Woe to those who read my blog and care not for Metroid, because it’s going to be a boring couple of weeks. I finally had a chance to sit down with Prime 3 last night, and I want to talk about my first impressions with the game because they weren’t exactly what I was expecting.

First off, let me just get the graphics portion of this discussion over with. They’re very pretty. And I don’t mean, “pretty for the Wii”. I mean just plain pretty. If you get really up close, you can see a bit of grain in some of the textures. But they are a significant upgrade from the GameCube Primes, and those were some of the prettiest graphics of the last generation, no matter what system you were looking at. I notice, once again, that the Wii’s favorite effect is Bloom, but it’s used quite nicely so far. And I’m sure that the graphics are as much a testament to Retro Studio’s brilliant artists as anything else – but that is true of any game with superb graphics. Of particular note is the level design itself (not so much in the intro, but once you get to the real meat of the game). Metroid is famous for strange, almost erily foreign worlds, and Prime 3 has thus far deliviered. Now, is it as pretty as the best offerings on the 360 or the PS3? No, no it’s not. But Prime 3 should put to rest the Duct Taped GameCube ramble, and shame the living crap out of third party developers that can’t crank prettiness out of everyone’s favorite thin white monolith.

And now for the controls. First off, everyone who’s told you to engage Z-locking and set the sensitivity to “Advanced” is right on the money. And those of you out there that are still burning with rage over the $50 you spent on Red Steel should put your fears to rest. Prime 3 is the handbook on how to do a FPS on the Wii, and even goes above and beyond that simple formula (by allowing the screen to be independently aimed from the targeting reticile. I think, personally, there was room for mild improvement (it would be nice to have a toggle option on the Z-locking, much like Wind Waker did) but these are thoughts for another day. You will spend your first hour of Prime 3 wandering off course, and after about twenty minutes of battle you won’t even have to think about how to fight. However, after three hours of combat, you’ll realize that what you thought were cool moves were the amateurish staggering of a rookie bounty hunter compared to the crazy lock-on tricks that can be performed with the right hand-eye coordination. Hopefully, unlike Resident Wiivil, the game will balance its difficulty around the amazing new combat prowess that this control scheme affords the player.

As for the game itself, it’s raw Metroidiness? I am still up in the air about that one. Maybe it’s just that there are suddenly voices and narration in the game. For once, a Metroid title doesn’t open by stranding you on some strange alien world with no recourse (not that Hunters or Fusion did, but those are often thought of as the least “Metroidy” games in the series). Techncially, you have allies. But their contribution o the combat is completely scripted and cut-scened. And yet I still can’t shake the feeling that the desperate, solitary alone-ness of Metroid isn’t truly present in this game yet. Both of the Primes, while occasionally plot-explained in text boxes, had this sideways forensics appeal to them. An almost creepy necro-voyeurism, sifting through the broken lives of others, trying to set things right. Dr. Sam Beckett with a big fucking gun. So far, that feeling hasn’t yet materialized, but admittedly I am not very far past the “intro” segment of the game yet.

What I can tell you is that the game feels a bit streamlined. Mostly in a good way, though. Samus feels a bit less clunky than in previous Prime titles (there were always a few bosses that were hell to fight simply because turning around was such an ordeal), and while I first found it annoying to have to use two movements to swap between visors, it’s become such a second-nature motion now that I hardly think about it at all. There are a few streamlining choices made I am not sure if I like. For one, the weapons configuration seems a bit less tactical and a bit more “pew pew pew”. It reminds me of the jump from Deus Ex to Deus Ex 2 – although not nearly as severe or crimp-tastic.

Though anyone who thinks Prime 3 is a “casual gamer” game is in for a rude awakening. So far I’m having no trouble on Veteran difficulty, but even the Standard game is going to be a brick wall for players used to Wii Tennis and Elebits.  Personally, I think that’s a good thing. Nintendo needed to reach out to hardcore gamers, and they’re finally getting around to that. And if Prime 3 manages to take even a portion of the Mario Party crowd and get them playing something more advanced (even if they do leave it on easy mode), I see that as a good thing as well. Higher demand for games like Prime 3 on the Wii benefit the hardcore gaming segment as well as just fans of great games.

Sure, lots of gaming websites are incurring Metroid-related flashbacks this week. I’m going to confine mine to just this one post, but I also want to touch on a few of the things that have made Metroid such an important franchise – even in spite of its years of dormancy after its initial release. Though sparsely sequelled for many years, Metroid has always been one of the cornerstones of modern gaming design both because it came first and because it was brilliant.

A lot of things about Metroid that we now take for granted were incredibly strange and radical at the time – like the idea of moving left. In fact, moving left is one of the very first things you have to do in the game, since you can’t progress rightward without the morph ball upgrade. By setting up this very simple puzzle (move left, touch glowing thing, get power up), the game teaches its players one of the fundamental concepts behind the Metroid formula. Sometimes you have to go backwards in order to be strong enough to go forwards.

And it introduced the idea of non-linear movement in general. Sure, the concept had existed previously in gaming. Most notably in the Legend of Zelda. But Zelda’s overhead map-like screens, which scrolled in huge chunks in every direction, were a very different beast than Metroid’s varried hallways and scalable passages. For most gamers, Metroid was the first side-scroller that allowed backtracking, and where not every hole in the ground led to sudden, inexplicable death. Metroid was about exploring, learning, memorizing.

And it was also about utility. Many of the items and power ups in Metroid had an obvious purpose. Bombs could be used to blow holes in the ground or to injure certain slow-moving enemies. But they could also be used to climb upwards if the player’s hand-eye coordination were sufficient. In fact, you could scale supposedly unreachable heights by chaining bombs off of each other. And the ice beam had an obvious function. It would freeze enemies, thus making them easier to shoot down. But it could also freeze enemies, thus turning them into stepping stones. It was one of the first examples of using pure weaponry to achieve non-combat results in a game, as well as using items and equipment to manipulate the gaming environment.

And the other true hallmark of the Metroid system was a world environment that literally was unlocked by the weaponry you had access to. Again, this was something that players had encountered before in games like Zelda. The ladder might give you access to a heart container or the raft would let you float over to a new dungeon. But Metroid had no keys except for the gear you carried. Doors were closed off to anyone without missiles. Entrances were out of reach to anyone without bombs. Even an item such as the high jump boots were used to “key off” certain areas that simply could not be reached without them.

The difference was that it wasn’t just one roadblock. You didn’t encounter one tricky jump or one missile locked door. It was a persistent condition of the environment. And while these two approaching have the same effect, the message is different. The first says, “We made you go get Item X so you could enter Location Y.” The second says, “Item X is necessary to survive in Location Y.” And rather than forcing the player to chase around for otherwise useless keys (I mean, how many times did you use the raft in Zelda, really), everything that you acquired simultaneously added to your arsenal and unlocked new portions of the game world to explore. It provides a context and a logical reason to progress, and it makes it feel less like you’ve reached a new part of the game because you got Key A for Lock A, and more because your character has genuinely become more powerful.

This system was advanced and in some ways overexploited in Metroid II (can we say spider ball?) and then refined as cleanly and as perfectly as gamers had ever seen in Super Metroid – heralded by many as not only the best of the series, but as one of the best games of all time. To this day, hundreds of games have copied the exploration, environment keying and combat concepts that were laid out in Super Metroid. The current crop of Castlevania games owe so much to Super Metroid that they almost feel like sequels – they even duplicate the look and feel of the mapping features.

In fact, it was the wildly popular Super Metroid that made many people (myself originally included) dread the release of Metroid Prime. Maybe it was the sacred reverence held for the originals. Maybe it was the uncertainly of the GameCube platform. Or maybe it was just that every 2D-to-3D conversion I’d seen in the past year and a half turned out to be an embarrassing, mortifying, stomp the soul from the original disaster. Sure, there were sparks in the night like Ocarina of Time. But for every Ocarina, there were a dozen Prince of Persia 3Ds. And a game like Metroid? No way, couldn’t be done. Metroid Prime was going to ruin the series forever – especially since it looked like Nintendo had handed off development to some no-name guys called Retro Studios.

Sometimes, it feels so very good to be wrong. Because Metroid Prime became the template for how to make the leap between 2D and 3D. What Retro captured was the feel and the style of the series. It didn’t just re-create weaponry and enemies (actually it re-created very little of the earlier incarnations and largely introduced new material at every turn). But it held true to the ideas of staged exploration, of weapon-keyed environments, and it balanced the concepts of accessible and earned content in much the same way that Super Metroid once did. Though what really sold Metroid fans on the game was the sequence breaking.

Which brings us to the quirkiest oddity about Metroid. The original game, while briliant, was very buggy. It’s understandable and even expected as no one had really attempted that sort of game before. As gamers played and replayed the title, they started to create challenges for themselves. First there were speed runs, where players tried to beat the game under a certain time limit. Those naturally lead to low-item runs, where players tried to beat the game with less health and fewer weapons.

And then finally gamers got into sequence breaking – ways to purposefully get around the weaponry-keyed parts of the game that made it so enticing in the first place. Often, sequence breaking was done to either lower your time or reduce the number of items needed to complete the game. Eventually, it was done just to be done (it was a proud moment when I beat Super Metroid with only one energy tank, one set of missiles and one set of super missiles – and yes, the last fight was a bitch, thank you very much).

Retro either understood that sequence breaking was an important part of the game to true fans, or else they were true fans themselves, because they left the world of Metroid Prime just manipulatable enough to break it. Perhaps they’d studied the series and realized that the only Metroid that locked out sequence breaking – Metroid Fusion – was widely panned by gamers for its stagnant, mission-ordered feel. Or perhaps the capacity to sequence break was just a natural extension of the kind of world you have to create to preserve the Metroid feel.

But what really makes Metroid an important series, what really defines it not just as a model to be copied but as a series to be envied, is that there is this incredible sense of working-ness about the game. You can sequence break because the game makes you powerful and because the game challenges you in the ways it does. In a game where locked doors and earned keys stand in your way, your progress is a static thing. You perform whatever task you have to to earn the key, then you “use” the key and you move onward. Your character and your functionality are exactly the same before and after you acquire the key and use it. In Metroid, you are what you can do. You are your own abilities and strengths.

Of course, there is one other significant difference between Metroid and just about any game from that era. The main character was, of course, a female. Hidden behind the ambiguous name of Samus Aran and a quarter inch of crazy metalic space suit was a chick (a hot one, this being a video game after all). And while it’s much more common to have a female protagonist in a game today, whether it be an over-the-top sex doll like Lara Croft or an understated (but of course still hot) heroine like Jill Valentine, Metroid did it first and did it in a way that slipped it under the radar of the vastly male gaming audience.

And perhaps most importantly, while Samus is, as I mentioned, quite hot in her little Zero Suit, she is never presented as a sex symbol. There aren’t camera pans whose sole objective is to display her polygoginally unlikely curved surfaces. She is, first and foremost, a walking tank. And for every one argument about the powerful market draw of “teh boobz”, there are a thousand arguments that such an approach would trivialize the character. It would at best turn her into Lara Croft (who, until Tomb Raider: Legend, was becoming a joke unto herself), and at worst, reduce her to being just another Blood Rayne. Perhaps that is why Retro Studios was able to transition the series into Prime so easily. They didn’t just understand the games that had come before. They understood the voiceless persona of its avatar.

Now, I will confess up front that I, myself, have never been to Africa. It just never came up. I’m aware of where it is, I’ve known a number of people who were born and raised in various parts of the continent, but I, personally, have never popped on over for a visit. Despite this fact, it has come to my attention that there are quite a few black people living there. Between Houghton-Mifflin, CNN, National Geographic, Eric Cartman or perhaps even Lethal Weapon 2, somewhere along the way I got the message. Many black people live in Africa.

As it turns out, this staggering pearl of wisdom is not limited to the United States. Over in Japan, where they also have cable television and access to globes, it is known that many black people live, as I’ve said, in Africa. So if a Japanese video game company (let’s say, oh, Capcom for example) were going to make a game that was set in Africa (where Africa /= Egypt), you might expect there to be many black characters featured in the game. Had Capcom developed a game set in Africa that was populated entirely by blonde haired, blue-eyed white people, it not only would have been strange, but it’s likely that a lot of people would have asked why they’d done such a thing.

As it turns out, populating their game with people who appear to actually be from the location the game is set in is a big no-no, especially if your character (as in most games) winds up shooting a lot of them. Enter Resident Evil 5, which is receiving a lot of “OMG racism” flak for exactly that reason. There is one particular blog that went off on a wickedly stupid tear on the subject, and I will not link to it simply because I don’t want the showboating attention stunter to get any more traffic than she already has.

Of course, the first three Resident Evils were set in the American Mid-West, and featured the indiscriminantly creepy killing of many white, white zombies. Resident Evil 4 was set in Spain (sort of), and the not-zombie enemies in that game were slightly more swarthy – dark hair, dark eyes, distinctly mediteranian looking. No problem there. I’ve played many games where the enemies were all Asian (Red Steel, for better or for worse, comes immediately to mind). And there seemed to be no outcry a few years back when those highly mediocre Desert Storm games hit the market. But RE5? A shit-fest of implied racism.

If the game featured dark skinned enemies based on the premise that you had to kill them because they were black, yes, that would be incredibly and embarrassingly racist. Even if the game featured mobs of black-skinned enemies who needed to be killed because they were dirty or impure or somehow less than human because they were black, that would also be racist (and in some ways, much worse). But the game features the enemies it does because of the location in which it is set, and the reason you have to fight these enemies is that they have been transformed from innocent people into vicious killers by an outside influence. Probably “The Man” come to think of it (where The Man = Umbrella Corporation). It’s only a matter of time before someone who isn’t getting enough web traffic decides that RE5 is a commentary of slavery. That’ll be a fun few days on Joystiq.

Of course, the other issue that seems to be upsetting people is that the central character is white. So it’s a white guy shooting black people. That he’s white because he was already white in previous games matters not, apparently. Though it does raise an interesting point. Suppose the central character was black. Would it still be racist? What if this newly pigmented hero was shooting packs of white people? And I mean, pasty-skinned white zombies, who were wearing Members Only jackets while playing water polo and listening to Toby Keith. Would that have sparked cries of racism?

Look, I’m not trying to defend racism or prejudices. I think they’re absurd, because if you really want to hate someone, all you have to do is get to know them personally – we’re all flawed enough to find an excuse. And I agree that there is still a shameful amount of racism in the world, even and especially in the Land of the Free. But stupid bullshit reactions like this do not fight racism. They trivialize it. They make it seem like an overblown joke. They excuse the real racism that hurts good, innocent people every day by lumping it in with this made up, oversensitive politically correct bullshit nonsense. Inventing racism where it does not exist furthers the cause of racism instead of diminishing it. And that is what is going on here.

But beyond the already terrible act of trivializing racism, reaction-spasms like this also make it harder to talk about the subject of racism in general. They add a finger pointing layer of obfuscation to the already murky and difficult discussion. They cause people to engage in verbal acrobatics to try to prove just how racist they are not, and those are exactly the sorts of acrobatics that wind up sounding like (you guessed it) racism. You don’t defeat racism by being a hypersensitive bitch, okay? And you sure as hell don’t fan the flames of self-constructed controversy just to get page views. Which is the only reason I haven’t suggested that assuming everyone else is racist might be, in fact. . . racist.

Oh snap! Bring on the flames.

So, anyone who has spent more than three minutes with it knows that Resident Evil 4 is a spectacular game. It is completely unnecessary to assign it arbitrary numerical values (usually high in the upper tenth of whatever rating spectrum is being employed) – in fact, it might even be a bit insulting. Resident Evil 4 isn’t just a 9.7. It’s a 9.7 that makes you shake your controller in spastic dread and exclaim, “Son of a bitch! Where did that thing come from?” at the top of your lungs.

When Capcom announced that they were re-releasing it for the Wii, my bullshit sensor went off. This was probably due, at least in part, to the flurry of GameCube titles that received a hasty, pointless Wiimote port over the first year of the system’s life. Splinter Cell was rendered maddeningly unplayable, and while Prince of Persia at least had some merrit, it was clearly just a port being re-sold at brand new prices. Considering that everyone who owned any video game system of the last generation (or a computer for that matter) already had access to RE4, I figured this was a dud title with no applicable market. I was wrong.

First off, Capcom acknowledged the obvious facts that the game is several years old, and that we’d probably all played it before, by launching the port at $30. I appreciated that. In fact, that places the title at only $10 more than the sticker price for the GameCube verison of RE4, and the new version includes all of the PS2 extended missions and a properly functional widescreen mode. Those almost make up the difference right there.

But, of course, the real highlight of RE4 on the Wii is the new control scheme. And notice I said highlight. I honestly think Capcom started the project as an experiment. How can a company take a traditional game and convert it to the Wii contol scheme without making it cumbersome and silly? The easy way to answer that question is to use an already established, polished game that requires a great deal of point-and-fire gameplay as your baseline. Resident Evil 4 was the obvious – perhaps the most obvious choice for a Wii port of any game in the past few years.

Now, some people claim Wii aiming is jittery or shaky, and a few reviews of Resident Wiivil reflected that. I have to tell you, honestly, I’ve never had that problem. Ever. I’ve played a Wii on a standard definition, curvy-faced 15″ television, on an ED 32″ tube, and on a 54″ HD projection television. They were three different Wiis and three different remotes played in twice as many lighting conditions. I’ve just never experienced any jitter that a fresh set of batteries couldn’t resolve (rechargable Energizers for the win). It could be that I rest my elbow on my knee or on the armrest of my chain and aim from the forearm. It could be that I am just a fucking deadeye. Either way, I get very good aim on the Wii.

In fact, I think the aim is too good. Honestly and truthfully. I tore through RE4 in a way I never imagined possible when I originally played it on the GameCube. Even with my knowledge of how most of the game would work, even with my better choices in weaponry selection, even with every advantage that I had playing it the second time around. I decimated that game in a way I never thought would be possible otherwise. I don’t think I fired more than a dozen shots over the course of the game that didn’t blast my target right between the eyes. I earned a bottlecap on every attempt in the shooting gallery. There were times when I thought, genuinely and tactically, “Okay, six enemies, eight bullets, I’m golden!” And yes, I mean with the 9mm.

There were points in that game that I just started using the Red9 as a sniper rifle, because my aim was so precise that it was both possible and economical to do so. What I’m trying to say is that the Wiimote actually trivialized the game. It made it too easy. Not that I never died, because occasionally I did (usually in areas where precision aiming gave way to either sheer numerical superiority or my early-level woefully underpowered shotgun). But a lot of the content was reduced to a fly swatting game, an through no fault of Capcom’s. It’s just that RE4′s movement and aiming system was never designed to accommodate such a refined and precise system of aiming. Having both the speed to whip my crosshairs from one side of the screen to the other, but also the careful finesse to aim, literally, centimeters to my left or right to line up a shot was simply more than the game’s mechanics could challenge. It made RE4 feel less like a console game and more like a PC game (which I’d always heard was easier for this exact reason).

Now does that mean you shouldn’t play Resident Wiivil? Pffft, of course you should. Professional mode returns much of the challenge to the game, and you can run through the game with less than optimal weapons (the Punisher 9mm, while low on stopping power, is crazy fun). People who didn’t play the PS2 version can finally access the Ada Wong missions as well. It’s a great game, and it is a precursor to where the series and the genre is going. It screams, “This is my potential!” with every loaded level and gurgling adversary.

In the mad, crazy rush for gaming realism, this three year old port has done more to create a realistic gaming experience than all of the pretty graphics in the world. Not that RE4 wasn’t one of the prettiest games of the previous generation, but the Wii version simply feels more real. It may be a sad commentary that, thus far, the game to best realize the Wii’s potential is a port with a control scheme slapped on top of it. But if that had to be the case, at least we can take solace in the fact that the game in question was of RE4′s caliber.

So, Manhunt 2. The sequel to a relatively unimpressive but pointlessly violent game from Rockstar, best known for their not quite as violent but incredibly impressive Grand Theft Auto titles. As anyone who connects to the webertrons might have noticed, it received an AO rating (Adults Only) and was even banned in several countries before it even hit the shelf. The AO rating more or less guarantees poor sales, because most game outlets won’t even sell titles with that rating on them (however, many of those stores that also sell movies will carry NC-17 titles, so go figure that out). So the AO rating really is the kiss of death for a new game, even one from as controversial and radical a studio as Rockstar. Sales of Manhunt 2 have been so crippled, that Rockstar is now going to reign the game in and tone down the violence levels to get it down to an M rating. And Rockstar? They couldn’t be happier.

No, really. Rockstar had no serious intention of releasing an AO title. It would be a waste of their time and their money. But, since their reputation is already completely shot with the watchdog segment of the gaming industry, announcing the release of an AO title was the best free publicity they could possibly muster. How many news outlets, non-gaming outlets at that, carried the Manhunt 2 story that wouldn’t even have blinked if it hadn’t been for the banning controversy? How much public interest, and how much morbid curiosity, has been drummed up by the release and withdrawal of the most violent video game ever? The guys at Rockstar are some sly devils. They know what happens when they launch just about any title and they were probably tired of the press crapping down their throats. Tired of being whipping boys on someone else’s slow news day.

Now the tables are turned. Everyone on the planet knows that Manhunt 2 is coming out. The downrated M version of the game is probably already finished or nearly so, just waiting to be sent to the ESRB for review. And the guys at Rockstar? They’re crying all the way to the bank.

At least, that’s what the AP bothered reporting to me today. It turns out that of the one hundred million accounts on Myspace, seven of them turned out to be unregistered sex offenders. Now, am I glad that they got caught? Of course I am. Do I acknowledge that there are some skeevy bastards on Myspace? Absolutely. But if you poll any given population of one hundred million people, you’re going to uncover just about every variation and deviance imaginable. You could probably find 7 necrophiliacs, 7 flat-earthers. . . maybe even 7 Bush supporters! Maybe.

The point, though, is that this likely wouldn’t have been a story if it hadn’t been on Myspace. Law enforcement did its job and caught some bad guys. Again, I’m glad to hear it. But if you think for a moment it would have warranted a full sentence, let alone an entire article, had it not had to do with “teh interwebs”, you’re sorely mistaken. It’s a non-story, disguised as news, designed to drive a wedge between old and young. Because computers are big and scary and strange. There are child molesters on your daughter’s cell phone and terrorists in your son’s closet. Be afraid. Be so fucking afraid.

Wii owners, you know what I’m talking about. The drought has been kind of rough, but not unbearable. Ever since Twilight Princess, there really haven’t been any system justifying games – the type of game you would be willing to buy the console just to play. There have been some good efforts, from Sonic to SSX to Wario Ware. But none of those titles really stand out, especially when you consider that for Sonic, simply not being a dog turd has become a franchise accomplishment of noteworthy importance. There have also been some flops, from Spider-Man 3 to the first-effort-and-you-know-it Red Steel. And then there is the remake machine, happily churning out new versions of old games, sans graphical improvement. I’m skipping Resident Wiivil 4, but since I never played the third Prince of Persia I did pick that one up (sometimes the controls are better, sometimes not).

Things look great on the horizon, though. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has a firm release date of August 20th. That’s a great relief, since all indicators up to that point suggested a holiday release, if not a 2008 launch. Metroid Prime 3 is a milestone for the Wii in a number of ways. It’s the first old-school Nintendo franchise being developed exclusively for the system. It’s the first time Nintendo will be releasing a brand new game, exclusively oriented around the Wii’s controls. And it’s a direct sequel to an existing and popular series – literally the two best games on their previous console. The expectations are enormous, because Metroid Prime 3 is the metric by which all other first-person style games on the Wii will be judged. And it will determine whether or not the hardcore gaming community embraces the Wii as a gamer’s platform, or whether it really will be another four years of Pokemon for Nintendo.

It’d be interesting to see the sales numbers on old copies of Metroid Prime 1 & 2 leading up to Corruption’s launch. And I think it’s pretty much a done deal that we will see Super Metroid on the Virtual Console sometime in July (finally). The truth is that Metroid Prime 3 is one of the three games that most gamers were sold the Wii based on. Once it is released, only Super Mario Galaxy will be left (and the word is that we can expect to see Galaxy in less than a year, though I can’t get any more specific than that).

On the upside of things, the other rumor is that development on the next Zelda title for the Wii began a very long time ago, since Twilight Princess was more or less a complete title and only needed a controller refit to move form the Gamecube to the Wii. That means we could be seeing a second Zelda in less than the normal 3+ year development cycle. Of course, that’s pure rumor. There aren’t even any vague, shadowy screenshots to back that up. But I’d suspect that a lot of Twilight Princess will find its way into the next Zelda game, since the Wind Waker feel has clearly moved to the DS, and the new more realistic Link has become a bit of a Nintendo staple.

That is the Link, for example, that we will be seeing in Smash Brothers Brawl, which we can also expect out before the end of the year. That one is going to be the holiday game on the Wii, you mark my words. Nintendo is trickling information on Brawl at a pace that maddens the mind and sometimes serves to highlight the current game drought, but at least it is coming. The other great news is that both Brawl and Corruption will be going online. For Brawl, that was damn near a necessity, though not being able to hear my friends scream, “Oh, you cheap bitch!” when I grapplebeam them off the edge at the start of the fight will sadden me a bit. I had hoped Corruption would go online, since the very slim multiplayer options in Metroid Prime 2 were pretty cool on their own, and Metroid Prime Hunters was actually more fun as a deathmatch machine than as a single player campaign.

But wait! There’s more! Nintendo may be dipping its toes into the world of downloadable games you don’t already have sitting in your basement. There has been talk of several non-VC titles for the Wii, and there is also the news that Geometry Wars is coming to the Wii and the DS. Now, obviously on the DS it’ll be a normal title. But on the Wii, don’t be surprised if it is Nintendo’s first download ready game. From the looks of things, these downloadable titles won’t have anything to do with the Virtual Console, and may occupy their own channel entirely. Personally, I care less about how they do it and more that it gets done at all. Oh yeah, and the Wii will be getting Guitar Hero III with wireless controllers. I’m just saying.

I can’t be any blunter with the title of this entry, and I wish I could say otherwise. But Spider-Man 3 is exactly what is wrong with gaming potential when it falls into the hands of sloppy coders. I was very psyched for this game, and after several days of trying desperately to like it, I just can’t bring myself to do it (and I don’t think I’m alone in that regard). Let me put it to you this way. If Uwe Boll made a game out of a movie, as opposed to the other way around, he’d make Spider-Man 3.

The bugger is, this game should have been a sure thing. There were at least three previous Spider-Man titles to work from, and each one was a substantial improvement on the one before it. The first movie tie-in set a lot of ground work for the new series, establishing that unless Spider-Man actually plays like Spider-Man, the game is a moot point. The second game, while flawed, was so thoroughly enjoyable that it was worth overlooking. Web-slinging and transportation became a veritable art form in Spider-Man 2, and no amount of cheesy New Yawka’ accents could bring that game down. And then Activision went and made Ultimate Spider-Man, which took a lot of what was raw about the previous titles, redefined it in a more comic book setting, and turned it into a very polished experience.

Which is why I can’t understand why Spider-Man 3 sucks so very badly. The first thing you notice are the graphics, which are just plain terrible on every platform. At first, I thought it might have just been a case of the Wii underperforming, but the graphics are equally bad on the 360 and the PS3. And when I say bad, I mean “worse than PS2″ bad. It’s absurd that the graphics on a Wii title should be weaker than the previous installment on the Gamecube, let alone a PS3 title being beaten by a PS2 title – that’s the widest divide in system performance from the last generation to this one.

Now, you know I’m not a graphics whore, but for me to notice, it’s substantial. The character textures are dreadful – I’d almost say N64 quality at times. The game slows down if you have more than six combat characters on the screen at once (so every third mission or so). The buildings are bland, and have a much worse pop-rate than the previous title. And despite their claims that New York City is much larger in Spider-Man 3, it certainly felt smaller and less real. And that’s no small problem, since the city itself is one of the central characters in the game.

I’ve lived almost my whole life next to NYC, and I’ve worked there in the past. I know the place. Spider-Man 3 could be any generic cityscape, the few landmarks aside. Spider-Man 2 had a beautifully rendered New York (not to mention a better textured one). The new NYC feels barren, often replacing industrial parks and well-worn districts with boring cut-and-paste buildings or, in some cases, just empty lots. They also took the weasel way out in 3 and just omitted the World Trade Center, where as in 2 they included a flat playing space and the memorial beams of light. I don’t even think that the Statue of Liberty is accessible (I haven’t bothered to try yet), and Roosevelt Island had its sidestreets-style setup replaced by just another generic patch of buildings and parks.

They also removed half of the good combat. Spider-Time (or whatever Max Payne analog name they used in Spider-Man 2) is gone, replaced by the black suit, when you have access to it, and adrenaline moves, which never seem worth the bother. A variety of Spidey’s coolest tricks are gone, including the ability to hang people from street lamps. Yet everything bad about the combat, from the repetitive attacks to the lack of a target focus or a way to change targets, right down to the dreadful camera options, all remained. There is no give and take in the combat. You’re almost always better off rushing an enemy, using your one melee combo, and then using Spider-Man’s insane jumping ability to take you away from your enemies so you can rush them and do the same thing again.

They also removed fall damage from the game, which I find greatly cheapens the experience. Half of the fun of webslinging was that it felt death defying. Spidey could drop a long way, but if you leaped from the top of the Empire State Building and didn’t latch onto something in time, you would splat. Now you just land carelessly on the ground. Crazy leaps were more exciting when there was a tiny bit of risk involved, and they helped maintain the Spider-Man constant of a hero that is very gifted and powerful, but also very vulnerable. Now it’s just an exercise in climbing.

The things they did improve are nominal. The street crime system is more interesting, where you can actually clean up crime in a district and track the movements of various rival gangs. It’s a shame, though, that doing a crime patrol is the same thing every single time. Each of the four gangs apparently only has about six quests apiece, and it’s usually four quests per patrol mission. They often don’t even make sense, as you will find yourself recovering dangerous explosives and handing them off to some guy on a street corner dressed in a wifebeater and jeans. And they removed some of the fun of rescue missions, by aways, always happening to have an ambulance about ten feet away. Grabbing a fall victim and racing back to the nearest hospital was infinitely more engaging. Additionally, the radar no longer shows the height of a given target, which makes the “find the tiny bombs planted somewhere on this building” quests even more annoying, especially since they often are obscured by the game’s poor draw distance.

The whole thing is just sloppy besides. Hastily and cheesily done. Half the time, voices don’t match up to the people you supposedly saved, and I’m talking basic things like gender. Sometimes a quest character will talk in two or three differnet voices, in fact. The game also apparently has to load and re-load the entire city every time you start or finish a mission, and has to load each quest one at a time – something Spider-Man 2 never had to do, so don’t tell me it’s a technical problem. This creates a very staged, choppy feel, because every time you turn something in, you have to wait for the game to fade out and fade back in before you can take off slinging. It’s a minor detail, but it’s very frustrating, especially since you will spend roughly 15% of your mission time waiting for the game to load almost nothing at all.

Speaking of missions, the plot-centric missions barely notice the movie at all. You only have three missions related to the movie plot, and the third one doesn’t even really pay attention to what happens in the movie (instead of an epic battle with a forty foot tall sand monster, you fight Sandman in yet another empty construction lot). And the difficulty scales constantly from annoying but easy to difficult for no good reason. Venom, for example, hits insanely hard, and none of your special moves or abilities work on him. So the boring trial of rush in, punch, jump away gets exasperated by the fact that if you screw up the timing more than once, you have to start the fight over. The only reprieve I got was that on the Wii, segments of the game that generally required a lot of sequenced button pushing were mapped to the motion controls, and were a bit easier to perform on the fly.

Speaking of which, I pity any poor bastard that bought this game and didn’t get it on the Wii. The only (and I do mean only) remaining joy in this game is the new webslinging. Despite the city being blander and the ground no longer being dangerous, slinging webs with the Wiimote is really, really fun. I suspect if this had been my first Spider-Man title, that would have counted for more. But I spent so much time zipping through the city in Spider-Man 2 that even with the very cool locomotion mechanic being cleverly adapted to the Wii controls, it’s just not enough to carry the game anymore. The only reason Spider-Man 3 hasn’t already been traded back in to GameStop is that I’m not done playing around with the motion controls.

Spider-Man 3 is also, so far the only game that managed to lock up my Wii and force me to reboot, losing a fair amount of progress. I still haven’t re-patrolled the entire financial district because the mission system is so tiresome. I may never finish the patrols in fact, considering I am already sick of the crime wave system and I’ve only cleaned out about 3/8 of the gangs. I simply cannot recommend this game to anyone, even if they are a huge Spider-Man fanatic. Perhaps especially if they are a huge Spider-Man fanatic. If you want to try out the webslinging on the Wii, wait until it gets knocked down to under $25. That won’t take long.

It’s a shame, really. I so wanted this game to be good. I think a lot of people did. Sony went through the bother of making an exclusive edition for the PS3 only (where the sixaxis controller lets you fly the Goblin’s glider). It strikes me as odd that they’d go through the bother and not even make the main game worth owning, even on their own system. Spider-Man 3 should have been a major highlight for both the PS3 and the Wii, as much marketing as there was. And it’s not like no one knew Spider-Man 3 was coming, so there should have also been ample development time, as well as a solid base to work off of (even just re-using the New York City from Spider-Man 2 would have been better).

I want to like Spider-Man 3. But I’m just not that good a liar.

So, I’ve had a lot of people ask me this question (and I know a few gaming sites covered it a while ago), but I never really posted on the subject until now. There are a lot of gamers out there that own a Wii but never owned a Gamecube. Which means there is an entire library of titles that they’ve never had access too before. With that in mind, I’d like to offer the following Necrocubing suggestions to tide you over until Spider-Man 3 comes out. This list, for obvious reasons, will not include games that were readily available on other systems (X-Box, PS2, PC).

Metroid Prime 1 & 2: I pity the poor, unenlightened bastards that have never played the Metroid Prime games. Even overlooking the obvious fact that Metroid Prime 3 hits this year and will likely make way more sense if you are familiar with the new incarnation of the series, Prime 1 & 2 are quite simply the two best console games. Period. They took an established 2D franchise and wrote the developer’s bible on how to translate a series into 3D while retaining the atmosphere, concept, play style and feel of the originals. But even if there wasn’t a legacy throwback to one of the most groundbreaking 2D games in 8-bit history and one of the most replayable games in 16-bit history, Prime 1 & 2 are simply brilliantly crafted games. They are difficult without ever being cheap, they are puzzlers without being mindlessly frustrating, and they strike a brilliant balance between the sandbox style of open world gameplay and the go-here-then-go-here questing methodology that far too many games force on players. The Metroid Prime series also served as one of the outstanding examples of what the Gamecube could do, graphically. The only bad thing about a Metroid game is that it isn’t even longer, and these titles retail for under $20 each.

Zelda: Wind Waker: Yeah, that’s right. Celda made the list, because it’s a great game. An imperfect game. Not nearly as polished as Twilight Princess or as accessible as Ocarina. But it’s still a damn great game. The lack of an overworld saddens, but the dungeons (those that made it to retail) are lovingly and brilliantly crafted, and if you can put away your ePeen for more than ten seconds, you will realize that there is something very inviting about the art style. I wouldn’t want to see all Zelda games redrawn in this fashion, but it honestly does feel like you are playing an animated movie. Again, it’s on the shelf in the sub $20 zone, and well worth it.

F-Zero GX: I should put a warning label on this one. If you’re a pussy, don’t bother getting F-Zero. It will bruise your ego and bloody your nose, even on the lowest difficult settings. It is the fastest, most difficult racing game ever published (where the difficulty wasn’t a result of poor game design, at least). In fact, it’s likely the hardest game ever released for the Gamecube, perhaps for any modern console. The Story Mode presents a series of brilliantly fun challenges, and the actual racing circuits are just brutally tough. There is also an amazing amout of customization available in the game, as you can really make your own car from a vast array of parts, colors and decals (and unlike most games, the custom designed cars can be some of the best if you get the right parts). This game takes no prisoners and accepts no pansies, but it is an example of what can be accomplished when Nintendo and Sega co-conspire to kick your ass and make you enjoy it. It also supports 16:9 and 480p, which is rare for a Gamecube game, as an added bonus. I’ve see F-Zero GX on the shelf for $12, new. Go buy it.

Eternal Darkness: This was a near-launch title that combined the survival aspect of Resident Evil with a very Lovecraftian story (Call of Cthulhu fans, this is your game). It’s a very dark, very adult title. To be honest, I can’t believe it was a Gamecube exclusive. But it’s also massively fun and devious. It features a sanity system, which is really the highlight of the game, that causes any possible variety of hallucinations – including hallucinations designed to affect the player, and not just the player’s character. Silicon Knights has promised that Eternal Darkness will be part of the trilogy at some point in the future, and it’s a great series to look forward to. This is another graphically impressive game that genuinely delivers. I bought it for $15, new, over two years ago. So should you.

P.N.03: I’m going to get some complaints about this game being on the list. It’s not for everyone, I’ll tell you straight up, and it’s very weird. Especially coming, as it does, from a major brand like Capcom. The box art makes it look like Lara Croft + Space Lasers, but nothing could be further from the truth. If you are a fan of old-school side-scrolling space shooters, if you enjoy complex enemy firing patterns, if you want to see something truly different being done in a third person environment, and if you want to see a cybernetic bounty hunter ballerina mistress blow up lots of really cool stuff, pick this one up. You can likely find it for under $10, if you can find it at all.

Killer 7: I’ve talked about a few of these games here before, but none quite so much as Killer 7. What a creepy freakshow of a game. Killer 7 is like a psychotic nightmare pop culture meltdown gamer’s version of James Joyce on PCP. It’s an odd, difficult to play, weird-feeling game that will really bother you. It’s also the precursor (if not in direct plotline than in concept) to Suda51′s No More Heroes, which Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear Solid fame) thinks is absolutely brilliant. It’s also the only game that will require novella-lengthed discussion walkthrough to understand the plot. It’s worth noting that this game was eventually ported to PS2, but since no one bought it for either system, I thought I’d include it on the list. Estimated price is $15.

Resident Evil 0: First of all, this is the only chapter of Resident Evil that is both worth playing and confined to one system only – the Gamecube. Unfortunately it is a pre-RE4 title, so it uses the older system of gameplay. But that’s nothing to scoff at, because Resident Evil 1-3 sold, you know, roughly a hojillion copies. RE0 brought with it everything you want and expect from a title in the series (and actually manages to improve the obnoxious inventory system while still making inventory room a game mechanic that needs to be carefully managed). It’s another example of a very mature title being released on the Gamecube, and to its credit it sold very well considering the hardware sales that had to support its purchase. For Resident Evil fans that were too hardcore to own a Pokecube, but wound up buying a up a Wii, this one is a no brainer. You can usually pick this game up for about $20.

Super Smash Brothers Melee: The good news is that it looks like Super Smash Brothers Brawl will be out very soon. But if you just can’t wait, and miss that N64 multi-player friend stomping action, Melee was a vast improvement on the original (even if the Donkey Kong stage music is obnoxious as all hell). To be honest, I’d wait for Brawl at this point. But if you’ve never played a Smash Brothers title before, and you want to see what the fuss is about before you drop $50 on the new title, give Melee a spin (note: better if played with friends) (note: best if played with friends who can’t kick your ass in real life for being cheap in a video game). It’ll run you less than $20, perhaps substantially so.

Ikaruga: Another game that does not screw around. Ikaruga is an immensely twitch-and-memory intensive 2D shooter that will make you harken back to the old days of 8-bit R-Type frustration and realize just how easy you had it. This game intends to be difficult and it shines in that respect. Also, unless you imported it for the Dreamcast, the Gamecube is the only place you can play it. It combines the classic elements of a shooter with the added trick of absorbing and discharging different damage types. Very often it’s not just a matter of avoiding attack patterns as it is knowing when to make yourself immune to one attack and vulnerable to another. It’s a thinking man’s shooter and a speed freak’s playground. Plus, it gets the Maddox Seal Of Awesomeness. Because of its limited run, you should expect to pay $40 or more for this title, even now. But if you like tough games, it’s worth the cost.

Mario Kart Double Dash: If F-Zero GX kicks your ass too badly, or if you just want a racing game that’s more party friendly, I have to suggest Double Dash. Those of you that have played Mario Kart DS should already have a pretty good grasp on the gameplay (some people have even said that MKDS is a scaled down but refined version of Double Dash). There’s no new Mario Kart slated for the Wii in the near future, and this game is still a blast with a few friends in front of a television. I can’t say I recommend it over F-Zero GX, but I can say it’s one of the most enjoyable and group-friendly racing games on the market. It should run no more than $20.

There are a number of great games I haven’t gone into detail here on (Pikmin, Zelda: Four Swords, the Resident Evil 1 and Metal Gear Solid remakes, etc.), but those are the ones I have the most personal and favorable experiences with. A few of them are eclectic, a few of them are hard to find, but any one of them is worth the price of a new game, let alone a bargain bin game. So troll the EBGames, hit up the used bin of the local GameStop, or just swing by a Toys R Us and see what’s still sitting on the shelf. You won’t be disappointed by any of these titles, and you can only play them on your shiny new Wii (sort of). Enjoy!

Just a side note for Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson and, apparently, Eliot Spitzer. The Virginia Tech shooter, officially, owned no video games. Congratulations, guys. You managed to get something wrong that Rush Limbaugh got right. That should be the media standard for permanent blacklisting, as far as I’m concerned. Please move on and find some other culturally acceptable scapegoat for this tragedy. Of course, in Rush’s defense(?), he also blamed the shootings on the idea that Cho was a liberal (an assertion supported by absolutely nothing, might I add). In this moment of psychopathic craziness, it’s good to know that the Rush Limbaugh Douchebag Constant is still to be relied upon.