Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Masterpiece"

When nintendo announced that the new metroid will be from a first person camera and that a new studio would make it everyone had doubts and rightfully so. Everybody was wrong though. Retro managed to make an instant classic and a masterpiece.

The graphics are excellent even today but what steals the show is the phenomenal art design. Retro has the best artists in the industry and this proves it. Every room is different and there is no copy/paste textures. There is a wide variety of places like ancient ruins, dark mines, lava caves and more. Everything looks and feels real.

The gameplay is classic metroid even if it is in 3d. You are a bounty hunter named samus aran who arrives at a planet trying to solve the mystery it holds. You start at a planet with your weapons and armor upgrades stripped, while exploring the world you will find new weapons and armor upgrades that will give you access to new areas. Occasionally you will fight a boss, although they are not many of them they are huge and a blast to fight them. This doesn't play like your ordinary shooter, don't expect to just shoot monsters and move to the next level. The aiming is meaningless thanks to the lock on system. You don't aim, you press a button and the suit automatically aims at your target like the legend of zelda.

What is unique of this game is it's spectacular atmosphere. You are alone in this world, normally in games you meet various npcs that give you quests or progress the story, in metroid prime you will not meet a single npc, you are the only human being in the planet. This is what makes the game unique. The story is not told by a guy while you watch a cutscene but from scanning your surrounding. You can scan plants, stones or enemies to find their weaknesses in order to defeat them. You can also scan logs from an ancient civilization who lived in this planet and learn what happened to them. There are logs of the enemy though that you should scan as well, by scanning these logs you will learn the story. The atmosphere is accompanied by a phenomenal soundtrack which fits each place perfectly.

As I said in the title I consider this game the best of the decade because of its uniqueness there is no other game like this. Its a fist person adventure not shooter, if you like shooters you won't like this game. This game is about exploring and feeling the world around you and that is what makes it unique.I would give this game a 9.8 but because I can't its a 10. If you haven't bought this game you don't know what you are losing go get it.