Review : Metroid Prime for Gamecube

Last Saturday I was at Blockbuster in Seattle harassing BBQ at work when I spied with my little eye a copy of Metroid Prime for the Nintendo Gamecube for a mere twenty dollars. Now I have rented this game before and it retails for around 45 bucks so this was quite a deal.

Metroid Prime is an American made FPS game based on the classic Nintendo game Metroid. Metroid was more popular in the US than in Japan so it really makes sense to make the Gamecube game over here. So Nintendo worked with RetroStudios to make a damn fine game. Since Rare was bought by Microsoft the new close relationship between Nintendo and RetroStudios could not have come to a better time. If Metroid Prime is a good example of what we have to look forward to from RetroStudios who needs Rare on the Gamecube. Besides if they make another Conker's Bad Fur Day I can get it for my Xbox. But anyway back to Metroid Prime.

This game is really important to Nintendo not because of the legacy of Metroid games but because we really like First-Person-Shooters in the US of A and Microsoft has this little killer application called Halo that all the First-Person-Shooter loving kids thought was so dope. So Metroid Prime was needed so that the Gamecube would have a really good FPS to brag about.

The level of detail in the world on Metroid prime is really something else. The virtual environments are all meticulously modeled and textured to be organic and rich. There is almost no boxy repeating levels that you expect to find in a first person shooter. Samus is a classic video game character is is right up theres with Miss Pac-Man for early kick ass non bimbo girls in video games. Sure she is wearing the tank like cybernetic suit but she has curvy hips and you can see parts of her face in her visor reflections.

This game also sports some great lighting shaders and pixel effects such as glows and when you shoot a charged beam there is this really neat Matrix like visual rippling as the energy ball distorts the frame buffer in a 3d space.

The music is very moody and Metroid like but it is not really catchy and I don't catch myself humming it like the music from Super Mario Brothers.

The creatures that inhabit the worlds of Metroid are a mixture of new and instantly recognizable creatures from the now over a decade old 8bit game.
The Bosses match environment and are fun to fight. Theres really are not usually very good bosses in FPS games so this is quite a treat.

The game is a lot of searching environments and solving puzzles with a good mix of action like the original 2D games.

Theres is no multplayer and no online play but it is not really needed because it is a damn good first person experience.

This game is more like Quake 1 than Quake 3. The control is much like Quake one to move around with a single stick but you can look vertically and lock onto targets by pressing a modifier trigger on the top of the controller. Also theres is the classic Metroid rolling into a ball to fit into small secret passages. This is a damn cool example of real time physics as Samus rolls around the tunnels and canyons self lit with a pixel shader.

The game links with the Gameboy Advance and Metroid Fusion to unlock the Metroid Fusion suit in Prime when you beat Prime and a emulated version of the original Nes Metroid game when you beat Metroid Fusion.

In my book this game is better than Halo and Nintendo needed games like this to attract the 20 something market to their small purple toy like but powerful game system.

This would be a damn fine choice as a first Gamecube game and PC and Xbox players should spend some time playing this game before they write off the Nintendo Gamecube as a kids toy. It respects the old game and causes me to be optimistic about US based video game development.