I originally played Metroid Prime on the Gamecube back in 2002, and have now replayed it on the Wii in 2020. At the time, many critics gave the game a perfect score, but I never thought it was as good as that. Even though it is still enjoyable to play, it isn’t as good as the likes of Super Metroid.
Although it looks like a FPS, it actually retains the same gameplay as previous games in the series, but has transitioned to 3D environments for the first time. The combat has a lock-on button, which allows you to strafe around the enemies. On this Wii port, you can still use the lock-on, but then have some degree of free-aim with the remote. The controls felt a bit clunky before, and they are clunky in a different way in this version.
You play as bounty hunter Samus, who has a cannon for an arm. At the start of the game, she is fully kitted out as she investigates a distress call on a Space Pirate ship. After Samus destroys the Parasite Queen, the resulting explosions hit her with a blast of energy which causes malfunctions in her suit. This reduces her to the basic energy gun (Power Beam) and scanning visor. She then goes to nearby Talon IV, where she finds remnants of an ancient civilization called the Chozo, and also conveniently has all her gadgets to re-upgrade herself which are found over the course of the game. The overall aim is to find twelve artifacts to enter the crater which seems to be the source of a mysterious substance called phazon.
You see the world from Samus’ perspective, so through her visor. The HUD elements are on the inside of the visor, like an Iron Man style. It shows your health, currently selected weapon type, missile count, and danger level. There’s some nice details like the way water drips off the visor, or you see a reflection of Samus’ face when hit by intense light from an explosion. You can change the helmet transparency and movement delay in the options menu, but I thought the default was fine.
Your standard “Power Beam” and missiles work well at the start of the game, but you later encounter enemies that need more specialist weapons. There are Electric (Wave Beam), Ice (Ice Beam) and Fire (Plasma Beam) augmentations which you will need to switch between. Doors open when shot, and some require a specific gun to open. You can charge the guns for stronger shots, and can find upgraded variants where pressing the missile button will launch a powerful attack. The Power Beam plus Missile combo is the Super Missile.
You will be using your Scanning visor to fill in your codec entries, and also disable energy fields, find weaknesses in the environment (blow up rocks/walls) and enemies. The X-Ray and Thermal Visors reveal certain secrets, such as power conduits in walls or find invisible platforms. The Thermal Visor can guide you through dark areas.
There’s suit upgrades too like the Varia Suit which protects from extreme heat, Gravity Suit which allows free movement in water, or the Phazon Suit which negates Phazon radiation. These are cumulative upgrades and there’s no need to switch between them.
The game is actually surprisingly linear. Even though there are areas you can’t reach until you return later, there is no point actually returning until the game wants you to go there. A) it can be a lot of backtracking and you may just be awarded with an extra 5 missiles, and B) you may unlock a door to find out you then need another power-up in order to get the reward in the room.
You often find rooms with 2 doors, but one is inaccessible. So you follow the accessible path until you find a power-up, which probably allows you to return to take the other path. This pattern happens over and over, progressively opening up more areas.
During the first half of the game, the upgrades are guarded by some kind of boss fight, but then you go through a long period without any boss fights. It’s a shame because the boss battles were really varied and fun. There are a lot of upgrades to acquire, so maybe that’s why they abandoned this idea. When picking up a new item, you are forced to use it which is a good way of ensuring you know how to use it, and what to keep your eye out for. E.g when you acquire the morph ball, you can only exit the room by rolling through a small tunnel.
Turning into a ball switches perspective to third-person, and is a fun way to travel. When rolling through tunnels, sometimes the perspective switches to a 2D style gameplay as you navigate a maze of sorts. One upgrade allows you to drop up to 3 regenerating energy bombs, and another is a limited use “Power Bomb” for destroying a certain material. Another upgrade is the “Spider Ball” which clings to magnetically-charged surfaces (mainly rails that allow you to reach great heights, or travel along the ceiling).
The planet has contrasting areas which is like the classic idea of a grass (Tallon Overworld), desert (Chozo Ruins), fire (Magmoor Caverns), ice (Phendrana Drifts) worlds. Then there is the dark, eerie Phazon Mines.
You will be backtracking though certain sections of the map. Then the final part where you will need to revisit each area to find the 12 artifacts using a clue to which room they are in and what to do when you get there. I only found 3 artifacts during the course of normal gameplay. This part is incredibly tedious as you will be revisiting at least half the rooms.
A large annoyance is that the enemies respawn. I wouldn’t have minded this too much if they had some time-restriction such as if they respawned after 10 minutes, or whenever you loaded a save file. It is often when you leave the room, which is frustrating when you realise you have gone through the wrong door, so you go back one room and find the same enemies have returned. There are loads of Energy Tanks to find across the course of the game, so Samus has an insane amount of health. Often I found myself just running past enemies, even if I took a few hits because it was insignifiant.
There’s a lot of platforming in the game, and for the most part - it does work well. There are some frustrating sections like the tall rooms with spiralling platforms. Often one mistake sees you plummeting to the very bottom. Initially, you have a simple jump, but there is an upgrade fairly early on to allow double-jumps
The music style is often quite ambient, and reminiscent of Super Metroid on the SNES. There’s no voice acting (except the one line of ending narration) since Samus is alone on the planet, but you do hear her gasp as he gets hit.
You can only save the game at Save Stations. It is possible to miss these, but if you keep glancing at the map, you can be given hints where these are. If you are in a room with 2 doors you haven’t been in, and you have access to both; then one of them is probably a Save Station. So I chose the one which didn’t seem to be the most “inviting” path. The Save Stations are at decent intervals, so I’d definitely advise moving forward to progress the game rather than backtracking to a previous location.
I think Metroid Prime is a good game, but very overrated (the game often got 10/10 from critics). The forced backtracking (a quick travel between key areas would be nice), respawning enemies, and the clunkiness to some controls hold the game back. There’s not many puzzles that require you to think; they often just solve themselves (hit a switch/scan something etc). It has a great atmosphere and gives you a good sense of exploration.