Is Metroid Prime 3's lack of online really that bad?

Judging by this thread on the Nintendo forums, gamers are fairly divided when it comes to whether or not online multiplayer would have been right for Metroid Prime 3. Seeing this great divide, I decided to write up an article stating why I think Corruption is better off without it.



The Metroid name has been around since the early days of the NES, and it always offered an amazingly deep and extensive single-player campaign. The franchise has appeared on nearly every Nintendo system ever made, with the N64 and the Virtual Boy being the only exceptions. And, almost always, these games shared one major defining feature: They were single-player only.

Even as time went on and consoles had more and more controller ports and processors were able to render more and more characters on screen, Nintendo kept to the way things have always been, leaving Metroid a one person adventure. That is, until Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the first ever game of the series to offer multiplayer. How did it fair?

Sadly, not too well. Critics seemed to universally dislike the multiplayer mode. Also, all the extra time and resources taken to make Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer had a significant impact on the core game. It was significantly shorter than it's predecessor, and locations were used over and over repeatedly, resulting in never-ending backtracking. In the end, Echoes was significantly less well received than Prime.

Then, in 2006, Nintendo once again tried to appeal to those wanting more than just a single player campaign, and they did it in the form of Metroid Prime: Hunters on the Nintendo DS. The controls were precise, the weapons were greatly varied, there were seven different bounty hunters to play as, and the online play was smooth and generally lag-free.

But, at what cost? Sadly, all the attention payed to the online aspect resulted in a very poor single-player adventure. The story mode of Metroid Prime: Hunters was short, and bosses were recycled over and over again.

So then, it seems that we either get a quality single player experience, or we get multiplayer, and there is little middle ground. Many argue that the Metroid Prime label would lend itself quite well to online fragfests, but I hold firm in my belief that Metroid should always be single player. As I've said before, adding multiplayer would subtract significantly from the main game, as the developers would have to spread their workforce thin in order to achieve it all. Also, there is the matter of how much space is available on the Wii's DVD format. If Retro has made Metroid Prime 3 as extensive a game as they've wanted, little space will be left on the disc for multiplayer modes.

No, multiplayer in any form is NOT right for Metroid. Maybe one day Nintendo will make a 100% multiplayer Metroid, with all resources focused on multiplayer and multiplayer alone. But, as of now, fragfest lovers will need to go elsewhere for their fix. Metroid Prime 3 is single-player only, and no amount of griping will change that.

The Duck Has Spoken.