Folks,
I know not everyone is a fan of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Those that have already played it and formed their own opinion this thread is honestly not intended to convert you or to argue.
Those of you who haven't played it yet or have no intention of playing it simply because it's in a third person perspective... This thread is for you.
I picked up Metroid Prime for Game Cube brand new at a Blockbuster (remember when we had those?) for $20 something like 10 years ago.
I've been a fan for a while. I beat Metroid for the NES and Metroid 2 the Return of Samus for the GameBoy as a kid. I played Super Metroid on a friends SNES a few times as a teenager and loved it.
I like many was VERY skeptical about a Metroid game in 3D. Still I figured for $20 I might as well see how bad it was for myself.
The first hour was... interesting. It was definitely a new experience and not one I was sure I liked. The controls were new and awkward at first but the second hour in I conceded it wasn't a terrible game. Once I landed on the Metroid infested ruined planet of the Chozo I could not stop playing.
The standard Metroid isolation and solitude was there. The only limits to my exploration in the wide open world were the ones set set by which abilities I recovered. Yes I said recovered. I liked the fact that the game started me off with a variety of abilities, some old and some new only to strip them from me less than 20 minutes in.
This Samus was not just some lone badass wiping out aliens and happening upon upgrades. She was damaged and determined to get back what's hers.
If you just speed run through the storyline is sparse, barely existent even (another staple of the metroid series). But if you want you can scan every creature, every object, and hunt down pieces of "lore" to get more depth out of the world you roam. Some of the lore even eludes to not just the Metroids but even Samus' own origins. It's there if you want it. Out of the way if you don't. I didn't want it at first. But found myself backtracking to get as much of it as I could before games end. Nicely done.
All the classic upgrades were there and then some.
The classic Metroids and Ridley were there.
The music. My God the music. Without a doubt the best mood setting music in the history of the franchise. The perfect blend of Sci-Fi and Solitude.
The platforming in first person DOES took some getting used to. But the morph ball side-scrolling and 3D sequences felt very very right.
I was relieved to discover shortly in that while it was a first person game. It was not a first person "shooter". Most notably because of the "lock on" feature (like in the 3D Zelda games but with a gun).
When you jump into this game you are going to be exploring, you are going to be collecting, adapting, solving puzzles, exploring some more... Amidst all of that you will encounter space pirates, Metroids, and yes from time to time some pretty nasty bosses. In other words you're going to be playing Metroid.
That is to say, by the end of the game
I was convinced. Prime is Metroid through and through.
And the sequel was just as good.
Playing the 3rd entry for the Wii I was put off a bit at first. Not from the controls though. The controls were amazing. What put me off was the series trademark isolation was abandoned in favor of a larger multi-world people driven narrative seemingly in spite of everything the franchise had ever done.
I wasn't a fan of scrolling through dialog and having to follow orders from non-playable characters. But I plowed through it. My tenacity was rewarded halfway into the game where the series trademark isolation hit back with an effectiveness and intensity unmatched by any of the previous entries in the franchise. An intensity that only worked because of everything the game had made me plow through before it.
It doesn't happen in a cutscene either. Man I'd love to just tell you what happens. But I don't dare steal the experience from you. It's one of the best, sucker punching, playable sequences I've ever experienced in a game.
Suffice it to say that by the end of the third game Samus has lost a lot more to the Metroids than some recoverable tech and the reason she prefers to do her job alone on planets that are already a lost cause becomes crystal clear.
You'll also learn the origins of Mother Brain from the NES original. But that's just icing on the cake.
Other M I haven't tried yet. So I can't really speak to it. But I enjoyed Prime so much I bought the Trilogy when it came out so I could play through the first two games again with Wii controls and slightly enhanced graphics. At some point I'll probably give Other M a go. Just to see what the fuss was about.
I know folks who have panned the Prime games without even giving it a solid try because it "doesn't look or play" like the previous Metroids and it saddens me a bit that they can't be more open minded. Rare did a hell of a job with it. No two areas are alike. Hell, no two plant or rock formations are alike. That's actually a first for the metroid franchise. In the side scrolling era I was constantly getting lost because many caverns looked exactly the same.
In my mind each entry in the trilogy holds it own among the best 3D Person games ever made. If you haven't played it at all it should be in your bucket list.
