I picked up Metroid Prime this morning at the Nintendo store and I've got about two or three hours into it. I know that's not much but I wanted to give you all some quick impressions so far. The game looks fantastic. Effects like rain and condensation on the visor are really well done and the levels themselves are beautiful. The scan feature is also pretty cool. If you are the kind of person who has to check every single barrel and box in an RPG then this game is gonna be a killer. You can spend a lot of time just scanning every computer terminal, strange bug or rock formation you see. The puzzles I've seen so far are decent but like I said I'm only a few hours in. I am not sure about the control yet. I am hesitant to say it's bad because there may just be a learning curve that I'm only at the beginning of. Right now it's pretty frustrating. The lock on mechanism is a nice idea but it's often hard to get it to lock onto the shit your interested in shooting. For some reason whenever there is a giant wasp stinging the fuck out of my asshole the lock on mechanism decides that the real threat is coming from the potato bug looking thing on the other side of the room. The game needs a quick turnaround button something fierce. Also when a group of enemies are attacking you at once the lock on system won't automatically target the next closest enemy after you destroy your current target. So you end up having to press the lock on button, kill the bug, press it again, and kill the next bug and so on. It seems to me like it should just switch to the next enemy and let you keep firing away. Also they don't make it very easy to look around. This wouldn't be such a big deal if the lock on system actually worked but there are lots of times were I had to manually look around all the while trying to get the lock on system to actually target the thing I wanted to shoot. If they are gonna make you look around they should have made looking around easier. Maybe that's some kind of upgrade you have to get later on in the game. The "fun" upgrade or something, I don't know. I'm determined to keep playing it though, at least until Wednesday when Resident Evil 0 and Mechassault come out. Perhaps with a few more hours under my belt I'll gain some new insight into the controls. Even with all that said I am still having a really good time with it. I just think there is some stuff that could have been done better.
Real quick I wanted to say thank you to those of you who signed up for the free two week Netflix trial we have going on this month. Your support of PA is very much appreciated. Every time one of you signs up for the free trial it helps us out in a very real rent, videogames and groceries sort of way. I think we probably have the best job in the world, but we only have it because of you guys. You won't ever see me bitching on the front page about how hard it is to make a comic strip. This is what I've wanted to do since I was old enough for someone to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Fuck, now I'm getting all sentimental and shit.
-Gabe out
