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Metroid Prime

by Daniel Bloodworth - May 24, 2002, 1:51 pm EDT

Metroid in first-person? Can it be done? Retro is just short of getting it right.

Metroid Prime has really turned out to be a great game. It still feels like an FPS in a lot of ways, but there is just as much emphasis on exploration as there is on shooting. You have to blast through rubble, blast doors, and bomb up to certain tunnels as always. Even in the demo I managed to find a well-hidden corridor that led to a map.

There are a lot of little details that really make the game impressive. The visor can get steamed up or splattered with bug guts and some enemies interfere with your vision when they attack. Another nice touch was in the airlock. You walk in and see all this rubble floating around, but when you hit the switch to pressurize it and enter the ship, gravity takes over and everything clatters to the ground.

There are a number of visors and weapons to choose from. You use the cross pad to switch between different visors and the C stick selects your blaster. There appear to be four visors and four blasters.

The combat visor is what you use most of the time to lock on and battle enemies. The scan visor allows you to examine enemies and objects and activate switches. In the press video, we also saw what appear to be a thermal visor and an X-Ray visor.

For weapons, we were able to use the standard blaster, missiles, and the ice beam. Both weapons can be charged up for a more powerful shot and you can use an even more powerful ice beam by charging it and then using the missile button.

Towards the end of the demo, I also had a chance to use the grappling hook, which is on Samus’ left arm. I’ll have to play it more to get used to it, but grappling in first-person was very disorienting.

Overall, I love Metroid Prime and I'm very impressed with what they've done. For the most part I feel that it does capture the essence of the series. Still, I can’t get past the stiff Turok style jumping. I’m hoping that there will be later levels where you can get into third-person and do some spin-jumping from platform to platform, but I can’t stand the short hops that I've seen so far.

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Genre Action
Developer Retro Studios
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Metroid Prime
Release Nov 17, 2002
PublisherNintendo
RatingTeen
jpn: Metroid Prime
Release Feb 28, 2003
PublisherNintendo
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