21st May 2005, 7:16 AM
Quote:The E3 demo is only set up for four-player wireless gameplay, but PGC has learned that the single-player mode of Hunters is well into development and is going to be more faithful to the series than you might think. The adventure spans several planets and has some of the exploration and upgrading elements of past Metroid games, but it's also infused with the bounty hunting theme that is prevalent in the multiplayer mode.
The story is essentially about Samus competing among other bounty hunters to retrieve a set of artifacts, which are scattered among the different planets. You travel among planets with your ship, although the player can't control it directly. Each planet is its own unique world to be explored, though it's unclear whether the level design will follow the pattern of the GameCube's Prime games. Instead of mutated native species for bosses, you'll face off against one of the rival bounty hunters already being seen in the multiplayer mode. If Samus wins, she'll win one of the artifacts. If she loses, the game continues on, but the other bounty hunter will take the artifact and flee to another planet, so Samus will have to track him down and defeat him for good.
As for upgrading, there probably won't be new movement upgrades in the tradition of the series, but there are a total of eight weapons to be found, and it seems that once you find them, they are in your inventory permanently. So the weapon upgrades do seem to work as usual in that respect. A big difference, however, is that Samus can only carry two weapons (plus her trusty power beam and missiles) at a time, and the rest are stored on her ship. Different areas and enemies will call for particular weapons, so there is some strategy and perhaps puzzle-solving involved in choosing the right weapons for the job. You can return to the ship to switch out weapons, of course.
Metroid Prime Hunters is still being billed as a multiplayer-centric title by Nintendo, but this new information should give hope to Metroid fans looking for a fix on the DS.
http://www.planetgamecube.com/previews.c...ile&id=304
Sometimes you get the scorpion.