50 Years of Video Games: Quality Time: Metroid Prime (GameCube)

With the 1994 release of Super Metroid, the Metroid series finally not only refined the exploration-focused platformer into a cleaner and more enjoyable shape than the first game’s flawed execution but provided a truly excellent game experience that has held up over time better than its two predecessors despite the small rough edges. It propelled the series to incredible acclaim and the series sits solidly on the goodwill it created with this better realization of what would become called the Metroidvania genre primarily because of its influence…

 

But then Metroid went quiet.

 

3D gaming loomed on the horizon and while there was nothing saying you couldn’t make more 2D games, especially on handheld systems, the industry and the audience were hungry for seeing the new direction the video game medium was heading. Making an exploration-focused platformer in 2D requires an interconnected world where traversal is a bit richer than just going from left to right, but adding in free movement in all directions would certainly complicate efforts to transfer this game design into a new dimension. So, Metroid sat out for a bit, to the point my introduction to the Metroid series was not one of its games but the N64 crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. where Samus earned herself a spot as one of the eight playable characters in the base roster. When I first encountered her I thought she was some sort of robot, a misunderstanding made more amusing by the fact her destruction of the space pirate base on Zebes was perhaps the first catastrophic gender reveal party, the bounty hunter’s removal of her helmet to reveal herself as a woman at the end of Metroid one of gaming’s first memorable twists. By the time of writing this I’ve played most every Metroid game but there was a brief window where Samus and Metroid weren’t able to capitalize on the spotlight Super Metroid or even Super Smash Bros. earned them.

 

Then in 2002, Metroid Prime released. Sure, there was also Metroid Fusion releasing the same year over on the Game Boy Advance, but in some ways that game stepped back some of Super Metroid’s advances for something tighter and more focused on forward progression. A good experience all things considered, but Metroid Prime was the daring one, bringing the series back after eight years and plunging into the third dimension not only with the same approach to an explorable area expanding as you gain new abilities but also taking the even more bold direction of having it be a first-person shooter. A genre best known for people blowing people away with military grade weaponry, the first person shooter hadn’t quite hit its full-on embrace of the war shooter yet, but you still had the Doom marine and Master Chief blasting aliens to bloody bits in chaotic kill fests as the representatives of the genre. Metroid’s previous entries had been slower paced, atmospheric, and the twitch reflexes to win a firefight would have been a big departure from what the series had done before, but developer Retro Studios wasn’t plunging the series into the realm of the competitive deathmatch. It would admittedly attempt it in the sequel under pressure, but this first game that had the player and Samus share a pair of eyes for exploring an alien planet embraced the contemplative traversal of a world that engages the player more with interesting navigation and enemies as obstacles rather than making this a string of blood-pumping gun fights.

If the concept had just worked well it would have been an impressive feat for the series, a solid step for the Metroidvania genre that even today still prefers to explore 2D realms since its a much safer bet for the design concepts featured. However, Metroid Prime tackled this new terrain with the same confidence as its heroic lead, unafraid of what new trials and tribulations would come with trying to get the job done. Retro Studios wasn’t content to just transition Metroid into this new style of play, they embraced it with incredible attention to detail, the evolution so natural it’s hard to believe anyone ever doubted its potential.

 

When I introduced the Quality Time style of review to the site I asked myself what kind of games I’d likely cover in this deeper look into fantastic titles, and one that came to mind with almost no deliberation was Metroid Prime. An so, now that the 50 Years of Video Games series takes me to questioning what influential and important game I should cover for 2002, the question was less “what game should I cover” as much as “is any game deserving of it more than Metroid Prime?”. Well, we’re here now so the answers should be clear, so let’s begin to take a look at how Samus’s incredible jump into first person 3D exploration succeeds so cleanly.

 

THE WORLD OF TALLON IV

Following the events of the first Metroid game, Samus Aran finds herself drawn to the orbit of a little known planet called Tallon IV. A vessel is in danger there, but when the bounty hunter begins to investigate, she instead comes across a fairly familiar foe. The same Space Pirates she has battled before are in charge of this vessel, the Frigate Orpheon an orbital ship that was actually waiting around Zebes and recovered the defeated dragon Ridley and fled following Samus’s previous mission. However, they’ve bitten off more than they can chew on this new world, discovering a corruptive substance called Phazon that they used to try and create new mutated living weapons only for them to turn against them.

When you step foot on the Frigate Orpheon though, none of this is explained to you. In fact, you can go the whole game without knowing what was going on up there or realize how closely it was tied to the first game’s events. However, one of the smartest tools added to Samus’s visor for this mission is the Scan Visor, this option allowing the player to focus briefly on an object or organism to get a short readout of details. If you use these visor to crack the computers on board this damaged spaceship you’ll find the logs left by your enemies, the explanations succinct but still detailed enough you can construct the story not by passively experiencing it but by collecting data through exploration. Already the game is giving the player some agency in learning about the world, and if you didn’t take the time to scan these you might not actually realize how smart the Space Pirates you’re up against are. Naturally whenever they spot Samus in game they fire on sight, none of them coming to a stop to explain their plans or focused on anything besides preventing this woman who has stopped them once before from doing so again. However, as you find more terminals to scan or the remains of their many experiments both on the ship and on the planet below, you begin to understand their organization and see they do have more personal moments. A rough and jingoistic devotion to increasing their strength and potential for conquest at even the cost of their fellow pirates colors the actions of these alien warriors, their destruction leaving its mark on many places you encounter during your journey.

Once the Frigate Orpheon meets its unfortunate end though, you end up down on the planet Tallon IV and soon learn another reason why the planet was of such interest to these pirates. Samus was raised by an intelligent and gifted race of bird-like aliens called the Chozo, this planet one of their great centers for discovery and culture until Phazon began to corrupt them. Samus’s Chozo developed weaponry is of interest to the group she had recently defeated so heading to a planet they resided on was a natural course before the Phazon distracts them with its greater potential, but you still find Space Pirates later in the game turning poorly reverse engineered versions of your own weapons on you to remind you of this effort. The Chozo aren’t present on the planet anymore though, at least not in a physical way since some of their spirits linger after death, but their ruins serve as one of the major areas you explore and their lore hangs on the wall for you to scan as well. You can begin to understand their fall as the Phazon appeared and how they dealt with the Space Pirate incursion after, but hidden among important details are also small but nifty explanations for things that some players could have written off as ways to make for interesting backgrounds or simple game mechanics. The Chozo have a strong belief in preserving their culture through statuary, this not only justifying later moments in the game where you come across statues that play a role in the puzzles but broadly contextualizing the statues you see in most every Metroid game that hold upgrades in their palms. The beautiful remains of their architecture and their greater intricacies become so much more meaningful the moment you scan one bit of lore on a wall, and the game definitely puts in the effort to add things just for the sake of creating a more realized world. In one room you’ll find an exposed bit of the irrigation system used for water conveyance, it having no purpose beyond showing that these people who lived in a seemingly dry place did have a reasonable way to survive while also giving the player a reasonable explanation for the rooms with rich plant life or pools of water.

Quite a bit more of the game will have you exploring Space Pirate facilities other than Chozo Ruins though, the icy Phendrana Drifts and the  vast Phazon Mines both having huge operations where again the game tries to make sure you gain an understanding of how things work on this world. The pirates aren’t just working in the icy region for fun, the dangerous Metroid creatures they have been developing in the past as bioweapons are weak to cold climates, so not only does it help keep them under control but it grants the pirates the means to test their efforts to remove this weakness from their biology with the Phazon. On the other hand though, Tallon IV has a fair few almost totally natural areas to explore as well, the player even first touching down in the Tallon Overworld’s rainy marshes. A pirate vessel has crashed in this area and you’ll pop into it later, but early on this area is focused heavily on Samus learning to overcome the environment and fauna, there being plenty of platforming in Metroid Prime but rarely does it need to be done so quickly that the first-person angle of it makes it disorienting. You can time your jumps as you please and there are never drops to instant death, Samus’s suit still damaged if you land in lava or poisonous waters but the player is even given the chance to leap their way out of there so the punishment for a miss isn’t too strong.

 

The game does manage a good mix of natural believable formations and the clear influence of someone more intelligent in the area designs. Outcroppings and large plants can make for some reasonable navigational aids for a bit, but finding a bridge made of twisted vines would be a break from reasonable biology… so the scan visor informs you that someone did twist that bridge into existence long ago, likely the Chozo who were more harmonious in their relationship with nature. The game doesn’t give you answers for everything and sometimes it can be a little silly to imagine the Space Pirates attaching little thrusters to the giant ice platforms in an area, but some mystery still keeps other moments from becoming overexplained as well. You don’t need to keep coming to a stop and scanning the world to understand it nor is there reason to as the game usually either has new major scan data in clusters or tied to encountering a new enemy or object type, and some things like certain breakable metals can be scanned to let you know they’re breakable but you’ll need to learn yourself what weapon can break that specific type.

 

Admittedly the scan visor can overstep things a bit. Getting 100% completion for a lightly changed ending involves scanning everything, and while it can be fascinating to read the game explain how a certain creature evolved into its unusual niche, the scan visor can also be a bit of a hint system even for boss encounters. The desire to scan things to learn more about this intricately realized setting can end up with you learning from that readout how to take down even foes who have a mild puzzle element to them, although thankfully a need to aim properly and dodge doesn’t mean the fight is invalidated by knowing a weakness. Most enemies are about sustaining fire in the right way though so learning the way to hurt something isn’t the only substance to a fight, but similarly, a lot of enemies aren’t there for a back and forth battle. Shriekbats fall down from the ceiling and dive-bomb the player quickly, the player wanting to spot them early to shoot them down before they sustain damage. Creeper Vines pop out of holes and whip Samus away from platforms she wants to be on until she briefly scares them off with some damage. Scatter Bombus will interfere with your vision and block pathways with electricity you need to carefully move through before you get the means to destroy them, and oftentimes a small outcropping will have a small creature like a spiky Geemer or sturdy Grizby hanging out on it that can damage you and shove you off if you don’t kill them before climbing up. The lava-filled Magmoor Caverns has enormous fire breathing Magmoor worms attack you as you go by while Puffer aerial mines fill the immediate area with toxins until they’re destroyed, the game concocting a good spread of dangerous and unique wildlife to impede your movement. There’s a heavy focus on traversal being the main challenge while creatures are often complications to it that you can shoot down to simplify the process.

That isn’t to say there aren’t true fights against foes who can hold their own though. The Space Pirates pack guns and come in many different varieties like ones who can fly, some who can turn invisible, and even some massive ones who can absorb your energy briefly if you just fire at them wildly. The Space Pirates are definitely the closest the game gets to firefights but they don’t fire too rapidly and are more about landing strong hits than consistent ones, the player’s health expanding as they find more upgrades over the course of the game but health is still a commodity refilled only by small pickups and the well-spaced save stations. There is danger if you get careless in these battles and the wildlife will likely have whittled you down as well, and one way the game definitely seems to emphasize survival over difficult aiming challenges comes in how you fight back. Space Pirates and their variations are often highly mobile, even regular enemies like the War Wasp also zippy little creatures that would be difficult to shoot down even with precise aiming. However, Samus has a lock-on feature that lets her focus her attention on a target and track them. Your shots aren’t guaranteed to hit with this if you fire when an enemy is moving or you don’t make the small adjustments still required for targeting, but you also get things like the missiles to home in for the flightiest of foes. The battles end up prioritizing your movement a lot as a result, the player needing to sustain fire while also ensuring their own safety with strafing and jumping.

 

Boss fights can break from this mold somewhat. The giant Flaahgra insect inside of a huge plant requires you to disable its sun-reflecting mirrors so your focus isn’t always going to be on that dangerous central foe, but then someone like Thardus the giant rock amalgam goes on a bit too long for how little it shakes up the fight design of shattering its rocky body parts one by one. A boss like Meta Ridley, the familiar draconic foe for Samus now souped up with mechanical attachments, has his moments of being invulnerable that slow the fight down some but also has a point near the end where its a lot more tense as he stops flying away and gets in close with quick attacks that are much harder to avoid. Mainly, the combat isn’t the core focus of Metroid Prime and it isn’t afraid to have moments where your lock-on will carry a lot of the fight, but it also makes sure this doesn’t make fighting too automatic or simple since it’s not a series of aiming challenges but instead trying to hit foes often enough or with the right tool to remove the danger they present to your progress.

Music also does a superb job in building up the planet’s atmosphere, the game even starting with a strange distorted and alien sound before kicking in with a strong ethereal sound to welcome you to this new and imaginative experience. Magmoor Caverns and its dangerous but lively halls have booming percussion and chanting to match the place’s dangerous energy but the more relaxed Phendrana Drifts has a beautifully serene track for its cooler climate. The music that kicks in when the difficult Chozo Ghosts make their attacks is appropriately anxious and fearful and the Space Pirates have their own theme to get your blood-pumping for the sections of the game where more active involvement in battle is required. A place like Tallon Overworld will build you up with a heroic sound, the underwater music better fits the slower movement of the section, and more mysterious and dangerous areas come with a more hesitant understated sound, the game never forgetting atmospheric considerations while also providing memorable tracks to explore to.

Before we move on from this accidentally packed section, it should also be noted how many little touches Metroid Prime throws in just because it can. The on-screen display seen during play is contextualized as Samus’s helmet visor, the readings spaced well to avoid becoming unobtrusive but always providing crucial data like your life, remaining missile ammo, and the buttons pressed to switch to other weapons or visor settings. However, it’s the reactiveness of the visor that makes it more intriguing. I mentioned already the Scatter Bombu’s ability to interfere with your vision, the visor’s digital readings causing a static effect if you don’t deal with foes like that one quickly enough. Other times, a large bright explosion might cause you to briefly see a reflection of Samus’s face in the visor, the game reminding you that there’s someone in the suit besides the player puppeting her through this game world. Walk through steam and the visor will briefly fog up and certain liquids can even splatter across your vision for a moment. The game doesn’t engage in these so often it’s distracting, but just like how your energy weapons always leave a small but quickly fading glowing mark on a surface when you shoot it, it’s a touch that helps bring together a world that was realized to incredible effect without compromising the game feel or the enjoyability of exploring it and fighting whatever lies in wait.

 

SAMUS’S BAG OF TRICKS

Tallon IV is an incredible world to explore with as many details given about its history by its appearance as there are hidden in the lore and data you can scan, but the interconnected major areas of your adventure provide more than platforming challenges and foes to shoot. When things begin on Frigate Orpheon you are granted a Samus who has a strong set of adventuring abilities. She can fire missiles to break certain objects or deal heavy damage albeit at a slower rate than her Power Beam fires, but that Power Beam can also be charged to pull in health and missile refills or fired for a strong but cost-free blast. The Grapple Beam lets you latch onto specific points and swing across gaps your generous jump can’t reach, and most diverse in concept from your first-person exploration is the ability to curl up into the Morph Ball and explore side areas designed just for it. The Morph Ball has bombs to deal with things in its path in these devoted sections but also can use them to jump, the areas specific to Morph Ball traversal often having some dangers to roll past while making your limited options work to get you to the next area or some hidden goodie. You’re a well-equipped warrior on that frigate… but are damaged when it begins to explode, your weapons taken offline and Samus landing on the planet rather vulnerable and weak.

 

Luckily the game doesn’t delay giving you back some of your options, the missile, Morph Ball, and other tools to help you reach a solid form for fighting and exploration quickly regained after defeating some early bosses who help you grow accustomed to things like dodging, focusing on fast foes, or exploiting enemy weak points. However, that Grapple Beam is going to take a long time to rejoin you, Samus even picking up all new abilities and weapons before she ever reunites with that tool. Your different beams are one of the most often used but still well varied tools in your expanding arsenal. The default Power Beam is reliable and simple, but the Wave Beam’s electrical shots can cause things like the jetpacks of Flying Pirates to go on the fritz and you sometimes even need to power devices with it by using your Thermal Visor to find the heated hidden conduits you need to shoot. The Ice Beam is slow to fire but can freeze a foe and leave them easy pickings for a missile to shatter them, but it’s certainly a risky bet against agile foes. The last gun takes a while to acquire but the Plasma Beam’s high damage and lingering flame when charged make traversing familiar areas much faster in the late game since you can easily incinerate most foes in your way.

Admittedly, some of your upgrades are just to overcome some barrier rather than give you a nifty new tool for movement and fighting. The suit upgrades in particular fit that mold, the Varia Suit protecting you from extreme heat and the Gravity Suit letting you move underwater freely instead of having your jump and walk speed hampered. Part of having these different tools is helping to open up the explorable areas of Metroid Prime, the game having you pass through the major regions of Tallon IV fairly regularly and rarely lingering in any one too long before a new ability or upgrade gives you more options. This helps the areas not only achieve a greater longevity as you can come back later and cover new ground but it also does a good job of mixing up the atmosphere and environment, the player sometimes heading through dark Space Pirate bases and the haunted parts of the Chozo Ruins only for a new upgrade to send you back to Magmoor Caverns with its higher energy and bright lava-filled chambers. A calm climb through the Tallon Overworld will take you to a new path that leads to the Phazon filled mines, and while some sections of the game have you plunging pretty deep into a specific location, Metroid Prime also makes sure you’ll have some shorter way out that better interconnects the world and makes navigation easier and quicker later. These connections are often made with elevator rides rather than direct connections, this in one way making a trip from the icy Drifts to the hot Caverns make some sense but it also means the game can pepper these elevators throughout more liberally so that you can make those many transfers from one environment to another quickly.

 

There is an inevitable amount of backtracking by design and most rooms are much easier to move through once you’ve experienced them before or acquired weapons that make early enemy obstacles negligible, but Metroid Prime does make sure these return trips aren’t just about getting to an area that was blocked off now that you can clear away the obstruction. There are plenty of optional hidden upgrades around the world, some as substantial as special firing modes for your weapons like the Flamethrower that makes your Plasma Beam into a costly high powered sustained flame great for wiping out some tough late game foes. Others like the missile upgrades and health expansions add up over time and show their value when things become more difficult, the game often laying out small puzzles or hiding things for keen-eyed players to come across either during regular exploration or when they’re crossing old ground and remember something a bit out of place from last visit they can now tackle in a different way. The Spider Ball is especially good for this, the game showing an unusual type of rail early on that later you can attach to magnetically in Morph Ball form and move across walls, ceilings, and structures in a new way with its own little puzzles and dangers. The X-Ray Visor is probably the weakest though when it comes to expanding things, this tool good for making the disappearing Chozo Ghosts stay visible as they are one of the more dangerous and flighty enemies to deal with otherwise but sometimes it just makes invisible things appear or walls disappear without it really feeling like you figured something out. Mostly though your return trips to new areas can also offer you ways to build yourself up even more before you head to the new area needed to make progress.

There is one bit of contentious backtracking involved in the adventure though, that being the search for the Chozo Artifacts. To get to the planet’s core where you face the titular threat, the actual Metroid Prime mutated into a considerably powerful state by the Phazon, you need to first remove the seal the Chozo placed on it with twelve artifacts that were hidden across the planet. When you first visit the Impact Crater’s seal the game will give you clues on where nearly half of them are located and later you can return to receive the rest of the clues, the descriptions almost riddles but also containing one key word that will help you locate where on the map you’re meant to go. The 3D map is certainly helpful with traversal if a bit unwieldy at times because of its need to depict elevation and the web-like designs of some areas, but each room has a name and the artifacts help point you towards them by mentioning those names and hinting at the action required therein. Some of these will be easy to pick up during normal navigation, a bit more involved than grabbing missile expansions most of the time but still not too bad to weave into your regular activities. There are a few that do feel like you won’t be heading off the beaten path to grab until you’ve done everything else though, and with the game already justifying the need to explore so well otherwise, this little bit of required backtracking to solve one puzzle to grab one object seems a little out of place. It doesn’t add an extreme amount of time to the journey if you follow the clues properly and mix in some moments of finding them during normal adventuring, and I even came across a few just by following curiosity rather than any hint. They are thankfully not nearly a hassle enough to lessen the experience, but their ability to enhance it is minimal as well.

 

THE CONCLUSION

The subheaders in this review haven’t really divided things up well, but whenever I found myself discussing one subject I found myself so eager to rope in details from another. In a way, it accurately reflects how well the game systems and world of Metroid Prime are intertwined, the subjects all leaning into each other as their connections make them more meaningful than their individual pieces. Metroid Prime is a first-person shooter where the action is about understanding enemies and avoiding danger rather than accuracy, this approach gelling well when the platforming and exploration value how you use your skills rather than if you can point and shoot at something quickly. The atmosphere of Tallon IV is rich with its music, subtle details, and most importantly the scan data that adds captivating context to a world that already said so much just with how it is laid out. This is a world realized both as a setting and as a place teeming with secrets and navigational hurdles, the player’s interest piqued as the scope of its understated story expands and its traversal challenges continue to provide new abilities and dangers that are just as complementary.

 

Having played it through on Wii through the Metroid Prime Trilogy and the GameCube release I wouldn’t say I recommend one over the other, although the Wii game is fairly cheap on Wii U until it gets delisted in 2023 and the free aiming with the Wii remote might be a more natural control method for some people to adjust to. The lock-on system is a statement of intent though, the creatures and dangers in this game not a series of gunmen you want to headshot to kill quickly but enemies who pose a threat because they aren’t coming for you very often with the same tools you’ll use to fight back. A Space Pirate’s gun-focused approach stands out in a cast of creatures who instead rely on interference or diverse attack angles to impede your progress, the main thrill of the adventure being exploring this world and thus the enemies stand in opposition of that core concept. Still, different weapon types and giant bosses give the game room to provide those flashy fights with a sense of power that punctuate periods of deeper exploration well, and while some ideas like Thardus and the Chozo Artifacts linger a little longer than their interesting contributions, the overall adventure is richer for pursuing such a wide range of ideas while also helping a franchise step into a new genre and dimension in tandem.

Some of the concept art for this game can still captivate me even now with its intricate details that are able to still come across in a game running on old hardware. Sure, you can see the texture work isn’t perfect on Samus’s chestplate during the elevator scenes, but the creatures are still well conceived as things that could reasonably live a normal life but fill a gameplay niche. There were eight years between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime and Retro Studios was only working on this game for two of them and even huge amounts of developed content ended up scrapped during that period. Miraculously though the game came out an incredibly cohesive piece of art that is also captivating with its world and exploration, the first-person Metroidvania still an underexplored genre mostly filled by Metroid Prime sequels because such a concept is hard to pull off even with a phenomenal example of how to handle it. The love and attention so many elements were given though is what brought this game to life in such a vivid and magnificent way, all while being understated in so many ways that make experiencing it greater than a game that demands you pay attention to its many ideas.

 

So now, a little over three years since I created the Quality Time format, the game I had in mind for it gets the spotlight in a review series that might be my most focused on incredibly important and often exceptionally high quality games. Even among distinguished company I knew I needed to give this game such focus, Metroid Prime not just an engaging journey through a masterfully designed alien world but one that refused to see the breakthroughs it was making as impediments or limiters. Metroid Prime would be phenomenal even if it wasn’t groundbreaking so it’s no surprise this still unique experience holds up twenty years later.