Metroid Prime: Why it's the best thing since sliced bread.

If there's ONE thing, ONE thing I like better than Portal, it's Metroid Prime. Retro Studios's 2002 title is not only the best Metroid games, not only the best Gamecube game, not only the best Nintendo game, but the best damn game in the history of platformers. Weapons, gameplay, music, even story!


THE STORY

The story begins with Samus intercepting a distress signal from the Frigate Orpheon, a space pirate research ship. She soon finds all of it's crew dead, or seriously injured. Further exploration finds the Parasite Queen, a giant bug thing hanging above the core. She soon dispatches it, and it falls into the core, causing a countdown timer to start. As Samus is leaving, she comes across Meta Ridley, a reincarnation of her old foe. Meta Ridley escapes, and as Samus is pursing him, a blast of electrical energy knocks Samus's powerups offline. She chases Meta Ridley to Tallon IV, a planet which has been impacted by a meteor containing Phazon, a deadly blue substance with incredible destructive properties. She lands on Tallon IV, and sets out to discover the Pirates' true intention.

THE GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is a lot different from most First Person games, and it bears lots of similarities to Half Life, except it's not as combat oriented, and the puzzles are a lot shorter. To jump, you hit B, and to fire, you hit A. Missiles are fired with the Y (Or D-Pad up, if you're playing the Wii version), Morph Ball is X (Or C if you're on the Wii), L (Or Z) locks on, and R allows freeview (GC only). All the controls feel natural, and are very quick and responsive. A lot of reviewers don't like the lack of dual sticks, but who cares? It plays like a dream. The power ups are the basic Metroid stuff, Varia suit, Ice beam, bombs, missiles, etc. All of them control like they do in the 2D games. Only thing is, they don't stack, so you have to choose them individually.
The biggest addition is visors, with a main visor, scan visor (Which allows you to scan enemies and computers for information), a thermal visor, an X ray visor, etc.

THE MUSIC

Holy mother of crap is it awesome. Just listen to the music on the right! It's fricken amazing! It mostly consists of remixes from old games, Lower Norfair being the Magmoor Caverns theme, Brinstar being the first Tallon Overworld theme (It switches to some other track when you acquire the Spider Ball) All of the tracks are beautifully made, and sometimes I had paused the game just to listen to it! It's that well done!






THE FINAL WORD

Buy it. NOW. It's the best damn game on the Wii/Gamecube. Final score, 9000 out of 10.

The Other:M Rant - Round 1

I want to talk about a game that's been panned to shit, a recent game which i downright refuse to play. Metroid: Other M. The article will probably contain spoilers, but if I'm honest, you want to read them and realize whats happened here. Other:m is Metroid, but it isn't, it's a flop, but a success, it's shite, but also pretty decent. It's a rare case of a game that is going to sell solely on your opinion of it. We're not talking something like "Bullet Witch" here, and we're not talking Call of duty 6. This game is like a blank check, if you've been a fan for years, you may give it the benefit of the doubt and take as much as you can from the poor chump who dropped it. On the other hand, you may, like me, leave it there for someone else to pick up. Because it smells.

In my opinion, Other M is the single greatest tragedy in Nintendo's history, because... It can fuck off really. However, to form an actual argument. Samus has been in training for years, learning the in's and out's of chozo combat, and military combat i think was introduced in Other M, and then she went off and fought a whole planet of nasties, exterminated a whole race of nasties, then proceeded to blow the shit out of every other planet she saw with nasties on it. Until Other: M. You see, story is introduced, that means we need character development, right? Brilliant. So we have this gruff bounty hunter in a suit who's secretly hot, so we're talking something like Ripley from Alien here, the military woman. Oh, but wait, apparently all that has been forgotten, and we have replaced it ladies and gentlemen, with bullshit. Such as, Samus wants to grow her hair long, but! She's not allowed to because Adam said so! First of all, what a dick, second of all: does whoever wrote this story really think it's clever to show Samus' independence through the growth of her hair? "IT REPRESENTS HER FREEDOM FROM THE FEDERATION!" Brilliant, how deep and un-nerving, i look forward to more developments like- GASP! A woman crying and pissing herself because of a big dragon! Now, i have one statement about this. Would they have done this certain scene had Samus been a male character? NO! No they wouldn't have, do the writers have any concept of a character that develops through a series? Or for that matter, a woman? I mean, sure, i'd kinda accept it, if it were Samus' first time seeing the creature, but she's killed this thing what... 5 times? First time? No bullshit, she's in there with the missiles. The 6th time though? Son of a bitch, it's a dragon! What happened? Were Samus' lens's not quite in all those other times? Did she not realize what was going on!? And to make matters worse, she's saved by a token black guy! A TOKEN BLACK GUY. In Metroid!


Metroid: Other M has completely ruined the series in my opinion, a series from Nintendo that felt... Almost mature, an original series for it's span, something that was intriguing has been given a narrative that's so diluted, so childish that it just implodes upon itself, where's my in depth Samus Nintendo? Having daddy issue's and being saved by big burly men! Where's my mystery? Apparently out playing cluedo with a set of stereotypical twats! Where's the fun? Well, i've heard it is quite fun. But the worst thing, the absolute worst thing. Is that this narrative, is cannon, it exists within the Metroid universe. Remember that awesome Lil game Metroid Fusion? Remember how it had a cool, vague, and ever so slightly cheesy narrative about Samus discovering that the federation was breeding the very thing that was helping to destroy them, and the undertones it laid for the rest of the series? The political statement it made about the government being a bit evil just before it became the cool thing to do? It was clever. Now, explain to me the climax of this story. The big twist. Yes. The discovery of Metroids being grown by the feds. Brilliant, now, let's take a look at Other:M's big twist: The discovery... Of Metroids... Being grown by the feds... Hmm, dunno bout you but that sounds fairly similar. Very similar indeed. Oh wait, IT'S THE SAME THING! Did the guy who wrote this pop some pills just before the end and switch scripts? What happened? It makes the whole narrative of Fusion non-nonsensical, nothing in Fusion would happen if Other:M happened! The point of the game was to bridge the gap, not alienate the game even more from the franchise!

Saying this however, i definitely want me some more spunky short haired Samus. There WILL be more on this later! In round 2!

- Serde, will be back for round 2 in the future

Image credit: www.Ign,com and www.Gameplay.com respectively - Thanks for the images thar fella's!