Metroid Prime

The Good
When a successful franchise is irrevocably altered to a new genre, it will be met with resistance, or at the very least, skepticism. Metroid Prime, the first American incarnation of a Japanese title by Retro Studios, achieves a highly polished game with some surprises, and tragedies. Many were alarmed when Metroid fans heard the infamous news... First Person Shooter. The transition from side scrolling action to 3D exploration is no small jump, and Retro Studios answers the call with slick graphics and the morphing ball... a narrow glimpse into what Retro really wanted. The visual appeal of the game is incredible. There are many places in the game where a player can just stand in absolute awe of what the artists have achieved with this game and GameCube's power. Effects are top notch, nearly second to none. Backgrounds in places are genuinely creepy. Mood, lighting all of these elements make for an extremely satisfying visual experience. The morphing ball experience speaks untold volumes about what this game could have been... This was undoubtedly the most exciting and liberating aspect of Metroid Prime. Allow me to step in here in person and say that, I think this was the game Retro was shooting for. The sense of movement and response was so compelling! I get the feeling they were going for 3rd person but they could never get the combat / lock on system to work well enough, so Miyamoto opted for the solution he knew Retro could do well... a FPS.

The Bad
Controls, the universal key to any game, in Metroid Prime is shot. It is Chaotic and non-intuitive and in terms of First Person Shooters it fails. Putting a camera lock and strafe mapped to a shoulder button is a mystifying concept. Why, when it is such an integral part of the game? Having you fingers fly all over the controller for scanning, aiming, locking, switching visors, switching weapons, strafing, jumping during combat is just ridiculous. It frustrates the player to such an extent of never playing again. Controls in Prime make no attempt to be logical or versatile. If a characters abilities increase during the course of the game, "progression" becomes a relevant term. When the player gains new abilities Samus is enabled to do more, and it means just that. You have to do more, not less. In the standard rule of gaming, powerups are for the purpose of making your life easier, not difficult. Case in point, the visors. Switching visual spectrums is to view the world to find more is an incredible idea. Switching visors to fight a boss is tedious action and pulls the player right out of the gaming experience. In Super Metroid the X-Ray scope was only used for finding items or finding your way through the world... Why? because it stopped the game, literally. The same rule applies in Prime as well, it interrupts the flow of the game and is thoroughly annoying. Compare progression in a game such as Legend of Zelda, everything you gain makes your life easier and less tedious as you journey towards the end of the game. There are no powerups in Metroid Prime that enable you to do your job faster or with less tedious action. In fact, you could say the game becomes more tedious the longer you play. The challenge the game presents is not by what you are trying to defeat, but trying to overcome the controls! This is not logical game design. The worlds are vast and visually diverse, but not gameplay diverse. The Magmoor caverns readily displays the fact it's hot and hazardous to be in there. In contrast Phendrana Drifts only visually show snow and ice... Well what are the characteristics of ice? Cold for one, slippery and brittle. All of those listed were potential gameplay aspects. Little or none of these aspects were incorporated into the design of the level to differentiate it from any other world.

The Bottom Line
Metroid Prime is pretty to look at. Had design been at the same level of the artists, I believe Prime would have been a truly extraordinary game. Metroid Prime frustrates the player on complexity of control, lack of progression and gameplay that is uninteresting by forcing the player to jump through gameplay hoops that don't work.

The Good
There is nothing to dislike about this game, it is such a perfect piece of gaming history. Once you have played this stunning adventure every other first person game is instantly exposed as a boring piece of faecel matter. Those critical of it point to it's flawed control system which is utter nonsense. At first it is alien to the usual 1'st person controls but over time it becomes as unique as the game itself. The simple lock on mechanism invites you to explore new tactics in defeating enemies and the game is the first to ever properly allow you to jump. The way that Samus' abilities are re-introduced to you and their timing make the whole journey so fresh and interesting. There is a lot of backtracking and trying to work out the best way to go using the map system was a little frustrating but the acquisition of a new skill such as the double jump make it quicker and more enjoyable. You notice the 'Nintendo' difference when rolling Samus into a ball for the first time and enjoying not just the ability but the wonderful physics involved with just this tiny part of the game. Also the different views of the visor, which have been seen to some degree in other games but haven't affected the game as much as here. You need certain visors to access different parts of this game. I will never forget the feeling of being totally lost and isolated only to recieve a visor upgrade which allows you to see beyond the enclosed walls around you to your escape. Wondrous. This is the only game to ever keep me awake at night with the enemies and journey racing through my mind.

The Bad
Maybe the ease of use of the map, the 3d method is necessary but needed to be easier to control.

The Bottom Line
The God of games.

The Good
Metroid Prime sure is a Metroid game, just a different kind of one. It definitely helped me to understand the series as a whole. I'd definitely recommend this game as everyone's first Metroid game to try - it isn't as hard as the previous games and is interesting all the way.

The controls are great. Even if, in FPSes, I can't really hit anything without a mouse and keyboard, the controls were never a problem for me. The controls emphasize strategy rather than reflexes - the point is to know how to blast the creatures away, to try to hit things.

The graphics are some of the best I've ever seen. Everything looks great. Lots of attention to details. I especially liked the various weather effects and visor effects (the face reflection spooked the heck out of me the first time I saw it).

The music is also pretty good. I didn't like it at first, but after you get to the planet and do some major moves, the music in general changes to something indescribably great.

There's some great pacing. As I say below, only the bosses were demotivating, every other challenge in the game seems just right.

I also found the game pretty good plot/narration-wise - the approach of collecting scraps of information on what really happened is a good idea.

The Bad
There was just one thing that I really didn't like about: The boss fights were, shall we say, demotivating. They weren't impossible, but they were just, at first, humiliatingly difficult. And by "humiliating", I mean "embarrassing enough not to make me touch the thing for weeks". Of course, once I did beat, say, Flaahgra and Thardus, and even the last boss without getting completely clobbered in the first phase... well, let's just say that the joy of victory was even higher then.

A smaller point I didn't like was that 100% scan completion requires some extremely sharp wits - If you miss some enemies at certain point of game, you can say goodbye to the 100% scan rate. Okay, it isn't really relevant, since it only gives you certain off-game bonuses, but still...

And this is probably the first game ever where I've had moral or ethical problems (as in "I can't kill that, it's too cute!")...

The Bottom Line
I don't really like first-person shooters, but I do love it when people grab their first-person shooter engines and do something completely different with them. I loved mysteriously creative Quake mods. I loved Deus Ex.

So, it wasn't really unexpected that I liked Metroid Prime. The one big thing about FPSes that I dislike is that you've always got to be either running or sneaking or dying. Metroid Prime, then, is sometimes about running and sneaking. It isn't that often about dying, though that tends to happen too.

Metroid Prime is about exploration. I hate to throw cliches around, but I think the appropriate one here is "the journey is more important than the destination".

It's about gathering items. It's also about gathering information. It's about seeing great places. It's about finding out what happened. It's about getting things done. It's about, I think, being a hero.

It is an adventure. It works beautifully as an adventure.

I used to think Metroid series was too complex for me, but now, I think I have learned to understand it. And that wasn't easy at first. Now, I think, I do know what this all is about.

Of all games I've bought for GameCube, I thought this was the one I'd least likely to beat - but somehow, I did, and I'm definitely one great experience richer now that I have beaten it. And excuse me, now, I'll get back playing Metroid Prime 2...