I never really remember Pikmin being as good as it is. I always liked it, but returning it seems wonderful, and more of a Nintendo game than Wind Waker and Sunshine. Building up 100's of slaves, racing against the clock to safety... I never really realised how great this is, and despite being a bit sceptical about the 2nd, I'm really looking forward to it now.

RBS is just plain wrong. Not liking this is foolish, it's a true Nintendo masterpiece and, in terms of gameplay, almost faultless (bar a few niggles when trying to seperate Pikmin.)

This is why a bought a GameCube.

You like Pikmin with a time limit, because it's what you were given and you can't imagine it in any other way.
You like Metroid Prime in first person, because that's what you were given and loved and you can't imagine it in any other way.

But me being the over-critical dreamer I am, I can. :-)


Seriously, I can see where you're coming from, but although it did make the game harder for me, it also meant that it was over far too quickly because I felt forced to rush through it.

The only games that I've found that ever justified a time limit were racing games or other games where speed is the whole objective of the game. Otherwise it's just a nuisance, putting you off when you want to enjoy what's good about the game.

Of course anyone with a great imagination can create a brilliant game.

But developers have to be realistic and see what they can REALLY make. Not just your idealistic views.

Nintendo must have spent the last 2 years removing the time limit and seeing how they can keep the re-playability and the time management.

They came up with keeping the day limit for time management and replayability with a multiplayer.

Of course they added to the game with new Pikmin, randomly generated areas, new monsters and a 2 character system.

But Metroid Prime is different, a 3rd person Metroid game could work absolute wonders. But it isn't as easy as we think, to create a 3rd person game is not just very hard but to create that around one of the worlds most popular franchises' is also very demanding.

A first person view may reduce how good the game could have been potentially... but realistically if the game was done in third person it would have been far more challenging and as the team are FPS experts they will find it hard to find their feet. The game would ultimatly be worse for it.

We can always imagine a perfect game, but the developers know their own limits and RETRO are just not up to making one of the hardest forms of game known to man.

Without the first person view, Metroid Prime would have lost so much. Not just the scanning (which is a great feature), but the feeling of true isolation would be lost, perhaps not completely, but certainly not to the same extent. Acrobatics worked in the 2D titles but Prime was never meant to be a traditional Metroid title and I believe it works better.

If Retro were totally perfect and had many years to make Prime there is no way they would make it first person. A third person game will feel far more isolated as you get the sense of space and emptiness.

The game will be easier to move and just genuinly that much better.

But they're not, Metroid Prime is realistically the best game we could possibly get.

How many games have you coded Dringo? You seem to know a lot about what makes for difficult design...

Darwock wrote:
> How many games have you coded Dringo? You seem to know a lot about
> what makes for difficult design...

Creating a working camera that doesn't have problems is notably one of the hardest things to create... it is why so many third party games fall down to it... especially the games where the characters are particulary acrobatic and happen to be flying all over the place ala Samus.

It doesn't take intelligence.

A developer recently told me the hardest part of any game to get right was the memory card code, so it just goes to show we have no idea what is easy or difficult.

I was going to reply to Dringo AND Rickoss, but then Dringo wrote:
> If Retro were totally perfect and had many years to make Prime there
> is no way they would make it first person. A third person game will
> feel far more isolated as you get the sense of space and emptiness.
>
> The game will be easier to move and just genuinly that much better.
>
> But they're not, Metroid Prime is realistically the best game we
> could possibly get.

Which pretty much summed it all up. :-)


I really thought they might be able to squeeze in a third person mode for the sequel though. I mean, they have Nintendo who are the experts at playable platforming and camera work.
And as for Samus' artwork and animation, in Prime they looked for ANY excuse to show that off.

The level platforming level design was already to a great standard...


I mean, they had ALL the ingredients the to do it perfectly...




I think that they were just a little wary of tampering with an already working formula, which would be a bit ironic considering all they said about being the series forward! :-D

I really couldn't see thrid person working as well. Beyond a few acrobatic moves, it has little benifits. What about the visors? All pof them work better in first person.

Rickoss wrote:
> I really couldn't see thrid person working as well. Beyond a
> few acrobatic moves, it has little benifits. What about the visors?
> All pof them work better in first person.

True, those visors were a cool addition, and despite not being a good thing, I couldn't help but always be impressed with the ability to play with them all whenever I wanted. Ah well. Small things..