By now the press has gushed so much praise on METROID PRIME that I’m sure a few of you have gotten copies that might be just a little bit sticky. Unlike
Star Fox Adventures, I won’t go against the trend and bash
Metroid Prime. In fact, I think the game has GameCube Game of the Year locked up, and deserves even more accolades than that!
The METROID series originated on the NES, continued to the Game Boy, and eventually made its way to the SNES for the third game. Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance is the sequel to the SNES’s Super Metroid, while Metroid Prime is essentially Metroid 1 ½. Samus is once again chasing after space pirates who are trying to use the Metroid species as a biological weapon.
If you’ve never played Metroid before, this game will seem very odd to you. While you play from the first-person perspective, it’s not really a first-person shooter. It’s a first-person exploration game that has shooting parts. The controls are not typical, the control stick handles forward and backwards movement, as well as turning. Strafing is accomplished by holding down the L button (which also serves to lock onto an enemy, allowing you to circle strafe). If you want to look around, you’ll have to hold down the R button, but you are stationary during this time. I’m sure you’re wondering what Retro decided the C-Stick would be used for.
The C-Stick is used to switch weapons between the four types of beams. You’re not limited to just four types of weapons though, each of them can be charged up. You have a complement of missiles (which can be combined with some beam weapons) as well as bombs and power bombs that you use in ball form. By pressing X you can roll into a ball, and fit into small spaces or roll along certain types of tracks. The Y launches missiles, the Z button brings up the map, and the B button allows you to jump. The D-Pad brings up different visors that you’ll use depending on the circumstances.
The prospect of jumping in a first-person game is an immediate turn off. But it’s pulled off remarkably in PRIME. The jumping actually gets to be fun, especially once you find the double jump power-up. The control scheme as a whole is not the most intuitive, only because it is very different than anything else you’ve ever played. After 5 hours of gameplay or so, it’ll feel very natural.
Once Samus gets onto the planet (the space station portion is a brief intro) she’ll be fairly weak. You’ll have to slowly find her power-ups throughout the levels. This means you’ll be exploring, find places you can’t get to, getting the equipment you need from somewhere else, and then backtracking. Backtracking has always been big in the METROID series, and it never seems to get old in PRIME. It’s the major portion of the puzzles, “ok, I have something new, where can I use it to advance farther?” A lot of the time, these puzzles will yield an expansion to your missile or health capacity, and the rest of the time you’ll find a new ability.
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