SPOILERS
Impressions from the demo via IGN -
"How is the controller & how many levels is in the demo?"
The thing is, I don't even think it was an actual demo. I think it was the full game on display, as it had save points and save profiles and everything. Each save profile was linked to a Mii.
The controls were excellent. The cursor was incredibly smooth, and I immediately switched the controls over to advanced. The turning speed was just as I expected, which was pretty dang fast. It also allows you to reverse the buttons for shooting and jumping. The default was A for shooting and B for jumping, so I just left it at that. The only thing I didn't really like was the way you changed visors, by holding - and aiming at which visor you wanted. It made scanning more of a chore than it was in the past games, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.
"Thanks for the tip.
one last question how is the difficulty level? is it easy? normal? hard? is just that I hope it doesnt turn out like Zelda TP for been easy & all."
They had two selectable difficulty levels. I don't remember what the medium difficulty was called, but the hard was called "Veteran." It seemed to me that in Veteran mode, the space pirates took a lot more damage than in past Prime games.
"How did it look in motion?"
Very, very nice. You could tell just by walking around that this games was much more detailed than the GameCube games. The textures were greatly improved, and the lighting (especially the particle effects) was excellent. The only thing that I thought looked a little iffy were the character models on the marines; some of the faces looked a little off. Still, the best looking Wii game I've played.
"Was it fun?"
Absolutely. It controlled like a dream, the AI seemed faster and smarter, and it was much more fast paced.
"How was the music and sound effects?"
The music and sound effects seemed about on par with the last two games. The voice acting was surprisingly well done though, and there was quite a bit of it.
"Did you get to try any puzzles?"
Yeah, there were quite a few basic ones. Playing around in the ship was fun, and there were several basic puzzles around, like "Find the control pannel, scan it to get the access code, find the keypad, enter the access code with the Wii Remote. It was pretty rudimentary stuff, but I could tell it would get more advanced as teh game went on.
"What abilities were you able to test out?"
Well, I started out with doing all the new interacting abilities in the ship, which were all very cool and fun to use withe the pointer enhanced finger pressing. Then on ground, I used the Scan Visor, Morph Ball, Morph Ball bombs, Morh Ball jump (Simply flick up on the Wii Remote to jump in morph ball mode - very intuitive and much improved from the old method), Jump, Double Jump, Shoot, Lock On (The new lock on with the free aim felt great, but was tough to wrap your head around initially), and the new grapple beam move (Was incredibly fun, satisfying and easy to pull off). I also used some of the new methods of interacting, with the Pull Back-Twist-Push Forward to release locks, and you can now point at companions and press A to talk to them.
"Where is this amazing video game store?"
Portland, Oregon, at the Washington Square Mall. On an unrelated not, Sarah Jessica Parker was also at that mall today promoting her new perfume.
"few questions m8
how many bad guys were on the screen at once, was it loads of bad guys, or was it the normal metroid elite experiance?"
From the levels I saw, there was pretty much the typical amount of enemies.
"how was the AI compared to current 360 games? does it keep up or is it a bit stupid?"
The AI definitely seemed to have been improved from the previous Primes. The pirates would flank, and fall back and hide if they were getting owned too hard.
"how did it sound"
Pretty much exactly like MP1 and 2, but with added voice work, which were surprisingly well done.
"did Samus smell like cookies?"
More like cupcakes, lilacs, and badassery.
"how was advanced play versus noob aiming?"
It was like night and day for me. Noob aiming was basically Red Steel, except with a smoother cursor. Advanced play was incredible though, it started turning slowly nearly instantly away from the center of the screen.
"did the game feel alot more cinematic? and did it have a faster pace compared to the others?"
It really did. The voice acting alone made it seem much more cinematic than past Prime games. But the entire game played so much more like a movie. The cutscenes were much better and more movie like, and there were a lot of almost Call of Duty-esque real time events. There was one part, where a missile collided with the outside of the space ship, ripping a hole all the way through to the hallway you are running in. It created insane amount of suction from the drop in pressure, and some Federation Troopers were sucked out in to outer space. Your screen blurred, and another trooper holds on to the wall as his feet go flying in the air being dragged out. Then a blast door shuts killing all the chaos. All in real time.
And yes, the game seemed to be more fast paced then previous games, with faster aiming, what seems to be a faster rate of fire, and faster enemies.
"how long did you get to play for?"
I played for a good 45 min - 1 hour. I had to give it up, as quite the line was forming behind me.
"did anything feel gimmicky while u were playing?"
Surprisingly, not really. I thought that some of the motion actions (turning switches, pressing buttons, etc.) would feel gimmicky, but they really didn't.
"does the game look stunning? how does it look being in 60FPS?"
For a Wii game, yeah, I was definitely impressed. The textures, lighting, and atmosphere was beyond anything I've played on the system before. The framerate sure helped too.
Oh, guys, can't believe I forgot to mention this, but I found this weird while playing the game. There were these little Achievment like popups throughout what I played. The said "100 kills" or "200 kills" in text in the middle of the screen, and I had never heard anything about these Achievmenty things. Thought you guys might want to know.
"how was the menu for the game set up how was the background music or how did the menu look and how was it laid out?"
The startup menu was pretty standard stuff. It started with a title screen (I think the same one as the title screen in the MP3 Preview Channel), and then went to I screen that had what I think was "New Game," "Load," and "Options." If you went to load, it had three save slots, each of which had the face of a Mii next to it. When you clikc on the save file, It allows you to select Normal or Veteran, then you start the game. All of the menu was controlled via moving a little arrow around with the pointer.
The music, again, sounded about the same from previous Primes.
The pause menu had definitely gotten an overhaul though. You pressed 1 (or maybe 2) to get into the pause menu. In the middle was the map, which you could move around with the pointer. Then around the map were different buttons, as in logbook, options, and some others.
"when you played did it seem hard did u get at a point were you were like low on life and just trying hard as hell to keep going on"
Yeah, there was one part where directly after a large space pirate battle, and these little bugs come out of everywhere, along with some bigger bugs that shoot you. I was wasting a lot of time and life trying to kill them all, until I realized they were never ending, and all I had to do was escape on a morph ball track.
"
I know I'll sound like a graphics-wh*re now but: how was the graphics? "
For a Wii game, they were incredible. The lighting was excellent, with a beautiful and realistic shine gleaming off your ship; everything had a nice healthy glow. The particle effects were phenomenal; in Prime 1 and 2, when you charged your beam, a few little beams of light would suction toward your beam, but now, bright blue and yellow particles are flying every which way on the screen, which looked fantastic. Samus' character model looked fantastic, and her animations (when transitioning into morphball and in cutscenes) looked very well done. The textures blurred much less than on the GameCube games, and everything seemed more wide open and high poly. It definitely couldn't have been done on the Cube.
ing sick!
