Progressing in Metroid Prime on Hard

Friday, April 16th, 2004

Currently playing the excellent Metroid Prime again for my recent Metroid series addiction that started with Zero Mission. After about 7h 40m with 54%, I’ve reached where I left off on my last try through Metroid Prime on the Hard difficulty, the Phazon Mines. The whole guantlet of space pirates to get through with no save point on the way frustrated me so much from trying again and again that I quit playing, and I had enough of Metroid Prime at the time.

This time things were different. I started using some better techniques to dispatch the enemies in this game, like firing missiles at a fast rate by manually pressing A to close Samus’ cannon so another missile could be shot quickily, instead of waiting for the missile delay. The Ice Beam works wonders against space pirates, just manage to freeze one and blow it away with a missile. Against the wave beam pirates, I knew charging up the wave beam and then firing would stun them, what I noticed now, specifically with the boss fight with Thardus, was that the charged wave beam is ready as soon as the sphere appears. It doesn’t have to be fully charged to fire and be effective. So this way as soon as the wave beam pirate is free from being stunned, I can hit him again. The normal yellow pirates just take some evasive action and super missiles.

It was normally that by the time I reached the room with the invisible sentry drone, or if I was lucky enough to even make it that far, I’d die around that point. Perhaps my recent experience with Metroid, Zero Mission, and Super Metroid made me notice the clever construction of this room.

Like the infinitely respawining enemies that are used for refill stations in the original Metroid, so too were these platted puffers. Of course, this was why this area was giving me a hard time! This was why this long stretch of doom was so hard and there was no save point where there seemingly should have been one. Before I had just rushed through this room because of the puffer infestation and deadly gas, my energy count already being low. Unless your going for some mind exploding speed run through Prime it will take a while, but the puffers will give off 20 energy point refills and missiles. Now I shouldn’t have a problem finishing the game on hard mode.