WWE WrestleMania X8 for GC.

I certainly respect other people's opinions, but I am surprised at some of the reactions of Metroid Prime.

Many of the "complaints" against it were evident in every Metroid game to date, yet they claim those were good and this isn't, perplexing comments.

I'm big fan of Halo, minus some of blandness, but MP is a hell of alot prettier and polished IMO.

My disappointment? Resident Evil Remake.

Yeah, I agree. Starfox had basically some mediocre gameplay and great graphics.

I think The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (ps2) was a big dissapointment, I was looking for some action but what I found was some boring magic combos and stuff packed into "ok" graphics

Wow. I think TTT has arguably the best graphics of any PS2 game to date. Especially with the sheer number of people fighting it out on screen at any given time.

And it seemed to be non-stop action for me. Hmm.

Thats kind of the fun of the thread though. Some games that in general people love can not work at all for certain individuals. The fact that the best Game of the Year can be disliked by some is nothing new. Grand Theft Auto 3 and Halo faced similiar complaints last year. There is no one perfect game everyone will love.

A good example for me is Zelda: Majora's Mask a few years ago. This game drew critical acclaim and I absolutely hated it. The time travel thing didn't work for me at all.

This years big let down for me was Splinter Cell. I felt Splinter Cell was pretty mediocre and sloppy in its design. It didn't work for me, but other people love it.

I think some of the disapointment in games comes from the tremendous hype many receive. Sometimes its hard for a game to live up to the expectations gamers have. I thought Mario Sunshine was a great game. However, Mario 64 left a pretty tough image to live up to and I think thats the reason for some people not liking it.

I would have to vote for UNREAL CHAMPIONSHIP for XBOX. After picking up XBOXLIVE the day it came out, I bought MECH ASSAULT to hold me over till my UC came in the mail. The game simply does not work on a console platform....period. The controls were never comfortable and the weapons were terrible. I will admit that it looked pretty and I never had a frame-rate problem. I got in on the $29.00 deal posted on this forum, so I am hoping in a trade that I can break even at funcoloand (which I hate)

Mech Assault on the other hand has turned into my current favorite game. Online play is a blast.

darkside, I agree and understand what you are saying in response to the part you qouted me on, but that was not my point. :)

My point was the interesting fact that someone can say they loved the NES and SNES incarnations and then condem the modern version for implementing the same type of gameplay. I considered going through the post line by line, but do not wish to get that far into it. However here is an example:

To be bitter that the gameplay has you determine an enemies weakness, exploit it, and then repeat has been central to all the metroid games. But now with MP is considered a "weakness"? It's part of the core metroid experiance!

I digress.

TUROK : EVOLUTION

I loved the N64 version and was hoping this one would rule, too, because I love the whole Lost World crossed with technology theme.

It sucked and was too over-the-top-gorey for my tastes.

Damn it....

Whoops. Yeah I totally misread that. I agree, it built upon the style of gameplay from Metroid and Super Metroid. It is kind of strange to like those games, but hate Prime for the same reasons.

I stand corrected. :)

I think you guys need to go back and reread the lengthy post about MP, his points are quite clear and consistent.

Please do the point by point analysis of the post, jeff... :)

Before I begin, I will reitterate, it is perfectly acceptable for someone not to like Metroid Prime. My concern is with the reasons listed for his and apparently GallantPig's distaste of the game.

Metroid Prime to me and apparently every gaming magazine I've read, is a sucessful and more importantly a faithfull translation of a 2d game into 3d.

If this game strived to be totally unique and something ground breaking, it would have made metroid fans furious for losing it's original gameplay. If that is what people are expecting you will be in for a dissappointment.

Instead MP sticks with the original formula created years ago. It is because this game and the it's 2d counterparts are so similar that I have a "perplexing" time understanding these comments.

I know I will likely not do a stellar job of this, but I will give it a shot.
As requested:

Fair enough I don't have any problems with this.

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It just blows my mind when I see people say something like MP is the best game they've ever played. Apparantly Nintendo released two version of the game or something, because the best word I can find to describe this game is "boring". Yes, it bores the hell out of me. The combat is incredibly undynamic and inane... auto-lockon to enemies with zero AI! And do it over and over again to the exact same enemies every time you backtrack through a location! Whoopeeeeee! And quite frankly I'm fed up with boss battles myself, which this game seems to have tons of. Find its weak spot and/or pattern and exploit it, and repeat and repeat and repeat until it dies. Oh how original. I just find it mind-numbing.

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Enemy weakness: Looking back at the other 2 metroid games that I have completed several times each, (Super Metroid last month) I don't recall any enemies that didn't require doing exactly as he describes. Find an enemies weakness and exploit it. Then repeat. Come to think of it, I can't think of many games that arn't like that.

Auto lock on: It's true the other games did not have this. However first you must remember the game is now in 3d. Next is that in the other two games you have a limted axis on which to shoot. 8 directions to be exact. So while not having a "lock on" feature, your aiming was just as linear as it is in Prime. In Prime you have to have yourself facing your enemy and he has to be in certain area before lockon is possible. I don't see how you could keep the metroid experiance anywhere near the same if you had line up all your shots. The game is not to be about being a sharpshooter, neither were the originals.

Enemy AI: Where is the AI in previous games? Just like Prime it's there but limited.

Same enemies in past locations: Again, just like the games of past.

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I also find it dull as an "adventure game". Could a game possibly have any more of a linear structure than Metroid Prime? Go here, find this, open this, kill that, jump here, shoot those four buttons to open door, activate switch to lower/raise water level in room, and on and on and on, encouraging absolutely no real exploration or problem-solving skills. Just one unoriginal puzzle after the other. And the worst part is, it's so linear that you have to do the exact same boring thing every time you replay an area after dying. I just got absolutely fed up with having to do that about half way or so through that I quit on the game.

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Linear: Did you play with the hints on? That will take away from the experience. Regardless, the original games plays much the same way. In Prime I was able to go places and latter realize I had to turn around because I didn't have a certain powerup, just like the other games. The puzzles originality is debatable to a matter of opinion, but they are very similar in style to what limited puzzles there were in the game of old.

Replay after Death: Same.

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And don't even get me started on the morph ball. It could have been used in such interesting ways, but it's primary use is as a key, a key that lets you into any passage you couldn't otherwise get through or to without the morph ball. Very, very little creativity went into the utilization of the morph ball, and while it may be fun as hell to control, that aspect of the game greatly disappointed me.

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Morph Ball - In the previous two games thats what the morph Ball did, act as key to new restricted areas. I know I'm repeating myself here, but that's my point. Prime is very close to the originals. You may have liked to seen it used in more creative ways, but others may not. It stayed true to form.

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And the controls....ugh. It still baffles me as to why the c-stick isn't used to look around. Would it have been that hard to implement? Why did they make it so you cannot look around and move at the same time? They say the game has 'simplifed controls', but what's so simplified about a control scheme if it just makes doing something integral to parts of the game even harder? I hate having to stop movement just to look around, and switch back and forth every half second, when I'm in the heat of combat. It's nothing but cumbersome in my opinion.

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Cstick: I agree that it seems that would be easier. The option would have been nice. But then what you choose to do with the assignment of your beam weapon? Would pressing the Left trigger button 3 times to advance it to the next weapon seem logical? What happens when you press it one more time then necessary, you have to recycle through it again. Just some stuff to consider. Like I said, the option would have been nice, but the game designers choose how they want to present their game, that's the method they choose. This part I'm not really "debating" because it is a valid complaint for the most part. However I direct you to my comments about the lock-on aspect above, as I believe it to be very valid, and the reason they utilized this setup.[/B][/QUOTE]

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I dunno. It's a beautiful game with pretty tight level design and always "something to do" (whether or not I find that 'something' as dull as can be), but there's no way I'd label MP "game of the year". Biggest disappointment of the year for me. Yes, that is a very minority opinion, but I'm sticking to it.

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You are welcome to do so. I just have a hard time understanding how someone that loved Super Metroid could have that much of an issue with this game, and I don't think the points are really valid.

Personally I was disappointed in Prime that it didn't try some new things. I felt that it was to similar to the other games. Obviously there were some nice new uses of the morph ball and weapons, but something larger woul have been nice. But since I can't think of good one, I don't blame the developers.

I actually never played Super Metroid, just the original which I enjoyed a lot. The game doesn't have the same creepy feeling/atmosphere. Maybe it's closer to Super Metroid or something?

The game is good, but game of the year or best game in years? Nahhhh.... Top 5 or top 10 of 2002 though for sure. Disappointing it's not the best game I played this year after hearing all the hype? Yup, definitely.

I hope the thread isn't sidetracked anymore.

I'll just settle for the 'most disappointing of the last six weeks'... MechAssault.

I enjoyed Dreamcast's Alien Front Online a lot more. {Hey, Sega... wake up! AFO2, please! It's a natural for XBL. And Virtua Tennis Online, while you're at it.}

Thank goodness the stunningly addictive Ghost Recon was there to fill the need for a non-sports XBL launch game. Unreal was never in the running for me... FPS with cheetah-like speed and interior locations with lots of hallways, twists, and turns? :yack:

Splinter Cell
State of Emergency
Starfox Adventures

my gamecube dissapointments were super mario sunshine and starfox adventures

neither have i finished... and i dont really want to either :(

For me the biggest disappointment of the year was Stuntman for PS2. I was so jazzed after seeing the trailer for this game, the I rented it and took it back the same day. The load times alone were unacceptable, but then making the game so insanely difficult with no selectable difficulty setting was just the worst.

Contra: SS - too easy, changes all for the worse, large sections of game ripped directly from previous Contras.

GTA: VC - sloppy.

I got that for xmas and I agree. I'm going to get rid of it and pick up Ghost Recon.

Does it have to be a game, or can it be a certain game-related announcement?

Was this the year, or was it last year, when a new graphics style for a certain Shigeru Miyamoto-produced game was revealed? If that was last year, maybe the disappointment could be that it was confirmed that the new Zelda will definitely look like that, and it wasn't just a joke.

I thought MORTAL KOMBAT: DEADLY ALLIANCE was a pretty big disappointment for me this year. I had been dying for some new MK and I got a game that played just like any other fighter and had lost most of the charm of the MK series... an as with MK4, the characters got more CG, which is fine in games like DOA or something...but the cool thing about the first MK games was the photorealism, which they have now abandoned to be like everyone else...

I think as a fighter, MK:DA is decent, but it didn't blow me away. I still think MK2 is the best in the series.

Also, one of the worst games i've ever played was Mickey Mouse and the Magical Mirror or whatever it was actually called...horrible game.

MATT

p.s. I thought Monkey Ball 2 and Super Mario Sunshine kicked ass. (both of which have been mentioned in this thread)

Wow, I too am surprised at the Metroid Prime debate but then again, having such a wide variety of people in this forum offers varying opinions. Which is good IMO. Someday we should all fill out some sort of form that explain our preferences and gaming needs. This way if so-and-so doesn't like this game we all know that he/she doesn't like action games in general. Still it is nice to see an intelligent and cordial (aka respectful) debate happening here instead of a bunch of flaming fanboy posts.

Oh, and just to put my two cents in- I love Metroid Prime. :)

And so back to the topic of this thread...

My biggest disappointment of the year is Robotech: Battlecry. I'm a huge Robotech fan and was looking forward to this game since its announcement. Well, the anime graphics look good but the gameplay, storyline, cinemas (if you can call a buch of still pictures cinemas), and missions are all mediocre. Not a bad title but nothing special either.

Oh god, I forgot about that piece of garbage. That has to be biggest dissapointment of the year. The game had tons of hype and the final version looked like an early beta.

To quote my favorite Simpsons character, "Worst Game Ever."

My biggest disappointment of the year...

Not gettin' any on Christmas. New Year's isn't lookin' like my day either. :(

Good thing I have a couple of systems and some games to get through(MP, SMS, Serious Sam, Monkey Ball 2, and I never did finish RE1 or Rogue Leader).

You meant games, right?
;)