I got myself a copy of the Japanese "New Play Control ! Metroid Prime" yesterday. This post is mostly for you people planning on getting the Metroid Prime Trilogy.

The good : you get about the same action you got in MP3:C with the free aiming. I thought before it would turn the game incredibly more easy and boring but I was wrong - it's the opposite ! The way enemies move were set according to the GameCube's controls so when you're playing on Wii, they'll move in a fashion which makes them usually a lot harder to hit. That is, if you have Lock-On Free Aim activated (which I recommend). I can safely say that I got my butt wiped quite a few times just because of that.

The bad : while free aiming makes for incredibly better fights, it also means you'll constantly be turning the camera. So you'll often bump into walls and/or objects lying on the ground if you're not careful. Even jumping on a platform will be a challenge if you constantly used L-Jumps and Spring-Jumps back on GC.

There's a learning curve for everything, so in a way you'll be discovering the whole game again. It's a good thing if you weren't expecting updated graphics and/or anything else GS users kept flooding the MP1 board with.

There ARE few minor differences in the game though, mostly contained in the cutscenes. For example, in the opening one when Samus jumps off her ship and lands on Orpheon, you'll see two very brief bursts of fire coming out of her suit's back. It's a good justification for a jump I always considered worthy of Action Replay.

So, I believe it's worth it for the other die-hard Metroid Prime fans. It's funny how simple controls can make all the difference.