Monday 14 January, 2008

Summary:

In Metroid Prime the player takes control of Samus Aran, a galactic bounty hunter that fights space pirates and parasitic creatures known as Metroids. The game takes place between the events in Metroid and Metroid II: the return of Samus and takes place primarily on the planet Tallon IV. Samus must explore the planet collecting power ups for her suit while battling space pirates.

Gameplay:

Metroid Prime makes good use of its first-person perspective. Unlike other games that make the HUD seem detached from the player, Samus’ helmet visor acts as the HUD. This makes the player feel like he/she is actually in the characters head. Metroid Prime goes even farther by having the visor react to its environment. For example, if a mist hits the player, the visor begins to fog up. These subtle details give a sense of surrealism to the game.

The narrative of the game is told through the cut scenes and by scanning the environment. While there is no actual dialogue so far in the game, I have derived the story by using the scanning ability to analyze my surroundings and learn more about the space pirates and the environment of Tallon IV. The cut scenes give the player some idea as to what is going on at certain moments as well. Overall the story doesn’t feel like it needs to be paid too much attention in order to appreciate the game.

One problem that I had with the game was the control scheme. It feels like I would have appreciated playing this game on a PC more than on the gamecube because of the difficulty I had controlling the movement of the character. If anything, I would have liked to have one stick to control movement and another to control where the player looks. I feel that this small problem made it difficult to lock on to targets and avoid enemy fire. I don’t think that it was a big enough problem that it dragged down the entire experience.

So far I have enjoyed playing Metroid and I look forward to completing the game.

One thing that I found very annoying with Metroid Prime was the lack of a waypoint system for getting around the massive map quickly, so you have to walk, and fight enemies you've already defeated, in order to get from one place to another, only to find out that it may not have been where you were supposed to go in the first place.

I see that now with my second session playing the game. I only found one save point and every time i enter an area I've been in, the enemies that I've already killed regenerate.

I am one of the few people that really can't get into the Metroid Prime series. While trying to maintain the feel of the original game, they kept some of gamings most outdated practices, such as meaningless fetch quests. I felt like most of the game I was doing pointless arbitrary tasks and the whole time I felt disconnected from the game world instead of being immersed in it. I might give it a second chance, but it's really at the bottom of my list. It feels like instead of innovating on the franchise, Retro Studios just threw a fresh coat of paint on deteriorating idea.