Well, it’s official:
Metroid Prime 3 won’t have any online multiplayer. I was pretty pissed about this for a while, as I’m sure many other gamers were, and it kind of feels like Nintendo is abandoning the hardcore gamer in favor of kiddies and grandmas. After some ranting to my friends and a little
research, I changed my mind a bit.
Retro Studios has said that multiplayer wasn’t in the cards for Prime 3 pretty much from the beginning, and that long, agonizing delay was honestly just for gameplay tweaking, to make the game more balanced than Prime 2. I’m trying to think of Prime 3 as the Wii’s Bioshock; neither is going to have online multiplayer, because both are trying to change FPS gaming in some way (Prime 3 with controls, Bioshock with depth and gameplay).
The only thing that makes Prime 3 hurt a little more is that the PC and 360 already have tons of great online games, and the Wii doesn’t, so Prime 3 multi could’ve really helped. Still, I wouldn’t want Retro to cram in a half-baked multiplayer just for the sake of doing it. Yeah, Nintendo still have their collective thumbs up their rears in regards to
online play, and a great multi FPS could change that, but Prime 3 just isn’t the game to do that. I wish we had something more appropriate to look forward to, that didn’t have the words Red, Steel and 2 in its title. I guess I should be happy that we’re finally getting something besides crappy
minigame collections for once—the Wii has had enough glorified tech demos.
