Series : Metroid
Developer : Retro Studios
Genre : First person shooter
Themes : Bio-horror
Other Tags : Female Protagonist
COMPLETED
Metroid Prime
Log entries
- Completed the game on Normal difficulty. (clear time: 22:40, score: 64% (a bit harsh, I thought I was pretty thorough) Phew. The final boss, Metroid Prime, was quite hard. My pulse still isn't back to normal, and I'm typing at about 20 WPM faster than I usually would, due to adrenalin pulsing through my body. Unlike certain other games (Onimusha 2, God of War), the difficulty of the final boss in MP isn't unfair, it's sufficiently hard for a game of its length. This reflects the entire design of the game - everything is as it should be, and if you like this genre, you will certainly enjoy MP.
If you don't know MP, you might be tempted to deduce that it is a first person shooter. This isn't quite true - it is certainly first person most of the time, and you do shoot a lot (it's the way you open doors, for instance), but it isn't the focus of the game. The main gameplay revolves around exploration and gathering items and upgrades for your character, the female bounty hunter Samus Aran. Memorable upgrades are the 4 different visors, including the awesome infra-red and x-ray visors. Very cool.
Not to say that there isn't action or suspense in this game; the bounty hunters are very scary, they tend to jump at you from nowhere, uttering intimidating shouts in their deep, alien voices. The fights with pirates work very well, the AI works perfectly, the pirates seem to react to your actions (this may all be in my head, though :), and when they die, they are thrown back, hammering into the ground with perfect ragdoll physics. Just the way it should be.
It's nice to play a game where patience and thoroughness is a virtue. Metroid Prime is such a game. Studying your environment, gathering information, learning the history of the extinct Chozo civilization is important for success in MP.
To obtain synergy, I've also been playing Super Metroid, which has remarkably similar gameplay to MP, even though it's from 1994. I haven't yet completed it, but one of these days I will - that is, if I take some time off from... - Tonight at our recurring PD game night, Jeppe played a couple of hours of Metroid Prime with Martin, Lasse, and Arnt as audience. We all like the game, although we eventually got tired of the music, which mostly consists of a single loop that plays without pause for a bit too long. The music itself is cool, but in my opinion it should maybe be playing for a quarter of the time.
2008-08-24
2013-12-05