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Metroid Prime

by Jonathan Metts - May 22, 2002, 1:24 pm EDT
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Samus in first-person…can it work? Hell yes.

Metroid Prime has surprised the hell out of me. Retro Studios have gone out of their way to make it much different than your typical first-person shooter, mainly in minor control features and just an incredible overall Metroid atmosphere.

We had heard prior to the show that strafing wasn’t possible in the current Metroid Prime burn, but that turned out to be completely false. Just hold down the L trigger and you can strafe left and right with the control stick. L also locks on to a target if one is near (available targets depend on which visor mode you’re in). Holding R causes Samus to bring her left hand up to steady the right arm blaster, and it hold her in place so you can use the control stick to aim. This works exactly like the aiming in Goldeneye 007, and since you generally use the mode to aim up or down, having her hand stabilize the arm immediately evokes the Metroid series. Tapping A will fire a standard shot, and in one of the tweaks that separates the game so much from other FPS’s, you have infinite shots of all your main weapons. This takes the focus off ammo management and puts it onto smart, quick targeting and evasion. You can also hold A to charge up a shot (again, for free), and any type of beam can be charged. Hitting Y once will enable missiles, which are of course expendable, and hitting Y again will fire one. I also learned that you can charge up a regular beam shot, then press Y instead of letting off A to shoot a special shot. It’s very slow to fire and appears to use up more than one missile per use, but the effects are extremely powerful and cool. Using the Ice Beam’s super shot covers the enemy and the surrounding environment in ice, whereas normally just the enemy itself is frozen. By the way, enemies can now die while being frozen, so attacking with the Ice Beam doesn’t necessarily translate to twice as many shots to kill each enemy.

B jumps. Yes, B jumps. I wasn’t sure if Samus would even be able to jump, but sure enough, it’s as simple as tapping B and works exactly like jumping in Turok…though the E3 demo thankfully doesn’t exhibit any signs of having Turok’s infamously frustrating jumping challenges. So far jumping is just a quick way to get up ledges; you can also bomb up to them. Pressing X will make Samus morph into the “Morphball" and the camera to pull out into a third-person view. At that point, you can roll around freely and set bombs with A. Bombs are infinite in keeping with the series, but no more than three can be out at a time; a simple graphic in the upper-right corner indicates how many more bombs you can set before the previous ones go off.

The D-pad switches among Samus’s visor modes, and if the demo is any indication, you’ll be using that feature a lot. The currently available visor modes are Combat, which is the default one in which you can shoot at enemies, and Scan, which lets you examine objects, switches, etc. and also lets you look for enemy weakpoints. If you try shooting while in Scan mode, the Combat mode will automatically return, although you won’t be able to actually fire until it’s fully engaged. I’d say the lag is about one second; nothing major, but if you anticipate trouble, you can react much more quickly if you’re already in Combat mode. A graphic in the lower-right corner of the screen shows a map of Samus’s visor modes and which direction on the D-pad you need to press to activate each one.

On the other side of the controller, the C-stick switches among Samus’s weapons (which are all just different modes of her arm blaster). Switching takes maybe two seconds, so you don’t want to do it in the heat of combat if possible. The available weapons in the demo are the Power Beam, which is the standard shot that Samus has always had as default, and the Ice Beam, which should be pretty self-explanatory. The weapons also have a map for easy reference, this one in the lower-right corner of the screen.

Unfortunately there is only one level open in the E3 demo, but it is moderately long (my completion time was 13 minutes) and gives a pretty good look at all of Metroid Prime’s various features and gameplay styles. Rolling around as the Morphball is quite fun and it seemed to be a very popular feature judging from how other people were reacting. On foot, Samus is a bit slower, but of course she is better equipped to deal with most enemies and situations. Walking around in first-person felt a bit awkward at first, just because it doesn’t seem to mesh with the Metroid concept at first, but I got over that rather quickly. By the end of my time with the game, I was switching back and forth between first-person and the Morphball often and with great ease, and the two forms feel totally balanced.

The demo starts out on a loading dock in space, outside a large space complex. There are no enemies, but Samus will have to use her targeting system and Scan visor mode to activate several switches and gain access to the space station. It felt very much like a tutorial area to teach you about the targeting and Scan mode, both of which are quite vital to working with the station’s inner workings and space pirate inhabitants.

The station interior is a series of tubular corridors (which are extremely fun to roll around in) and a few large rooms with enemies and elevators. Scan mode is necessary to activate some machines; in other situations, its use is optional. For instance, when you’re escaping from the station after beating the boss, you can use Scan mode to deactivate some of the gun turrets. That’ll save you some energy and time spent fighting the turrets, but it also uses up some several seconds, which are in short supply during the escape sequence.

Most of the regular enemies present in the station are space pirates, the insect-like guys that have were so annoying in Super Metroid. They’re pretty easy cannon fodder in Prime, but you can bet that later levels will have more advanced versions of them, likely immune to certain weapons. There are also a few little critters on the ground that will pretty much leave you alone, and during the escape sequence, there are hundreds of small parasites that crawl along the ground and will damage you upon contact. I found it better to simply roll past those guys than try to shoot them down; they attack in swarms and will quickly surround Samus.

The boss is a queen parasite who hides behind rotating energy shields. The first thing to do is turn on Scan mode and examine her body; you’ll find a weak spot that will make the battle much more fair. While the shields are moving, you can only shoot rapidly and hope the odd lucky shot makes it through to hit her. (Her big green beam attack, of course, miraculously goes right through the shields.) Every fifteen or twenty seconds, the shields will slow down significantly, and you’ll be able to fire at the boss through a large window. This is a good chance to unload a charged up shot, or even a super shot as described above. Once she’s finally dead, you’ll begin the aforementioned escape sequence.

Metroid Prime is probably on visual par with Legend of Zelda GC, although in a completely different style. Prime sports lavish sci-fi environments, with wildly angular architecture and numerous effects constantly going on in your field of vision. One particularly cool part has various space junk floating in a corridor until you activate the re-pressurization device, at which point the junk will drop straight to the floor. Sweet. Prime’s music is also very moody and dark, and it dynamically picks up in creepiness at just the right moments. The ambience and low-key music have always been a huge part of Metroid’s atmosphere, and so far I’m impressed with how Metroid Prime continues that legacy. In fact, I’m just plain impressed with everything I saw and played of Metroid Prime. I was really worried about the game and actually not even all that excited about it going into today’s show, but now I’m as pumped up about it as any of Nintendo’s first-party games.

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Genre Action
Developer Retro Studios
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Metroid Prime
Release Nov 17, 2002
PublisherNintendo
RatingTeen
jpn: Metroid Prime
Release Feb 28, 2003
PublisherNintendo
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