Metroid Prime 3 and the Work Fireworks

I spent a lot of the weekend playing through Metroid Prime 3, the rest I spent failing to keep up to my target for NaNoWriMo.

Metroid Prime 3 is pretty good, if Red Steel is the text book example about how not to do an FPS on the Wii, Metroid Prime 3 is a text book example of exactly how it should be done. You use the wiimote to aim and control the spin and for the occasional interaction, the nunchuk controls the strafe and locking on to a target with Z. For shooting you use the A button rather than the trigger B button, which jumps, though you can reverse them. initially I wondered about this but after a short while it feels pretty natural plus the few extra options you can select are then in handy reach of the thumb.

The camera and motion work perfectly you never feel like you are fighting the control system to get it to do what you want. The game is quite good too, quirky in the way Metroid always is with a fair amount of back tracking as you get the various upgrades. The motion control stuff for the most part works well and never feels tacked on as it has done in a lot of the wii games. It adds some nice sections that use the unique possibilities of the wii like some of the door locks being a set of concentric circles with a piece taken out you have to line up by twisting and some of the circuit repair puzzles they might normally accomplished by some sort of tile game or something uses the wiimote pointer to weld a broken circuit back together which works very well. The lash grapple thing can be a bit hit or miss but for the most part works well. I'm glad they didn't implement the morph ball using the wiimote as a balance, they just use the nunchuk but allow you to jump the ball with a flick of the wiimote. Story wise it's interesting enough most stories in FPS's a pretty weak this seems reasonably good, it kept my interest.

Anyway on to the next topic. Today is November the 5th or bonfire night here in the UK, so work arranged a nice fireworks display as well as some pretty decent grub for the whole office to attend. It was good fun I took a few pictures with the firework setting on my camera most are abstract light squiggles but a few came out OK. It was a good evening. The embedded slide show thing for the photos appears not to work but they can be found Here