Otakumegane
Member
Playing through trilogy, recently finished Fusion. And dang. The other space pirates are total scrubs compared to those in prime 1.
In the 2D Metroids the regular pirates have this dumb looking design with the non intimidating claws and usually are killed in 1 charge shot or a missile. Honestly these enemies usually were more of a minor annoyance than an actual threat and their beams were slow and easily dodged.
Now in the Metroid Primes, the design of the pirates change from game to game but in primes 2 and 3 they are just bitches to some other higher power and design wise feel much less threatening.
In Prime 1, Samus starts the game off on a pirate ship, but all of it's people are either dead or heavily injured and don't pose much of a threat. But the game tells you that it isn't their full strength. Now, once Samus lands on Tallon, it takes a long time (3 areas or so) until the next pirate encounter, but all the while it builds it tension for the inevitable conflict by the use of logs and hint scattered around. When you finally do encounter the pirates at Phendrana, the 1st one is a stealthed melee one that rushes right up to you and makes you go "Holy shit" before managing to kill him. Pirates in Prime 1 have a much larger health pool overall and their design feels much more badass and dangerous with their glowing flaming eyes, darker color scheme and the stance they take. Many times where you fight them, it is complete darkness and you have to rely on the thermal visor. It's also the 1st instance in where the aerial pirates will attempt to suicide bomb you as the die in a last-ditch effort. You know that they are fking taking charge when they infuse themselves with phazon willingly and copy Samus' weapons. And then we have this whole metroid breeding plan and the phazon mines. It makes you think that the Space pirates are intelligent, highly organized, and fearless on their quest for power.
Then we have Primes 2 and 3. Now I haven't played too much of Echoes but I found that the Space Pirates felt the most threatening when being controlled by the Ing. In Prime 3, you encounter them from the beginning of the game, they lost all their bulkiness from Prime 1 and have this weird colorful red and blue thing going on. They have very little armor and die extremely easily. (Remember that game of catch they had going with the power cell early in the game? That did wonders for their image). Not to mention that in Prime 3 they are wholly subservient to Dark Samus and for most of the game you don't get one glimpse into their mindset only to find out that they went out like a bunch of pansies.
Seriously what happened to the whole threatening atmosphere they gave to pirates during Prime 1? They made it really feel like Samus has facing the great adversaries with each encounter.
In the 2D Metroids the regular pirates have this dumb looking design with the non intimidating claws and usually are killed in 1 charge shot or a missile. Honestly these enemies usually were more of a minor annoyance than an actual threat and their beams were slow and easily dodged.
Now in the Metroid Primes, the design of the pirates change from game to game but in primes 2 and 3 they are just bitches to some other higher power and design wise feel much less threatening.
In Prime 1, Samus starts the game off on a pirate ship, but all of it's people are either dead or heavily injured and don't pose much of a threat. But the game tells you that it isn't their full strength. Now, once Samus lands on Tallon, it takes a long time (3 areas or so) until the next pirate encounter, but all the while it builds it tension for the inevitable conflict by the use of logs and hint scattered around. When you finally do encounter the pirates at Phendrana, the 1st one is a stealthed melee one that rushes right up to you and makes you go "Holy shit" before managing to kill him. Pirates in Prime 1 have a much larger health pool overall and their design feels much more badass and dangerous with their glowing flaming eyes, darker color scheme and the stance they take. Many times where you fight them, it is complete darkness and you have to rely on the thermal visor. It's also the 1st instance in where the aerial pirates will attempt to suicide bomb you as the die in a last-ditch effort. You know that they are fking taking charge when they infuse themselves with phazon willingly and copy Samus' weapons. And then we have this whole metroid breeding plan and the phazon mines. It makes you think that the Space pirates are intelligent, highly organized, and fearless on their quest for power.
Then we have Primes 2 and 3. Now I haven't played too much of Echoes but I found that the Space Pirates felt the most threatening when being controlled by the Ing. In Prime 3, you encounter them from the beginning of the game, they lost all their bulkiness from Prime 1 and have this weird colorful red and blue thing going on. They have very little armor and die extremely easily. (Remember that game of catch they had going with the power cell early in the game? That did wonders for their image). Not to mention that in Prime 3 they are wholly subservient to Dark Samus and for most of the game you don't get one glimpse into their mindset only to find out that they went out like a bunch of pansies.
Seriously what happened to the whole threatening atmosphere they gave to pirates during Prime 1? They made it really feel like Samus has facing the great adversaries with each encounter.
