Are you ready for the return of Samus? Are you prepared to battle it out with Ridley, Mother Brain, & other Space Pirates? Well you’ve come to the right place. In honor of the Queen of S-hero’s I give you an updated preview to hold you over for the next few weeks. So kick back & relax and hope you can survive the days in wait of the biggest game of the year.

The Story
Samus’s adventure on the Nintendo GameCube takes place in the past. After the events of the first Metroid adventure, but before Metroid II, Samus learns that there were Space Pirate vessels in orbit as she fought on the surface of Zebes. She traces one of these to an orbit around a planet called Tallon IV and discovers an enormous Space Pirate research operation in progress. The Space Pirates are experimenting with a dangerous mutagen called Phazon, combining it with local life forms as they try to rebuild their army. Samus must delve deep into magma-filled caverns, poisonous mines, and icy caves as she tries to stop the Space Pirates’ sinister plan.

Cute ain’t she...?

The Game
After a months of speculation on if Metroid Prime was going to be done right. All the First Person & Retro’s first game fears went away and fast. It all happened at E3 2002 when for the first time the people had the chance to play this awesome game. Controlling Samus Aran, space bounty hunter extraordinaire, Metroid doesn’t really feel like a FPS and doesn’t encourage you to play it like one either. Much like its Super Nintendo predecessor, you start off investigating a derelict space station, trying to find out its mysteries. From this point on, the fantastically detailed and smooth visuals encourage you to use Samus’ scanner to find out information and operate switches. The adventure element starts to kick in from here because of this, as you analyze everything to find out what exactly it is, what’s happened to it and if there’s anything of note that your computer picks up. This makes the action very deliberate and steady, requiring you to look around for clues to your objectives rather than charge in looking for the next enemy to kill. You’re not required to scan everything if you don’t want to. Players who know what they’re doing will understand which switches to operate without the aid of scanning, and the snippets of story and game hints that you get from performing such duties can be missed at will simply by going through the game quickly. Although this means you tend to omit any tidbits that would otherwise increase the gaming experience and plot, it’s a welcome option to create a diversity and accessibility of play often seen in the best titles.

As you progress it becomes clear that this title is already well within the Metroid mythos, with many of the elements which starred in the series already apparent. Rockets, ice, wave, grapple and charge beams, puzzles, blasting doors open, excellent pacing between exploration and shooting, mini holograms, a 3D map that resembles the one of old, and the well-recreated morph ball function, where the viewpoint changes to third-person, are all present. The latter of which works extremely well in both control and execution, not removing any of the engaging feel created by the game’s intense and gloomy setting, inspiring Alien-like paranoia and a sheer level of laser against steel tension associated with the franchise. Adding to that is the superb splatter and condensation effects that appear on Samus’ visor, completing the immersion, but not distracting or concealing the action around you. Excellent stuff. The controls also hint to something beyond a FPS, too, as there are no strafe buttons per se, and a lock-on target function can be used to find your enemies quickly and easily. While these things may have you turning your nose up, they’re a reminder that this game is not aiming to emulate others, but rather striking out to create something of its own identity - and thus keep the flavor of Metroid and not something like, ooh, we’ll say Halo. For those unconvinced though, both the lack of strafe and having an auto-targeting function work well, neither constraining you nor making things too easy. The auto lock-on makes it simple to circle around your target while blasting away, with manual targeting there for use if you want more of a challenge. The buttons are as easy to get a good feel with…
A: Fire, Charge Shot
B: Jump
Y: Missiles
X: Morph Ball
L: Lock On Target
R: Manual Aim, Look Around
D-Pad: Change Visor
C-Stick: Change Weapons
Z: Not Used In Demo

Understand what’s going on here? Yeah I don’t either.

The demo featured four weapons: the standard arm cannon, ice beam, missiles and the bombs Samus drops when in Morph Ball mode. The demo level setting was suitably dark and atmospheric, but unfortunately the entire audio component of the game was lost in the E3 din. The graphics were impressive, using colored lighting to create creepy effects. Samus’ beam weapon also seemed to create a sort of ripple or distortion when fully charged and fired. We also saw an impressive boss character surrounded by a rotating transparent shield. Cruising around in the morph ball was fun, but the bombs did not seem very effective against enemies (I surmise they are used for blowing open doors etc.). I did not get a very long look at the game, but it seemed to work well as a shooter. The lock-on targeting system was fairly intuitive and the long, debris filled corridors created a sense of suspense. However, how it will fair as a Metroid game is still according to what Metroid fan you ask. While the corridor-shooter style play may make some fans grumpy, the look and feel of the game seemed very Metroid to me.

Outlook
Metroid Prime is promising a lot and from what we’ve played, it’s delivering more so far. The praise has been justified in the way it looks, sounds and plays, and most importantly of all, it doesn’t seem out place in the Metroid legacy at all. While there may not have been as many elements from the series as we’d like to have seen, it’s clear that Retro is holding back much of it for the final product come its November release. Until then, fans should breathe easy - Samus is playing and looking perfectly angelic in 3D, and there’s not a Halo in sight.

~ditto~