Metroid Prime Review

If you ask a Metroid fan what their favorite game in the series is, you'll likely get one of two answers: Super Metroid, or Metroid Prime. The latter of the two is praised for having a strong, lonely atmosphere, deep story, and for bringing the series into the realm of 3D. Many people regard Metroid Prime as one of the best games on the GameCube, one of the best games of that era, one of the best games ever, a masterpiece, an incredible experience, or simply a ground-breaking game.

I couldn't disagree more.

Personally, I think Metroid Prime is a gallon-full of overrated dribble. That's right, I just equated this game to spit that slowly slithers out from one's mouth while they sleep. In all honesty, that's what this game is to me: it's slow, unpleasant, and I'd rather not experience it ever again. Actually, that's not true; dribble moves at a faster pace than Prime does, because it's affected by real gravity, not some sort of syrupy space slug somehow substituting for gravity.

If it wasn't already clear, I hate this game, and I derive pleasure from exaggerating how bad it is. Allow me to explain why: you see, the first Metroid game I ever enjoyed was Metroid: Other M, the most notorious game in the series. It wasn't the first Metroid game I played, but it was the first one I enjoyed. The first one I ever played was in fact Metroid Prime, but that was when I was a kid, and my play session lasted for about, oh, maybe ten minutes before thinking to myself "man, this game is boring, and the controls are weird, and I don't like it." I didn't even make it all the way through the game's intro sequence. It wasn't until I played it at the start of this year that I actually beat it, and my thoughts on it are still roughly the same: it's boring.

I never played another Metroid game since that first attempt at Prime until I got Metroid: Other M for Christmas of 2010. I remember I saw a commercial for it and though "wow, that game looks really cool. Maybe I should give Metroid another try?" Thus, I did, and I thought the game was as awesome as the commercials made it look. I found the game rather hard, but I still enjoyed it. I had to use a guide to get through some of the puzzles and bosses, but I still enjoyed it. It was that guide that I used that was the first instance I heard of the game being "bad." The writer made it very, very clear that he hated the game and thought it was garbage. I originally took this as an isolated incident. Just one opinion.

Oh, how I was wrong. Nearly every Metroid fan I have ever heard talk about Other M refers to it as if it is the worst video game ever made in the history of ever. In case it wasn't obvious, it's not. There are plenty of games worse than Other M; Superman 64, Bubsy 3D, The Slaughtering Grounds, Bad Rats, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Link: The Faces of Evil, need I go on? Despite this, Metroid fans act like it's the worst game in the series. Now, why do I bring this up in a review for Metroid Prime? To point out the blatant hypocrisy. As I previously mentioned, I think Prime is awful. In fact, I believe it is much worse than Other M is, and it absolutely baffles me that Metroid fans can regard it as a "one of the best" and Other M as "complete trash."

First-Person Tickle Fights

The major element that distinguishes Prime from other Metroid games is that it is a first-person platform "shooter" rather than a side-scrolling platform shooter. The reason why I say "shooter" in quotes is because Prime may look like a shooter, and it technically is, but it is better described as a "first-person adventure." Yes, there are shooter elements, like, well, shooting, but the game plays out more like an adventure game. As I've discussed with Metroid fans on Reddit, the appeal of the game is more in walking around solving puzzles and exploring the planet of Tallon IV. This makes sense to me, because the game's combat elements are one of its weak points. In fact, it's so laughably bad that it's one reason why I don't get how anyone can call this game a "masterpiece."

If you've never played a Metroid game, allow me to explain how combat works: instead of having several different guns, the protagonist, Samus Aran, only has a single arm-cannon that can fire one of two projectiles: Beams, which cost nothing to shoot, or Missiles, which are limited by ammunition. In some games, Samus can also fire Super Missiles, which are very powerful but have a much more limited ammo stock than normal Missiles. In the first two game in the series, Samus could find alternate Beams that could only be used one at a time. The third game in the series changed this to allow most every Beam to be active at once - with only one exception. Traditionally, Metroid games are 2D platformers, so enemies act as both targets and obstacles simultaneously. Projectiles and enemies that come in melee range must be jumped over or ducked under to avoid taking damage. The second game introduced the Space Jumps power that allows Samus to jump an infinite amount of times, and the third game introduced wall-jumping, both of which make dodging enemies both easier and somewhat more skill based. All of this makes up the combat system that I fell in love with, and to this day, I have yet to find a game that feels just like it.

Metroid Prime, on the other hand, spits in the face of the combat system that I love. Combat in Prime feels much more dumbed down. First of all, there is a lock-on system, allowing your aim to remain on a given enemy, taking away part of the skill to a shooter; aiming. You could avoid using it if you so choose, but the controls are too stiff for that to be any more fun than locking on. Additionally, Samus' movement is way more sluggish, which bleeds into combat to bog down the experience. Instead of being able to quickly jump and duck over incoming danger, the best you can do is a piddly little side-hop when locked on to an enemies. This side-hop takes no skill to use, is very easily spammed, and is of no help in tight corridors or while on a small platform. It's like the developers wanted to make the game play like Doom, but didn't make Samus fast enough for that to work.

The most frustrating part of Metroid Prime's combat is its Beam system. The Beams are all separate weapons once again, for very weak reasons. It is a better system than the older games, since you don't have to backtrack to switch them out, but in this case it's still rather clunky. Some areas will have you constantly switching Beams just to navigate from room to room, since doors will often require different Beams to open them. Pepper in enemies that are only susceptible to one Beam type, and you'll be changing them nearly constantly. Because of this, instead of each Beam feeling like its own weapon, they just feel like items - tools, if you will - that just so happen to also deal damage.

Awful Enemy Designs

The Beam system is made worse by how certain enemies can only be harmed by certain Beams. This doesn't make these enemies any more challenging, it just makes them more annoying, especially when an encounter involves several enemies with each being weak to different Beams. Once you zone in on an enemy's weakness, you can stand there and spam projectiles until it dies. This strategy works on nearly every enemy in the game, with a small few exceptions. In a 3D game, you can often just walk around enemies, so they need to be more engaging than "spam its weakness," and more powerful than "tickle lasers."

Most every enemy, and even some bosses, deal so little damage that it hardly matters if you get hit. In my entire playthrough of Metroid Prime, I died merely twice: once when I went the wrong way and died to environmental damage, and once when I couldn't figure out a particular boss's pattern and eventually had my health whittled down to nothing. I was hardly even trying to conserve health while playing. I ran through traps, let suicide-bomber-type enemies slam into me, and paid zero mind to any enemy that wasn't necessary to kill to progress. I took a lot of damage, sure, but I always had enough health left to reach a save point, which all fully restore health.

Again, I emphasize that enemies in Prime aren't difficult, they're just tedious to fight. A lot of enemies in the game are just there to be distractions or time-wasters, not real threats or adversaries. A lot of the time, these enemies are placed in platforming segments, so that you fall back down to the beginning if you get hit. This is normal for many platformers, but the difference here is that the platforming in Prime is garbage. Jumping is floaty and sluggish, and the first-person perspective makes precision difficult. Combined with Samus' "Sunday morning stroll" movement speed, this makes having to re-do platforming segments infuriating. In this sense, the game indirectly forces the player to stop in their tracks, shoot the enemy, and continue on. This isn't objectively a bad thing, but it absolutely kills the pace of the game. It'd be one thing if fighting enemies was something that was fun, but again, it really isn't.

The best example of poor enemy design is the boss, Thardus (pictured above). This fight can easily be summed up in three words: "War of attrition." In this fight, the player must use the Thermal Visor (more on the visor system later) to locate Thardus' weak-spot. After shooting it a sufficient amount of times, Thardus will overload the Visor, forcing the player to change back to the standard Visor. Shooting the weak-spot even more will cause Thardus to change the location of its weak-spot, at which point the fight repeats. This goes on for an obscene amount of time. It doesn't help that there is very little variation to any of these different weak-spot phases, making each phase indistinguishable. On top of that, Thardus can drag out the fight even longer by performing a long-winded rolling attack that makes hitting its weak-spot much more difficult, even with the game's lock-on system.

Even Samus' long-standing rival Ridley was a horrible boss to fight, for the wrong reasons. Normally, the fight against Ridley is intense. I often die to him at least once, even on repeat playthroughs, and I'm left with little health remaining when I manage to defeat him. I remember the fight against him in Other M was so tough for me the first time I fought him, when I finally beat him, I marked that day on my calendar so I could celebrate it every year. Yes, that's silly of me, but I was so happy about winning that fight that I wanted to remember the day it happened. In Prime, I barely even tried and I still beat Ridley. I let myself get hit numerous times - way more times than any other Ridley fight would've let me get away with - and I still managed to defeat him on my first go. In fact, Ridley dealt so little damage that I had eight of my eleven 100-unit health blocks still full. I'd also like to point out that this version of Ridley is dubbed "Meta Ridley," implying that this is his most powerful form, yet it is ironically the easiest incarnation of this character I have ever fought.

Does Prime Get Anything Right?

There is only one redeeming quality to Metroid Prime's combat system: Charge Combos. These are super weapons that combine Beams and Missiles into one powerful attack. Even I have to admit, these are pretty rad. Unfortunately, these often come with a hefty Missile cost, which forces the player to use them sparingly. This sucks because they're the only fun part of the combat system. Half of these Charge Combos suck up Missiles like they're candy; ten to start, then five every second. Keep in mind that the maximum cap on Missiles is 250. In my playthrough, I had a cap of around 90-100 Missiles from the expansions I was able to find. As item drops, Missiles don't appear often enough to support even a moderate amount of use of these weapons. I was almost always out of Missiles through the last portion of the game.

In parallel to Prime's four Beams and Charge Combos, the game also has four different Visors as well. These are cool in theory, but they're impractical in execution. Initially, the player starts off with two: the Combat Visor and the Scan Visor. These are the most practical of the four visors. The Combat Visor is really just the default HUD, while the Scan Visor allows the player to do one of two things: activate holographic buttons, and analyse creatures and objects to learn more about what they are. Anything scanned by the Scan Visor will be added to Samus' Log Book for further reading. Not only can this give the player a hint if they're stuck on a boss, but this is also where a majority of Prime's story is found. Instead of forcing the player into dialogue sequences or to watch cutscene-based exchanges, Prime only has a handful of short cutscenes at key moments and places all of its lore in the optional Log Book entries. This allows players who are curious about the game's characters and world to learn more about it, while also allowing players who only care about gameplay - like myself - to play mostly uninterrupted. I love this design choice, and I almost wish more games approached story like this.

That's two of the Visors, now lets go over the other two: the Thermal Visor and the X-Ray Visor (pictured above). The former allows the player to see heat signatures via thermography, while the latter uses x-rays - go figure - to allow the player to see invisible enemies and find hidden paths. Both of these Visors are very videogamey, in that they're only useful when the game wants them to be. The Thermal Visor is only useful in specific areas, and rather than these areas being naturally occurring like a dark cave, they're just rooms in the Space Pirate's hideout in which they decided to turn off the lights. The X-Ray Visor is even more selective, only working on a small few objects and enemies.

Furthermore, once you have both the Thermal Visor and X-Ray Visor, figuring out which one the game wants you to use can be annoying. The abilities of these Visors overlap, with some enemies only being visible with the X-Ray Visor, while certain hidden objects can only be seen via the Thermal Scope. There's even one boss in particular that is only visible with the X-Ray Visor during a very specific point, which was so cryptic that it made me think the boss was outright invisible to all Visors during this point. To be honest, this was that boss that gave me my second death.

Time To Nitpick

The final nail in the coffin for these two Visors is how much of an assault on the eyes they can be. The Thermal Visor doesn't get too bad, only changing the HUD to something much more intrusive than normal, and only occasionally blinding the player when overloaded by some enemies and bosses. The X-Ray Visor, on the other hand, is often harsh on the eyes without being overloaded, since it displays everything as a bright white object. This on top of cluttering the HUD with unnecessary details and effects, arguably more so than the Thermal Visor.

Speaking of bad Visor effects, there are some general Visor effects that are annoying as well. Passing through steam and other such vapors will fog up the screen as if it's actually sticking to Samus' visor. Somewhat similarly, Samus' face will be reflected on the visor under certain conditions (pictured above). Furthermore, there are some enemies that can cause "interference" with Samus' visors, causing them to turn the screen to static. I am dead serious when I say that this effect hurt my eyes so badly that it would cause my head to hurt. These effects are supposed to be "immersive," but I've got a different "I" word to describe them with: "irritating." I realize that this is most certainly nitpicking, but people nitpick Other M, so I'm within my rights. If anything, I'm proving how easy it is to nitpick something.

Speaking of Other M; one of the things most often criticized about the game is how Samus loses her powers. Many fans think it is an incredibly stupid reason, but if you look at it, Prime's excuse is way, way worse. This is spoilers, obviously, so skip this paragraph if you care about that. At the beginning of the game, Samus stops on a space frigate, Orpheon, to investigate a distress signal. Some tutorials, minor enemy encounters, and a boss fight later, the ship begins to self-destruct. During her escape, Samus gets caught in an explosion that slams her against the wall of a nearby elevator, somehow causing her to lose almost all of her powers. This is incredibly stupid. Why is this one explosion able to damage Samus' Power Suit so badly? Samus has survived shipwrecks, Mother Brain's hyper beam, being swallowed whole by a Queen Metroid (multiple times!), an X Parasite infection, several encounters with Ridley, and even near-electrocution in one clever tactic used against a certain boss, yet this one explosion is somehow powerful enough to make her lose nearly everything. People complain about how stupid Samus' reason for losing her powers in Other M is, but this is just as dumb, if not way worse. If that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what is!

Another thing that's way worse than it is in Other M is Prime's gamefeel in regards to locomotion. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, the game's pace is so bloody slow, it's like crawling through intestines. Instead of her usual athletic running speed, Samus runs like she's got Bowser riding piggyback on her shoulders. I've also already mentioned my qualms with the game's platforming; jumps feel floaty, and the perspective makes precision difficult. In addition to all of this, Samus' signature ability, Morphball (pictured below), feels shoehorned into the game; it feels like it was tacked on to regular gameplay rather than acting as a natural part of it. The ability allows Samus to navigate through small areas by turning into a ball. In other games, this ability has a very short transition animation, and is often used for short sequences of extra tricky platforming. In Prime, however, it's most often used to crawl through straight, four-foot-long tunnels that doesn't add anything to the gameplay experience. Furthermore, the transition between normal and Morphball forms takes away control for a brief amount of time, often causing the player to run into a wall or off of a ledge if they're not careful. This transition can also cause Samus to take unnecessary hits while in combat. Granted, as I've already mentioned, enemies don't deal much damage, but this is poor design regardless.

The Conclusion

All things considered, Metroid Prime is not the worse game I've ever played, but it's not the best game I've ever played, either. Even judging the game as its own game rather than part of a series, it's still has too many flaws to be objectively good. The game is a lot like the X-Ray Visor: it's a really cool idea handled really poorly. The idea of a first-person Metroid game sounds awesome, so if Prime remember to be a fun action platform shooter like its predecessors, it would be a phenomenal game. Instead, it disregards so much of what makes the series fun that it's hard to call it a Metroid game. It's got Samus, it's got Ridley, it's got Metroids, that's it. Those three things are the only things that allow Prime to be called a "Metroid" game.

I get that Prime is about the story, and the immersion, and it doesn't focus on being an action game. My problem lies in the fact that action game elements are present within the game - regardless of whether or not they're the focus - and they're awful. The player shouldn't be expected to ignore flaws simply because "they're not the focus." The entirety of a game should be enjoyable, not just bits and pieces. Plenty of games out there balance story, immersion, and action-based gameplay without any of those elements suffering. Prime has no excuse.

Metroid Prime gets a 2 out of 5. It has some good ideas, but there is too much fighting against them to find them enjoyable. That said, if you like the game, that's fine. I don't claim that my opinion is the word of god. To quote Mark Edward Fischbach, "You do you, and I'll do me, and we won't do each other. Probably."

Image Sources:

Wikitroid: http://metroid.wikia.com/

Metroid Recon: http://metroid.retropixel.net/