In the experience, huh? Excuse me, but do you think every person in the world find your kind of fun games funny? Why do you think it is weak to not be able to do it like you can? People have different strengths and different weaknesses, you know. But this is not even about being weak or not.
I maintain that that game, and the former game, was simply not fun to play anylonger. And that has nothing to do with being weak. It has something to do with not wanting to play along anymore because it isn´t fun anymore. I don´t know what happened to the series, but I now for the first time have the open admission from Retro that they made the series too hard with Prime 2. This is what people have been "bitching about" on internet forums and elsewhere for years.
A lot of gamers worldwide got enough of the series with Prime 2, and sought greener pastures. I saw the responses on many forums months after it´s release, I talked to people about it too, and I noticed the far lower sales numbers of it. Numbers that spoke for themselves.
What I think happened to me is that I simply got burned out by the hassle I had with the bosses in Prime 2, and it left such an impression on me that I woved to never ever let something in a game do that to me again. When I experienced it again in Prime 3, something snapped: I reacted. Call it a kind of preventive mental programming. To shield oneself from future harm, because of a painfull past event.
The people I personally ever talked to about Prime 2 (many of them hardcore gamers), all admitted to me that Metroid is a very difficult series to play through. Now, I have personally never encountered any other game anywhere (over 20 years of gaming) that has bosses being so complicated, so openly asking for brainmelting multi-tasking (the most difficult ones), and which require so many deaths and tedious backtracking, before being able to - maybe - beat them. Most infuriating.
I have had the strength to continuously try over and over to get to grips with Metroid Prime 2 and now 3. Because I like the excitement of the worlds they are set in. I didn´t give up just like that, you know.
But enough can also be enough. So I concluded, after dying over and over too many times, that what I was being asked to do in the games to progress was just not me. I didn´t care to do it. That was after trying dozens of times. The series was nolonger the fun that it started out being in Prime. There was no fair balance between effort and reward. Too unforgiving. Not funny. A matter of taste. Not weakness. A weak person is someone who gives up without ever trying enough. That is weak.
I further believe that a lot of people worldwide would simply never even touch the Metroid series, if they find out how tough the bosses really are. Most reviews never warn the reader of the toughness ahead. What they do, is express their own opinion exclusively. They should try to imagine what less hardcore gamers feel. The learning curve is too steep.
It is no simple thing to figure out a towering, rapidly incoming Boss, and it´s attack-pattern, when you have too many other things to attend to simultaneously. Such as not falling off a far too narrow platform, or dealing with a camera that means you can´t see what you need to in order to regain your footing. All the while being hammered down by that damn monster or what ever it is.
Be carefull not to impose a label on people, for not being able to match your standards. You have a right to have your opinion. But what you say sounds like an attempt to categorize me as belonging in the weak department. You don´t know me. You don´t know what other things I have done in my live that others could never do.
It´s not always about being weak, but about if the tools you are given to do it are perceived good enough for the job or not. The Metroid series is a very special series, which require extraordinary skill compared to the requirements of most other games ever made. The question you should be asking yourself, is if you think that all people in the gaming world care to engage in the toughest fights on their tv sets to get those skills or not. Most don´t.
The Speedball Boss in Prime 2 alone was a tedious nightmare to defeat, and a clear example of why that game was instantly regarded too difficult by many gamers. Upsetting and infuriating nonsense. The Chykka Boss would have sent most gamers running away screaming or cursing. I tried defeating it, but decided after multiple attempts to damn it to hell.
Of all the people I ever talked to who could deal with the MP bosses, there are very few indeed. Whether I talked to them live or on the internet. And it is many people over the years, I tell you. It is only very few gamers worldwide who even plays the Metroid series, out of the combined number of gamers that exists. That is because of it´s notorious difficulty.
If you happen to be so damn good at defeating Metroid Bosses - fine! You are just good at that, I admit. Probably in the elite of hardcore gaming. But the rest of us, who are good at other things, will probably just wait around until we get the opportunity to play a game with that level of difficult fights, where you´re given far easier tools to feel that you can go into the game VR style, and finally smack the living crap out of such an otherwise untouchable program-pattern! And feel, yes, I did it. And it felt possible to do. No cheating.
So long as there is only a stick and some buttons, or a remote and a nunchuck I am out of that competition. Some would belittle themselves for not being able to complete it. I merely regret the difficulty, a difficulty which a few gamers worldwide seem to love. If Retro ever plans to get rich on selling Metroid games, I think they should include an easy setting also in every new version. It´s an enchanting world to be in. A world which I feel many more people would love to be able to experience to greater extent. They just never will with the current level of hardship.
