Metroid Prime

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...

The Good
Fun, fun, fun. Metroid Prime oozes fun, the graphics are gorgeous and the environments sprawling and full of little alcoves and nooks to explore. Enemies are nicely rendered however I do have a couple of qualms with them. The puzzles are ingenious and involve you rolling around in morph ball mode or finding and shooting runes to activated doors. Boss battles are pretty epic and normally involve 2 or 3 different forms.

The Bad
The game is short I finished it in 6 or so hours the first time I played it through. This is a shame aswell because the game feels so epic and then all of a sudden it's just over. Additionally enemies are pretty dumb, the insect based ones will float around or crawl around and run into you to attack you. Shooting enemies will hide behind things to a degree or stand out in the open and shoot at you, one thing I did like was the fact that some will fall when shot and turn around and continue shooting from their prone position but otherwise they are quite stupid. It's also hard to die as nearly all enemies will drop health replinishing items or missiles which are pretty devastating provided you have the room to store them.

The Bottom Line
Metroid Prime is a great FPS. I don't think it really revolutionizes the genre but it feels fresh and most of all it feels like a game you want to keep playing. Unfortunately the game is so short you can't keep playing it and you walk away feeling unfulfilled. A nice aesthetic, great gameplay and a fistful of great ideas more than compensates for this though.

The Good
The graphics..... AMAZING!!!!!!! Nothing compares except maybe Rouge Leader. If you walk under a waterfall, your visor will get water on it and drip. If you are in a hot enviornment, the visor will steam up. The weapons and visors look cool and it's fun scanning all the diffrent stuff. The first level also is terrific and fun to play.

The Bad
The gameplay. The controls are frustrating (like alot of other things in this game...) You'll destroy your controler the 50th time you fall down a cliff while trying to jump in FIRST PERSON!!! The power-ups make the game harder instead of easier as you go along. Instead of going through diffrent levels, you are dropped in an ENORMOUS enviornment. It's not so bad the first few hours, but after you get finished with the treasure hunt for diffrent power-downs, the enviornment will become very large. There are at least six enormous sections in the game. Each new power-down let's you get through a new door in a completely diffrent sections. So, you go through the same place over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over etc. This wouldn't be so terrible if enemies didn't respawn. After fighting to get to a new area, you just fight the same guys again when you come back after you get x to use with y to do z etc. This creates alot of frustration when for instance you get x. "Gee", you say, now I can get through door y. Getting through door y(after fighting the same guys you fought 50 times before) You unlock the door. You continue for an hour until you reach a seeming dead end. "You need z" a text message on the screen tells you. Now you get to go back, find z, and come back through the same enemies and obstacles you beat before and do the same jumping puzzles etc. After it took me 30 min just to get to the door you just spent an hour getting the needed power-down to open it, I quit the game and have never played it since. The prize for repeating the same levels and enemies 1000 times should be a refund for the money you just wasted. In the end, despite it's incredible graphics and music, repetition is what makes this game a frustrating and overall unenjoyable game experience.

The Bottom Line
Playing this is like reading a book where you have to read the all the other pages you've read before 50 times before you get to the new page.