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Man and Woman Vs The World Intro: Sin and Punishment is a series I knew about for quite a while thanks to the Quartar Guy and CJ. Particularly, the sequel. Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is a game that always made me wonder what all the fuss is about? Why do people revere it so? A question I intend to answer in this review. PS: I haven’t played the original game so don’t expect me to compare it to the sequel. Story: The story of S&P2 is quite hard to break down. But the easiest way to explain it is that you have two main characters: Isa and Kachi. Isa was sent on a mission to kill Kachi. Isa befriends her instead, Kachi loses her memory, they both get attacked by a group of soldiers apparently working for the creators, and are now supposed to escape Earth 4. Yes, there are four Earths or more in this game. There’s a lot of other plot elements mixed in such as keepers, the fact that Kachi is not human but some kind of alien life form threatening the creators and such. And it appears that the game is trying to tell a much bigger story than its length allows. There are a bunch of villain characters introduced that recognize Isa because he used to work with them; but all of those characters have no form of character development whatsoever, and their relationship with Isa is not explored that much. And that makes the story convoluted and filled with plot holes. And the dialogue writing isn’t all that great and can feel cheesy at points. But I’ve seen much worse, so this isn’t as bad as you might think. My biggest problem with the story is that the ending sucks. It lasts for like 20 seconds and then cuts straight into the credits with little character conclusion shown. But in all honesty, I don’t come to this kind of game and expect a richly detailed world with deep characters. So while the story, characters and writing are somewhat mediocre, I can forgive that. Graphics and Presentation: The game’s visuals look pretty good for a 2010 Wii game. It’s nowhere near Prime 3 in visual fidelity but it still has some good looking textures and environments. Especially for a game with levels this big. The game’s art direction is really good, there are 7 stages, 8 if you count stage 0 and all of them have their own unique setting. The game will take you through a variety of different stages during the 6+ hour adventure, that it never gets dull or repetitive. The animations look pretty cool, they are all smooth looking and there’s not a single piece of animation that I found to look dumb or anything like that. The sound design is great, and sets the mood for each stage. And I like the punchiness behind the sound when you shoot an enemy from close range. The soundtrack, however is not all that great. And that’s a big downer for me when it comes to a game like this. The tracks are good but none of them are ones I would consider memorable. And in a game this short, even if your tracks are repetitive, you have to make sure that the tracks you repeat are memorable enough. The voice acting is alright. It’s nothing that will blow your mind, but it isn’t bad, either. Overall. Presentation wise, this game is quite impressive. Gameplay: Now we’re getting to the really good stuff. The gameplay! The thing that makes this game so addictive and fun! This game plays like a typical rails shooter in terms of structure. Gun down hordes of enemies as you go through the on rails stage, fight a boss, gun down more enemies, fight another boss, rinse and repeat. There are sometimes where you fight multiple bosses in a row. So the gameplay structure isn’t that different, but the execution here is masterful! The game begins with a tutorial level that gets you oriented with the game perfectly before taking on the real deal, levels 1-7. The boss of the first level is actually very good, it’s fun and has a lot of varied and detailed moves that he can pull off on you. It’s not difficult, since it’s the first boss. But it’s a great test of what you learned in the first level. The controls are really smooth and precise, that you can never fault the game for your death. Every time I died, I always only blamed myself and never felt that the controls were working against me. You control your character by moving the nunchuck stick, shoot by holding the B button, hit the B button once for a melee attack and continue for a deadly combo, press the A button for locking on to the enemy, press C for jumping, and finally, hold A to use your special attack. Your special deals a lot of damage, but requires you to charge it up. And it can be interrupted by an enemy attack so it’s quite balanced. Your melee attacks deal much more damage than shooting but can leave you wide open for enemy attacks. In fact, a full combo will leave you open for a split second, which is quite dangerous for a rails shooter like this, so be careful not to abuse it. Hovering is a new feature in this game added in from the first one, from what I heard. And it makes the gameplay much less restricted and more open. But battling on ground is still a viable strategy at times since there are some enemies that may require a good melee attack or two. The game is generous enough to give you health packs from time to time. Make sure you absolutely grab every one you see without hesitation, they won’t float around forever. The game is quite challenging, I played on Normal difficulty, and while I didn’t die too much, I was still faced with enough challenge to be engaged, through and through. It is a serious dexterity test in multitasking. Seek out the largest threat and get rid of them to focus on other threats, pay attention to your health so that you don’t take too much damage, and keep an eye out for small mobs as ignoring them can bite you in the ass later on as you discover that you took too much damage by just ignoring a couple of them. The game almost has no difficulty spike and the gameplay flow is almost flawless. It keeps getting gradually more challenging without ever feeling cheap or unfair. But the thing I love about this game the most is the boss battles. They are spectacular! Stupendous and are all creative in their designs in some ways. All of them have detailed movesets and quick reactions are crucial to your survival. Some of them just feel very clever and unique. Such as a boss where you have to detach train cars so they can go over her way and deal damage. A tetris boss, where it starts out by you going to the top while gunning down enemies and when you get to the top is when the camera stops following you and the boss starts becoming a bit similar to tetris where he starts throwing blocks down the arena, and you have to attack him, destroy the blocks before they start covering up the arena and get you cornered but at the same time avoid all of his deadly moves. There’s also a boss that changes the game into a 2D fighting game. There’s all sorts of cool and creative bosses, and the best ones are some of the best I’ve encountered in any game. There’s even a boss rush near the end but the bosses you fight there, while they are the same characters, are in no way the same boss at all. And don’t worry, you don’t fight them ALL again. You just fight about 3 or 4 of them, so if you’re worried you’d fight the entire boss roster again, you can rest easy, now. The game is very addicting to play and has high replayability. I will definitely go back to it as I heard that if you beat it again with a different character, you unlock the ability to switch between them. That sounds awesome! I didn’t get the chance to play the 2 player mode as I don’t have people to play locally with, sadly. But I hear I’m not missing out that much since the second player is an assist shooter, an extra reticle rather than an extra character. But that doesn’t change that this is some of the most fun I’ve had in a rails shooter in quite a while! Breaking my score record is something I enjoy a lot in a game. And it’s quite enjoyable to do so in this game. The gameplay is the highest point for me. It’s definitely enough reason to buy this game. Final Verdict: Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is the apex of rails shooters. Never before were bosses this well done, never before was gameplay so varied and addicting, never before have I felt so engaged in a game for pure gameplay alone, that I completely ignored the story buried beneath it. The game is short at about 6 hours long. But it has really good replay value. A better soundtrack could make the levels a bit more fun to play, but the game is overall tight. And there’s not that many major faults with it. It was an absolute blast for me to play through. And I can’t wait to go back and play it again. Final Score: 9/10 Excellent Update on Upcoming Reviews: I really like playing through obscure games like this one. It helps expand my horizons a bit more. I must thank Zera for recommending it to me. But I wonder, what are the plumbers doing this time around? It’s been quite a while since they’ve been on a grand RPG adventure. But now, they have returned. Is Mario and Luigi: Dream Team as good as Bowser’s Inside Story? Find out in my next review.

Phase into Phazon: Introduction: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is the final game of the Metroid Prime series, and the closing of the Phazon saga. Metroid’s first jump to 3D was successful enough for not one, but three games. As the ending of the trilogy, it has more to live up to than Prime 2 did. So, is it good? How well does it do its job of ending this epic story? That is the question I intend to answer in this review. Full Review: Story: Metroid Prime 3’s story starts out with Samus waking up from a nightmare, in which Dark Samus is resurrected after the events that happened on Aether. If you saw the secret ending of Prime 2, then you saw this coming. After waking, she is ordered to board a federation ship and meet up with Admiral Dane who has a mission for her and three other bounty hunters. The other hunters are Rundas, basically an ice lord. Gohr, who is apparently obsessed with giant robots. And Gandrayda, who appears to resent Samus and thinks she’s better than all of the other hunters. Admiral Dane informs the hunters that the galactic federation’s Aurora units have suffered from Phazon corruption, and hires them to hunt down and eliminate the viruses and rescue the Aurora units. The Aurora units are basically the federation’s own mother brains and run the information networks for the Federation. The mission briefing is cut short by a pirate fleet who comes to ruin the party, and a meteor that is about to crash into planet Norion. So Samus and the fellow hunters immediately go to Norion to reactivate the cannon generators there and destroy the meteor. But Samus gets derailed not just by pirates, but the Berserker Lord, a baller status trooper that knows how to make one hell of an entrance. He gets defeated but not before absorbing a ton of punishment. After reaching Norion and repairing the first generator, Samus encounters Meta Ridley, who's back again with a vengeance. Samus then defeats Ridley and Rundas rescues her before she falls into the abyss. After activating the final generator, the hunters hurry to the cannon before the meteor hits Norion. When they get there, however, they are attacked by Dark Samus. Damn, those dreams came true! Dark Samus kicks all the hunters butts and leaves as Samus desperately crawls towards the cannon and fires it to destroy the Meteor. Overall, the intro sequence of this game does a solid job of building up tension before shit hits the fan. I like it a lot. Samus then wakes up a month later and discovers that all the hunters who were attacked by Dark Samus are now corrupted. Samus acquires the PED (Phazon Enhancement Device) suit as an upgrade of her iconic Varia Suit. Admiral Dane tells Samus to go and cleanse the Aurora units from Phazon infection and destroy leviathans that have landed on three different planets. She will encounter the other hunters who have been completely corrupted by Phazon, so you are forced to kill them. Honestly, the hunters lack enough character development for me to feel sad about their loss. The only exception is Rundas, who is a great character that had a good amount of interaction with Samus before his corruption. It looks to me like Retro Studios ended up putting a lot of detail and depth into the story, but sadly not much to the character development (except for Rundas). That’s my only gripe about the story. Otherwise, it’s very well presented, with epic cutscenes to boot. Every character except Samus is fully voiced, and every planet you visit has its own backstory, told by a series of logs. Of course, that means none of them have even close to the amount of depth that Tallon IV and Aether had, but it's a fair trade off. Graphics and Presentation: Metroid Prime 3 is the best looking game in the trilogy, at least on a technical level. The game has really good lighting for the Wii and the textures look really good. Artistically speaking, it’s more impressive than Prime 2, with some gorgeous environments. But for every Skytown, there’s a Pirate Homeworld which is kinda repetitive on the visuals side, and the leviathan seed levels all look too similar to the impact crater. But from a narrative standpoint, I’d say it makes sense. But there are a lot of good looking vistas and areas, which are memorable this time around, unlike in Prime 2 where I kept getting lost, at least in the Temple Grounds. Two little notes on the graphics side, one is that the Plasma and Nova beams can sometimes fire from locations away from the barrel if you tilt the Wiimote enough while shooting them, but it's not a big issue. A brighter note is that you can now see Samus’ face fully reflected when you use the scan visor, complete with eye tracking. The game’s sound design is on par with the rest of the Prime series. I’m not sure how I didn’t mention this in earlier reviews but I like how the game has a sound effect when you near a power up or expansion. The soundtrack is on par with Prime 2, but I think it could’ve used more memorable tracks if it wants to catch up to Prime 1. It focuses a bit too much on the atmospheric tracks, but I like the Super Metroid pirate remix in the Pirate Homeworld. The voice acting is superb, both in cutscenes and in-game dialogue. All of the characters feel down to earth and the lines are delivered convincingly. Overall, Prime 3’s presentation was awesome, but then again, it was not really lacking in the previous two games. Gameplay: Prime 3 proves to me that I made the right call to review these three games separately, as they always do some things differently. First of all, the objectives are more clear. The Aurora Unit give Samus all of the objectives and hints she needs to progress through the story. It’s like the hint system from the previous two games except it’s more frequent, it’s voiced, and it’s forced. And you now have a log to view your objective, now described in-depth. With that, the game’s exploration feel is somewhat hurt since I know where my goal is and don’t have to search for it as much. It's understandable since the developers were probably trying to appeal to a wider audience; it’s just I’m not particularly a big fan of that. Since this is the first Wii Metroid game, it was bound to have motion control gimmicks attached to it, but I actually like them in this game. The motion controls help immerse the player further into the game. Stuff like pulling handles, twisting them, pumping power into some machines, inserting codes and accessing elevators all felt natural, with nothing too gimmicky about them. Some of the power ups you obtain such as the grapple lasso are pretty fun to use. Speaking of power ups, the game doesn’t take them all away from you; instead it just doesn’t give you that much in the first place. But you still have to collect them all over again, but having played Super Metroid and the last two Primes, I’m already used to that. So let’s do it and re-obtain our lovely missiles, beam weapons, grapple upgrades, and the good ol’ Screw Attack. You actually get the screw attack quite early this time around, which is good because one of my complaints in Prime 2 is that you got it so late that you couldn't experience how cool it is that much. But to be honest, it was still utilized way better in Prime 2 despite getting it earlier here. And it’s still a pain to hit enemies with it. The seeker missiles have returned, which were useful for me in Prime 2 and just as good now. The morph ball has a new-ish type of puzzle, air puzzles which allow you to use bombs to launch yourself into the air. Your missile combos are gone now, but later in the game you obtain the Nova Beam, which lets you shoot through Phazon. Combined with the X-Ray visor, you will go to town on any enemies or bosses that gave you trouble beforehand. The beam weapon system is different from the first two Primes. This time around, your weapons stack their effects by the new ones. The power beam is replaced by the Plasma beam which now fires as rapidly as the power beam. The Nova Beam is essentially a green plasma beam, but the awesome thing about it is that you can shoot through Phazon with it and destroy enemies from their weak spots. The Ice Beam is not back, but instead you’ll get Ice Missiles which were featured previously in Fusion. And it still freeze your enemies regardless. I think Prime 1 had the best weapon system of the trilogy because you had four completely different guns that never became obsolete and always had their uses against different enemies. I would also say that Prime 2’s weapons were better than 3, honestly. But the weapons are at least different enough that it’s exciting to get a new one. You can now use Samus’ Gunship in more ways than ever before. You can travel not only between planets, but also different landing zones on each planet, which cuts down on the backtracking present in pretty much every Metroid game. Not all that necessary since the only Metroid game where I felt that backtracking was a pain in was Prime 2, but this is still greatly appreciated, and perfect for newcomers to the Metroid series. You can also command your ship on specific parts of levels, with commands including landing, attacking, and picking up or dropping off cargo. It’s kinda disappointing though. I never used the ship missiles at all because I never knew what specific parts of the map I could use it on, and it wasn’t needed because Hyper Mode destroys every enemy out there. Frankly, I would’ve preferred having the power bomb back. If there is ever another Metroid game, it would be nice to have the ability to fully pilot Samus’ gunship. It would be epic. Another cool new thing introduced is the achievement system. Bowling Bots is a funny one. They’re satisfying to earn but I didn’t pay much attention to them. There are green ledges that can be grabbed onto, so Samus can now finally grab ledges outside of Smash Brothers. 'Atta girl! The game’s boss fights are once again well done. The Berserker Lord is the best first boss in any of the Primes. Omega Ridley and Meta Ridley are epic fights. Helios is a fun, challenging and complex boss battle with many different attacks. Gandrayda is my favorite of the hunters because of how many different forms she uses through her shape-shifting powers. Rundas’ battle is epic and the music is fantastic. Mogenar, on the other hand, is a terrible boss. He never gives you room to attack - at all! It’s impossible to get a straight hit on him without screwing up a thousand times over. And the Metroid Hatcher is annoying and you fight it three times, but the second and third are not that bad because you can defeat it easily with X-Ray Visor + Nova Beam. Speaking of the Metroid Hatcher, I got stuck during the Norion fight. I dunno why but I just jammed for 40 seconds before regaining control. I thought that the Repticlus Hunters were gonna be the new Chozo Ghosts/Pirate Commandos but they’re much easier and you only encounter them once or twice. The Steamlords, however, ARE the new Chozo Ghosts/Pirate Commandos, but they’re not nearly as bad or common. Let’s talk about this game’s biggest gimmick, Hyper Mode. Hyper Mode is basically god mode. It’s the Phazon Beam from the first Prime that you only got to use during the final boss battle. Now you can use it all the time as long as you sacrifice a single energy tank. Despite playing on veteran, the game is still generous enough with health drops that you can use Hyper Mode almost all the time, I didn’t abuse Hyper Mode to keep the game fairly challenging, but there are some enemies who have a Hyper Mode of their own which can only be countered by your own Hyper Mode. If you stay in Hyper Mode too long, it will fill up and lock you in until you consume all of your Phazon. But that actually makes the game easier since it gives you more time in Hyper Mode. Overall this is the easiest of the Primes. It even has save points right before bosses, but this is a plus since it kinda bothered me that it didn’t have that in the first two games. The game was fairly challenging while not abusing Hyper Mode and the pacing remained solid throughout. Even collecting energy cells for the Valhalla wasn’t bad because you can collect them throughout the main story. In fact, I had 7 by the time I reached Valhalla. And you only need 5 of them to proceed to the final level anyway. As for the final level itself, without spoiling anything, it is terrific. Unlike the Impact Crater and Sky Temple, Retro added a challenge to their final level this time around. The time crunch scenario feels rewarding to pull through at the end. But the final boss was really disappointing. The concept and execution behind it were decent enough, but it could have been done better. In Prime 1 and 2, the final bosses were a test to all of the skills that you acquired throughout the game. And in Prime 3, the final boss gets his ass whooped by Hyper Mode! It's way too easy. Thankfully, the boss preceding it was spectacular. Despite the game having a big and large scale feeling it was actually not that huge, as I finished it in 12 hours unlike the first two games, which took around 20. But at no point did I feel like the length was bad - the story covered most of what it needed to, and the ending was great. So there’s not that many complaints I can throw toward it in that regard. Final Verdict: Prime 2 and 3 were great games, but the highlight of the trilogy in my opinion is the first Prime. It was the perfect blend of exploration, puzzle solving, and storytelling, and it was an absolute blast to play through. But Prime 2 and 3 were also a blast, despite not having as much impact on me as the first Prime. All and all, the Metroid Prime games are some of the most atmospheric that I’ve played, and I loved how each of them had their own personalities, their own differences to distinguish them from each other. Retro Studios have succeeded not only in adapting the Metroid series into the 3D realm of gaming, but also providing quality games in that dimension. And that is an achievement I find very admirable. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a great ending to a well crafted trilogy. It is an excellent game that has served its job well in ending one of the best game trilogies of all time. The ending was climactic and satisfying, despite the final boss not being all that creative. The game felt too easy at points but at no times did it feel like a chore to play through. It may not be a new gold standard in the first person shooter genre but it’s a great entry in an already great series of games. And a great Metroid game in general. Final Score: 9/10 Update on Upcoming Reviews: Hoo, I didn’t expect to come back this early, not even a month after my Prime 2 review. I got a week off, and I took the opportunity to play through and finish Prime 3. At this moment, I am 60 hours into Square Enix’s Bravely Default for the 3DS, I still got a few chapters to go, but after I finish it, it’s gonna be my next game to review. So please stay tuned for that. For those of you who were with me throughout my run through the Metroid Prime Trilogy, I must thank you for doing so. Since game reviews are pretty much my favorite side hobby right now, I am here to stay. Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is on my radar since Zera recommended it to me. I will definitely play and review that at some time in the near future.

The Legend of Metroid: A Link To The Past: After playing Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, both of which I loved, I have finally played through and finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Here are my full thoughts of the game. Story: Let’s talk about the story, Metroid Prime 2’s story is different than the first game with some similar elements, it takes place after Prime 1, the game starts out with Samus hired by the galactic federation to go to a rogue planet called Aether which had some marines that called for an emergency signal. Aether’s atmosphere damages Samus’ gunship, leaving her stranded on Aether, with her initial objective being to find out what happened to the marines. Samus encounters Dark Samus, essentially the daughter of Metroid Prime if you will, come to avenge her dad’s death on the hands of Samus! seriously, though, she’s just the remains of Metroid Prime. Samus then she gets attacked by Darklings who hijack all of her items, ALL of them….except for the charge beam, Varia suit and Morph Ball, the game doesn’t have any heat based areas so the varia suit is purely cosmetic. She then proceeds to find that the marine troopers have been wiped out by the same darklings that attacked her, and then she encounters a Luminoth man called U-Mos, this NPC serves as the driving point of the story, giving Samus her objective and providing a lot of context to the world in a lengthy bit of exposition. Samus’ goal now is to restore power to Aether’s energy controllers so that she can gain access to the Sky Temple and take out Emperor Ing. Graphics and Presentation: Graphics and animations have been notably improved from the first game on a technical level, Samus’ model is fixed, no longer does it look jaggy a bit, it now looks all smoothed out, the game now has better cinematography than ever before, not that it was terrible in the first game, but cutscenes are now fully animated, even saving the game has it’s own animation. The game now has in-game dialogue unlike Prime 1 and it actually works well within the game. Dark Aether’s has a great post apocalyptic atmosphere feel to it, I heard some people complain that it makes Dark Aether’s graphics too repetitive and boring but I beg to differ, that’s the whole point of the game and it succeeded in that part. The UI however was very difficult for me to get used to at first, Prime’s menus were much cleaner and easier to navigate through. One thing the UI did greatly improve upon was the scan visor, it now highlights scannable objects by three different colors: Blue being unscanned, red being unscanned and important to progression and green being scanned. Gameplay: Now let’s talk about Prime 2’s gameplay which can easily be considered hit or miss for some people. This is considered to be the black sheep of the series, it’s gameplay structure deviates greatly from the first Prime game, now much more similar to Link To The Past than its prequel, Echoes plays around with LTTP’s light world, dark world mechanic, where the game is divided into two halves, light Aether and dark Aether. The game has a lot of returning powerups and a few new ones here and there. The Dark Beam is essentially a much faster Ice Beam, it freezes your enemies, making them vulnerable for some hilarious missile kills, in true Metroid style, its combo is the Darkburst, it’s an awesome looking and very powerful powerup that shoots a dark portal that absorbs the enemies’ HP like it’s nothing. The Light Beam is super effective against dark enemies, and can disintegrate them, it’s combo is the sunburst, a powerful yet quite slow attack that I rarely use. Then finally, there’s the annihilator beam which besides using it to open its doors, the only combat scenario I used it for was against the final boss, that’s how impractical I thought the weapon was, it uses both your light and dark ammo, its combo is the Sonic Boom which I just about never use because it’s too expensive for a combo that’s not much stronger than the previous ones. Oh, by the way, there’s ammo in this game, a traditional thing in first person shooters yet it was completely unnecessary and very unfitting in a Metroid game in my opinion, managing missiles and beam ammo have gotten very cumbersome for me throughout my playthrough. Missiles are really enough, and the Beam weapons from the previous Metroid games were personally much more interesting and enjoyable for me. In Prime 1, none of the weapons felt obsolete because you would always encounter enemies that require different guns in order to defeat. But in this game, there was no reason for me to use the Dark Beam over the Light Beam unless I wanted to open Dark Doors or do a darkburst. The exception was the Ingmasher enemy and Emperor Ing who both required switching your beam weapons constantly, besides from that, there was no incentive for me to use the Annihilator beam due to its cost except for the occasional sound wave puzzle. The Morph Ball in this game is utilized very well and has some really fun and clever puzzles to get through, overall, the puzzle design in this game is as great as ever, and at points, feels even better than before. The dark visor lets you see stuff invisible objects and enemies, and the Echo visor allows you to detect sound waves. The gravity boost replaces the gravity suit and instead of just allowing you to walk better underwater but also gives you an ability to hover in the air underwater; Torvus Bog is the only region with water so this power is rather underutilized. Speaking of underutilized, the screw attack comes in very late in the game that you can’t experience its greatness well enough, the best improvement is that it’s no longer just a very powerful attack, it’s used for traversing the game’s world, too, and reaching area otherwise unreachable. I consider this game to be overall not as strongly paced as the first Prime game, which is the biggest problem for me, one that hurts the replay value greatly. The game starts out with a strong opening sequence, not nearly as strong as its predecessor’s opening but it was good regardless. Then the game takes you to dark Aether and for the first hours of play, you will find yourself taking ridiculous amounts of damage by just standing in dark Aether, the only way to avoid damage is using light energy fields which not only prevent you from taking damage but also SLOWLY regenerates your HP which can be quite boring, you can shoot the light field with a light shot which powers it up to deal more damage to dark enemies, which is a great level design technique because it encourages players to save ammo by luring enemies to light fields and powering it up, but that doesn’t increase health regeneration speed, it’s incredibly slow and boring, I’ve never played a game where I had to sit there and wait for my health to refill for potentially more than 3 minutes if you have high enough energy (HP for non Metroid players.) It’s not until a bit later in the game when you obtain the dark suit which boosts Samus’ damage resistance but also significantly decreases the damage you take from dark Aether. There’s the point where the game becomes much more fun and overall more playable than before, now I can play the game without feeling constantly feeling stressed. Now that the game picked the pace back up when you obtain the dark Suit, let’s talk about the game’s bosses. There are a lot more of them here, there’s almost a boss for every power up obtainable, most of the bosses have a gimmick where they use your power ups against you until you defeat them. I liked most of them, with the exception of the Boost Guardian, the Alpha Blogg and Grapple Guardian. My favorite bosses and some of my favorite moments in this game as a whole were Quadraxis, the Spider Guardian (Yes, I’m serious) and Emperor Ing. I didn’t have that much trouble with the spider guardian, in fact, I beat him on my first try, and perhaps that was because they made jumping easier with the Wii controls. Quadraxis was a masterful boss, why can’t we have other bosses this good in pretty much any FPS? Quadraxis is a fun and challenging boss that is a great test of skill and everything you learned in the game, he’s more complex than the final boss of the first game, nuff said. And I won’t spoil much about Emperor Ing, see for yourself. I also loved every boss fight against Dark Samus as she uses a lot of Samus’ signature skills. And when you reach the late game part is when the game slows down once more and gets rather tedious because of the final mission objective. Collect the 9 Sky Temple keys. Before you take on Emperor Ing, you HAVE to do this. Oh, man, this mission was boring. And it killed the game’s pacing right there, this is why the replay value is hurt for me, besides the early hours with Dark Aether damage. This time around, you acquire the Light Suit which allows you to fast travel between energy controllers, go through rays of light, improve your defense once more and of course, completely negating all dark Aether damage, as well as damage taken from swimming in dark pools which is awesome. But that doesn’t change the fact that the reward for finding 9 temple keys is finding 9 more that are even harder to find this time around. Some would argue that the same criticism could be leveled against Prime 1 for finding the 12 Chozo artifacts, but the game instantly gave you hints on how to receive at least most of them. The thing here is when I killed the Omega Pirate in Prime 1, I already had about 80% of the Artifacts I had to collect. However, when I killed Quadraxis in Prime 2, I had literally just ONE sky temple key out of nine. This part of the game is just there to pad out the game’s length whereas in Prime 1, I didn’t even feel like it was there. The Final Verdict: All in all, my final impressions of Metroid Prime 2 is that it did some things better than its prequel and did some other things worse. The game’s fun factor had some really strong and really weak moments scattered throughout. Unlike Prime, which remained a consistently solid experience that I never got sick of. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Metroid Prime 2, it’s the sequel to what I consider to be the best first person shooter ever made, and I still adored the boss fights, I loved how they added more of them and made them feel varied. I feared that this game would feel too samey but in fact, it changed but perhaps changed too much for its own good, when I play Prime 3, I hope it expands on what the first game offered more than I would like it to be like another Prime 2. And heck, if it can manage to be a nice blend of the first two games, then that’s great. But bring back the weapon system from the first game, please. I will be taking a break from Metroid Prime Trilogy for the time being to play some other games and do some work. But I will hopefully be done with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption hopefully in the near future. One thing very much in common between Prime 1 and 2 is that I felt very satisfied when I reached the end. As disappointing as it felt at times, I still enjoyed this game. And that's enough for me to recommend it to Metroid Fans and FPS fans alike. Here's a link to my review of Prime 1 if you're interested http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=52669