Hylian Knight

Yes, let´s drop the racism issue. Let´s just realize that while some people find it incredibly interesting to accuse other people of racism where there is none, and enrage people with it, we have now tired of that and want to focus on THE GAME because it is going to be awesome (Yay!). Bring it out on Wii, too, CAPCOM! I wanna shoot zombies with the Wii-mote!

There is an awesome Resident Evil 5 video documentary which all of you should see right away. It is with the series creator and subtitled in English: http://blog.capcom.com/archives/1116 If you haven´t already seen it, I am sure you will enjoy it.

Ok, McPhee, will do that if I find something more to say about it.

Originally posted by Dilli Gee: I agree that my tone has been a little sharp. But that is due to annoyance over people belonging to an Ethnic group taking the very principle of racism as far as they seem to have done with the hillarious complaints over content in an upcoming videogame. That is sort of where I draw the line. That is what puts it over the top, as you expressed it. I just meant to defend the right to freedom of content (short of content that could be seen as being too callous, alike Manhunt, and so harmfull to in particular kids). Nobody should dictate to developers what kind of content they put in games in the way some Black people have been doing it lately. Otherwise you jeopardise the freedom of creativity in games. By the way, my Forum name is: Hylian Knight. Not -King.

Originally posted by King V: King V: I DON´T "live on the outer fringes of society". You are being very offensive! How come? Do you know how many times I have encountered so-called "legitimate" complaints by Blacks about them being exposed to racism, when most of the time it was no such thing because they were falsely accusing White´s of racism that were no where in sight? How many times I spoke to White people who told me they had been accused of racism by Blacks when I KNEW it was a lie? Where they were abusing their "rebellion" against White people, like myself, to justify counter-racism? The reason why I wrote what I did was because I have heard from both EB Games and GAME staff how much Black opposition there is in England to the release of Resident Evil 5 because these people think it is racist! There is NO racism in that game, and it is just another example of Blacks overdoing their rebellion against so-called "racism" against them. I DO NOT judge ALL Blacks, based of off one remark in a forum. But it reminds me of how much nonsense accusations I have had to listen to coming from Blacks over the years when they start attacking a game for being racist. I REACT on the ridiculous amount of accusations against RE5 as a GAME, for crying out loud, that they call racist when it is not. So please watch your language! I Don´t call YOU abusive names if I think you have an opinion which I don´t like.

I agree that the best game in the Zelda-series after OOT, is TP. I was initially merely listing the 6 best games on GCN as I thought it then. Did you mean that it was MM, or TP, that was bland? I am asking because I really think that many of the countryside areas of TP were bland.

It´s funny how Black people always seem to complain loudly each time they feel they are being subjected to racism. It happens so often, one might be forgiven to think their complaints have no substance anylonger. I personally think that they have taken their racism rebellion too far, and by my experience have in many cases become worse in terms of racist attitudes than their original oppressors. They remind me of feminists everywhere who also have taken their rebellion against the man too far to actually become worse than men, and now stand out as being too demanding, too aggressive, luring men into having children with them promising they will grow old together. Only to dump them later for hillarious reasons (which they have agreed with their female counterparts is "fair" to do), so they can get their childcare benefits (at least so in my country many many places) and live alone with their kids and the money from the man as a nice extra. I have had it with them, and with the Blacks and their so-called revolution. I have seen enough in my life over the past two decades to know that Blacks can be just as big racists as they claim in unison that all other people than themselves are if they say or do something even remotely alike racist remarks and acts. Or if they, we, create a videogame with Black people in it who are killed by a lone guy who has a right to defend himself!!! WHERE, I ask, were these SAME Black people when it was Americans and Spanish people who got killed in the same game-series? Huh, Blacks? Just a simple question. I have a feeling, though, that no answer will come. Just release RE5, CAPCOM, and for good measure´s sake include a few jokes dotted around in the gameworld about Blacks and their hillarious, unfair and totally unjustified attack on your right to freedom of game creativity! Such as: Chris beware - a big Black hypocrite lurks around the next corner! You can´t see him since he is BLACK in the darkness in here. So watch it....! Or: Watch it, Chris - for you are surrounded by Black reverse-racism. It seeps out from every corner of the Dark. But just ignore it! And keep shooting the fools who dare attacking you! I could go on. Such jokes dotted around the RE5 game world would be fitting as a means of showing Black people that CAPCOM have a right to make whatever game they want, and that they are tired of the unfair complaints seeking to actually kill RE5 as a production! Chris? Chriiiis? Chris Redfield? Hellooo? Are you there......... You are not dead, are you? ( Sigh! I hope not. Since then I can´t get to play him in RE5 - and then there is no game. Sob!).

The best games I played on GCN was: 1) Luigi´s Mansion. Not quite like a Mario game at launch, but still quite innovative and fun to play. 2) Metroid Prime 1. The first 3D Metroid game was also the best which to this day has not been surpassed in terms of overall balance between what it gave in sheer beauty, excitement, skill requirement across the board and what it came up with as a reward. Simply spectacular. Awesome worlds to explore and fight in with so many things to see and do, manageable bosses and a great background story. What else could any gamer ask for? In my opinion, this game had more massmarket appeal than any other Metroid game since. 3) Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. The follow-up to the first true 3D Sonic game. Better gameplay, better camera (in my opinion at least). A definite improval over SA1. 4) Resident Evil 4. The first true 3D Resident Evil game. No horror title I had played until then, or even to this day, beats RE4. It will be interesting to see if RE5 will surpass it in terms of fun and excitement. 5) Legend of Zelda: Master Quest. This game was an improved re-release of OOT, and in my view just served to confirm that the original OOT was a massive hit with the masses which wouldn´t die. And I hope it also never will, since no Zelda game since has surpassed it nor will until Nintendo makes something as good as that with: as detailed a world, as great and totally involving a story, as great a soundtrack, as great a gameplay, as great a...feeling of being part of something so awesome it seemed otherworldly. Many great game-elements fused into one through hard, dedicated world on the part of Nintendo´s developer teams then. TP was a step in the right direction, and had many of the things from OOT in it, but it wasn´t complete. Something which I have already discussed with people many times here and there. And most I talked with agree. The world in TP lacked it terms of animated NPC´s and things to see (outside the major areas) making travelling through Hyrule country dull after a while. Something which again only serves to prove how much time it requires to make a game as great as OOT. I sincirely hope Nintendo hasn´t forgotten how to make such a game. For it was a true fairytale realized in interactive 3D fashion for the first time on a game console. 6) Legend of Zelda: Majora´s Mask. A worthy sequel which saw Link travelling into another dimension and back. It was great, proving how much work they had - again - put into a Zelda title. But not as great as OOT.

Actually, I feel much better holding the PS joypad than the more bulky XBOX360 one. For comparisons, let me tell you about one game I had to give up playing on XBOX360: Colin McRae DIRT. I couldn´t steer the cars with that controller, and so I got too much of a struggle on my hands with trying to score a neat rank in that game on XBOX360. Since I was already way annoyed with the the more noisy fan on the XBOX360 (having to wear headphones with the volume turned up to drown the fan-noise) I bought a Playstation 3 instead. Slamming the same driving game into that console and playing away I could easily steer the cars and get somewhere in the game. I now virutally love the PS3 for being so quiet and far more stylish + having a blue-ray player built-in that I will never regret having bought it. So, no I don´t think it has anything to do with not being used to the PS3 joypad. I think that all of the replies to this thread shows one thing very clearly: it is very different how people feel about Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and, among others, it´s aiming. That much is certain.

In retrospect, I found this game to be too repetitive too in terms of gameplay objectives. There was too little variation. "Been there done that"- kind of feeling is what I got towards the point in gameplay time where the overwhelming problems I encountered, thanks to what now seems like improperly calibrated aiming, made me ditch the game completely. Too little exploration as well. The shoot outs were too many, seemed more like fillers, and they weren´t much fun when there was so many enemies that were just too hard to hit in tight spots for reasons of that calibration issue. I mean, if I look at how easy I could hit enemies in HALO 1-3 with the same type of analogue sticks, yet so hard to do in this game with the exact same kind of control, it is obvious that Bungie knows better than Naughty Dog how to adjust the aiming. I agree that the motion capture, the graphics and the voice acting was awesome. That game reminds me a little of Sonic games lately though. Half of the game or a little more was great, yet there was something missing in there. And it left me with this empty feeling when had stopped playing it. I really think that it shows that the developer team must have been out of either time or money to make the game what it could have been.

I sincirely hope for Sonic Team that they don´t mess this one up. They are rapidly developing a reputation for rubbish games, and it had better be for them that they have learned from their mistakes. I really think that if they mess up another Sonic game(please dear Videogame God: wake them up!) with sloppy controls, unfair AI, and erh..bad collision detectionnnnnn (HAIEEE...CRACK!! = broken game disc).. hardly anyone will care anylonger what they conjure up next (Groan!).

I have just bought Sonic The hedgehog for PS3, and I happened to stumble upon a couple of reviews of it over on IGN and Gamespot. They have given it what I would term one of the lowest review scores in videogame history. 4.5 out of 10. Sigh! I have never seen such a low score for...a Sonic game. A sonic game, for crying out loud! Now, the reasons why they give it this incredibly low score is crappy controls, severe gameplay-hampering camera issues, and glitchy graphics dotted all over the levels. Not to mention a constantly dropping framerate. Which is incredible, given that Sonic Team had planned to make it a completely new experience to play marking his anniversary for the first Sonic game of that very name. Now it turns out that people say it´s an insult to Sonics name to use that title for the game. They are tempted to call it the worst Sonic game ever!! There was one private review on Gamespot which gave it 1 out of 10 encouraging anyone who gets near that game to destroy it on sight! Being interested in another game´s review score, I looked up the current review for Lost Planet on PS3 which got 7.5 out of 10. Seemingly a much better score. However, gamers are here warned that the graphics there are worse than on XBOX360. And I was just starting to look forward to it on PS3, expecting perhaps even better graphics. But no, for they are worse than on XBOX360? Duh! And I almost bought the damn game today at GAME... Now I am glad I didn´t! What´s happening to developers these days? In retrospect, the reviews of games across platforms today is...a rollercoasterride. I almost get dizzy! There is few which ever get a 9 out of 10. Wasn´t gaming from the start about developing the best possible gamer experience? With top notch graphics, excellent gameplay, wonderfull view by way of a great camera, and an involving story? Isn´t that what the developer must aspire to do? Instead we most often get games that for the most part become the opposite of all of that. That is my direct experience with many games since years ago. For this reason there are games that come out which I simply never play. And, yes, I have tried many times to actually play the badly reviewed ones anyway. And the reveiwers had nailed the reviews perfectly every time. They were truly awefull to play. The point of this topic is to ask the forum members, if any of you have any explanation as to WHY there are so many crappy games these days! In my experience, the reviewers on most websites are sane people, who play a lot of games, and so know what they are writing about. So it´s not about bias or anything like that. They mostly agree about games that start out being reviewed bad by someone in the first place. Concluded it can then be that they aren´t on an evangelical mission to destroy the games they don´t like, and save the few they do like. They merely react to poor games, and give them their fair opinion. So the problem is... the developers. The directors and the producers and the armies of designers, sound engineers and what not under them. So what do you people think is wrong with the people who make the games? Where do the problems come from? Has Sonic Team gone mad? Every game they developed after the end of the sidescrolling 16 bit days on all but handhelds (in most cases anyway), has gone worse and worse. In the IGN review of Sonic the Hedgehog for PS3 the reviewer gave his review the headline: "Maybe someone should put this animal down" and then proceeded to dissecting the enourmous problems with it´s execution on-screen. I can tell you that I don´t feel like playing the game at all now. I mean, seriously: Is Sonic Team trying to kill Sonic? Doesn´t CAPCOM care about the fate of Lost Planet on PS3 anymore than they do a poor arcade adaptation sold in a Greatest Hits bundle? What happened to the love for the games made such as Nintendo has it and which produce hit upon hit in an almost never ending stream? Why even release games that are as poor as Sonic the Hedgehog, as Lost Planet being significantly worse from platform to platform? I could give many more names of games that got the most incredibly low scores. But they are too many, and you people will, I trust, know your own bundle of games to avoid. The point of this topic anyways is to invite a discussion about this. I would just love to hear what other forum members think about rising problem, that in my opinion is coming close to besieging the game industry these days. We as the gamers pay a lot of money for the games out there. Because they cost a lot of money to make. That makes sense. But it doesn´t make sense why games that aren´t even complete are released to market regardless, threatening to one day playing havoc with gamers overall game affections!

Yes! I agree, Flameboy. See, I was suspecting that a lot of them just seek to cash in, without necessarily having to invest much effort. So it shows in the games...and on the review boards. Sonic Team has to me now become one of the worst examples of relentless franchise milking in videogame history. I am relieved that we have Nintendo. They always made that huge difference, make the games that count, and hopefully they always will. After reading all of the replies to my thread so far, I am convinced that Sonic Team is going to lose even more respect from the gaming community, and eventually fade into obscurity, if they don´t stop neglecting the Sonic series. Could the problem lie in lack of talent withing the developer group itself? There is so many talented developers who have left SEGA already. Three key developers that I recall leaving the company are Yuji Naka, Yu Suzuki, Tezuya Mizuguchi. They were all pioneers, who secured SEGA´s fame and fortune for many years. But they suddenly left for greener pastures, and I do hope that we will one day again hear from them in the way of other games from new companies. I wonder if not in the coming years we might see a further erosion of the base of talent within this troubled company which has been in troubled waters since the fall of Saturn and Dreamcast. I think that the future will see the guaranteed end of a lot of game companies that somehow can nolonger manage- or nolonger care to develope quality games. A sort of upheaval from within, because individuals working within the game companies could finally get enough of greed, and lack of care for the games, and so quit for other more challenging and rewarding jobs in other game companies. Something the three that left SEGA may have done for that exact said reason. This scenario could then play out for some years until a new generation of companies have taken over the market, and we get more great games. I am all for that!

Ok, Aimless. Then so it is for you. I understand that well enough. But I can´t do it with analogue control anymore without a lock-on system. At least not in Uncharted. I should include, though, that it worked acceptably on XBOX360 playing HALO 3, as well as all of the first two Halo games on the old XBOX. I don´t know what Bungie did with the aiming in those awesome games. But it felt simply way easier to aim with the sticks there. Halo 3 was even better to aim in, than the first two games in that series. I think that is why I have given up playing anymore Uncharted as the aiming is impossible for me there. The dissapointment over the perceived huge difference in aiming-control from HALO to this otherwise awesome game was too much for me in the end. I did try over and over so many times, but had to ultimately give it up. So to me this experience bears witness to the fact that one developer apparently can implement an ease of aiming-control with the analogue sticks in FPS games, while another can´t or wont. I do recall that I have often noted clear differences in the way that shooters controlled from one game to the next across many platforms. I wouldn´t say that the analogue sticks have become hopelessly unwieldly. Racing games still do fine for me with those. I would, as a matter of fact, only use those for car games. Not a steering wheel, which I feel takes up too much space. And I agree with Flameboy that the Wiimote is no replacement for the twin stick shooter. Only an alternative. I just got hooked on that alternate way of aiming as it is, somewhat in the words of Aimless: more tactile in terms of shooting mechanics. Thanks dazzybee for your support! I really needed to express my opinion on a subject which I feel is relevant to the entire future of FPS gaming.

Fandango - for me it´s like this: gaming has evolved with the advent of Wii, and the fabulous Wiimote. When playing Resident Evil 4 on Wii, it was like a revolution for me controlwise, as I could now just dead-on accurately point and shoot at targets. Not steer-a-stick and then-shoot! My whole range of gameplay options just sort of evolved incredibly with Wii. Like a dream being fullfilled. Then PS3 comes along, with drop-dead gorgeous graphics, awesome blue-ray playback, and yet: the same old steer-a-stick principle for shooting targets on the screen. So, going from Wii´s enourmously convenient control, to the, to me, outdated one on PS3, I feel like dropping from an airplane with a parachute that wont open. I am screwed controlwise. So, while you argue that lots of other games are like this, and that you therefore cannot see what my problem is, I can only say that for me the problem is the control-induced interruption in the gunplay momentum, which results from nolonger being able to just dead-on point the reticule and shoot the targets. It´s not natural to guide a stick over on a target, point-and-shoot is! Wii is indeed a gaming revolution, as Iwata put before it´s official unveiling some years ago, and Sony and Microsoft has got to follow, and come up with a new type of joypad. If need be, with a license from Nintendo. It might have to snow green before that happens. But I don´t see the old joypads being usefull much longer as games grow increasingly large and complex, necessitating a kind of inventive easing of the strain on people who have to control them for all of those hours, so to speak. Nintendo´s approach to control is definitely the future, and sooner or later the other two will have to follow somehow if they want to stay competitive since the Wii control keeps getting more and more popular, thus appreciated, and in the end simply demanded by a majority of gamers! Nintendo invented the very principle of analogue control in games. They set the future trend with it. They invented this new point-and-shoot principle too, and in the form of something everyone is familiar with already: the tv-remote. So they will, I predict, also set the trend in the future for among others gunplay control without any doubt. It is just a question of time before that happens. It is simply far, far more convenient to point at a target like that. And then Sony and Microsoft will have to follow somehow. I wont buy another shooter on PS3 unless it has lock-on control at the very minimum. I can´t do it with the analogue stick movement principle anymore alone, and I consequently will have to just wait for games like Resident Evil 5 to come out on Wii, before I can feel good about gunplay in games for the forseeable future. I sure wont play it on PS3. Unless of course it will incorporate a lock-on system. It would be wise for the developer(s) to do so, since it would give them a competitive edge in the fight for global marketshare with Nintendo.

Too easy with lock-on? Head-shots feeling great because "you did it". I can follow you. But try dying close-up tens of times because you can´t hit the target. Then you will know what I am talking about. Lock-on didn´t feel "too easy" in Metroid Prime! Instead, I find a lock-on system more fun because I can just give the enemies hell, and walk away feeling I could give them something back. And see the whole game. In my opinion, you just gotta have some sort of compensation for the fact that you don´t have a light gun to aim with making it way harder to point and shoot naturally (!), since using a stick to move the crosshairs over on targets feels incredible unnatural for a weapon(!!). I would have not minded an option to turn lock-on in that game on and off. Then gamers could choose how they wanted to engage the enemies.

I agree with forums members that this game is spectacular in terms of story, graphics, voice acting. But it lacks severely in terms of aiming, and in crucial, tight spots, in terms of the camera too. My problems were always where intense shootouts are coming into the picture. I died way too many times in tense situations, because I couldn´t hit the enemies with the PS3 controllers analogue stick. I couldn´t draw the gun, point, and just hit the damn enemies like I would have done for real. In this game that is not possible. The Wii mote makes it possible, but to me the PS3 controller´s stick doesn´t. I would describe the problem I have with aiming with that stick by using the word "waver". That is what it felt like. I turned the stick towards the rapidly incoming enemy, but I always initially missed the target by always going too far to either side of the target. Trying to make up for the inaccuracy, I then manually sought to correct the error, wavering with that annoying stick for aims, costing me too many precious seconds so, in close combat situations, I got constantly mauled and killed. This happened throughout the whole of the game, where I was really close to enemies or being surrounded. Consequently, I felt really bad in almost all of the shootouts. In one of the last chapters, where Nate is inside an abandoned U Boat base, I died constantly because the NPC monsters kept coming at me so fast in the dark, often at blind angles, and with turning and pointing being simply too slow to be usefull in such a constricted space. I needed a lock-on system to hit the enemies in the dark, and feel GOOD about blasting them. I didn´t, I felt miserable. I got to turn all three switches on, get lighting, only to be attacked close-up by another monster (they kept coming like noone knows from where) which came around the corner with no prior warning, or in any visible light...which I couldn´t aim and hit it with that stick fast enough. So I died, again and again, and had to start all over. I think I went with that for 10-12 times, and then I got so mad that I threw the game out. I had at that point endured hundreds of re-tries throughout the game´s many chapters. This was like the drop that made it all over for me. In any normal encounter when surrounded by enemies, I would adjust my aim to whatever comes at me. Couldn´t do it here since Nate turns too slow, or the bloody stick makes it impossible to just lightningly fast point, and shoot at the rapidly incoming targets. I didn´t see the treasure at all. If I ever play this kind of game again, it will only be if it has a lock-on system, or if it comes out on Wii. Yes, a lock-on system folks! Nintendo´s got it right as for solving aiming problems in shooters. Naughty Dogs doesn´t. I find it incredible that they didn´t include a lock-on system in a game where shootouts takes place so frequently. The flow of the shoot-outs is badly interrupted when dying so many times for reasons of aiming errors. And where enemies need so many rounds of shots before actually dying. Sorry, if that puts any of you off. But I have had it with games that get ultra-high review scores for otherwise excellent in-game feautures, but where nobody deals with little, hugely annoying facts. Such as the exclusion of a truly needed lock-on system that forgetfull, or overconfident developers, tend to just leave in games before they ship to retail. Lock-on has been invented, Naughty Dog.

Sorry about that, King V! It was indeed you! It has been corrected already!!

"Quote: Originally Posted by Fierce_LiNk I want Zelda to be its own game. Taking influences from other games is fine, but I don't want a carbon copy of something else. I want a new Zelda game. If that means Nintendo sticking to their guns, or trying something new, then that's where the future lies. I feel TP took too much inspiration from Lord of the Rings to the point where Link actually bears resemblence to Frodo. Also took some of the magic out of it, for example the enemies are mostly orks and goblins and so forth, what happened to those jelly-like things in Termina or Chu-chus amongst others. And then the great fairies look too LotR in appearance and demeanour. I liked those over-exuberent LOL fairies in OOT, it atleast gave us something to remember. This is a jist as to why TP didn't feel like it had soul." I agree with you, King V, that TP didn´t have any soul. It felt like a beta-version of a Zelda game in the making being still a while from being complete. The thing you wrote about there being mostly orks and goblins is totally what I also found hugely dissapointing. I recall a Cube Europe Staff forum member commenting on my complaint in this thread that there wasn´t anything to see when looking over cliffsides - by writing that there was. Well, I don´t recall there was very many sights there, except in major areas where you naturally see something when looking out into the distance around that major area like Lake Hylia or the farm or the forest. I´m not desiring to be a grumbler here, but I look for details that make areas in a game stand out and come to life. Give them a distint feeling and atmosphere. The fields Link had to ride through in TP felt too empty and lifeless. Too restricted as well. It actually felt scary without there being any overly scary things to be afraid of, whereas the fields he traversed in OOT or MM felt far more alive, warm, and pleasant. They really felt like a real place would, if you were to go there, and be part of it all. Those two games were awesome fairytales, books, that you could open and be sucked into and not wanting to return from for quite a while in Earth time hours. A fairytale inside a living book, that is somewhat the way Miyamoto himself expressed it right after OOT had been released. That game, in my opinion, is the milestone they have never met or surpassed in terms of quest and scope. There has been a number of forum members who have already in previous replies to this post expressed a desire for the next Zelda game to be greater in scope with massive battles, and larger fields to play in. I totally agree, as that is what I feel many have always dreamed of being able to do in a Zelda game. THAT would be the true next-generation of Zelda! And, the first TP trailer which we saw prior to the release of the game itself, showed large armies of enemies gathering in battle formation, but were simply nowhere to be seen in the actual game. That is how it should have been, but didn´t become because Nintendo apparently ran out of time to complete the game so it was truly complete. It could have been what all of us Zelda-fans who since WW wanted a return to the realistic style had asked for, but didn´t become as has been lamented by many I heard the opinions of. TP it is indeed very, very beautifull in many places, but there is too many things that was left out which drags it down in overall value. This was indirectly admitted by Aonuma in one interview where he said they needed to work more on the next Zelda game. I believe that nomatter how many copies, and nomatter how high a score any Zelda game has ever recieved, it will do better even going beyond those numbers if Nintendo makes a Zelda game which gives us the possibility to fight in a Hyrule which is built from the ground up with those proportions. Size matters still, folks, and I am just tired of hearing about Link being in New York or London or going to God knows where. Link is an Elf, supposed to defend his forest homeland of Hyrule when called to do so, which involves saving a sweet, beautifull little Princess (who is the definition of a true fairytale princess in my opinion and whome we hardly saw in TP by the way) from evil forces. Having seen Oblivion on the other two consoles, I encourage Nintendo to go for it and make the next Zelda an awesome 3D RPG with a great story, and great Wii controls that will give the little white wonderbox a future reputation as the first homeconsole to re-invent RPG´s and swordplay in games!

Maase, DarkJack and Deathborn all said the magic words about how the next Zelda should be. I envision too a Zelda-next which is truly monumental in scope and quest. I hate the cell-shading and toon-Link style, I can only feel great travelling in a 3D world which is realistic in graphical style, and nothing else. Twilight Princess came close to being what we wanted from a realistic Zelda, but ended up being too easy and too lifeless in many opinions, because Nintendo´s 3D team apparently were good at delivering 3D fields that the rest of the developer group couldn´t catch up with in terms of filling it with enough life and level-furniture. The most immediate thing that comes to my mind here is the fact that when I looked down a slope, or over a bridge, there was nothing there except fog. In OOT and MM I always saw a lot of sights which made me feel more one with the gameworld. After Eiji Aonuma said that they would work harder on the next Zelda game, I have the highest expectations and hope I will not be dissapointed.

I´m afraid that if there was to ever be such a system introduced to market, it would quickly be abandoned after a huge fight. The fight would erupt over the fact that if all games came out on one console only, the attention each unique game would get would be drastically limited since suddenly there would be not 500 games for the console we would all be owning, but 1500 or even more. 5 years after it´s release it would probably amount to more than 2000 games. Any game developer who was used to getting so much attention from us all on one of three platforms, now would get many times less the attention for their particular games since there would be such a huge number of other games to select from that gamers would overlook their games more than before. This means money left on the table, and developers would instead be left to fight for gamers attention spending more on advertising time than game developement time. This would mean a general hollowing out of the quality of games, and wind up hurting the entire gaming market. And I thought I was complaining about gaming quality these days. I shiver at the thought of my complaints then! Consequently, such a universal console would hardly ever be the future for the video game market!

The worst thing Nintendo ever did was to change the visual style of Mario after Super Mario 64 and Zelda after Zelda 64. I returned both Super Mario Sunshine and Windwaker to the store where I bought them, because I simply didn´t like their visuals. Or the way they played, for that matter. But to me the graphics are the first thing that I notice. Or rather, the way they have been implemented. I understand if Nintendo likes to experiment back and forth, which seems to be what they are doing a lot, but the disparity in the visuals between the N64 Mario and Zelda games and the GameCube ones was too pronounced to be acceptable to me. I really thought that Nintendo had gone mad, and nolonger cared to give us more of the same which had been so successfull in the past. I do recall that some major news headlines following the unveiling of "Celda" at E3 were touching on just that. A lot of people I talked to about Super Mario Sunshine said it was much more difficult than SM64 in which I also agreed. I didn´t like the way the worlds had been made. Super Mario Sunshine had, of what I saw myself during playing and read about in reviews, too many ugly sprites, and strange backgrounds. It felt half-complete. More like: rushed! To this day Nintendo have, in my opinion, not surpassed the immense fun of Super Mario 64 with its large, incredibly beautifull, fun, enchanting worlds and manageable difficulty - allowing any kind of gamer to play it through to the end. While great to play, in Super Mario Galaxy the worlds are too small, I think. And Twilight Princess is definitely not "120% Zelda", as they strived for it to be, as it falls short of being the fairytale that Ocarina of Time was. It is far, far better than WindWaker I think. But it does definitely not surpass the N64 games. I have also read that it didn´t get as much developement resources as OOT did. It is indeed very beautifull as we were told it would be. But there is not enough things to interact with and explore in that world. It feels too empty in many places. Not enough diversity. In fact, Nintendo have themselves admitted (Eijii Aonuma) in an interview I read somewhere, that they were constantly behind their own 3D team in terms of catching up with implementing level furniture, and animated creatures. So that world wasn´t as complete. I think that Jordan (in this forum) may be right about Nintendo not investing enough in developer teams even though they have the financial means to do so. In one other interview which I read recently, I recall Aonuma saying that he thought they needed to invest more developement time in the next Zelda game. I agree, and hope they do. A new OOT really takes 4-5 years, I think. We will then just have to wait, unless of course they do decide to widen their developer teams. Strange, I get the impression that Nintendo are stuck in the past in many instances, not quick to adapt to what their customers want by not investing enough in it. This is probably what lies behind among others the many complaints related to all things Nintendo I read about here in this topic. Kind of like them not making "ends meet" in terms of their gaming business worldwide. Am I the only one who thinks that?

"It's really quite simple, you can dodge while scanning, so flip out the visor right away, scan the boss, and repeat if he mutates. Also read the extended log by pressing start or 1, it tells you its weakness directly most of the time. This can all be done easily as there's no boss that sends a unblockable stream of destruction to you right away. Second, just enter the fray without expectations, just jump around calmly to see what's the best way to dodge his attacks and make him show its weak points. If you do that, there's a good chance you'll wipe him the first time around. Hell, I was down to 2 energy points twice in MP3 uptil now, and managed to still defeat the boss on the first go, because I didn't care whether I died or not, and kept on calmly dodging attacks and collecting energy. Every boss has a point where you can say you've figured him out completely and he is easy to beat." I guess I must have been too much like: going into a room, guns blazing, and naively hoping I could blow the bosses away like that. I wasn´t like that in Prime 1 though. For lack of any knowledge about how to really do it, I freaked. It was in itself a reaction to not being able to progress. And we do buy the games to see the end credits too. Don´t we? Games are almost becoming a kind of education, because they have changed so much from the simple old-school sidescrollers and 8-16 bit graphics, to complex fully rendered, breathing, responsive worlds almost with a mind of their own. So the source of my greatest frustration was not knowing how to engage the biggest problems in mostly Metroid Prime 2 and 3. And I didn´t get much from the majority of the internet game walkthroughs, really. They are more technical, than philosophical. What you describe as proper approach to the bosses, fighting philosophy if you will, is something I never thought of. I don´t have a lot of friends who play games, strangely. May change fast later. So it´s good that there are forums such as this where we can all help eachother to find clarity and understanding. Thanks again. You, and other members who replied to my posts, have helped me along to being a new gamer. I wanted you to know that. I really seriously needed to be told the part with how to calmly engage, and see what the boss does, and expose its weaknesses from its attacks, without fear of dying. Then attack it with that knowledge. Superior approach. Almost zenlike in its expression. Instead of walking in with fear of it. because that´s what I did starting in Prime 2. And I think it is because they had made that world far more scary than the brighter Prime 1 world. IGN expressed in their review of it that there were places they dreaded to go to in Prime 2. It is exactly the fear that brings one to panic. And then it is all over real quick. A damning thing, when one wants to move further on into the game, and taste the wonderous feeling of accomplishment. I now believe that I got too much negative influence from that IGN review, and feared Dark Aether too much when starting to play the game. It was actually scary as hell in places, which I do believe many other gamers felt like I did. But to succumb to the fear was not the way. I did. To rise above the fear is what I will now know how to do. And it feels great. Hell, I might even get so good at playing Metroid in the future that I will be surprised at my ability. As for learning how to quote texts properly, no, I don´t know how to do that. There are many buttons in the menu above the text window. And I don´t know how to use them. Might find it out later though.

DCK, wrote: "Have you ever even tried the Scan Visor It tells you freaking everything! It's exactly what you described you wanted! Seems to me you lack a certain relaxation in confronting the bosses that is necessary to keep a good overview. In the Flaagra battle you mention, the timer is always more than enough to reach the slot to bomb, as long as you calmly Morph and just roll towards it. If you start jumping frantically towards the bomb slot however, of course you will miss it in your own fear of Flaagra's impressiveness. Also, if you took your time, you'd find there's an easy way to lock on to Flaagra, take a step back, and line up the mirror targets exactly with your Flaagra lock, knocking them out whilst being able to side strafe and dodge his attacks." You nailed it dead on accurate there, DCK! I have heard people tell me about that problem in me before. There has been too much fear. As for the scan visor, I always used it in Prime 1, but didn´t always manage to flip it out in time in Prime 2 and 3, mostly because of the tenseness I felt when confronting the bosses. I think my main problem has always been confrontation in itself. The fear of it. So that when I am presented with a larger than life Boss character which I am asked to "fix", I panic. So, I will probably just have to try Prime 3 again. There isn´t much else to play right now anyways which is as good as that in terms of pure game quality. But I will complete Mario Galaxy first. Thanks again for your observation, insight and advice. It helps. Haven´t studied the functions of the forum board yet, but I will look into it and see if I can figure it out.

DCK wrote:"Metroid Prime 2 excels at scaring you, making it seem harder, while its difficulty is overestimated." Hmm, perhaps. My biggest problem with that game, and what made me drop Prime 3 for thinking it the same, was not knowing how to tackle the Boss attacks. I mean, you come into a room and you view a cutscene. And next, you are greeted by an enourmous boss character which you haven´t any idea about how to get started with. And which bombard you with rockets, missiles, grenades, fragmentation bombs, lasers, mines or just plain roll right over you and love every moment of it. Let me give you an example: remember the giant plant boss in Prime 1, that had mirrors which it used to stay alive during the battle? I died several times there, before somebody graciously told me that I had to hit the red lights behind each mirror first, in order to deactivate it. But nowhere in the game did it appear that that was the way to do it. And those lights were rather high up, and didn´t at all look like something you had to hit. I don´t recall any onscreen icons hovering near them either for guidance sake. So I didn´t see them at all!! And therefore didn´t know they were there. The violence of it´s attacks made it impossible for me to compose myself and figure out something. So, I was being done a bombing run on by a towering menacing boss. Constantly having to jump around like a crazed rabbit, and usually being in the wrong end of the arena when my wild gunfire had somehow managed to knock out one of the mirrors. So I had to nervously dash over to the point where the plant had fallen, hoping I could make it over to the other side in Morphball form before the programmed timer would rise the bastard up again, because otherwise I could start over. I admit that in retrospect that boss was easy. But understanding it - fast - was the real problem. Get the picture? My exclusively problem and grudge match with the MP game series (the world of which I love to explore which is why it hurt double, no, triple to not being able to progress in it because of perceived impossible bosses) is that Retro didn´t include something in there to give you some on-screen assistance during the most heated battles IF you happened to simply not know what the hell to do to combat the damn thing in front of- or above you! That is core essence of my situation with the series. And I think many others feel exactly that way too. I have heard of a kind of game that are out on xbox360, or which is supposed to be it in the future, which will automatically drop the difficulty if it feels you can´t beat it. Perhaps Retro could think of such a way of easing the difficulty in the future? To answer some questions from forum members to my last post - Meta Omega: Why do I play games? Answer: I do because I love to do it, but I feel a greater and more immersive kind of control is needed to engage the bosses in Prime. In Prime 1 and 2, I had to sometimes twist my fingers to operate the joypad to perform onscreen actions during bossbattles. I got finger cramps, and anger from those battles. I felt it isn´t enough with the controls we have now with Wii. I feel a need for a kind of nameless device which will enable me to be faster, more precise at counter-attacking the bosses. But that´s how I feel after the toughest fights with the bosses in Prime 1 and 2, and now 3. Sometimes, motioning with the nunchuck wouldn´t even work to get the grapple-lasso to attach to a boss. So beating a boss thus would be a big problem. That is what I mean by tools! But it was mostly in Prime 2 that I think that the Wii controls or better would have felt like been a blessing. However, it is up to people like Miyamoto to figure out what can be done to ease the sense of control in-game. Wii controls are great, but I feel better ones can be invented. That is why I touched on VR. Shino: I didn´t get violated as such. But the game made me lose my sense of wellbeing as a player. DCK: Overreacting? Yes, maybe. But that is because I expected I would get the same problems from Prime 2 again. So I instantly decided to get rid of the game. Just to avoid disturbing my neighbours. And I don´t criticize myself for giving up on the game. I understand it. 20 years of gaming has never shown me such difficulty in any one gamme I ever played. Not even Prime 1. Can seem overstated. But truly that is how I felt about it. Deathjam: Sods law, huh? You may be right. When having such a problem, I should probably take a break and come back later. Then I might take it in one go. But I don´t believe it, I tell you! Maybe we should all get a game shrink wo can tell us what our brain temperature is at such and such a moment during a Metroid Prime Boss fight - and instruct him to turn our game off so we don´t experience a meltdown like I did! Fierce Link: I don´t consider myself to be flawed. As explained above, my biggest problem was always to get to grips with the boss attack patterns and how to counter them. It was never about giving up too easily, but about not being able to go any further. Too overwhelmed by doubt and confusion of those tough buggers I was. And I know that many will have felt the exact same thing. It´s not mainstream to make games too difficult these days. Most people don´t bother about it. That is also why the Wii is such a success. Most of its games are simple, rewarding and exciting. Which is what people have the time and patience for in the light of other problems that they have to face daily in work- and family life. To them, the Wii is a breeze. A cool breeze amidst years of games being too complicated. That is why they are back and playing. Like they once did. But that really belongs to another thread in this excellent forum. Just thought I would mention it in connection with Metroid Prime and it´s difficulty.