Metroid Prime

With monsters like this, I'm not sure it was a good idea to move from 2D to 3D. They tend to freak me more out, when they come in three dimensions...

Metroid Prime is like New Year. After midnight you look forward to a new year and rarely ever look back. You’ll feel likewise, when you play Metroid Prime for the first time. I'm sure your old 1st person games for your console again will lose a lot if not all of their attraction. That’s simply because Metroid Prime is the best game for the Nintendo GameCube so far, and it’s probably also the best 1st person game for a console yet released.

Metroid Prime is the first Metroid game in 3D – the games used to be side-scrolling action-adventures. Some concerns were raised when it was announced that Texas-based Retro Studios were to develop the game, but they proved to be the perfect choice for the task. Metroid Prime is best described as a mix between a 3D shooter and an action adventure game with lots of exploring.

This is a lady's world

The star of Metroid Prime: Samus Aran

Once again you play as the female bounty hunter Samus Aran, who must face the space pirates and their hideous plans. Make no mistake – Samus Aran is by no means a gentle, understanding girl. Actually she could probably turn Duke Nukem into a friar just by staring at him... So our heroine clad in a shining red and gold battle suit follows the space pirates to a planet called Tallon IV, which is filled to the brim with technology, monsters and genetically engineered enemies. Of course the task is to overcome everything the space pirates throw at you and get back home before the next episode of Simpsons. Or whatever Sams Aran enjoys in future's equivalent of TV.

Normally I don’t write a lot about controls in a review, since they typically can be customized to your individual liking. However, in Metroid Prime the controls are the first thing you’ll notice. I’ve never played a 1st person console game with such logical and natural controls before. Even in the fiercest battle you’ll automatically and without any thought push the right buttons at the right time. One of the best ideas is the auto-aim system, which works perfectly and even lets you circle a target without ever losing your lock. Normally such a feature could ruin a game, but that’s not the case in Metroid Prime.

Every woman needs a suit

Samus' battlesuit helps you defeat the countless bugs, monsters and pirates in the game

This is due to the fact that Retro Studios have decided to simulate Samus Aran’s battlesuit. You don’t just wander around like you did in Red Faction. You’ll actually believe that she’s wearing a suit, when you wander around. There’s a graphic delay when you turn your head, so the displayed HUD will not move at the exact same moment as you move your head. It really gives you the illusion of wearing a helmet. Sometimes you’ll also see steam, water or acid fluids on the outside of the glass, and a bright flash might cause Samus’ face to be reflected on the inside. Therefore the auto-aim function doesn’t ruin the illusion, it really feels like a natural feature of your battle-suit and it certainly doesn’t causes the game to be too easy. Metroid Prime isn’t a fast-paced action shooter like Unreal Championship, and you can only defeat bosses if you use gray matter between your ears.

You’ll also notice the simulation of the suit in other details. You must hold down the right trigger and move the analog stick in order to look up and down, and Samus can’t just look right up in the sky or at her feet. The suit actually restricts her head movements as it would do in reality, too.

I see through you

Your battlesuit also lets you use different kind of optics, which are vital, since a large part of Metroid Prime is about exploring and discovering things. In the beginning you only have a primitive scanner, but later you’ll be able to pick up a heat sensor and an X-ray sensor. The X-ray sensor is just as essential as a good excuse when arriving four hours too late for an exam. Without it you can’t detect enemies that use advanced kinds of camouflage and thus are invisible.

Back-tracking has always been a trademark of the Metroid games, and because of the more advanced sensors, you find later on, you’ll often visit areas more than once in order to get all goodies. To change between your different visors, you just use your D pad.

Samus' got a Gun

You have to figure out how to kill the boss monsters. Here you need to shoot, when the shield is not protecting the parasite queen

However, you can’t do with optics and visors alone. You need guns and lots of them, and of course Metroid Prime doesn’t let you down. All the classic Metroid weapons are present and you are not just limited to choosing between a power beam, an ice beam or a plasma beam. You can also create extremely powerful combos by using both a beam weapon and a ballistic missile. With these offensive capabilities, the battlesuit and the nearly perfect auto-aim feature, Samus becomes an (almost) invincible bounty hunter, which supports the story nicely. Thus it’s not unbelievable that she single-handedly has to defeat the space pirates and their monsters.

However, you don’t have to fear that the game is too easy. Many of the smaller bugs are just cannon fodder, but the pirates and especially the bosses can challenge even the most experienced players. You’ll often fail the first time or be very close to fail, you meet a boss monster, because you have to figure out a specific tactic in order to defeat it. But the game is never unfair, and this is why you’ll keep trying, because you can be sure there IS a way to get past every challenge and every foe.

One big world

Metroid Prime never loads a new level. The whole planet is one big map. And believe me - that's a great experience

A distinct feature of Metroid Prime is the fact that you don’t play through one level after another. Once you get to Tallon IV, you’ll one vast world. Of course the environments range from jungle to desert ruins to high-tech, but all areas are still connected to each other and you will never experience any loading time.

That's because Metroid Prime uses a very clever system, which streams new areas in the background as you move along. It’s actually very amazing, since the surroundings are so detailed and vast. This is one of the features of Metroid Prime that really demonstrates how old-fashioned nearly all 1st person games are. You just feel much more as a part of a living, real world than if you move from on separate level to the next. Although the technique works perfectly in most cases, and you can access nicely detailed maps with you Z-button, I sometimes felt a bit overwhelmed with the freedom, though. Where to go next? A few more hints would have been nice. But still I prefer this system, and Retro Systems deserve a lot of praise for their open map design.

Great ball of morph

When you transform Samus into the morph ball, you can use small passageways

Retro Systems are very faithful to the previous games. If you’ve ever played one of them, you’ll remember the morph ball, and you’ll be happy to find out that it’s also a part of Metroid Prime. Samus can turn into a small ball, and the game switches to a 3rd person point of view and thus you gain access to areas via passageways or rubble that you can’t pass normally. With a little practice you can also use energy bombs to make huge leaps, and you gain the ability to ride along certain magnetic streams. The ball is a perfect example of Metriod Prime’s great gameplay. Once you learn to use the ball's abilities (or for example the X-ray visor's abilities), the game really opens up and you just keep on playing, because you get more and more choices and possibilities all the time.

One convention too much?

This shot clearly shows you both the effect of the HUD and some of the impressive graphics

So Retro System have certainly captured the feeling and essence of the previous games in nearly every aspect. However, I’d prefer if they had left one of them were it belongs – back in the 90s. I’m talking about the respawning of enemies. Soon after you leave an cleared area, the enemies respawn and you have to blast your way through them again, if you need to backtrack. And because of the open nature of the Metroid Prime world, you’ll need to go backtrack a lot. I really hate this convention, although I know it was a part of the previous games. In my opinion it ruins the illusion that you actually play in a real world and that your actions matter. It’s frustrating and the standard of modern games have clearly moved beyond this method.

But this is about as much as I can complain about. I’ve already mentioned some of the graphical effects and could continue filling several paragraphs of text with great examples. Metroid Prime pushes the GameCube to its limits. Textures, lightning effects, environmental effects, and animations – all are superb and there are virtually no letdowns. The same goes for the music, which seem very inspired by synthesized music from the 80s and the 90s and fit right into the sci-fi theme. The FX is also great and your weapons sound just as dangerous as they actually are, however the game would have done better with a little speech to give Samus personality.

This is how the Metroid series started back in 1986, and Metroid is also included in Metroid Prime and should prove to be a good retro experience.

Metroid Prime supports the connectivity feature between the GameCube and the GameBoy Advance, and if you own Metroid Fusion for the GBA, you can unlock a complete port of the original Metroid game, which was released back in 1986. You can unlock lots of other stuff such as a harder mode, if you complete the game. Features like this add to the already impressive experience that Metroid Prime is. If you need a reason for buying a GameCube, this game is that reason.