My review of Retro Studios' Sci-Fi Masterpiece
Shortly before my original purchase of Metroid Prime, I played Metroid Fusion and fell in love with the game and the series immediately. I went out and bought Metroid Prime. I was unsure about the game at first. The screenshots looked like a first person shooter. But I took it home and put it in my GameCube.
It is difficult to describe in words what is good about Metroid Prime. Is it the graphics? The environments? The perfect, fluid gameplay? All of the above.
Visuals
The graphics are impressive, but it's not just graphics that amazes me as I play the game. It is the art, design, and visuals. This game brings atmosphere to a whole new level never before seen. The art and design are beautiful. The atmosphere is downright overwhelming. Raindrops splatter on your visor as you walk through the forest. Water runs down when you emerge from a river, and condensation clouds your view when you stand near a broken pipe or small waterfall. The environments are perfectly designed. The camera is flawless, and particle and lighting effects beautifully rendered. The sound track is very atmospheric and moody. The architecture is amazing. Again, it is hard to convey fully in words. The game is quite simply a work of art.
Gameplay
The first thing I want to say is that this is not an FPS. It controls nothing like a usual FPS and the focus is not on shooting. It is, first and foremost, an adventure game, and a really good one at that. The focus in this game, like any other in the Metroid series, is on exploration. Your character is a loner, a bounty hunter named Samus Aran, who pursues the evil Space Pirates to the world of Tallon IV. Once there, you learn of a strange chemical known as Phazon, which is infecting and mutating the local wildlife. The Space Pirates begin experimenting with the Phazon and use the mutating properties to enhance their army. I don't want to spoil much, so I'll leave it at that. The story is not explained in the usual way you'd expect. The cutscenes usually serve to establish something important (such as Metroids breaking out of their containment fields and slaughtering their space pirate captors, which leaves you in a rather bad position), or give you a hint as to where you need to go. There is no dialog. You can choose whether or not to learn the story in the game. Samus has a nifty new feature in her suit- a scan visor. You can scan virtually every object in the game. Every item, every character, every creature, every computer panel. You can read various people's logs on their computer panels or read orders from their superiors. You can translate various ancient messages left for you, and often scanning creatures lets you put two and two together (you may have read about an experiment earlier in the game that relates to the creature you are fighting, for example). As everything you read is stored in your log book, it becomes a novel of sorts, detailing the engrossing storyline. You can choose to ignore the story and not scan anything you don't have to, but then you miss out on so much and the puzzles become much, much harder. The storyline is great, and one of the best of any game on the GameCube.
Your goals are similar to other games in the series. Samus' suit is damaged in the beginning, and you lose basically everything. The game world is one giant world, and miraculously, there are no load times. From what I've gathered, the game automatically loads the adjacent rooms to the one you are in- by the time you reach the door the next room has been loaded. Thus, you never see a loading screen. On occasion, when rushing through a room you've already been through, the door doesn't immediately open because the next room hasn't loaded yet, however, and you have to wait a couple seconds. But most of the time, it is completely seamless. I reiterate- this game has no loading screens. Like traditional Metroid games, as you explore this world, you find enhancements to your suit that both enhance your durability and combat prowess, and allow you to reach new areas. You might, for example, need a heat-shielded suit upgrade to access the Magmoor caverns without being toasted rapidly. You need the space jump to reach high doorways. You need the Morph Ball (which lets Samus roll into a small ball, controlled in the third person) to make your way through many puzzles and reach yet more new areas. You might find a small missle upgrade in a doorway you couldn't previously access, or you might get a new visor and see a hidden door you didn't know of before which leads to a space pirate base.
Which leads us to visors. This is, in my opinion, one of the most incredible aspects of the game. As you play, you can upgrade your visor. At first, you have the standard visor (regular vision) and the scan visor, which lets you scan objects. As you play the game, you get other visors, which allow you to see, for example, X-Rays and heat coming off objects. The game is incredibly well designed in this way- every single character has a unique X-ray image, and even the bones in Samus' hands are visible. Every single object in the game gives off heat which can be seen with the appropriate visor. Pipes and electronic panels hidden behind walls might give off more heat and that heat would be visible to you. The level of detail is astounding, as is the feeling of power as you become a near-invincible fighting machine, only to have that illusion broken as the next boss beats you down.
The game is full of puzzles at every turn, around every corner. This is the premise of the game, what it is designed around. And that design works wonderfully. They can be simple, or they can require everything in your arsenal and everything you have learned up to that point to figure out. You also are rewarded after solving each puzzle, with either an item or a new area unlocked. Unfortunately, this can make it hard to save, because unlocking one thing usually helps you solve another puzzle or opens up several new ones. Often times you'll get something new and you'll stop and think, "Ah, so this is what I need to solve that puzzle on the other side of the world that has had me stumped!" And you'll be dying to try it out, and not want to stop and take a break. If you do want to take a break, like I said, it's hard to save, because you keep seeing puzzles you now know hot to solve and keep wanting to run out and solve them immediately and never make it to the save point. The game can be rather addicting. As for the actually controlling your character, the shooting is a lock on system rather similar to the Zelda series that plays surprisingly well (I am usually against lock on in first person shooters) and feels extremely satisfying as you blast your opponents. The game has a lot of platforming, and while usually platforming in a first person game is looked down upon, Samus controls so perfectly that it feels completely natural to jump from platform to platform when solving puzzles. The controls are perfect in my opinion, and couldn't be improved without the Nintendo Revolution's controller. Your opponents are also extremely intelligent. They will take cover when you open fire and often hide and wait for you. They work in teams and leap great distances to get an advantage over you. The lock on does not detract from the challenge.
Wrap-up
So, the game has wonderful sound, absolutely stunning visuals, great design, mind-boggling atmospherics, beautiful environments, and gorgeous architecture. Is it a perfect game? Not quite. There are no major flaws. There are only some minor problems and or nitpicks. The first note is that there's not a lot of replay value. Some might keep playing to get 100% completion, so you can see Samus without her mask. Those with a GBA, Metroid Fusion, AND GameCube Link cable, who have beaten both games, can unlock a bonus costume and the original NES Metroid (a great unlockable). And there's an art gallery. That's really about it. Of course, nothing prevents you from playing it all over again. But there's no way to replay old bosses without going through the entire game to get to them, and of course once you've solved a puzzle, it is solved. So once the game is beaten with 100%, there is little else to do but start a new game (or beat the final boss again and again). Couple this with the complete lack of multiplayer and the replay value suffers a little. However, the sheer number of hours it will take for you to actually complete the game makes up for this- by the time you have beaten the game, you've gotten your money's worth. By the time you get 100%, you will have put many, many hours into the game. Also (and here comes the nitpick), there is this one really long stretch near the end where there is no save points to be scene and a number of obscenely difficult enemies in the way which can get very, very annoying.
So is this game perfect? No, but it is close enough. If there could only be one game I could recommend that every single GameCube owner buy, it would be Metroid Prime. It is in my opinion the greatest single player adventure game in this console generation. This single game has addicted me to the franchise. Don't rent; buy it. If you don't have it, shame on you. It's $10 at GameStop. Get off your computer chair and play this game. Unless you play your games from your computer chair, in which case, get the game, and then stay right where you are.