Metroid Prime

[FMW]

Well - Metroid Prime. It's pretty generally accepted that this was a good game. Some never wrapped their heads around the irregular control scheme, but the vast majority of players managed to pierce this learning curve and discover quite a compelling adventure.

 

So there's that, it's fun. Any primate could tell you that. I'm here to postulate as to why:

 

Metroid Prime is not a triumph in how it plays, the traditional road to success. The turn speed is slow, the combat is easy, and the game inhibits creative interaction with the environment. Every jump, enemy location, and firing angle has been planned ahead of time. Most shots are homing, so player location hardly matters in the second half of the game anyway. Samus' abilities can only be used in scripted ways in prescribed places. The mechanics of overcoming obstacles is not, by and large, an enthralling experience.

 

Metroid Prime is a triumph in storytelling. This is a non-traditional story, told in a way that really couldn't be told in any other medium. The elements are as follows: great art/graphics, great sound/atmosphere, great characters.

 

1. The art/graphics are beautiful. Even though some of the designs are anatomically ridiculous in this realistic vision of Metroid (I'm looking at you, Magmoors) the creature designs are memorable and more importantly they mesh very well with their environments. This game is the opposite of Devil May Cry or whatever else is popular with the kids these days - you are not trapped in a room tasked to kill enemies for the sake of it. Enemies are in the logical places for them to be, and will only react if you come wandering into their abodes. This goes for the non-intelligent enemies as well as the Space Pirates. Everything is in it's proper place at it's proper time. The art of the stages and monsters really drives this home. The wraith like fliers flitter around Phendrana Drifts, and you aren't even sure if they're enemies for you to shoot or part of the environment. The Space Pirates stand around working at their dastardly deeds interacting with their world in perfectly logical ways. The Zoomers don't even react to you at all - they just go about their humble lives. Everything fits together perfectly. This is a rare (unprecedented?) triumph in the medium.

 

2. The Sound/Atmosphere is fantastic. The sound effects are serviceable I guess, and the first time you hear Samus grunt in pain because you made a mistake it's quite a shock. The music is very good. This is totally subjective I guess, so the best I can do is give some standout examples of the tracks that work well with their environments: Phendrana Drifts is serene and calm, just like the place. Magmoor Caverns is obnoxious and in-your-face, which works well with the claustrophobic hallways and lava and fire shooting everywhere. Tallon Overworld has two music tracks at different parts of the game. One, a remix of a classic Metroid theme, plays at the beginning of the game and really helps set the tone for the entire adventure. The second track is less melodic and much more electronic in sound - this track plays as you begin to venture deeper into Tallon Overworld and you discover stranger and more dangerous alien flora/fauna.

 

3. Great characters. Allow me to rephrase. Great character. Singular. And it isn't Samus. Tallon IV, the planet the game takes place on, is one of my top five video game characters ever. The story of Metroid Prime is told explicitly through scanning, and subtly through graphics/sound/atmosphere. It's the story of a paradise. How it was found and made, and how it was lost, and how it was redeemed. It's the story of a planet.

 

The first act is told explicitly in the Chozo Lore scans, but really all you need to know is what you see and hear when you first step out into the Tallon Overworld. The audio/visual of that area tells the story of the paradise this planet once was better than any amount of prose ever could. This moving picture is worth at least a million words, so I won't waste more describing it.

 

The second act, the fall into disgrace, is told explicitly through the Chozo Lore and the Space Pirate logs. Again though, the more powerful storytelling is not the prose - it's the broken lifeless waste of the Phazon Mines. It's the poisoned water of of the Chozo ruins, and the scream of the Chozo ghost. These, as well as a million other details, tell all that has gone so horribly, inconceivably, wrong in this place.

 

The final act, the redemption, is provided by the player. There are slight mentions of this in some scan logs, prophesies of your return in the Chozo lore and plots to kill you in Pirate logs, but that isn't really how it's told. It isn't so much told through music/art either. You don't see or hear Samus much in this game. This chapter is told not in the past tense, but in the present and is told through your actions. Cleaning the waters of the ruins, eliminating the abomination that is the Omega pirate, and ultimately destroying Metroid Prime itself are stanzas in this third act that ultimately relates a hopeful, optimistic theme. That no sin, no fall from Grace, is too far gone to be returned. It's not an accident that the game's final moments take you back to the beauty of Tallon Overworld, nor that the music returns to the first music track that inspires such hope and triumph.

 

Edit: Looking back on this, I realize I didn't really spell out why it's so important that the creature and environment design mesh so well. Since my premise is that this story is the story of the planet, it is imperative that the planet be a believable, relateable place. In character terms, it's making the planet a character you can believe in enough to feel sympathy. If the locations in this game were to feel artificial or contrived, then the entire narrative would be out the window. The game would have been a series of video game levels rather than a setting. But that didn't happen, and the execution in that area is the glue that holds this whole project together.

[Vargras]

The things I enjoyed most about Metroid Prime were the little things, the incredibly subtle details - rain drops on your visor if you look up on Tallon IV, Samus' reflection in the visor after a close explosion, being able to see her arm inside the cannon with the x-ray visor. There's tons more, and I don't have the patience to list them all.

 

The attention to detail was mind-boggling.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

While I completely agree that the atmosphere was a triumph of storytelling, I do think there is more to the gameplay than you're letting on here. While the shooting element itself was streamlined and super-easy, the boss battles and the ball puzzles were fantastic examples of fun, meaty gameplay. And though a lot of Samus' abilities were limited to preset points (such as her grapple beam), half the fun was discovering where some of those not-so-obvious places were and how to reach them using the arsenal you'd unlocked so far.

 

Anyway, good read. MP is one of my top ten favorite titles.

[FMW]

Hey, thanks for reading guys. Reviewing my writing, I kinda agree with you p4warrior - I give remarkably little (no) attention to the mechanics of actually playing the game. If I decide to do anything with this (though honestly I'm not sure what I would do with it, it's not like the internet is short on video game opinion articles) I'll make sure to clean it up and address the mechanics at least in part. Or explicitly state that I'm not going to talk about the mechanics. Either works I guess.

 

Another reason I didn't touch on those much though is that I feel the moment to moment interactions with the world are what was most improved in Metroid Prime 2. I was kind of saving that discussion up for the sequel thread about Metroid Prime 2. Still, totally fair point. Good call.

[RockyRan]

You just made me want to re-play Metroid Prime. Good job. > I already have a ridiculous backlog.

[Baconrath]

The things I enjoyed most about Metroid Prime were the little things, the incredibly subtle details - rain drops on your visor if you look up on Tallon IV, Samus' reflection in the visor after a close explosion, being able to see her arm inside the cannon with the x-ray visor. There's tons more, and I don't have the patience to list them all.

 

The attention to detail was mind-boggling.

 

shooting those little bird thingies in the sky

[excel_excel]

Great post. Ah Metroid Prime was just perfect. Everything came together so well, the way the story was drip fed to you by scanning, the incredibly varied environments, and those little touches like when a flash would go in front of your visor and you could see Samus's face for a second. So atmospheric and engrossing. Easily one of the greatest games ever. The sequels were great but were no where near as good as the first