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I finally found Super Metroid in a second hand shop and it is the ultimate in action platforming.
It has a simple but practicle 8 way shooting system which you can use to blast enemies in all directions while simultaneously rolling/jumping/running/dodging and pulling off various neat acrobatic stunts to avoid their attacks.
Samus was the ultimate in character design.
She had a protective but light armour.
She was packed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons and gadgets from rockets and freeze guns to X-ray scanners and grappling beams.
She was also a great acrobat, with high jumping, fast rolling, running across floors that would crumble beneath her and kicking herself off walls long before Mario would try it in the third dimension.
The combination of platforming, blasting, exploring and solving clever puzzles has marked this game as the "best ever" among many Snes owners.
So you think we'd all be glad to find that Nintendo was bringing the franchise back to life on Gamecube hardware.
It was great news, especially with that FMV footage on the initial GC tech demo's.
There was one problem though.
Metroid's original creator had died, and the team that had been given the task of creating this new Metroid game hadn't had anything to do with the originals and didn't seem to be sure which way to take it. Reports of the game having problems and Shigsy disliking it emerged.
And then it became a first person shooter.
My hopes fell. Although being an FPS wouldn't stop it being a good game, it wouldn't be a Metroid game.
The problem?
The last installment of Metroid on the Snes had so much in it, everyone interpreted it in a different way.
Ask Grix, he'll tell you that Super Metroid's highlight was the atmosphere and the combining of weapons.
He's pretty happy with how Metroid Prime is turning out.
Shigsy would say that Metroid was about exploration. Unfortunately, he says that the third person camera view gets in the way of this and although a first person eliminates jumping, he doesn't think that this matters.
The full statement is at:
http://www.planetgamecube.com /news.cfm?action=item&id=2828
(remove space after .com)
He also said something about the japs liking it because although it's first person exploration, not so much shooting.
He's wrong. The japs love their shooters in terms of Lightgun, it's just moving around in first person tends to make them sick!
Anyway, back to the point. Everyone seems to have their own idea about what Metroid is and I have mine.
This might be because I played as Samus a lot in Smash brothers long before I played Super metroid itself, but I've always thought that a Metroid game was about Samus.
Mario games (about Mario), Zelda (about Link) and other platformers (Zelda does have some platforming, even without a jump button) have always been about their main character and their special abilities.
I'd have thought that the same applied to Metroid, especially with Samus being such a fantastic character.
We have the multiweapon weilding space bounty hunter, with a mysterious woman hidden under the sleek armour.
Add that image to the afore mentioned stack of abilities, you have a character that would not only appeal to the "mature market", she would also make the likes of Solid Snake and Lara Croft look pretty dull and pathetic in comparison showing that Nintendo characters rule the cute AND non-cute scene!
Only with Metroid Prime being first person, that more or less rules Samus out.
Think about it. You won't be able to see you character anymore except for cutscenes. Can you link with a character that you can't even see?
No. You can't. All the most popular characters have come from games where you can see them. Samus' image is instantly wasted.
It's not just the imagery either.
Think of her abilities.
The best thing about Samus was that she didn't do JUST one thing. She could not only do every skill under the sun, she could multitask and do them at once.
She could be jumping and shooting one second, and in the blink of an eye lid her evasive tactics would have changed to rolling away and laying bombs in a small ball.
And the moment she'd breatched her enemy's grasp, she could be up a firing in an instant.
This made her the ultimate action character.
Will she being doing this in Prime?
Well jumping over enemies and pits are out of the question...
She can shoot, but only while running - just like every run of the mill FPS character - no big deal.
She can still roll but that's being made more of a gimmick!
It's only been put in so the game looks faithful to the original. You won't be able to smoothly hop in and out of it during a fight, not least because you have to change the camera position ever time you do it.
It'll be used as a gimmick rather than a practical move, special sections designed to show off Samus' roll animation rather than seamlessly implementing them into the game.
The grapplebeam will likewise be a gimmick.
With no jumping, you won't be exploring where to go and what to do so much. The grappling beam won't be seamlessly be part of a platforming game.
Special platforming sections will be designed to show off the grappling beam.
I think that the big mistake that Metroid Prime's devellopers made is choosing between third and first person views.
The best thing about Super Metroid is that it combined shooting (which could only be done in first person), and platforming (which is pretty third person exclusive).
Metroid Prime should've let the player play how they wanted, combining a Jet Force Gemini style third person (where you could zoom in for a special aim) and traditional first person, allowing the player to play how they wanted.
They could choose between more accurate shooting (first person), or more manauvering to dodge enemies (third person).
The designers opted for a strictly first person game and in making that decision, they took Samus' image, identity and potential abilities right out of the game.
Imagine hiring Bruce Lee for a film, and have him play as cripple who can't move a limb from a disease and simply gives a speech from the sick bed.
A serious waste of potential in his skills?
Samus is wasted in the same way.
It might as well not be a Metroid game, especially as it's set before Samus meets the Metroid (therefore there'll be none in the game)...
It has a simple but practicle 8 way shooting system which you can use to blast enemies in all directions while simultaneously rolling/jumping/running/dodging and pulling off various neat acrobatic stunts to avoid their attacks.
Samus was the ultimate in character design.
She had a protective but light armour.
She was packed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons and gadgets from rockets and freeze guns to X-ray scanners and grappling beams.
She was also a great acrobat, with high jumping, fast rolling, running across floors that would crumble beneath her and kicking herself off walls long before Mario would try it in the third dimension.
The combination of platforming, blasting, exploring and solving clever puzzles has marked this game as the "best ever" among many Snes owners.
So you think we'd all be glad to find that Nintendo was bringing the franchise back to life on Gamecube hardware.
It was great news, especially with that FMV footage on the initial GC tech demo's.
There was one problem though.
Metroid's original creator had died, and the team that had been given the task of creating this new Metroid game hadn't had anything to do with the originals and didn't seem to be sure which way to take it. Reports of the game having problems and Shigsy disliking it emerged.
And then it became a first person shooter.
My hopes fell. Although being an FPS wouldn't stop it being a good game, it wouldn't be a Metroid game.
The problem?
The last installment of Metroid on the Snes had so much in it, everyone interpreted it in a different way.
Ask Grix, he'll tell you that Super Metroid's highlight was the atmosphere and the combining of weapons.
He's pretty happy with how Metroid Prime is turning out.
Shigsy would say that Metroid was about exploration. Unfortunately, he says that the third person camera view gets in the way of this and although a first person eliminates jumping, he doesn't think that this matters.
The full statement is at:
http://www.planetgamecube.com /news.cfm?action=item&id=2828
(remove space after .com)
He also said something about the japs liking it because although it's first person exploration, not so much shooting.
He's wrong. The japs love their shooters in terms of Lightgun, it's just moving around in first person tends to make them sick!
Anyway, back to the point. Everyone seems to have their own idea about what Metroid is and I have mine.
This might be because I played as Samus a lot in Smash brothers long before I played Super metroid itself, but I've always thought that a Metroid game was about Samus.
Mario games (about Mario), Zelda (about Link) and other platformers (Zelda does have some platforming, even without a jump button) have always been about their main character and their special abilities.
I'd have thought that the same applied to Metroid, especially with Samus being such a fantastic character.
We have the multiweapon weilding space bounty hunter, with a mysterious woman hidden under the sleek armour.
Add that image to the afore mentioned stack of abilities, you have a character that would not only appeal to the "mature market", she would also make the likes of Solid Snake and Lara Croft look pretty dull and pathetic in comparison showing that Nintendo characters rule the cute AND non-cute scene!
Only with Metroid Prime being first person, that more or less rules Samus out.
Think about it. You won't be able to see you character anymore except for cutscenes. Can you link with a character that you can't even see?
No. You can't. All the most popular characters have come from games where you can see them. Samus' image is instantly wasted.
It's not just the imagery either.
Think of her abilities.
The best thing about Samus was that she didn't do JUST one thing. She could not only do every skill under the sun, she could multitask and do them at once.
She could be jumping and shooting one second, and in the blink of an eye lid her evasive tactics would have changed to rolling away and laying bombs in a small ball.
And the moment she'd breatched her enemy's grasp, she could be up a firing in an instant.
This made her the ultimate action character.
Will she being doing this in Prime?
Well jumping over enemies and pits are out of the question...
She can shoot, but only while running - just like every run of the mill FPS character - no big deal.
She can still roll but that's being made more of a gimmick!
It's only been put in so the game looks faithful to the original. You won't be able to smoothly hop in and out of it during a fight, not least because you have to change the camera position ever time you do it.
It'll be used as a gimmick rather than a practical move, special sections designed to show off Samus' roll animation rather than seamlessly implementing them into the game.
The grapplebeam will likewise be a gimmick.
With no jumping, you won't be exploring where to go and what to do so much. The grappling beam won't be seamlessly be part of a platforming game.
Special platforming sections will be designed to show off the grappling beam.
I think that the big mistake that Metroid Prime's devellopers made is choosing between third and first person views.
The best thing about Super Metroid is that it combined shooting (which could only be done in first person), and platforming (which is pretty third person exclusive).
Metroid Prime should've let the player play how they wanted, combining a Jet Force Gemini style third person (where you could zoom in for a special aim) and traditional first person, allowing the player to play how they wanted.
They could choose between more accurate shooting (first person), or more manauvering to dodge enemies (third person).
The designers opted for a strictly first person game and in making that decision, they took Samus' image, identity and potential abilities right out of the game.
Imagine hiring Bruce Lee for a film, and have him play as cripple who can't move a limb from a disease and simply gives a speech from the sick bed.
A serious waste of potential in his skills?
Samus is wasted in the same way.
It might as well not be a Metroid game, especially as it's set before Samus meets the Metroid (therefore there'll be none in the game)...
I'm just rather glad another Nintendo charecter is making a return - the FPS does not look that bad - sure it looks drab, but form the shots i've seen, it looks detailed and expansive - and ts nowehere near finished (good or bad???)
Ok. But playing it will only tell you if it's a good game or not.
If you want to know whether it's a true Metroid game you'd need to download Super Metroid of some ROM site or, even better, hunt for a copy and a second hand Snes.
It's an absolutely fantastic game.
If you want to know whether it's a true Metroid game you'd need to download Super Metroid of some ROM site or, even better, hunt for a copy and a second hand Snes.
It's an absolutely fantastic game.
hmm... still, I think I'm gonna reserve judgement till I play the game with this one...
Messiah, I wasn't saying that Metroid shouldn't be in 3D, I said that it shouldn't be entirely first person.
Mario was great in 3D, as was Zelda.
Both of them would've seriously sucked if they'd been in a first person perspective.
Remember how in Zelda 64 you could move around normally and switch to first person perspectives when you needed to look around/aim a weapon?
That's what they should've done in Metroid.
A 3D platformer where you can switch to first person/aiming mode when neccessary.
(Sibs, Shigsy has confirmed that it's 100% first person bar the rolling and although it's nice to see the rolling and grapplebeam in there, I'd much rather see them done properly, integrated in with the rest of the action.)
That's how it SHOULD have been done and that's how it was originally being done only the team seemingly couldn't cope with this task and opted for the easier FPS.
With the likes of Turok and Perfect Dark around, we don't exactly need an FPS game. What would've been nice is a game that showed the world that platformers don't HAVE to be cutesy and that Nintendo were ahead of the rest, combining shooting and platforming action in the smoothest possible way.
If only Metroid's original creator was still around. He'd show them how to do it...
Mario was great in 3D, as was Zelda.
Both of them would've seriously sucked if they'd been in a first person perspective.
Remember how in Zelda 64 you could move around normally and switch to first person perspectives when you needed to look around/aim a weapon?
That's what they should've done in Metroid.
A 3D platformer where you can switch to first person/aiming mode when neccessary.
(Sibs, Shigsy has confirmed that it's 100% first person bar the rolling and although it's nice to see the rolling and grapplebeam in there, I'd much rather see them done properly, integrated in with the rest of the action.)
That's how it SHOULD have been done and that's how it was originally being done only the team seemingly couldn't cope with this task and opted for the easier FPS.
With the likes of Turok and Perfect Dark around, we don't exactly need an FPS game. What would've been nice is a game that showed the world that platformers don't HAVE to be cutesy and that Nintendo were ahead of the rest, combining shooting and platforming action in the smoothest possible way.
If only Metroid's original creator was still around. He'd show them how to do it...
You have to accept that the designers would want to make use of GameCube's hardware and their own 3d-designing capabilities. What you are asking of the programmers is like asking Michael Schumacher to drive his F1 car on a straight road at 30mph.
The same problems will arise. Schumacher would get fed up and his car will stall. The programmers would feel wasted and bored because they know that the GC and themselves could do so much better.
Just becasue Metroid is taking a different path doesn't mean it will lose quality or that 'Metroid' feel. Before Super Mario 64, would you have complained that Mario was taking advantage of the N64's 3D capabilities? If you have played SSB:Melee then you will realise that such a game would not have been possible on any other system. We need to accept that as hardware progresses some things must get left behind.
Instead of concentrating on the bad points of Metroid Prime, look at what the new 3D viewpoint and the Gamecube's power could do to heighten the Metroid genre.
-M-
The same problems will arise. Schumacher would get fed up and his car will stall. The programmers would feel wasted and bored because they know that the GC and themselves could do so much better.
Just becasue Metroid is taking a different path doesn't mean it will lose quality or that 'Metroid' feel. Before Super Mario 64, would you have complained that Mario was taking advantage of the N64's 3D capabilities? If you have played SSB:Melee then you will realise that such a game would not have been possible on any other system. We need to accept that as hardware progresses some things must get left behind.
Instead of concentrating on the bad points of Metroid Prime, look at what the new 3D viewpoint and the Gamecube's power could do to heighten the Metroid genre.
-M-
Having never played any Metroid games, I may not be 'qualified' to comment on this subject but hey...
However you look at it, they would be wasting the Samus potential if they didn't do a Metroid game. Then Samus wouldn't be in another game AT ALL. Is it better to create an update and take the risk of not being 100% faithful to the originals, rather than just letting the franchise die?
Now it may have been a better idea for Ninty to wait until they had enough time to do it themselves, but I'm sure they had their reasons...
I must say I haven't been reading up about the game hugely, but at least now they ARE implementing some of the features (ball roll, grapple hook, etc.) into the game, where before even these features were at risk of not being implemented at all. And I understand that an ability in game can become pretty pointless if it is only available to you in set sections, but I'm not sure we really know that these sections will be that segregated...
I think it'd be really cool being chased down a claustrophobic corridor, a load of hulking great monsters behind you, and findng a huge chasm... then you quickly whip out the grapple hook and sail over to safety, while they topple to their doom. That would be pretty cool I reckon. And who's to say that can't be in there? If the sections are as segregated as you feared, then obviously that will be bad for the game, and make the game feel distinctly linear, but hopefully they won't have it so black and white, and even if the sections are kept relatively seperate, I'd hope they could blend them somewhat...
Anyhow, I hope it does turn out to be a good game, and just one last question. Is it certain that you can't choose when to switch between 1st and 3rd person? I was under the impression you could view in first person 'through the visor' view, or switch whenever to a third person perspective...
Ah well...
However you look at it, they would be wasting the Samus potential if they didn't do a Metroid game. Then Samus wouldn't be in another game AT ALL. Is it better to create an update and take the risk of not being 100% faithful to the originals, rather than just letting the franchise die?
Now it may have been a better idea for Ninty to wait until they had enough time to do it themselves, but I'm sure they had their reasons...
I must say I haven't been reading up about the game hugely, but at least now they ARE implementing some of the features (ball roll, grapple hook, etc.) into the game, where before even these features were at risk of not being implemented at all. And I understand that an ability in game can become pretty pointless if it is only available to you in set sections, but I'm not sure we really know that these sections will be that segregated...
I think it'd be really cool being chased down a claustrophobic corridor, a load of hulking great monsters behind you, and findng a huge chasm... then you quickly whip out the grapple hook and sail over to safety, while they topple to their doom. That would be pretty cool I reckon. And who's to say that can't be in there? If the sections are as segregated as you feared, then obviously that will be bad for the game, and make the game feel distinctly linear, but hopefully they won't have it so black and white, and even if the sections are kept relatively seperate, I'd hope they could blend them somewhat...
Anyhow, I hope it does turn out to be a good game, and just one last question. Is it certain that you can't choose when to switch between 1st and 3rd person? I was under the impression you could view in first person 'through the visor' view, or switch whenever to a third person perspective...
Ah well...
I finally found Super Metroid in a second hand shop and it is the ultimate in action platforming.
It has a simple but practicle 8 way shooting system which you can use to blast enemies in all directions while simultaneously rolling/jumping/running/dodging and pulling off various neat acrobatic stunts to avoid their attacks.
Samus was the ultimate in character design.
She had a protective but light armour.
She was packed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons and gadgets from rockets and freeze guns to X-ray scanners and grappling beams.
She was also a great acrobat, with high jumping, fast rolling, running across floors that would crumble beneath her and kicking herself off walls long before Mario would try it in the third dimension.
The combination of platforming, blasting, exploring and solving clever puzzles has marked this game as the "best ever" among many Snes owners.
So you think we'd all be glad to find that Nintendo was bringing the franchise back to life on Gamecube hardware.
It was great news, especially with that FMV footage on the initial GC tech demo's.
There was one problem though.
Metroid's original creator had died, and the team that had been given the task of creating this new Metroid game hadn't had anything to do with the originals and didn't seem to be sure which way to take it. Reports of the game having problems and Shigsy disliking it emerged.
And then it became a first person shooter.
My hopes fell. Although being an FPS wouldn't stop it being a good game, it wouldn't be a Metroid game.
The problem?
The last installment of Metroid on the Snes had so much in it, everyone interpreted it in a different way.
Ask Grix, he'll tell you that Super Metroid's highlight was the atmosphere and the combining of weapons.
He's pretty happy with how Metroid Prime is turning out.
Shigsy would say that Metroid was about exploration. Unfortunately, he says that the third person camera view gets in the way of this and although a first person eliminates jumping, he doesn't think that this matters.
The full statement is at:
http://www.planetgamecube.com /news.cfm?action=item&id=2828
(remove space after .com)
He also said something about the japs liking it because although it's first person exploration, not so much shooting.
He's wrong. The japs love their shooters in terms of Lightgun, it's just moving around in first person tends to make them sick!
Anyway, back to the point. Everyone seems to have their own idea about what Metroid is and I have mine.
This might be because I played as Samus a lot in Smash brothers long before I played Super metroid itself, but I've always thought that a Metroid game was about Samus.
Mario games (about Mario), Zelda (about Link) and other platformers (Zelda does have some platforming, even without a jump button) have always been about their main character and their special abilities.
I'd have thought that the same applied to Metroid, especially with Samus being such a fantastic character.
We have the multiweapon weilding space bounty hunter, with a mysterious woman hidden under the sleek armour.
Add that image to the afore mentioned stack of abilities, you have a character that would not only appeal to the "mature market", she would also make the likes of Solid Snake and Lara Croft look pretty dull and pathetic in comparison showing that Nintendo characters rule the cute AND non-cute scene!
Only with Metroid Prime being first person, that more or less rules Samus out.
Think about it. You won't be able to see you character anymore except for cutscenes. Can you link with a character that you can't even see?
No. You can't. All the most popular characters have come from games where you can see them. Samus' image is instantly wasted.
It's not just the imagery either.
Think of her abilities.
The best thing about Samus was that she didn't do JUST one thing. She could not only do every skill under the sun, she could multitask and do them at once.
She could be jumping and shooting one second, and in the blink of an eye lid her evasive tactics would have changed to rolling away and laying bombs in a small ball.
And the moment she'd breatched her enemy's grasp, she could be up a firing in an instant.
This made her the ultimate action character.
Will she being doing this in Prime?
Well jumping over enemies and pits are out of the question...
She can shoot, but only while running - just like every run of the mill FPS character - no big deal.
She can still roll but that's being made more of a gimmick!
It's only been put in so the game looks faithful to the original. You won't be able to smoothly hop in and out of it during a fight, not least because you have to change the camera position ever time you do it.
It'll be used as a gimmick rather than a practical move, special sections designed to show off Samus' roll animation rather than seamlessly implementing them into the game.
The grapplebeam will likewise be a gimmick.
With no jumping, you won't be exploring where to go and what to do so much. The grappling beam won't be seamlessly be part of a platforming game.
Special platforming sections will be designed to show off the grappling beam.
I think that the big mistake that Metroid Prime's devellopers made is choosing between third and first person views.
The best thing about Super Metroid is that it combined shooting (which could only be done in first person), and platforming (which is pretty third person exclusive).
Metroid Prime should've let the player play how they wanted, combining a Jet Force Gemini style third person (where you could zoom in for a special aim) and traditional first person, allowing the player to play how they wanted.
They could choose between more accurate shooting (first person), or more manauvering to dodge enemies (third person).
The designers opted for a strictly first person game and in making that decision, they took Samus' image, identity and potential abilities right out of the game.
Imagine hiring Bruce Lee for a film, and have him play as cripple who can't move a limb from a disease and simply gives a speech from the sick bed.
A serious waste of potential in his skills?
Samus is wasted in the same way.
It might as well not be a Metroid game, especially as it's set before Samus meets the Metroid (therefore there'll be none in the game)...
It has a simple but practicle 8 way shooting system which you can use to blast enemies in all directions while simultaneously rolling/jumping/running/dodging and pulling off various neat acrobatic stunts to avoid their attacks.
Samus was the ultimate in character design.
She had a protective but light armour.
She was packed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons and gadgets from rockets and freeze guns to X-ray scanners and grappling beams.
She was also a great acrobat, with high jumping, fast rolling, running across floors that would crumble beneath her and kicking herself off walls long before Mario would try it in the third dimension.
The combination of platforming, blasting, exploring and solving clever puzzles has marked this game as the "best ever" among many Snes owners.
So you think we'd all be glad to find that Nintendo was bringing the franchise back to life on Gamecube hardware.
It was great news, especially with that FMV footage on the initial GC tech demo's.
There was one problem though.
Metroid's original creator had died, and the team that had been given the task of creating this new Metroid game hadn't had anything to do with the originals and didn't seem to be sure which way to take it. Reports of the game having problems and Shigsy disliking it emerged.
And then it became a first person shooter.
My hopes fell. Although being an FPS wouldn't stop it being a good game, it wouldn't be a Metroid game.
The problem?
The last installment of Metroid on the Snes had so much in it, everyone interpreted it in a different way.
Ask Grix, he'll tell you that Super Metroid's highlight was the atmosphere and the combining of weapons.
He's pretty happy with how Metroid Prime is turning out.
Shigsy would say that Metroid was about exploration. Unfortunately, he says that the third person camera view gets in the way of this and although a first person eliminates jumping, he doesn't think that this matters.
The full statement is at:
http://www.planetgamecube.com /news.cfm?action=item&id=2828
(remove space after .com)
He also said something about the japs liking it because although it's first person exploration, not so much shooting.
He's wrong. The japs love their shooters in terms of Lightgun, it's just moving around in first person tends to make them sick!
Anyway, back to the point. Everyone seems to have their own idea about what Metroid is and I have mine.
This might be because I played as Samus a lot in Smash brothers long before I played Super metroid itself, but I've always thought that a Metroid game was about Samus.
Mario games (about Mario), Zelda (about Link) and other platformers (Zelda does have some platforming, even without a jump button) have always been about their main character and their special abilities.
I'd have thought that the same applied to Metroid, especially with Samus being such a fantastic character.
We have the multiweapon weilding space bounty hunter, with a mysterious woman hidden under the sleek armour.
Add that image to the afore mentioned stack of abilities, you have a character that would not only appeal to the "mature market", she would also make the likes of Solid Snake and Lara Croft look pretty dull and pathetic in comparison showing that Nintendo characters rule the cute AND non-cute scene!
Only with Metroid Prime being first person, that more or less rules Samus out.
Think about it. You won't be able to see you character anymore except for cutscenes. Can you link with a character that you can't even see?
No. You can't. All the most popular characters have come from games where you can see them. Samus' image is instantly wasted.
It's not just the imagery either.
Think of her abilities.
The best thing about Samus was that she didn't do JUST one thing. She could not only do every skill under the sun, she could multitask and do them at once.
She could be jumping and shooting one second, and in the blink of an eye lid her evasive tactics would have changed to rolling away and laying bombs in a small ball.
And the moment she'd breatched her enemy's grasp, she could be up a firing in an instant.
This made her the ultimate action character.
Will she being doing this in Prime?
Well jumping over enemies and pits are out of the question...
She can shoot, but only while running - just like every run of the mill FPS character - no big deal.
She can still roll but that's being made more of a gimmick!
It's only been put in so the game looks faithful to the original. You won't be able to smoothly hop in and out of it during a fight, not least because you have to change the camera position ever time you do it.
It'll be used as a gimmick rather than a practical move, special sections designed to show off Samus' roll animation rather than seamlessly implementing them into the game.
The grapplebeam will likewise be a gimmick.
With no jumping, you won't be exploring where to go and what to do so much. The grappling beam won't be seamlessly be part of a platforming game.
Special platforming sections will be designed to show off the grappling beam.
I think that the big mistake that Metroid Prime's devellopers made is choosing between third and first person views.
The best thing about Super Metroid is that it combined shooting (which could only be done in first person), and platforming (which is pretty third person exclusive).
Metroid Prime should've let the player play how they wanted, combining a Jet Force Gemini style third person (where you could zoom in for a special aim) and traditional first person, allowing the player to play how they wanted.
They could choose between more accurate shooting (first person), or more manauvering to dodge enemies (third person).
The designers opted for a strictly first person game and in making that decision, they took Samus' image, identity and potential abilities right out of the game.
Imagine hiring Bruce Lee for a film, and have him play as cripple who can't move a limb from a disease and simply gives a speech from the sick bed.
A serious waste of potential in his skills?
Samus is wasted in the same way.
It might as well not be a Metroid game, especially as it's set before Samus meets the Metroid (therefore there'll be none in the game)...