Metroid Prime (Gamecube, 2002)

After an 8 year hiatus for the Metroid franchise, they decided to revive and create a new game. They outsourced to an American developer known as Retro Studios. This game was created as the first 3D game in the series, and it's also technically a First Person Shooter. Oy...I'm not so sure about that...First Person Adventure sounds better. But still...I bought my copy a year ago, and I was skeptical about the whole first person thing, and I decided to play it just to say I did and give it an honest shot. Sigh.

So I played it and....................I LOVED IT!!!!!!!! It was absolutely fantastic. It was also a huge success in general and sold a buttload of copies. Anyways, without further ado...

Story

Samus came across what appeared to be an abandoned space vessel, known as Frigate Orpheon. She landed and began to investigate. It appeared that the frigate had recently been attacked, and several dead Space Pirates were littered everywhere, and there were a few injured Space Pirates that attacked Samus, so she put them out of her their misery. It would seem that following the events of Metroid NES, there were surviving Space Pirates, half of whom constructed the frigate and began taking over Tallon IV (read as 4, not I.V.) which is the fascinating planet that Samus will soon explore, and the other half went back to Zebes and began rebuilding, which is later discovered in Super Metroid.

After exploring the Frigate, she encountered the Parasite Queen. After slamming her with a few missiles and dropping her like a ton of bricks, a self-destruct sequence ensued. (Surprise, surprise!) Samus hauled ass out of there, going through what seemed to be engine pipes. She got out of the tunnels and caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a cybernetically enhanced version of a familiar nasty pterodactyl skeleton dragon. An explosion slammed Samus against a wall and caused almost all of her power-ups to malfunction. She was left with her basic power suit and power beam. Oh shoot! She made it to her ship just in time to escape the frigate as it exploded and crashed on Tallon IV. Samus also landed on Tallon IV to investigate.

Samus prepares to explore Frigate Orpheon

Samus went through different areas of the fascinating planet, and regained her powers and then some. She discovered that Tallon IV was apparently a colony for the Chozo, as there were ruins left over from where they used to reside, along with some artifacts spread out all over the planet that Samus needed to collect to gain access to the final area. Samus encountered a whole bunch of baddies, including a variety of Space Pirates. Some of these pirates required Samus to use specific beams to defeat, and there was also a big, nasty one called Omega Pirate. There were also...you guessed it...metroids! Apparently the Space Pirates were cloning metroids. Samus also came across the aforementioned dragon, who is now Meta Ridley. The "Meta" sure makes it seem scarier! Samus discovered a highly toxic substance called Phazon which mutated a lot of monsters and plant life. Samus needed a special suit to be able to touch it, the creatively-named *sarcasm* Phazon Suit. She collected this suit after wasting Omega Pirate.

After she collected all of the Chozo artifacts, she fought and beat Meta Ridley. After defeating Meta Ridley, she teleported to the Impact Crater. This was a cavern full of Red Phazon, which was way more caustic than it's blue cousin. It even eats through the Phazon Suit. There were also Fission metroids, which were extremely tough metroids that would split into two metroids that could only be killed with the beam that matched the color of their nuclei. (Yellow-power, purple-wave, gray-ice, and red-plasma.) After getting through the large room of the Impact Crater, Samus entered a cavern where a really strange looking monster lurked. This was some kind of odd-looking Phazon-mutated metroid known as Metroid Prime. It had an outside shell which looked spider-like, and Samus had to use beams according to Prime's color, in the same way that she had to with the Fission metroids. She finally defeated this form of Prime, and it shed it's outer shell to reveal it's true form, which was a floating head with nuclei and tentacles. This form was way tougher, since it could only be damaged if Samus stood in a Phazon puddle and absorbed the Phazon and fired it as a beam. Prime put up one hell of a fight, but it still fell short. Samus laid Prime to waste. Before Prime went down for the count though, it (she?) tried to draw in Samus, but instead absorbed her Phazon suit. (Sounds like sequel material!) After the fight, Samus escaped the unstable crater and summoned her ship. Before entering her ship, she observed the collapsing temple. She took off her helmet and seemed a little concerned. She then left the planet.

Meanwhile, back at the collapsed temple, something strange was going on. Where Prime was defeated, a dark hand with an eye on it emerged from the ruins of Prime. Apparently Prime wasn't through just yet. (Sequel!!)

Samus battles Metroid Prime

Gameplay

Ok, so the gameplay turned out to be awesome. I'm not a fan of first-person shooters by any means, and as I said before, I was very skeptical of this game. Since it was Metroid I decided to give it a try. It turns out that this is an action-adventure-exploration game that happens to be in a first person view. The controls were rather simple and easy to use, compared to a typical FPS. This is more appropriately called a first-person adventure, since it's based more on exploration and finding stuff. Yes, you do shoot and kill enemies, but it has more meaning than "see if you can get a kill-chain" or "blow this guy's head off and get extra points." You fight many bosses to regain certain power-ups, and you simply just find other power-ups and run and gun and solve puzzles on the way. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this first person view, since it gives you a feeling of what Samus is actually seeing as she ventures through Tallon IV.

Samus prepares to fire the Ice Beam

This game retains all power-ups from it's predecessors except for Space Jump and Screw Attack. (Which kinda sucks.) It also introduces several new features, including the Space Jump Boots, which allow Samus to double jump in first person view. There are charge combos, which the familiar Super Missile is a part of. The other three are new. Charge combos are a combination attack that uses missiles and your beam. These are the Wavebuster (wave beam combo), the Ice Spreader (ice beam combo), and the Flamethrower (plasma beam combo). Of course the Super Missile is the power beam combo. All of these do devastating damage, although the Wavebuster and Flamethrower use a ton of missiles. Another new upgrade is the Phazon suit, which is this awesome looking suit of black, silver, and red with an orange visor. This game introduces different types of visors. The scan visor allows you to gather information on creatures, bosses, items, areas, lore, and research. This visor also allows you to activate many different devices. There is also the Thermal visor, which lets you detect objects and creatures in the dark by enabling Samus to see objects by converting heat waves to visible shapes. Finally, there is the X-ray visor, which allows Samus to see disappearing enemies and invisible platforms, and of course through certain walls.

The Wavebuster being used against Metroid Prime.

The rest of the gameplay was really good, despite some difficulty, including areas, items to obtain, and bosses. There really wasn't a dull moment in the game. After a while, when going through the Chozo Ruins, you encounter Chozo Ghosts in certain rooms. These ghosts are corrupted specters who can really be a pain to fight before obtaining the X-ray visor. Most of the bosses proved to be formidable, some of them were downright frustrating. Meta Ridley was certainly a fun fight, but it got frustrating when he got on the ground and started charging at you. That was difficult for me to dodge. Metroid Prime was even more difficult but fun. You had to shoot Prime with beams that matched the colors on it's body. I mentioned the gist of this fight in the story section, but I did not mention that sometimes Prime cloaks itself, making you have to use the Thermal or X-ray visor to track it down. It was a fast paced battle, and sometimes Fission metroids and Space pirates would appear to make the fight even more difficult. It was very satisfying for me to finally defeat it after several tries. I found it easy to get lost sometimes, and some items are hard to obtain, but not impossible, since I was able to achieve 100% completion in this game.

Graphics 

Actual gameplay footage

Ok, I think it goes without saying here. But I will say it anyways. The graphics were amazing! For being a Nintendo Gamecube game made in 2002, the graphics are about as good as the gameplay graphics in Other M. The cinematic graphics were really good as well. The different looks for the arm cannon based on which beam is activated was a really nice touch, and the beams were very well animated. The surrounding areas were very well done and made Tallon IV seem like it could be a real place and not just some manufactured video game environment like in Other M. I also must mention that when Samus walks through steam or water, her visor gets dewey and it looks very realistic. Of course, I can't forget to mention that sometimes if there is a bright flash, you can see Samus's eyes reflected in her visor. Awesome.

Totally awesome.

Music/Sound

As for the music, only one word can really describe it: Ear-gasmic. The music for this game is absolutely beyond fantastic. It seems to have a kind of pop-techno theme to it, and a lot of the tracks have the "X-Files whistle" which really adds to them. One of those tracks with that whistle melody is the title theme, as well as the menu theme. I think my favorite track in the whole game is a toss-up between this one and this one. The first one is a theme for the Phendrana Drifts Deep Lake Area, and the other one is the Meta Ridley boss fight theme.

The sound effects were pretty darn good as well. I may only have one small complaint, which is the sound effect used for the power bombs. It sounds like some weird whirring noise, so I feel like it doesn't really do the power bomb justice. Other M's sound effect is how it should be done in my opinion. This is the first Metroid game to introduce any kind of voice over, but there are no spoken words, just Samus grunting when she gets hit and screaming when she dies, along with various monsters growling and grunting, and of course, Metroids squeaking. A lot of the sound effects really added to the atmosphere of the game, like when you enter a room and and you can hear distinct squeaking....meaning that there are Metroids in there. Other times, when you enter a room, after it goes dark, you can hear the shrieking of the appearing Chozo Ghosts.

Overall

Ok, so my skepticism was very much quelled when I played this game. Despite it being in the first person view, the game was fantastic. Honestly, I think the first person view added to the suspense and intensity of the game, since players pretty much see things exactly how Samus sees them. This game does have some difficult boss battles, but they certainly are not boring and they are not impossible to beat. The entire planet was very fascinating and a real treat for the eyes. I'd recommend this game to anyone who wants to try a Metroid game.

Some of the cons are this:
Some frustrating boss battles
Some expansions are difficult to obtain
It's somewhat easy to get lost
The fission metroids exist
This game has an end

Rating

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
10 out of 10. Well done, Retro!

Samus observes the collapsing temple after defeating Metroid Prime.