Pixel Pushing Monkey

Warning: This post is undoubtfully, 100% emo.

Traditionally, I only post emo stuff following you know, some sort of a heart-breaking event in my life. This time really isn't any different. Yes, there is a heart-breaking event in my life (of a very typical & easily guessable nature). However, that event in itself isn't to be talked about here in a public forum. As far as this post is concerned, that event only serves as a catalyst for me to think about posting something here that is related to the mood itself, but not the subject matter. It also serves to explain why this "blog" uses a publicly available template, instead of a customized, made-just-for-me template that all proper designer should have.

The heart of the matter is, I loathe everything I make.

I had a conversation with my best friend last night, it was brought up that I have this huge void, a yearning and desire to be loved. She thought that I wanted to be loved by everybody as much as I loved myself, seeing that I always seem to self-righteous and stern about my ideals. There's no question that she was definitely right about my need to be loved, but the reason is actually opposite of what she thought. I don't love myself, not even a little bit.

Part of being a designer is that you need to have very firm belief in what you're doing. Design is subjective, although you may support your design choices with as much rationalization, facts and data as possible, you can't avoid debating over subjective opinions. For example, if I chose a shade of light green as our branding color, I can support that choice with the rationalization that it is a friendly, approachable color. Thus allowing our brand to stand out against other brands which are more tech-oriented, with a clearly defined male-dominant target audience. At the same time the color will not turn away the tech audience by being too effeminate. I've made this choice based on my experience, my personal opinion, and gut instinct.

So when someone asks, "Why can't we go with blue?" Or even better, when someone says, "I really don't like green, we should go with a color that's more, you know... (insert your choice of pretty/normal/like what that other company does/pink here)." As a designer, you need to have the conviction and confidence to stand up for your point of view. This need for conviction is why I seem to be self-loving. "Steve thinks he's always right," is a statement of what I seem to be in front of others, not necessary of how I process thoughts internally.

I like to blame my job for this weird personality disorder of mine. It is also very possible though, that I chose this career because of that personality disorder. So in a way, I would've been the same whether or not I'm a designer, but by some strange twist of fate I happen to have a personality disorder that allows me to perform better at my job.

So, I have no love for myself. In its place is really a constant stream of self-doubt, insecurity and self-loathing. I can't really explain how or why it started, it goes back for as long as I could remember, even as a child I was introspective in the worst way possible. I'm constantly examining my own faults, and rarely happy with any of my accomplishments (if one could call them accomplishments-worthy at all). Worst of all, is that even under this constant self-examination, endless number of personal flaws still slip through the crack. Thus the endless cycles of self-examination, loathing, and fixing what isn't fixable.

How is this an essential part of my creative process? One of the most important lesson that all designer must learn, is that everything has flaws, faults, and must be critiqued. If you can't identify what is "wrong", you can never figure out what is "right". Then you may or may not look at what you've just corrected into the "right" and try to determine whether or not the new "right" is now also "wrong" as well. The only thing that stops the cycle, is the deadline imposed by some other department outside of the design process. This pursuit of perfection will never end, and perfection doesn't exist.

When I'm done with a major design project, I usually sit back a bit, admire all that has been accomplished, and feel good about my existence in the universe for a few brief moments. It's only a matter of time before I find flaws in what I just accomplished, then there comes the fear and desperate hope that no one else has noticed the same flaws I just found. "How did I let that one get away?" "That color isn't right." "I should've done something different here." And it's only a matter of time before the momentary relaxation turn into another round of complete self-loathing.

Yes, I loath everything I've ever created.

There was a time when my portfolio was small enough, and my ambition for my own design-oriented website was just a few pages. I designed the website over the weekend, have everything coded, up and running by the end of that weekend. If I had any time at all to go through the self-examination process, it just stops. I hate what I've just created, I must destroy it and rebuild it again. This is also why PixelPushingMonkey has no real website and no real design of mine at the moment. I have not found enough time to complete this massive project in as short of a time as possible, before the self-loathing kicks in, before I want to destroy it all just to rebuild it half-way again.

I guess, this is the quality that makes me at least somewhat decent at my job.

It is also a very slow deterioration that eats through my very own being, a bit at a time, making that heart devoid of self-love even more empty. The void continues to grow, and my yearning for love goes along with it.

It would be a misnomer to say that the cycle never ends, because at some point, I imagine, I would have to stop. I would collapse, I would give it all up. At some point... maybe.

I could let it continue to eat me up inside, or I could force a change of perspective on my own life. How do you change someone into something that they're not, that they've never been? I don't think it's possible to change one's personality and their belief in life by rationalization and willpower. Aren't we all exactly just as dysfunctional as we're meant to be?

For the moment, the void is manageable.

I spent the past week thinking of a clever title for this post, to my failure and disdain, that which you see (yeah, up there, look up) is the best I can come up with.

As a bit of background, Purple Violets gained a bit of attention as the first movie directly released to iTunes as an exclusive before it is available either as a direct-to-video release via DVD/VHS/rental or in the theaters. This move generated a bit of media coverage which probably would've never occured via any other channels, and the film would likely have died an obscure death, or relegated to the bargin bin in Best Buy.

However, Purple Violets' release is not just a play on generating media hype. The nature of the film itself is almost exactly the opposite of that. I am reminded of a few years ago, when horror movie genre was gathering steam yet again, and there were a lot of hype generated around some horror film fest (something akin to the 4 horror films you'll never see, major studio will never release, or one of those all-weekend horror film b-flick marathons... or something); and the films all turned out to be forgettable, mediocre waste-of-my-time-and-intellect (what little is left of that last part).

Purple Violet is *not* one of those films that would've been dependent on media hype to just be seen. It is a very frank, straight forward and non-assuming film about relationships and human interaction. It doesn't provoke any new revelations or truth about human nature, it doesn't have any real controversies to induce emotional conflicts from its audience. Most of all, it does not attempt to make you cry and weep to prove that it is in fact, a very romantic & emotionally engaging film.

To put it blandly, this film is simply about people who had made mistakes in their lives, especially in regards to their choice in relationships; and how they were given another chance to rediscover what they might have been, and what they have lost. The dialogs aren't dressed up with unnecessary complexity, they're delivered naturally without pretense. Part of that I attribute to the script (written by Edward Burns, who is also the director), and a part of which I attribute to the wonderful casting (Selma Blair's best work). The story itself is refreshingly linear, you always know where the movie is going, and it never once pretends that it's going to veer away from that path.

This movie reminds me of Next Stop, Wonderland, which is another romantic film that delivers its content without dressing. Due to the likable characters and the tenderness of its plot, you can't help but fall in love with the characters in the film. Purple Violets reminds me of how good a film can be, without trying to be anything that it's not.

I can't take credit for the title of this post, it's really just a part of the discussion on one of the TWIT podcast this past week (or was it the week before? I can't remember). Last week Google announced an astonishingly underwhelming software platform. I mean, it's not horrible or anything, it's just disappointing that a lot of people were expecting Google to throw their hat in a complete consumer product, rather than a half-assed promise to deliver some sort of product nine months from now which may or may not be any good.

Well, Google released the Android SDK today. The SDK was pretty impressive, giving us a good preview of the the OS user interface (via Engadget). However, one can't help notice how much the "mockup" looks like a Palm Centro, or any myriad of Palm or Windows Mobile device that's been available so far. One also can't help but notice how the UI takes many lessons from iPhone's UI. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose, but didn't everyone expect a *lot* more from Google than just another software platform that looks just like any other software platform?

I listen to podcasts when I bike to work every morning (my form of reading the newspaper while having breakfast?), and one of the panelist on TWIT made a lot of sense, although I can't recall it verbatim (and I'm too lazy to listen through a one-hour long podcast to find the exact quote). Whenever Google can't conquer a market, they fragment.

Take for example, the "OpenSocial" initiative that Google just started. Google had their own social networking property (www.orkut.com), which was almost completely forgotten as a footnote to all their other services. Facebook became the monstrosity that overtook MySpace, which long before had overtaken Friendster. Orkut, however, was nowhere in anyone's distant memory. By introducing OpenSocial, Google is undoing Facebook's dominance in building web applets specifically for their service. In away, it seems like a move that benefits every developer, who can now develop for every social networking site (other than Facebook) and support many "platforms" at once. Of course, the "side" benefit is that Google has planted the seed that could possibly unseat Facebook from its dominance at the top, and also insert themselves as the tour-de-force of any social networking site that may eventually take the throne.

Taking a look at what they've done with Android, they've essentially fragmented any previous mobile Linux development, again inserted themselves at the helm of the movement. Furthermore, they've even fragmented the Java development community as well. CNet's Crave blog has a great post on this, which touches on some of the issues with Android's SDK and overall Java development. Of course this isn't all bad, since Java in itself is a platform that has failed to satisfy anyone. However, once again it shows Google as a very shrewd company at being able to project themselves as a kind, gentle company that can do no evil; and at the same time, position themselves as the titan that is able to undermine an entire industry in one fell swoop.

Who does that sound like? You know it, it's on the tip of your tongue, you know exactly who I'm talking about.

Yup, Apple.

Google's Open Handset Alliance is exciting, because geeky programmers around the world just all simultaneously orgasmed and are now struggling to hold their drool inside what is presumed, to be their oral cavity. To be frank, that was not my first response to the announcement. I had a really, really busy day at work when Google hit the press; so my first impression was, "Oh, there are some new info on the Googlephone, great!"

It was another day of soul-searching later, that I said to myself, "Wait, is that all there is to this news? That's it? Really? You mean, I didn't miss anything? I mean.. I combed through my RSS reader for hours and hours looking for more detailed information, something more exciting, something with actual substance.... and... really? That's it?" For at least a few hours, I thought I was caught in some sort of temporal anomaly and was missing vital information that Google has apparently announced to the entire world minus little ol' me.

The truth is rather, disappointing? Underwhelming? Indeed, the news outlets were positive on Day 1, and almost all universally speculative and introspective on Day 2. How many times have we been promised a "mobile phone OS based on Linux & open-source"? This harkens back to the Linux PDA days, and we all know how that went. The only difference between Google's announcement and all the other dozen open-source mobile OS initiative, is that Google has a lot of money. Shitloads of money. Certainly a lot more money than open source Linux companies that's been trying to figure out how to make any money at all by doing, anything and everything?

Of course you'll see an impressive list of partners, it's Google for god's sake! Everyone jump in the pool! The question is, how many of those partners really have any product development plans? How many of those partners will be looking for their own competitive advantage once the SDK is out? How many of those partners will actually, actively contribute to the initiative once they realized that they are at very high risk to put themselves out of business?

The answer for now is, "It's Google, they'll make it work." We'll see what develops in the coming months. I see it as Google just throwing a piece of SDK out there, and allowing the sharks to battle it out for supremacy. After all, taking this strategy really means they have very little stake in any particular company. It's a smart way to position themselves, as a software platform provider that doesn't really care which hardware wins out. If Sony Ericsson develops something great and put HTC out of business, so be it. If Nokia collapse (well, they haven't made a commitment to the consortium at all yet, probably a smart move at this point for them), it really doesn't matter to Google either.

I'm starting to see a bunch of executives & software engineers from companies gather at a coliseum built in Google's backyard (or maybe by naval airbase or something), and someone from Google is sitting atop in the Emperor's seat and just giggling at the bloodshed that's about to happen.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the way that Google is going about this. In fact, it's probably the smartest thing they could do to get into the mobile device arena without actually becoming involved in it. The style just disagrees with me on a personal level. I like companies that design end-to-end solutions that satisfies consumer needs. For example, Tivo is a great company that threw themselves into the heat of the battle, and forever changed the way we interact with televisions.

That kind of a company earns my respect. Google's Open Handset initiative makes me wonder, "Is this just going to be a Linux version of Windows Mobile?"

Since I got my iPhone, I've been buying a lot of TV shows on iTunes, so I can carry them with me and watch them wherever I am. Most of the time that watching is done when I'm in my room, right before bed (I don't have a TV in the bedroom right now). However, the freedom of watching a TV show or a movie when I'm out eating dinner (by myself, of course, that would just be rude in the face of other company), or waiting in line at some place, is quite priceless.

So I was a little disappointed when NBC decided to have a bit spat with iTunes, and decided to pull all of their shows off of iTunes by the end of the year. What really gets to me, is how senseless the arguments the media companies are raising against Apple. This doesn't pertain to just NBC, but all media companies dealing with iTunes as a whole.

Think back to when Universal was negotiating with Apple for their new music agreement. Their argument was that they're not making enough money from iTunes Music Store, they want more control over pricing. Similar arguments has been brought up over the years with Apple multiple times, and they're all along the lines of more control over DRM, more control over pricing, more profit for the record labels. Time and time again they insist that they can't make enough money from iTunes Music Store alone.

Yet, look what happened these past few months. EMI started selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes, and doesn't seem to be hurt by it as much as bolstered by it. All the other studios started offering completely DRM-free tracks on Amazon MP3 that sold for as little as $0.89 per track, depending on albums (although the misconception is all tracks are available at $0.89, they are not. Most out-of-print album tracks are $0.99, similar to how such albums costs more than new releases at record stores). They have agreed to sell less restrictive & less expensive music on Amazon, meanwhile telling Apple this is precisely what they cannot ever afford to do.

Now with this NBC deal, they're complaining about revenue, about not making enough money. Same arguments as the record labels had with iTunes. At the same time, they're going to be bringing out their own video service that allows you to watch entire shows for free (albeit with advertisements) and even embed videos on other sites in a very web 2.0-friendly fashion. So now they're just serving up bandwidth and going back to relying on advertisement-based revenue models. Do they really make that much more money from webcasts compared to selling the shows? I'm sure the studios makes a huge amount of money from DVD sales of TV shows. Meanwhile iTunes' sheer volume may not be as much as DVD sales now, it is a developing market that will probably grow bigger over time as we steer away from solid-state mediums for media delivery.

Furthermore, NBC's little tirade about how much they've helped the iPod, and how they should get a share of that iPod sales revenue, is utterly ridiculous. Has RCA, Sony, Sharp and other TV manufacturers been sending part of their revenue to television stations? Obviously TV as a delivery medium wouldn't work without the TV stations. So why isn't NBC charging TV makers a fee for delivering their shows to millions of homes everyday?

We'll see how this whole thing plays out. In the end, AmazonMP3 might take over iTunes Music Store, but that's only because iTMS was there to pave the way first. Maybe Hulu.com will succeed, or maybe it'll be a massive failure. Whatever happens, the end result probably wouldn't impact iPod sales a slight bit. After all, no one's stopped buying TV's because NBC doesn't have any interesting shows on Wednesday nights, right?

During the tedium of the work day grind, I have all sorts of weird IM conversation with my friends. While we're talking about what we had for lunch today, I brought up one of my minor annoyances with... I'm not even sure to whom this one would be directed.

Why do we have asian/chinese "chicken" salad? Our cuisine covered an entire spectrum of all sorts of dead animals, why "chicken"? Is there a perception that Asian people only eat chicken, or somehow the only ingredient that you can mash into a salad from the entire range of Asian cuisine is chicken? Why isn't there Asian barbecue pork salad? Asian fish salad? Well, if you really need to stay within the realm of poultry, how about Asian duck salad?

Of course, the mere fact that we have a certain salad created to cater to our culture is funny. I mean, growing up in Taiwan and all, Chinese people don't eat salad, ever. Salad is clearly not a part of our traditional palette. So first we have our named tagged onto a type of food we don't make, then have it limited to only one type of meat.

There is one possibility I have yet to consider though, maybe all Asian chicken salad strictly forbid the use of any other type of chicken excepted the ones imported from Asia...

Wow, that's a whole 'nother mess of complications.

As I'm sitting here re-ripping my entire CD collection into MP3's again (something I should probably detail in another mundane & boring post), it made for a perfect chance to put down a few thoughts I had playing through the beta of Tabula Rasa, well, what little I can stand of it anyway.

With Tabula Rasa, I had the same problem getting into the game as I did with all other sci-fi-oriented or alternative MMORPG's that tries to defy the traditional fantasy convention. There are a lot of game-related knowledge that doesn't have to be explained in fantasy-based RPG's. A lot of conventions are inherited, preached, rehearsed from years and years of fantasy literary work. Even those who aren't into the whole RPG scene, understand the basic nature of the medieval-derived culture.

Here's a pack of hungry wolves, they'll probably bite me. Here's a dragon, that's really bad. I have just acquired a new plate mail armor, which is definitely stronger and sturdier than my previous chain mail armor. Picking up a bigger, two-hand sword probably means I do more damage than a one-hand sword, but swings much slower. Learning a new fire spell that shoots out a bigger fireball, is probably better than the one that shoots out a smaller one (unless, the smaller one is a completely different spell with a bigger concentration of heat in a small package!). Lastly, a blacksmith does exactly what a blacksmith does, and a leatherworker or an alchemist is unlikely to be taking care of farm lands anytime soon.

These are all conventions that one can easily assume when stepping into a fantasy world, and fantasy based MMO's doesn't have to explain those items & mechanic in as rich or deep of detail for the gamers to just step into the game to understand. One of the elements that made World of Warcraft so immensely successful, is the speed you can get into the game without having to read or think much about it. Hey, pick up a quest here, it'll teach you what you need to know. Go find this trainer here, and they'll teach you what you need to know. Combine that with the normal conventions that you're used to, it makes for a game that works without having to pick up an instruction manual and dig through forums of information before you even start playing.

With a game like Tabula Rasa, I get the exact opposite feeling. Sci-fi thrives on inventing new terminology and technology. While this works extremely well in other entertainment mediums where the explanation of the technology is a part of the story, it really suffers in games, especially a MMO where there are massive amount of knowledge that has to be acquired already. The preference is that these knowledge will be slowly acquired over time, as in: What does 1 point of strength do for my character development? Exactly how much +hit% do I need? Those are the detailed, geeky math that you get into once you're really deeply involved with the game. On the outset, you want the basic information to be taught to the gamers as soon and as easily as possible.

Without prior knowledge and conventions, a sci-fi MMO has a much larger task ahead of itself when it comes to the education of its populace. It has to teach you that one type of armor is better than another, what this weapon does versus another. Is a plasma rifle really as useful as a shotgun given your training & talent point allocations? Even the very basic neccessities of the game has to be "taught" somehow transparently to the gamers. If you had to force the community to reach to an outside source to understand what's going on inside the game, even at the very beginning, then you would've created a huge barrier of entry and preventing you from ever building a large & successful community.

I've only played Tabula Rasa for a total of 2 hours on my character. This is exactly how I feel.

I don't understand what's going on, I don't understand all the conventions & technology. I can't even figure out how to equip spells that I supposedly had already trained, then had to take my web browser to a wiki site to figure out how to activate my abilities. Even after learning what I have to do, I failed to do so because by that point, I'm too annoyed by the game to want to play it. Lastly, of course without understanding the conventions and technologies, it makes crafting an impossible variety of jargons that I can't even start to think about.

The combat system lacks a certain amount of involvement that's required to keep me interested. What WoW did very well, even with its bloated number of spells & ability in the game now, is making sure that each spell & abilities you used had a purpose of some sort, and you had to use a combination & variety of them to be successful. This was evident very early in the game. This is not quite so evident in Tabula Rasa, where I am not sure why I would use spells versus armed weapon in different situations, or whether there would be any value to ever use one or the other. What I choose to do, seems completely random and have very little effect on the outcome unless I'm specifically told to "use lightning spell on this boss."

That is not to say that these spells & combat system will become more purposeful as you get to higher level, but if I don't sense that amount of clarity now, there's no reason for me to progress beyond the current tedium. It's more likely for me to think, "OMG, there are how many more of this pointlessly-firing-at-whatever I have to do? For how many levels?" than to consider the fact that the game will expand into some richer & more satisfying.

So, I guess I won't be playing Tabula Rasa when it reaches final release. Here's hoping Hellgate: London turns out much better.

It took me a few hours to upgrade to WordPress 2.3 last night. I don't have the coding prowess of some out there, so it wasn't exactly unexpected that it would've been a painful undertaking. However, upgrading to WP 2.3 was even more difficult than I had expected due to the new tagging mechanism built into WP 2.3 (which I had known about beforehand, but wasn't expecting any issues).

Upon installing WP 2.3, I immediately was being fed errors due to the use of Simple Tagging plugin that I had before to manage tags. I had to disable Simple Tagging, then import the tags into WP's new format. The import process was pretty easy and smooth. However I immediately found that there are no tag management UI built into WP 2.3 at all. Good thing that someone had already wrote a plugin to help manage tags, but it's perplexing that you would have a blog that supports tags without any UI that help manage tags.

Furthermore, the tag cloud display that shipped with WP has no options whatsoever. It just displays a cloud, it doesn't give you any customization capabilities. You can't display a list view that I had before (although arguably I may stick with the cloud view anyway). Although there are a few early plugins that can help you customize the tag cloud display just a little bit, none of them had the flexibility of the Simple Tagging Widget.

Of course, retaining Simple Tagging isn't possible, because the database structure that Simple Tagging used before is completely invalid with WP 2.3. So even though now there's an "official" tagging structure in place, overall it is much less effective and usable than previous third party implementations. Over time, there will be third party enhancments to the built-in tagging mechanism for WP 2.3, but I'm really disappointed in how bad the out-of-the-box experience is.

When I first got my iPhone, I noticed that some of the black looked weird on video playback. I thought it was just a problem with all iPhone screens. Then the reports about iPod Touch's "negative black" screen came out, I got suspicious that some models of the iPhone exhibited the same issue as well. Seeing Engadget's post about iPhone display problem yesterday confirmed my suspicion.

I immediately scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar, went in and exchanged my iPhone after work. The concierge at the Genius Bar was taken by surprise; he said it was the first time he's seen this on the iPhone, although it was seen plenty of times on the iPod Touch already. He promptly exchanged my iPhone, and I walked out the Apple Store within 10 minutes of my appointment with a brand new iPhone and a much better screen.

The customer support experience I've had with Apple has always been very good. Although I do wish that I didn't have to do that with almost every first generation Apple product I've purchased. I have exchanged an iPod Nano that couldn't play Apple Lossless formats (even though it played everything else just fine), older iPods where the hard drive failed after less than a few weeks of usage; and my Macbook Pro's power button has sunken in, which means I will have to take that to the Apple store eventually down the road.

Despite how well their products are designed, it's also pretty widely known that first generation of any Apple product tend to have some unforeseen issues. I still remembered how the first TiBooks had a misaligned CD/DVD drive that can get your disc jammed and permanently stuck inside. Why can't they just iron out these launch issues... pre-launch? Oh wells, at least I have a pretty screen on my iPhone now.

Metroid Prime 3 Corruption is almost without a doubt, the best game released on the Wii thus far. It pushes the Wii's graphic engine to show that pretty games, even though not at HD resolution offered by other platforms, is still possible. It also shows that the Wiimote control scheme works almost (and I do mean almost, because it doesn't quite get there, read on...) brilliantly with the right software programming. However, that is not to say that the game itself is without flaws. Despite the fact that Metroid Prime 3 garnered good reviews from just about any major outlet, I found some of the gameplay elements lacking and frustrating.

First we have to talk about the control of the game. Even though it is indeed the most fluid and well-calibrated use of the Wiimote so far, it still isn't quite accurate enough to really get it right. There are basically two options to how you control the game, you can opt for the traditional, complete lock-on as offered on Gamecube before; or you can opt for the semi-lock-on, which allows you to lock onto the enemy and strafe around, but still aim your gun manually. The full lock-on makes encounters against non-boss enemies a joke, just lock on, move around and fire away blindly until the enemy dies, and find another enemy to lock onto. In contrast, the "advanced" mode controls is accurate most of the time, but it does lose tracking once in a while, and it's easy to lose your cursor when tracking starts to get erratic. Before you know it, you're staring at your feet trying to get the sensor to pick up the Wiimote properly.

An interesting side-effect of the contrasting control schemes, with one being overtly easy and the other being "moody", is that the game pushes you towards the easier control; but the boss fights would be way too easy with it. So on many boss fights, your control scheme automatically returns back to the advanced mode, with manual aiming being mandatory on many fights. This caused some early confusion as I was playing through the game, as there's a big red cursor for the boss that I've locked onto, but just a tiny little red cursor for where I'm actually firing.

Another sign that the control scheme is still buggy at times, is when you have to interact with switches in the game. I admit that the level of interactivity with the switch, many of which employs a variety of pull/twist/push mechanisms adds a whole level of immersion into the environment. At the same time, I've yet to come across a single switch in the game that just worked the way it was supposed to. Most of the time it fails to detect some of the motion I performed, and requires repeated push/pull action for the control to pick up at least some of the movements Similarly, the morph ball "jump" is controlled by a swing of the Wiimote, which often has problem recognizing multiple jumps performed in succession, causing some unnecessary grief in complex manuever situations (such as a bomb double jump with the morph ball).

Even with these flaws, the control scheme still offered a level of immersion that's hugely appreciable. Except for those long boss fights where you can feel your shoulders getting sore, and at some point you just want the boss encounter to be over with. If minor control problems were Metroid Prime's only detraction, I would've still loved this game. Of course the flaws doesn't end there.

For Metroid veterans, you guys know what this game is all about. A mixture of some action elements, a lot of puzzle solving, and backtracking through previous levels to uncover new areas that you couldn't reach until you've upgraded your abilities. Metroid Prime 3 still follows this tried and true formula, but I was really hoping that the series would progress and take that concept to a new level.

Puzzles are fun when they can be resolved quickly as to not disrupt the pace of the game. What worked well in Metroid's 2d incarnations has never worked all that great in 3d. Finding a hairline crack to bomb on a 2d map was relatively obvious & easy. Finding the same hairline crack to bomb open, so you can use your morph ball and solve the puzzle in a fully realized 3d world is much harder. There are plenty of times when I got stuck running around the same area over and over again in attempt to solve a puzzle, only to find that I missed a little crack there, or I missed a double jump into a dark & vacant space that's practically unidentifiable. That's *not* good game design, when there are potentially too many points where you can get stuck trying to just get through a room to your next objective. At some point you would think that game testing would've caught these mistakes. Looking into every dark crack of every corner of every room, is not my idea of a good time.

The amount of backtracking, although a stable in Metroid's gameplay, is also an outdated gaming element that should've evolved or just scrapped altogether. Visiting the same level that I've beaten 3 times before just to open up one more door, and get through 3 more rooms, is again, *NOT* my idea of a good time.

Overall, I think Metroid Prime 3 is a swell game, by far one of the best game on Wii. Does it qualify as a great game in comparison to Gears of War, or BioShock? Probably not, but Wii fans will have at least something to play that isn't just another cutesy, casual title.