I've been excited for Donkey Kong Country Returns to come out for a while. It was announced at E3 last year, and I've been pumped up for its release. E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, for those who don't know, an event that happens annually and is the go-to event for people who want to see what the latest and greatest plans are for the video game industry. I later heard that Retro was designing the game, who also designed the Metroid Prime series for Gamecube and the Wii. Retro hasn't designed any other games EXCEPT those, and they're AWESOME. After my disappointment with Activision's rendition of Goldeneye 007, I was guaranteed to be more satisfied with this. For the most part, I guessed correctly. However, the game does leave me wanting.
The game, overall, is great. It's very reminiscent of classic Donkey Kong Country from 1994 - the scenes are very similar, the feel and physics of the game are very similar, and the music is a phenomenal remaking of the entire original soundtrack. Upon getting into the game, you really feel like you're playing the original, but souped up to today's standards.
As I got further into the game, that's when I started to notice the things I thought could have been done better.
I'm quite a ways into the game (probably three quarters), and have noticed the distinct lack of cast. There's Donkey and Diddy as the playable characters, then there's Cranky Kong. That's it. There's no Funky, no Candy, nor any of the characters from other DKC games. With Cranky, he runs a shop in each world, selling items such as extra lives and temporary powerups. He makes smart-ass comments at you when you visit, but nothing like the classic story-telling he did in the original. Additionally, there is only one ridable animal friend - Rambi. There's no Expresso the Ostrich, Enguarde the Swordfish, or Winky the Frog - just Rambi. Squawks is available as one of the temporary powerups that helps you find puzzle pieces in levels (more on that later). But the lack of characters and interaction gives a very desolate feel to the game, which feels out of place for a DKC.
The story is also very impersonal - the island volcano erupts to ejactulate some random, evil, tiki spirit antagonists into the area who possess the native wildlife into feral rages. No talking, no selfish king trying to steal a stash of bananas - just some 5-year-old's sporatic imagination. Nothing against 5-year-olds, but their writing and logic skills are a bit... underdeveloped.
I've also noticed that there are no swimming or snow levels. Swimming levels were a good way to add variety to the game (I'd prefer them over the barrel rocket levels... ugh, how irritating), and I'm sure there could be lots of improvements to the gameplay and flow of them (swimming levels) after 16 years. The snow levels - I know they were hard back in the day. But they were memorable for more than just their difficulty; they gave a desolate tone to that area of the game with the scenery and amazing music. Using the increasing volume of snowfall to decrease visibility and add to the chaos made that a remarkably signature part of the game for me. Leaving out these two settings was a huge mistake on Retro's part.
As you look at the map screen, it's got a very Super Mario World/New Super Mario Brothers feel. There are alternate paths through worlds, bonus levels, and Cranky's shops. It's easy to navigate and pretty to look at.
For each level, there are up to 3 medals to collect (I call them medals, but they're really just icons that show up next to the level's title on the map screen).
1) The first is obtained by collecting all 4 of the K-O-N-G letters scattered through the level in a single run of the stage. Similarly to the original DKC, you keep letters you've collected up to the check point if you die and return to that check point. Collecting the Kong medal in each level for a world will unlock a bonus stage with its own unique collectible (not sure what happens when you get all those yet!).
2) The second medal is obtained by collecting all the puzzle pieces scattered through a level - there are anywhere from three to nine pieces in each stage except for boss levels. Any puzzle pieces you pick up, you keep permanently, even if you die. The only time you won't keep them is if you manually quit a level or run out of lives before finishing it. You maintain that progress - but there's no way to check how many puzzle pieces you've obtained for a level unless you actually enter the level and pause the game to look at your level progress. On the map screen, there's a nifty little "Level Progress" option that lets you view your medals and best time trial times for every level, but it doesn't show you how many puzzle pieces you've collected - you actually have to enter the level. Very odd. Upon collecting all the pieces in a stage, you unlock images and music in the bonus gallery. Nothing super for the gameplay, but still kinda cool.
3) The third medal is a bronze/silver/gold medal obtained by attempting a time trial available to the level after completing it normally. The gold medal times are very difficult to obtain, and there's even a "platinum" rank (a glittering gold medal) for getting close to the fastest time humanly possible. Definitely for the hardcore only.
Moving on to the gameplay itself... In single player, you either have Donkey Kong by himself, or you have Donkey Kong with Diddy riding on his back. Unlike the original, you can't have JUST Diddy (unless you're playing 2-player - more on that in a bit). When you have Diddy, you can absorb 2 hits before he runs away, then Donkey alone can take 2 additional hits before dying. When you have Diddy, you also get the benefit of his jetpack, a crafty little item that lets you hover for a full second or so during a jump or fall, and you can continue moving left or right while doing so.
It's nice having this little perk to make some parts of the game easier, but it's clear that some *other* parts of the game were designed with the jetpack in mind. That being said, it's REALLY hard to get through some of those areas without it. Being the experienced player that I am, even I found them difficult (by difficult, I mean losing tens of lives). I imagine it would be quitting time for someone of substantially less experience.
The thing is, it would have been very easy to simply make it possible to play as JUST Diddy (or just Donkey). In 2-player, you play as Donkey and Diddy simultaneously. Diddy, played by 2nd player (the person who is typically less experienced), gets the jet pack as well as the peanut gun, a weapon that Diddy fires as he slams the ground. It does damage to most killable enemies, so it's nice for the less experienced player to have. Something else that's nice about 2-player - you can't get trapped off-screen, the way you can in New SMB Wii, for example. If one person lags behind and disappears off-screen, a timer appears, counting down from 3 seconds, and then the player just gets moved up to where the person in front is. It conserves your shared extra lives, and also prevents players that like to dick around from holding up progress.
But back to Diddy - I'd have preferred to have Diddy playable SEPARATELY from Donkey Kong in single player. The thing is, the jetpack presents a complication. I'd like to have the 2 extra hits WITHOUT having the jetpack (playing as Donkey alone) - having it can lead to some of the mechanic downfalls of the game.
In most platformers where you can kill enemies by jumping on them, you have control over the height of the "bounce" you get after landing on them. In the original DKC or most Mario games, you'll bounce higher by holding the jump button as you land on the enemy. There are two issues we run into in DKCR.
First of all, you can't simply jump and hold down the jump button (the "2" button) to get a high bounce after landing on an enemy - they designed it so you have to make a separate press of "2", soon before landing on each enemy, perhaps to add to the challenge so you can't just hold the button down to jump on a long chain of enemies. This feels awkward because it's not like other platformers - games usually check whether you're holding the button or not upon hitting the enemy - that's it. When you add in this odd need to TIME the pressing of "2" while you're in midair, you lose some degree of control: You have a lot less certainty as to whether or not you're going to get a high bounce. The game is hard enough without this added challenge, and it's certainly not an added challenge that adds to the enjoyment of the game.
The second problem is that the "2" button also engages Diddy's jetpack. So now you're forced into hovering for a second above an enemy before landing on them, if you want to get a high bounce. There is, however, a split second as you land on the enemy, that will get you a high bounce without turning on Diddy's jetpack. This is very hard to hit, and is just another arbitrary challenge added to the mechanics.
Next, another mechanic I noticed that may have been overlooked... In most cases, if you bounce on an enemy or tire, you maintain your horizontal momentum. So, if you're running full blast through a level, and you jump and land on an enemy or tire to bounce, you continue at your fast speed forward. The exception to this, however, is after launching out of a vertical barrel cannon. After launching out of such a cannon and bouncing on an enemy/tire, your horizontal momentum is reset to zero, so it takes a moment to accelerate back up to speed.
For most of the game, this isn't a problem. But a few levels have you launching up out of a barrel cannon, then you have to maneuver in midair to land on an enemy or tire and bounce to the next obstacle or platform. When you launch out of the cannon and start holding to the right, you get some horizontal momentum that you're adjusted to keeping when you land on an enemy or tire, but you lose it in this case. Additionally, following a cannon, you can't get high bounces from landing on enemies (you can on tires, though). Again, these occasions are few and far between, but I've lost so many lives to them that it's worth mentioning.
There are some other mechanics I've found to be a nuisance. One of them is in mine cart levels. Even if you have Diddy with you (that means 4 hits to kill you, normally), one hit in a mine cart will kill you. Any collision with an enemy, wall, ceiling or barrier will end your attempt. The mine cart levels are already challenging - letting you take at least 1 extra hit for having Diddy would not make them trivial, but no. You hit anything, you die.
The mine cart levels are also one of the places I've noticed an "I Wanna Be The Guy" moment. "I Wanna Be The Guy" is a free indie game that, simply said, is designed to kill the player thousands of times with its tons of hidden threats that can only be discovered by dying and avoided by prior knowledge or trial and error.
I'll be coming up to either: A) a harmless-looking area, or B) an impassable obstacle and I'll not know what to do; then I'll suddenly be dead. For instance, while riding a mine cart, I'll be riding straight for a huge stone pillar in my path. Having not already played the level and not being gifted as a Jedi with predetermination, I'll have no knowledge as to what the game is going to present to me.
Do I jump and run into the pillar, or stay on the tracks and run into the pillar? Is the pillar going to start tipping toward me and see-saw over a big rock to open a small path underneath, in which case I should avoid jumping, or is the pillar going to tip away from me so I have to jump... Oh, it didn't move until I was a hundredth of a second away from it, so I'm dead. Yep, I was supposed to jump.
Again, an "I Wanna Be The Guy" moment.
The last thing I have a beef with is the "waggle" function of the remote. This could very well be the most frustrating part of the whole deal for me.
Retro decided to link the "waggle" function (shaking the remote) to 3 actions: Slamming the ground (while pressing no buttons), blowing air (while crouching), and rolling (while moving). For slamming the ground and blowing air, I don't have an issue, since both of those things are done rarely (relatively) and while standing still. However, waggle is a terrible function to link to such a fundamental ability as rolling. I've read that many people do not mind this, but I certainly do. There are so many parts of the game that require very precise timing and movements - having to rely on the not-fully-reliable waggle function to perform such an important and common action is very frustrating. Not only does it make it difficult to be precise with timing it, but it doesn't always work. With a button press, it's clear to the game what your intent was. The "1" button serves all the same functions as the "Y" button in the original (running faster, grabbing barrels) except rolling. Why? There's no reason for it, and they could have very easily made a controller configuration to do it.
Through all these issues, the game is still keeping me busy, and I'm determined to collect all the Kong and puzzle medals. I may go for bronzes or silvers on the time trials, but no more. In any case, I'll still have to go back to playing my Virtual Console if I want a true DKC experience.
~A
2010/11/23
2010/11/13
Goldeneye 007 Wii
I won't call this a review since I don't really address a lot of the primary features or positive aspects of the game. This is more of a rant of disappointment.
So the more I play this, the more disappointed I get. Of course, when I heard it was coming out, I knew it wouldn't measure up to the old game, but I thought it would at least be a nostalgic experience for us teen N64 players.
It's not.
Activision has the rights to the Bond franchise, but they don't own any of the rights to the original Rare game. I guess they had to make this game different enough from the original so it wouldn't look like any copyright infringement, even though Rare's game mostly used content from the movie in the first place. Activision seems they used neither the predecessing game nor the movie as their reference, for the layout of the levels all the way to the plot - it's so different that it's like they created their own complete story from scratch. Oh, and just because you see Jaws and Baron Samedi as selectable multiplayer characters, don't get your hopes up - it's not an indication that the Aztec and Egypt bonus levels are available in the campaign; they're not. But they felt it necessary to include those bonus characters, along with Oddjob, anyway. Because, y'know, it just wouldn't feel like the original game if they didn't include them. :|
In the end, it truly just feels like I'm playing a bad Call of Duty, which seems to have been a much bigger inspiration and influence anyway, with a sort-of James Bond skin.
For the gameplay... They placed check points in the game. So throughout a single mission, you'll run into 10-15 check points, the most recent of which you'll return to if you die. This seems to be pretty commonplace in FPS games now to keep the smoothness and have the game less broken up, but in this case it just seems to be a quick workaround for parts of the game that they didn't take time to balance. The levels are longer, so check points can make sense... But it just seems like they can get away with having stupidly difficult parts because they can just drop a check point right before it; the player can't complain because they didn't have to play the whole level again. I just can't help but compare it to the original Goldeneye, which certainly had its difficult parts, but was balanced enough so it wasn't like you'd die at the same stupid part, 10 minutes into the level, and have to play the whole thing over and over again. They actually worked on the N64 Goldeneye long enough to balance it. Well... MOST of it; the N64 version's Control level on 00 Agent difficulty may be the exception.
The game also has waypoints - indicators on your map and even directly on your screen that tell you exactly where to go to progress through the level. How much more linear can you be? Exactly like any of the other military FPSs out there.
Something else to add: Throughout most levels, there are various points of no return. You'll go through a door, and some explosion will cause a support beam to fall and block the door behind you (for instance), so there's no way to go back. I'm against things like this on principle, because it just adds to the linear "game on rails" feeling, and it takes away more of the element of exploration, as if the waypoints weren't bad enough. I'd prefer to have open levels, but whatever: I can deal with it if the gameplay is good enough.
However, many of your mission objectives are things like, "Gather 5 pieces of intel throughout the level." If you know you're approaching the end of the level pretty soon and you have 3/5 pieces of intel, you can rest assured that you missed one. On N64, no biggie - go back and find it; you might run into more baddies, but you can still accomplish the mission. Not so on the Wii - the points of no return plus the check points force you to accept your failure before you've even finished the level because there's no way to go back and search for what you missed. And the waypoints don't direct you to the secondary (and often mandatory) objectives when you pass them - they simply give you a sense of urgency and lead you further into the level, causing you to miss things. If anything, the waypoints direct me where to AVOID going, so I ensure I don't miss anything.
Next, the Wiimote controls are... Well, they just don't feel as good as they could/should be. I know how good first-person controls can be because I've played Metroid Prime 3. This game is just choppy-feeling, though. At first, I saw how much was customizable and how many options there were, but I realized it's just a dog-shit-contaminated batch of brownies. Throw it all away.
You can resize the "dead zone" in the middle of the screen, which is the area in which you can point without the character turning. That's kind of nice, but I find that when I move the cursor from the dead zone into the turning zone, it's very abrupt. It's hard to turn just a small amount, while still leaving the turn sensitivity high enough so you can turn quickly when needed. Sometimes I turn when I don't want to, and sometimes I try to turn and it doesn't happen.
There's an option that will, when moving your reticle cursor around in the dead zone, shift your view slightly in the respective direction. Effectively, it gives you more to work with inside the dead zone, but feels sloppy in combination with the turning functionality of the cursor.
Another feature: When you look down your scope to get more precise shots (Aim Down Sights), it sort of automatically tries to focus your view on an enemy that's close to your aiming reticle (Aim Down Sights Snap). It's nice to get a close view on a guy quickly, but much of the time I end up relying on it and it fails me during a big intense gun fight, and I end up zooming in on a completely different part of the screen while the group blows me away.
All these extra features that are supposed to give a bit more smoothness to the game are OPTIONS, though - options that I fucking turned off because they irritate me to no end. All I did was bump up the sensitivity, turn off all the extra options, and shrink the dead zone to be as small as possible. It's as close to the natural feel of Metroid Prime 3 as I can get, but still leaves me wanting.
Of course, with the lack of lock-on that Metroid has (just hold the "Z" button, and you'll lock-on to an enemy, keeping the center of your screen focused on it until it's dead or out of range), you have to be a lot more precise with your shots. I've found it hard to be precise with my shots. Why's that? Because of all the 10-12 pre-set button configurations, none of them allow me to change "Fire Weapon" to the "A" button instead of the "B" button. I know "B" is the "trigger" on the remote and all, but I can fire much more quickly and precisely with "A" than I can with "B." The button schemes simply swap around which buttons will reload, open the menu, switch weapons, aim down sight, crouch, and pretty much every other goddamned action in the game EXCEPT firing your weapon. It would have been so much easier to just allow free button mapping. So, I eventually resorted to turning on the auto-aim for the last few levels, although I hate doing that because it just feels like I'm making the game do my work for me. Additionally, auto-aim isn't available in multi-player. Why get used to a feature I can't use when playing with/against other people? I was so frustrated by all of it that I almost pulled out a Gamecube controller or a Classic controller to play with, since those are also options (which is cool for those used to the dual-joystick setup).
To top off all the controls business, there's a hundred options and a billion different setups - maybe a good thing, but you have to go through about 6 sub-menus anytime you want to make adjustments (Pause > Options > Control Settings > Wii Remote Presets > Customize > one of many submenus > possibly another submenu > adjust). So it's almost too much of a hassle to switch anything - by the time I go in and adjust something, then exit each of the menus, save changes, and get back out to the game, it's been 30-45 seconds and it's hard to make a comparison with what the controls were before.
As far as the enemies themselves, don't you dare try to kill anything without having a silenced weapon, or let any guys see you and fire their non-silenced weapon, or do anything in any way to alert them. Everybody in a 10 mile radius will hear about it. Instantly. And they'll know exactly where you are. There are no "stages" of alertness by the bad guys; they don't "I think I saw something..." or "What was that?!" or "Ohmygod hit the alarm!" No sir. If they even catch a glimpse of you through a small crack, the shit's hit the fan - they'll know immediately what they saw and they'll alert everyone. Not only that, but if you do something remotely, like hack a drone gun from a distance with your smart phone so it starts shooting guys, or shoot a gas tank from a distance with a sniper rifle, it's the same effect - everyone finds out and magically knows exactly where you are. Seriously, there's more realistic AI in the original Goldeneye.
Not to mention that if you ever ARE discovered and you don't kill the guys before they can yell, "We found him!", EXTRA baddies appear as reinforcements - not just the 10 people that will be alerted, but 2 or 3 additional aggressive guys that only appear when you alert someone. So, you have to do everything in your power to remain stealthy. Unfortunately, I have found it difficult thus far to remain stealthy - most enemies you run into are in groups of at least 2 or 3 that notice right away when one of them is taken down.
And once you're exposed a single time in a mission, it's no longer a stealth mission. You got a room full of guys blasting at you - you clear them out and head into the next area. Well, the guy in the next area was already alerted by the gunfire he heard, so he starts shooting right away. This alerts guys in the next area, so they'll start firing when you get to them; it has a domino effect the rest of the level. Maybe this is more realistic and what would happen in a real life situation, but it's not conducive to making the game enjoyable - it's actually pretty infuriating. It's better to just kill yourself or start at the last check point if you're ever spotted. And if you run out of ammo for your silenced pistol, you're completely screwed.
On the other hand, there have been plenty of times where I've been stealthing my way through an area, and I've killed a guy standing right next to someone else, and the other guy doesn't even notice. This lack of consistency is what gets my adrenaline pumping more than anything - the gamble as to whether or not attacking someone is going to alert the entire country of Russia to my presence.
Again, this just feels like a bad Call of Duty; Goldeneye 007 on the N64 was essentially an arcade-style FPS - fast-paced, exciting to watch, with sensible AI that wasn't connected to a hive mind even on the hardest difficulty. This game just feels like it's trying to regurgitate the success of FPSs on other systems & PC, forcing you into an inevitably non-stealth mission, while butchering the Wii's control potential.
Then, the graphics really leave something to desire. I'm not even comparing it to other consoles or PC because I know the Wii is not set up to be a powerhouse in graphics. Problem is, I've seen prettier games on the Gamecube. Metroid Prime 1 was beautiful in its time, and still looks crisp and smooth even now. Additionally, MP runs consistently at a beautiful 60 frames per second. This game's frame rate is like the N64 - standard NTSC 29.95fps maximum - and it gets choppy during times when the screen is very "busy;" the game will even have little half-second pauses in the middle of a gun fight when I hear the whir of the disc drive trying to keep up with the action. Also, the quality of the images, scenes and models themselves is certainly no better (worse, in fact) than the early products of the Source Engine, like Half-Life 2, which came out in 2004. Why, for a game that looks relatively lousy, does it run like molasses in winter?
I haven't even mentioned some of the real technical issues - the game has frozen on me. Twice. I've also seen some real buggy stuff - I got stuck in a corner once and was completely immobile, then had to restart the level. One enemy I saw was stuck in a run animation, but his figure was flashing all over the screen, like the game couldn't physically place him on a surface or something. The game wasn't totally cleaned up before they rushed it out to shelves for the holiday season.
While I'm going on about every other aspect of the game, I may as well address some of the positive things. The sound and music are decent enough that they didn't catch my attention. The voice acting, while being done by professional actors, is mediocre. That's it.
Don't buy - rent if you must. I planned on hanging onto it for the party I'm having next week, but forget it. Not worth the few extra bucks to hang onto it for the additional days - it's going back to Blockbuster on its due date.
~A
So the more I play this, the more disappointed I get. Of course, when I heard it was coming out, I knew it wouldn't measure up to the old game, but I thought it would at least be a nostalgic experience for us teen N64 players.
It's not.
Activision has the rights to the Bond franchise, but they don't own any of the rights to the original Rare game. I guess they had to make this game different enough from the original so it wouldn't look like any copyright infringement, even though Rare's game mostly used content from the movie in the first place. Activision seems they used neither the predecessing game nor the movie as their reference, for the layout of the levels all the way to the plot - it's so different that it's like they created their own complete story from scratch. Oh, and just because you see Jaws and Baron Samedi as selectable multiplayer characters, don't get your hopes up - it's not an indication that the Aztec and Egypt bonus levels are available in the campaign; they're not. But they felt it necessary to include those bonus characters, along with Oddjob, anyway. Because, y'know, it just wouldn't feel like the original game if they didn't include them. :|
In the end, it truly just feels like I'm playing a bad Call of Duty, which seems to have been a much bigger inspiration and influence anyway, with a sort-of James Bond skin.
For the gameplay... They placed check points in the game. So throughout a single mission, you'll run into 10-15 check points, the most recent of which you'll return to if you die. This seems to be pretty commonplace in FPS games now to keep the smoothness and have the game less broken up, but in this case it just seems to be a quick workaround for parts of the game that they didn't take time to balance. The levels are longer, so check points can make sense... But it just seems like they can get away with having stupidly difficult parts because they can just drop a check point right before it; the player can't complain because they didn't have to play the whole level again. I just can't help but compare it to the original Goldeneye, which certainly had its difficult parts, but was balanced enough so it wasn't like you'd die at the same stupid part, 10 minutes into the level, and have to play the whole thing over and over again. They actually worked on the N64 Goldeneye long enough to balance it. Well... MOST of it; the N64 version's Control level on 00 Agent difficulty may be the exception.
The game also has waypoints - indicators on your map and even directly on your screen that tell you exactly where to go to progress through the level. How much more linear can you be? Exactly like any of the other military FPSs out there.
Something else to add: Throughout most levels, there are various points of no return. You'll go through a door, and some explosion will cause a support beam to fall and block the door behind you (for instance), so there's no way to go back. I'm against things like this on principle, because it just adds to the linear "game on rails" feeling, and it takes away more of the element of exploration, as if the waypoints weren't bad enough. I'd prefer to have open levels, but whatever: I can deal with it if the gameplay is good enough.
However, many of your mission objectives are things like, "Gather 5 pieces of intel throughout the level." If you know you're approaching the end of the level pretty soon and you have 3/5 pieces of intel, you can rest assured that you missed one. On N64, no biggie - go back and find it; you might run into more baddies, but you can still accomplish the mission. Not so on the Wii - the points of no return plus the check points force you to accept your failure before you've even finished the level because there's no way to go back and search for what you missed. And the waypoints don't direct you to the secondary (and often mandatory) objectives when you pass them - they simply give you a sense of urgency and lead you further into the level, causing you to miss things. If anything, the waypoints direct me where to AVOID going, so I ensure I don't miss anything.
Next, the Wiimote controls are... Well, they just don't feel as good as they could/should be. I know how good first-person controls can be because I've played Metroid Prime 3. This game is just choppy-feeling, though. At first, I saw how much was customizable and how many options there were, but I realized it's just a dog-shit-contaminated batch of brownies. Throw it all away.
You can resize the "dead zone" in the middle of the screen, which is the area in which you can point without the character turning. That's kind of nice, but I find that when I move the cursor from the dead zone into the turning zone, it's very abrupt. It's hard to turn just a small amount, while still leaving the turn sensitivity high enough so you can turn quickly when needed. Sometimes I turn when I don't want to, and sometimes I try to turn and it doesn't happen.
There's an option that will, when moving your reticle cursor around in the dead zone, shift your view slightly in the respective direction. Effectively, it gives you more to work with inside the dead zone, but feels sloppy in combination with the turning functionality of the cursor.
Another feature: When you look down your scope to get more precise shots (Aim Down Sights), it sort of automatically tries to focus your view on an enemy that's close to your aiming reticle (Aim Down Sights Snap). It's nice to get a close view on a guy quickly, but much of the time I end up relying on it and it fails me during a big intense gun fight, and I end up zooming in on a completely different part of the screen while the group blows me away.
All these extra features that are supposed to give a bit more smoothness to the game are OPTIONS, though - options that I fucking turned off because they irritate me to no end. All I did was bump up the sensitivity, turn off all the extra options, and shrink the dead zone to be as small as possible. It's as close to the natural feel of Metroid Prime 3 as I can get, but still leaves me wanting.
Of course, with the lack of lock-on that Metroid has (just hold the "Z" button, and you'll lock-on to an enemy, keeping the center of your screen focused on it until it's dead or out of range), you have to be a lot more precise with your shots. I've found it hard to be precise with my shots. Why's that? Because of all the 10-12 pre-set button configurations, none of them allow me to change "Fire Weapon" to the "A" button instead of the "B" button. I know "B" is the "trigger" on the remote and all, but I can fire much more quickly and precisely with "A" than I can with "B." The button schemes simply swap around which buttons will reload, open the menu, switch weapons, aim down sight, crouch, and pretty much every other goddamned action in the game EXCEPT firing your weapon. It would have been so much easier to just allow free button mapping. So, I eventually resorted to turning on the auto-aim for the last few levels, although I hate doing that because it just feels like I'm making the game do my work for me. Additionally, auto-aim isn't available in multi-player. Why get used to a feature I can't use when playing with/against other people? I was so frustrated by all of it that I almost pulled out a Gamecube controller or a Classic controller to play with, since those are also options (which is cool for those used to the dual-joystick setup).
To top off all the controls business, there's a hundred options and a billion different setups - maybe a good thing, but you have to go through about 6 sub-menus anytime you want to make adjustments (Pause > Options > Control Settings > Wii Remote Presets > Customize > one of many submenus > possibly another submenu > adjust). So it's almost too much of a hassle to switch anything - by the time I go in and adjust something, then exit each of the menus, save changes, and get back out to the game, it's been 30-45 seconds and it's hard to make a comparison with what the controls were before.
As far as the enemies themselves, don't you dare try to kill anything without having a silenced weapon, or let any guys see you and fire their non-silenced weapon, or do anything in any way to alert them. Everybody in a 10 mile radius will hear about it. Instantly. And they'll know exactly where you are. There are no "stages" of alertness by the bad guys; they don't "I think I saw something..." or "What was that?!" or "Ohmygod hit the alarm!" No sir. If they even catch a glimpse of you through a small crack, the shit's hit the fan - they'll know immediately what they saw and they'll alert everyone. Not only that, but if you do something remotely, like hack a drone gun from a distance with your smart phone so it starts shooting guys, or shoot a gas tank from a distance with a sniper rifle, it's the same effect - everyone finds out and magically knows exactly where you are. Seriously, there's more realistic AI in the original Goldeneye.
Not to mention that if you ever ARE discovered and you don't kill the guys before they can yell, "We found him!", EXTRA baddies appear as reinforcements - not just the 10 people that will be alerted, but 2 or 3 additional aggressive guys that only appear when you alert someone. So, you have to do everything in your power to remain stealthy. Unfortunately, I have found it difficult thus far to remain stealthy - most enemies you run into are in groups of at least 2 or 3 that notice right away when one of them is taken down.
And once you're exposed a single time in a mission, it's no longer a stealth mission. You got a room full of guys blasting at you - you clear them out and head into the next area. Well, the guy in the next area was already alerted by the gunfire he heard, so he starts shooting right away. This alerts guys in the next area, so they'll start firing when you get to them; it has a domino effect the rest of the level. Maybe this is more realistic and what would happen in a real life situation, but it's not conducive to making the game enjoyable - it's actually pretty infuriating. It's better to just kill yourself or start at the last check point if you're ever spotted. And if you run out of ammo for your silenced pistol, you're completely screwed.
On the other hand, there have been plenty of times where I've been stealthing my way through an area, and I've killed a guy standing right next to someone else, and the other guy doesn't even notice. This lack of consistency is what gets my adrenaline pumping more than anything - the gamble as to whether or not attacking someone is going to alert the entire country of Russia to my presence.
Again, this just feels like a bad Call of Duty; Goldeneye 007 on the N64 was essentially an arcade-style FPS - fast-paced, exciting to watch, with sensible AI that wasn't connected to a hive mind even on the hardest difficulty. This game just feels like it's trying to regurgitate the success of FPSs on other systems & PC, forcing you into an inevitably non-stealth mission, while butchering the Wii's control potential.
Then, the graphics really leave something to desire. I'm not even comparing it to other consoles or PC because I know the Wii is not set up to be a powerhouse in graphics. Problem is, I've seen prettier games on the Gamecube. Metroid Prime 1 was beautiful in its time, and still looks crisp and smooth even now. Additionally, MP runs consistently at a beautiful 60 frames per second. This game's frame rate is like the N64 - standard NTSC 29.95fps maximum - and it gets choppy during times when the screen is very "busy;" the game will even have little half-second pauses in the middle of a gun fight when I hear the whir of the disc drive trying to keep up with the action. Also, the quality of the images, scenes and models themselves is certainly no better (worse, in fact) than the early products of the Source Engine, like Half-Life 2, which came out in 2004. Why, for a game that looks relatively lousy, does it run like molasses in winter?
I haven't even mentioned some of the real technical issues - the game has frozen on me. Twice. I've also seen some real buggy stuff - I got stuck in a corner once and was completely immobile, then had to restart the level. One enemy I saw was stuck in a run animation, but his figure was flashing all over the screen, like the game couldn't physically place him on a surface or something. The game wasn't totally cleaned up before they rushed it out to shelves for the holiday season.
While I'm going on about every other aspect of the game, I may as well address some of the positive things. The sound and music are decent enough that they didn't catch my attention. The voice acting, while being done by professional actors, is mediocre. That's it.
Don't buy - rent if you must. I planned on hanging onto it for the party I'm having next week, but forget it. Not worth the few extra bucks to hang onto it for the additional days - it's going back to Blockbuster on its due date.
~A
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