I'm currently in the middle of replaying Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as part of the Metroid Prime Trilogy, where again I'm going for both the Veteran and Hypermode difficulties. Playing Veteran mode first has actually a greater purpose this time, because with the goal of fully completing the game, I also want to finally get all Credits and Friend Vouchers and there were still some tricky achievement-like goals left, where some of it is simply easier to do on Veteran.
Friend Vouchers
Luckily, I received enough Green Credits to unlock everything in the Extras menu from people over at GameFAQs, when WiiConnect24 was still a thing. Today you can't get these Green Credits anymore, unless you're using a prepared savegame, but you can still get the Friend Vouchers, which were originally used to send Green Credits to other players.
There was also this trick, where you could send Fried Vouchers and then restore your savegame from a SD card to get them back, which is why I still had my total of 23 Friend Vouchers preserved. They are earned by clearing various achievements throughout the game, with 26 in total. This meant that I was still missing three achievements and I made it my goal to find and unlock them. Well, I still had to get those:
- GF Trooper Saved
- Flawless Escape
- Perfect Execution
Thing is that the game doesn't keep a list around of which ones you already got, so I had to make an educated guess. With "Flawless Escape" and "Perfect Execution" I was pretty sure that I never did those, because they are easy to screw up and frustrating to repeat. The other one completely eluded me, however. I had no clue, which one I could still be missing, because they all seemed doable enough. So, I had no choice than to try them all again one by one (here you can find an excellent guide by the way).
Luckily, it turned out that I originally failed to save one of the GF Troopers on the GFS Olympus sequence right at the beginning of the game, so I didn't have to keep looking and worrying for long. However, I still repeated the "Juggling Bonus 20" right before that, which isn't easy to pull off. But at least I didn't have to look any further. I suppose, when I first played this I was focused on the three Blue Credits, where you also have to save various GF Troopers, but I completely ignored this one.
So, this was easy enough, but sadly I can't say the same about "Flawless Escape". Getting this one was hell and it stagnated for over a week, because I couldn't do it. In the past I would try maybe once or twice and then move on, like any sane person would do. But since I'm now in it for the completion, there was no moving on until I got this.
And this created my personal nightmare of a Groundhog Day. You can't save right before this sequence, so if you screw up (and it's very easy to screw up here), you have to cross through half of Norion again, getting through the same scripted sequences again and again. You watch a Space Pirate getting blasted by a PED Marine, who then shouts "Hostile eliminated". You walk through Crawlmines and then destroy some actual mines. In the next room you have to wait forever, before the door opens. And then you have to skip two cutscenes with Ghor, who has the atrocity to block the way to the other Landing Bay, where the way would much shorter from there... This really made me hate Ghor more than already, where blasting his face with my Hyper Beam was more satisfying than ever.
Anyway, it takes about five minutes to retry the Ridley escape sequence and during that very short sequence it's easy to make a mistake. His feet hurt you, so you can't fully dodge to the sides. You need to be fast and precise here and it takes a lot of practice and some luck. Now, if the game had checkpoints like Metroid: Samus Returns, you could just skip back to the beginning of the sequence to try it again. Then it probably wouldn't take long to earn this Friend Voucher, because you can really practice it. But sadly Metroid Prime 3: Corruption doesn't have checkpoints and the extremely dull repetition of those scripted Norion sequences takes you out of it again and again, where it's hard to stay focused.
This really took a big hit on my motivation and it took me around a week to do it, before I could finally move on with the game. I started playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, right after I had finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes last month on May 21st, but I wasn't done with this Friend Voucher before May 28th...
I probably couldn't have mustered the motivation if I didn't also complete Super Mario 3D World the other day, where I still had to clear every level with every character. For this I also had to do the crazy Champions Road again, as well as the Mystery House Marathon, both two tough and lengthy levels, where you don't have any checkpoints. But at least there you stay focused all the time, there are no dull moments. While here you just walk through some corridors. It's needlessly frustrating padding and I really hope that the Metroid Prime Trilogy games will get checkpoints like in Samus Returns if they are remastered in HD someday.
As for the "Flawless Escape" sequence itself, to me it felt like the first part was much harder, because Ridley spams the laser more and goes in for a bite attack more quickly. In theory clearing this challenge sounds "easy enough", where you lure his laser attacks to one side and then quickly dodge to the other, but in practice it felt like the return of Metroll Ridley. Sometimes he shoots in the middle or at the opposite side just to confuse you and I would dodge right into the beam, because you have to dodge early...
The key to success was watching Ridleys head more carefully instead of focusing on the attacks themselves. If you focus on the lasers, you would need to dodge right when it starts, which then causes twitchy behavior, where you dodge, while you shouldn't dodge. But watching his head gives you more time to react properly, so I then finally did it after multiple evening of trying this.
It didn't take me as long to score "Perfect Execution", in fact I got it on my first try. But repeating this would probably be worse, because the game shuts you off from the last save point during the entire turret sequence on Bryyo. So, to repeat this, you would also need to destroy the first turret again, which is an annoying fight thanks to the endlessly spawning Space Pirates.
I hate this mechanic and it's also what makes "Perfect Execution" tough, because these Aerotroopers keep swarming in and they might even appear behind the turret, where you can't immediately hit them. On top of that you have to deal with the terribly unresponsive motion controls of the Grapple Lasso, where you might waste time trying to get a clamp down, which then results in a loss. I was lucky, though, and I could do it despite these difficulties on my first try. This is still a terrible Friend Voucher, however...
Gold Credits
With that I finally had all 26 Friend Vouchers unlocked, but I was still missing a special Gold Credit called "All GF Troopers Survived". Or at least I thought, I was. There you have to make sure that all 20 Demolition Troopers survive on the Pirate Homeworld, which isn't the easiest task. You have to be really aggressive, use Hyper Mode almost all the time and make sure that none of the Space Pirates can take a shot at your comrades...
Again, I was in a Groundhog Day situation, where you do the same sequences over and over again. And that pitching sound of a GF Trooper dying really started to get on my nerves. But when I finally did it nothing happened, which had me really baffled. "Is this a glitch?" I tried it again, but again for nothing...
It turned out that I already got this Gold Credit on Normal Mode back in 2009 and I was simply miscounting the Gold Credits on the aforementioned Credits Guide. I was counting how many Gold Credits I was missing in the Extras menu (18), and then compared it against the number of Hyper Mode bosses mentioned in the guide (17). I thought I was one short, but defeating the Commander Pirate on Hyper Mode also rewards you with another Gold Credit, which wasn't included in the boss count of the guide, but as an extra entry, which I had missed when checking. I simply assumed that I was missing the most difficult one, while I wasn't really missing anything at this point.
Well, I still have to beat the game on Hyper Mode and I will hopefully collect all Gold Credits then. The biggest challenge will probably be Mogenar, who didn't gave me much trouble during Veteran Mode – he didn't even regenerate his orbs once. But I've tried him on Hyper Mode once before and it didn't go well... my run ended at that point. So, let's see, how this will go this time.
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