This is the most I think you start out with so far. From the ball to bombs to missiles to double jump. Speaking of ball bombs, how are those? They're about the same as the two that came before it, I think Zero Mission, while broken, was a bit more fun to mess around with.
You wanted more story outside of the logs? Well you got it and with voice acting this time around, there are actual characters! This means we learn more about the federation and I need to point out that the female suits remind me of Yori. They get attacked easily but they go out of their way to prove to you that they aren't stormtroopers and can actually hit stuff when they want to. But my question is, why would they have doors that require you to shoot live blaster fire just to traverse through a military facility? Isn't that, I don't know, dangerous?
The menu is more organized, just point and click. It assumes you've played the other games so while you can go into your logs and see what buttons to push, it doesn't hold your hand. You should already know stuff, like scanning for example. The scan doesn't completely fill every item with green, it just outlines it, which I find to be more visually pleasing than the former but you may have to double check just to make sure.
There are also achievements, like say you shoot 100 enemies, there's an achievement for that. What do they unlock? Credits that you can use in-menu to get art, extras, or back in the day, friend tokens. It gives it a better replay value and I kind of like seeing those little S's pop up. I mentioned how the story has voice acting and dialogue and stuff but does that make the scan logs less relevant? No, I found a lot of things out by reading the logs, treat it as the same as the other games but they did change something in return, how you get your endings. The endings no longer require you to scan everything in sight, instead you just have to collect items, whether you think that's better or not, I'm unsure. Can you still scan everything? Yes, it's worth an achievement.
Visors? How are those this time around? Well, similar to how I'd view the blaster, it's pretty concise, it's similarly handled to the 2D games, where you have other blasters but it's usually just upgraded instead of swapping all the time. The only exception to this is the extreme mode, which seems different enough to me anyway. The only other "visors" you get is the one to call your ship with, so I barely even count that and the X-Ray visor which is a lot cooler and cleaner than Prime 1, you only ever use it in a few instances anyway so with that said, I prefer it this way.
Back it up, "call your ship"? You know those outdoor platforms? Well if you can get to one of those and clear it out, you can call your ship there to park and make a save point.
There are some good little details like when you get the grapple, it changes her hand to just straight metal grey as if she's changing pieces of her armor when she gets a new item. If you shoot liquid (like this explosive gel) it will make a break in the flow, and pools will bubble and jiggle, ladies and gentlemen, we have jiggle physics. Samus also has my favorite suit of hers to date in this game, it just looks so cool.
I'm a sucker for interactive stuff and this pumps it up even more. It really makes the game feel like an on-rails arcade shooter at times and I dig it. I think it might be the attraction effect like where you're at an amusement park and you're aiming your water guns and lasers wherever you want just like the Wii Remote, so they gave it more freedom. While Prime 1 and 2 still had that (It's the Prime Trilogy version mind you), they were made for the Gamecube so it was held back a little without me even knowing. I don't think I've felt that since the Ghostbusters game. From an enemy slicing through a glass wall, causing Samus to shield her arms up to being able to press buttons on the ship, yes, that's right, you go planet to planet.
Can you fly the ship? No, you can upgrade it and tell it to land or pick something up. (But you can't land (or ride) it and pick something up at the same time for whatever reason?) And you can tell it to shoot missles at something (very rarely). In fact, that's a bit how I felt with a lot of things, like the robots for example. You can "activate" them but you can't control them, some people may not want that though, I know when Star Fox did it, people went bonkers.
The actual story reasons are kind of weird with Dark Samus just electrifying the hunters and all of the sudden they're all corrupted. I think there also could've been more development with the Hunters themselves before they split apart but I understand why it was done the way it was.
But anyway, let's tally up what I thought overall. It did a lot of things differently and a lot of things right, I would like to see more like this, especially seeing as this was made nearly 15 years ago, imagine the things they could do with a modern game. 4/5
You wanted more story outside of the logs? Well you got it and with voice acting this time around, there are actual characters! This means we learn more about the federation and I need to point out that the female suits remind me of Yori. They get attacked easily but they go out of their way to prove to you that they aren't stormtroopers and can actually hit stuff when they want to. But my question is, why would they have doors that require you to shoot live blaster fire just to traverse through a military facility? Isn't that, I don't know, dangerous?
The menu is more organized, just point and click. It assumes you've played the other games so while you can go into your logs and see what buttons to push, it doesn't hold your hand. You should already know stuff, like scanning for example. The scan doesn't completely fill every item with green, it just outlines it, which I find to be more visually pleasing than the former but you may have to double check just to make sure.
There are also achievements, like say you shoot 100 enemies, there's an achievement for that. What do they unlock? Credits that you can use in-menu to get art, extras, or back in the day, friend tokens. It gives it a better replay value and I kind of like seeing those little S's pop up. I mentioned how the story has voice acting and dialogue and stuff but does that make the scan logs less relevant? No, I found a lot of things out by reading the logs, treat it as the same as the other games but they did change something in return, how you get your endings. The endings no longer require you to scan everything in sight, instead you just have to collect items, whether you think that's better or not, I'm unsure. Can you still scan everything? Yes, it's worth an achievement.
Visors? How are those this time around? Well, similar to how I'd view the blaster, it's pretty concise, it's similarly handled to the 2D games, where you have other blasters but it's usually just upgraded instead of swapping all the time. The only exception to this is the extreme mode, which seems different enough to me anyway. The only other "visors" you get is the one to call your ship with, so I barely even count that and the X-Ray visor which is a lot cooler and cleaner than Prime 1, you only ever use it in a few instances anyway so with that said, I prefer it this way.
Back it up, "call your ship"? You know those outdoor platforms? Well if you can get to one of those and clear it out, you can call your ship there to park and make a save point.
There are some good little details like when you get the grapple, it changes her hand to just straight metal grey as if she's changing pieces of her armor when she gets a new item. If you shoot liquid (like this explosive gel) it will make a break in the flow, and pools will bubble and jiggle, ladies and gentlemen, we have jiggle physics. Samus also has my favorite suit of hers to date in this game, it just looks so cool.
I'm a sucker for interactive stuff and this pumps it up even more. It really makes the game feel like an on-rails arcade shooter at times and I dig it. I think it might be the attraction effect like where you're at an amusement park and you're aiming your water guns and lasers wherever you want just like the Wii Remote, so they gave it more freedom. While Prime 1 and 2 still had that (It's the Prime Trilogy version mind you), they were made for the Gamecube so it was held back a little without me even knowing. I don't think I've felt that since the Ghostbusters game. From an enemy slicing through a glass wall, causing Samus to shield her arms up to being able to press buttons on the ship, yes, that's right, you go planet to planet.
Can you fly the ship? No, you can upgrade it and tell it to land or pick something up. (But you can't land (or ride) it and pick something up at the same time for whatever reason?) And you can tell it to shoot missles at something (very rarely). In fact, that's a bit how I felt with a lot of things, like the robots for example. You can "activate" them but you can't control them, some people may not want that though, I know when Star Fox did it, people went bonkers.
The actual story reasons are kind of weird with Dark Samus just electrifying the hunters and all of the sudden they're all corrupted. I think there also could've been more development with the Hunters themselves before they split apart but I understand why it was done the way it was.
But anyway, let's tally up what I thought overall. It did a lot of things differently and a lot of things right, I would like to see more like this, especially seeing as this was made nearly 15 years ago, imagine the things they could do with a modern game. 4/5