Disclaimer: I
haven’t played Metroid Prime 2: Echoes neither Prime 3: Corruption.
Metroid Prime: I heard about this game a long time ago, about 8 years ago (which are like 25 years in gamer
times, because you know… 20 years playing videogames makes you immideately old (it’s
not like I have more, I actually have 20 years old, but… You know… You feel
old)) that I noticed its existence and it wasn’t about recently that I started
playing this game, and it was amazing: It started slow, but you immerse
in the game really fast, So I will go bit by bit talking about all the good and
bad that I found in this game (yeah, it has its flaws):
1.- The Gameplay:
The game has a slow start, it tells you what does each button and
each visor, being the first one the normal visor to attack and the scanner to scan
the environment (which I think it is cool, I’ll explain why later), enemies and
objects.
The good part: The game is a FPS,
although it is called a First Person Adventure, since instead of shooting all enemies
you see to get to certain point, you have to explore the planet you’re on, and
figure out how to advance, there are enemies that cannot be defeated just by
shooting at them and to know your objective you have to explore the places to
find the power-up or the Chozo pieces, and also figure out on your own what is
happening and what to do there.
You start with one kind of beam, the
other beams you obtain them advancing in the game and one more that you can activate
in the final battle under certain condition, they’re all useful and you always
use them, you don’t get the feeling that the beams becomes useless after
obtaining the next one since there are enemies that are weaker or can only be
defeated by a specific type of beam. In example: in Phendrana Drift (the ice
level) the enemies are weak against the Plasma Beam while in Magmoor Cavern
(the fire level) the enemies are weak against the Ice beam. You can also
upgrade them through the Super Missile and make Combo Beams (if you find the
respective upgrade), so you can have a Super missile, a Plasma Whip, an Ice
Diffusor and a Flame thrower. To activate them, you have to find the respective
power-up, and then Charge your beam and when is full charge, press the missile
button. But in exchange you will deplete your missiles: 5 the Super missile, 10
missiles the other combo beams and if you have one less than needed, you won’t
be able to use them.
The Powers are given by items
that you’ll find in the game, which will allow you from being immune to water
physics, the double jump, the morph ball, throw bombs when you’re in the Morph
Ball, two extra visors (a heat vision and X-ray vision), etc. And they’re all
useful since the game requires that you use all your powers and arsenal to
advance. And I quote, one of the things I liked the most was the scanner,
because it tells you how to defeat every enemies and bosses (with one
exception), it also tells you about the planet and its story when you scan the
environment (I’ll go with the story soon).
Another thing that I liked about the game was the Hand-holding, at
the beggining they tell you how to use the controller, but besides telling you
were to go (through the map, nothing else). They don’t tell you anything else
of how to advance in it. And they also have a good conveyance: They manage to
tell you how to defeat the final boss through the special pirates, since the
special pirates are only weak to specific types of beams (white pirates to ice
beam, red pirates to plasma beam, etc.) you can figure out on your own how to
eat them, which is the way to fight the final boss.
The bad things: I know the ability loss troubled some, it didn’t
bothered me (I thought you started with more powers), but what did bothered me
was the back track: having to back track from one place to another, going
through big spaces to obtain the next power-up was very annoying (especially if
you add the lack of save points) I got bored whenever I had to do that. Another
thing that bothered me was the fact that to aim (which would be most of the
time if it weren’t for the lock-on feature) you have to keep pressed the R
button and when you did you couldn’t move at all (like in Goldeneye 007 for the
N64, although in Metroid Prime there is a radar, although I never used it) at
least the lock-on solved the problem, and this would be the only mechanic in
the whole game that would be useless, if it weren’t for one exception: One
enemy that you can’t scan. It appears in the Phazon Mine, when you reach the
Central Dynamo, appears an enemy that you can’t scan, no beam damage it, and
you only see two lights floating, I had to search for a guide to figure out how
 |
| The enemy that cannot be scanned. |
to beat it, and still, I had to go Rambo on it shooting the wave beam while
using the heat vision and keep pressed the R button, since I couldn’t make a
lock-on on it, until it died. But that aside, I love the boss fights. Also, a
few enemies were annoying, the pirates in general were annoying but it was nice
you fight them in specific areas (And Ridley, their leader, one of the best
bosses of the game). But the most annoying enemies were the phantoms, it was
annoying find out where they were (they can disappear in the middle of the
battle and attack you in a different spot), your weakest beam is the only one
effective against them and even with the X-Ray vision it was annoying to fight
them; but they’re nothing compared to the Fission Metroids, they appear in the
last level of the game, they split if you damage them long enough and when they
split they become immune to all but one (random) beam, they caused me a lot of
delays and it was horrible to kill them and I even think they respawned
infinetly (I just didn’t wanted to check out for how annoying it was to kill
them), but it was rewarding when you kill the Final Boss, so despite its flaws,
the game managed to balance itself so you could forget those problems easily.
2.- The
Story:
All you’ll know of the story basically is: You got a distress call
from a space satellite, when you go to explore you discover that the satellite
belongs to the space pirates, theres a fight and the satellite falls into the
planet the satellite was, you begin to explore the planet and done. You know
nothing of the planet except maybe its name: Tallon IV; but unless you use the
scanner you won’t know the History of the Planet itself: On one side, you can
scan the runes of the ruins to find out what happened to the civilization
living there and how it was corrupted by a “poison” that fell from the Sky, they
left some artifacts you must collect (the Chozo pieces: when you reach to a
Sanctuary full of statues or pillars, when scanned, they’ll tell you where are
the Artifacts and to find them you’ll require a lot of patient and deduction
since they tell you were it is plus a hint of what you should do and in what
places of said level) to access to the center of the crash and face the source
of the “Venom”; on the other side you can scan the data and pc of the space
pirates to find out all they have done (in the satellite there is a file
referencing the events of the first Metroid that if don’t scan it, you lost it,
because when the satellite crashes in the planet all the pc stop working) and
how they have found the source of the “venom” which they decided the Metroid
Prime and are planning to use it and the Phazon (the “venom” described by the
civilization) to power-up themselves and become an unstoppable force.
The good thing: the fact that the story is found over there and
not shown in the usual way (by the means of flashbacks or the protagonist
talking) making you able to figure it out by yourself at your own rhythm,
keeping the mystery of what is happening in Tallon IV and what is your
objective and how to accomplish it, at the same time if you are of those who
doesn’t care much about the story, you can ignore it, a detail I like, you’re
not forced to figure it out, if you’re curious, you figure it out, if you want
to blow everything up, ok too.
The bad thing: if we go deep, is
the Typical cliché of the evil alien force that fell from the sky, destroy the
good people, and the industrialist who doesn’t respect anybody want to use it
to gain profit. At least is original and you can ignore it if you don’t care.
3. - The Music:
I didn’t find anything wrong in it, every tone flow in the ambient
helping you to get immersed in not only the game but also feel you were in each
level (explanation: the theme of Phendrana Drift, calm and cool, made me feel I
was in a tundra; while the theme of Magmoor Cavern gave me the feel of being
inside a volcano (if not in a different version of Norfair)) although I didn’t
pay much attention to the Phazon Mine or the last level, I enjoy them. Especially
the intro tune (when you choose your file) and the ending theme because even
though they are the same, they give you a different feeling when you listen to
them in those particular moments: at the beginning, basically the song tells
you of all the awesomeness the game have in store for you, and when you hear it
in the ending is like if they tell you “congratulations for finishing the game,
enjoy this song while you’re cheering for your victory”.
4. - The Graphics:
They’re excellent, between the best graphics you can find in the
Gamecube, I loved to see how well detailed the enemies were, if there were
errors or glichtes i didn’t notice them, although there was something weird in
Samus’s face (or at least the Little it could be seen) like if she were
disturbed… but maybe it was just me.
5. - Conclusion:
Metroid Prime is a great game, is one of the many must-own games of the Nintendo Gamecube, and the fact that there is a secret ending if you get a 100% of all the items makes it interesting, the fights are amazing and it feels so satisfactory to finish it, Retro Studios did a great job making that big leap and make a game that was so well known for being a 2D-sidescroller into a FPA (being the first game with that classification in genre), in simple words.
7/10
Is a classic that will stay in the pass of time.
