"We Chozo are drifting, tumbling through space and time as the Great Poison eats away at our sanity. We wake in dreams. As the veil of lunacy descends, as past and future blend and shuffle, one image appears and flickers through the landscape, wraithlike. It is the Hatchling, the Newborn, walking the path of corruption, a lone figure shining in the toxic shadows. She comes dressed for war, and her wrath is terrible."
--Chozo lore (Shining One), Metroid Prime
It's time for me to review one of my favorite games--the legendary GameCube title Metroid Prime, a game that helped resuscitate a major Nintendo franchise, update character Samus Aran's adventures into a stunning first person perspective, show off the wonderfully impressive (for its time) abilities of the GameCube, and that alao produced two acclaimed sequels. Given the opportunity to play this game again, I remembered why I fell in love with it years ago.
Production Values
Wow--this game is now 15 years old! Surprisingly, the game still definitely looks passable most of the time, a testament to its once incredible graphics and technical design. The music and scenery combine to present a beautiful and sometimes soothing world exuding charm, challenge, and plenty of secrets. The soundtrack is phenomenal, ranging from the nostalgic title theme to the intensity of the prologue theme when Samus first exits her gunship to the calming melodies of Phendrana Drifts. The quality of the visuals matches the epicness of the soundtrack if the standards of 2002 are invoked. At that time, the graphics were probably gorgeous and likely stood out distinctly among the offerings of the day. Even today the game is far from ugly despite the fact that a decade and a half has elapsed since its release and three generations of consoles have come out since the GameCube. I did have one complaint about the visuals, though. Darkness and dim lighting sometimes hide otherwise obvious pathways to the point where easy solutions to puzzles can be overlooked because of this strange and gratuitous darkness, but perhaps that was a problem with my TV settings instead of the game programming.
Relatively minor details like showing the reflection of Samus' face on her visor when an explosion detonates close to her demonstrate that much care was invested into crafting the world, aesthetics, and overall design of Metroid Prime. The amount of things to scan and learn about, collectibles to hunt, and the organic environments and creatures contribute to a splendid vision of the planet Tallon IV and I appreciated every moment of exploration and success in the 14.5 hours it took me to complete the game recently.
Gameplay
This game did for Metroid what Super Mario 64 did for the Mario franchise. Up until this point, every Metroid game had been a 2D side scroller, so a first person shooter was a rather drastic and ambitious leap forward. It expertly blends exploration, boss battles, and backtracking. Iconic items like super missiles, the grapple beam, the boost ball, the wave and plasma beams, power bombs, and the X-Ray visor all make appearances. As you acquire more of them, more places become accessible. The search for optional items when equipped with more abilities to find them alone adds hours to gameplay time. Without assistance from Google, I discovered 91% of the collectibles in the game--including all four beam-missile combos, all 14 energy tanks, all 5 power bomb expansions, and all 12 artifacts. Listen for a distinct humming sound if you need help identifying the locations of expansions, as sometimes they will generate a noise that can greatly aid in your search. The process of finding these expansions can be very satisfying and intellectually stimulating, and traveling back to earlier areas to use new devices to unlock more passageways and rooms to find the expansions is a large part of the game's appeal to franchise fans.
Some of the memorable bosses include Flaahgra (a plant creature), Thardus (a sentient being made of stones held together by invisible forces), the Omega Pirate, Meta Ridley, and the Metroid Prime, a highly-evolved and experimented upon metroid infused with large amounts of Phazon. Defeating many of them grants access to new weaponry or suit attachments, similar to the way boss fights yield new items in Zelda games.
The potentially great difficulty of locating certain necessary items is cleverly sidestepped by the inclusion of an automated hint system that periodically offers hints about where to go to obtain a new suit enhancement or weapon if the player does not find them within a certain amount of time. I think that these hints can be disabled, meaning that players who are either lost or already adept at discovering things can enjoy the game. The locations of the 12 Chozo artifacts needed to access the final geographical area of the game are also revealed subtly via hints that only disclose the room they reside in.
The locking mechanics will probably strike modern gamers as outdated due to the fact that the only way to adequately maneuver around an enemy is to lock onto it and strafe. Otherwise, you can only move and fire in the direction you are facing, and since Metroid Prime does not allow the C-stick to be used as a second analog stick that means that the player can only change which direction he or she is walking towards by standing still or through awkward use of the left stick. You can only look above a predetermined point your weapon is pointed at if you hold the R trigger button and stand still or if you are locked onto an enemy above or below you. The later Wii remaster of Metroid Prime in the Metroid Prime Trilogy definitely updated the controls well, but the controls of the GameCube version are simply outdated by current standards as of 2017.
Story
Legendary galactic bounty hunter Samus Aran emerges from her iconic gunship and sets foot upon a space station orbiting the planet Tallon IV in response to a distress signal originating there, finding that an escape pod was jettisoned six hours before, "Parasitic infestation" was detected, and experiments involving Phazon infusion occurred some time before her arrival. Her Space Pirate opponents, a species notorious for aggression and militarism, have failed to contain or control biological weapons and have fled the station. Samus enters a fight with a giant parasite and a classic Metroid escape sequence ensues before she chases a metallic pterodactyl-like creature down to the surface of Tallon IV. This world was once inhabited by a species of bipedal birdlike beings called the Chozo who have vanished from the planet.
Scannable lore indicates that the Chozo enjoyed not having to rely on technology here, opting to instead connect with animals and nature--"a testament to the mortal forms we no longer need. We have drawn back the veils of time and space aside, and are withdrawing beyond the illusion", they wrote. Even in their absence, the surface of the planet testifies to their brilliance and culture. Statues of a Chozo shaman, warrior, and philosopher all preserve elements of Chozo society that lives on even after their mysterious extinction. The Chozo actually raised Samus, evidenced by their lore which says they took care of "Hatchling Samus" as they saw the "Great Poison"--Phazon infestation of the planet--nearing. This Phazon infection refers to a substance carried by a meteor that plummeted deep into Tallon IV, which spread Phazon into an area later transformed into a mine by the Space Pirates. Leftover Chozo data indicates that the "Great Poison comes from Tallon's core", a "Worm" was predicted, and a "Defender" (Samus) was prophesied. The Chozo retreated into spectral ghost forms susceptible to corruption as they foresaw their peaceful society overpowered by Phazon and the Space Pirates, and so they awaited the "gathering of Artifacts called the Cipher" at the hands of Samus Aran from beyond the material world.
The majority of the story is communicated via optional lore and computer logs, meaning players can access as little or as much of Tallon IV's background as they wish. Samus did not yet speak until Metroid: Other M in 2010, so she is entirely silent in this adventure, but there is a great deal of backstory that players can learn from written materials alone. I will leave the summary of the story at this.
Intellectual Content
The high emphasis on exploration allows players to flex intellectual muscles by using minor environmental clues to find secret items or by remembering to return to an area to use a new type of bomb or missile to access additional items. The intellectual component in this game is immense and comparable to that of Zelda in many regards. Though the puzzles themselves are often not truly difficult in and of themselves, the large open-world-like atmosphere certainly encourages and titillates the minds of players.
References to various evolutions in the animal and plant life abound when scanning creatures or files, yet many of them seem to be micro-evolutions within a species. For instance, the beetles found in the beginning develop into ice beetles in the snowy Phendrana Drifts and the shriekbats encountered early on have different variants later. Phazon is said to produce great evolutionary changes in a single generation and the space pirates exploit this for their experiments. The theme of evolution complimented the way that this game dramatically evolved the Metroid series.
The Space Pirate foes exemplify an error that plagues western culture right now. Log 10.712.1 that Samus accesses from Space Pirate data says that their labs were breached by creatures yet the doors were never opened unauthorized--it is later revealed that the invading entities are the Phazon-corrupted Chozo ghosts. The theories that follow seem to not admit the possibility that they are immaterial entities, implying that the Space Pirates could not conceive of a supernatural threat being responsible for these breaches. Scientistic folly (as opposed to a legitimate scientific hypothesis) fails to acknowledge the reality or possibility of planes of existence outside of what is detectable through the limited scientific method, and the Space Pirates appear to have temporarily succumbed to the fallacies of scientism.
The extinct Chozo (well, extinct in the physical sense, as some of their ghosts still inhabit Tallon IV), whose ruins and data entries are all that marks their former presence other than the occasional appearance of their ghosts, actually can come across as the philosophical and spiritual giants in the Metroid Prime universe. While not anti-society in the Rousseau sense, they retreated from organized society to Tallon IV and cherished a reliance on nature over technology, eventually shedding their physical forms entirely and becoming what is referred to in-game as Chozo ghosts. These spiritual forms, though, still became corrupted by Phazon and thus became more aggressive and hostile towards all sentient life, without distinguishing between the space pirates and Samus as they once did. They represent the antithesis of the Space Pirate mindset, as the Space Pirates rely on science and technology to a great extent and experiment upon creatures and even each other, disregard the environment except as a means to an end, and seek to harness corrupting Phazon power in their attempts to conquer other portions of the galaxy. Where the Chozo want to embrace the simplicity of the natural world and avoid over-reliance on technology, the Space Pirates have little to no respect for nature; where the Chozo value most or all life forms, the Space Pirates do not hesitate to use foreign creatures for sometimes lethal and painful experimentation; where the Chozo prefer solitude away from other societies and are content with peace, the Space Pirates relentlessly plot to use their scientific advancements and creature experiments as weapons with which to dominate other realms. Not only does this contrast work very well, but since the Chozo raised Samus (as learned from several of their records), it seemed fitting for her to explore their ruins with her Chozo armor and beam weaponry as the only living fragment of their culture to survive beyond their departure into the spirit realm. As Samus scans their lore, she learns of their past as a species. They once cultivated a great philosophical and even religious tradition, complete with prophecies, spiritual awe, contemplation about the nature of the universe, and eventually a retreat from the material world into immaterial forms. Although scanning and reading Chozo lore is completely optional, the player can stumble upon some fascinating writings that truly deepen the Metroid series background and the overall gaming experience.
Conclusion
It was thrilling to replay a classic masterpiece game that reinvented the Metroid franchise and left a legacy that many Nintendo gamers want to return to. I would love for Nintendo to release a fourth entry in the Prime series (besides the bizarre Federation Force), but replaying the first game in the trilogy reignited my sense of awe at everything from the level design and items to the subtle story of the Chozo. If you have a GameCube, Wii, or Wii U and have not played this game, you may want to purchase it for its original platform or in the remastered Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii or Wii U. It may satisfy those who crave searching for collectibles, navigating through the serpentine crevices and pathways of an alien planet, and fighting spectacular bosses. It is a game that has aged remarkably well in many regards and one that deservedly received great recognition upon its release.
Content
1. Violence: Bloodless shooting is mandatory throughout the vast majority of the game, but the recipients of Samus' shots are just the aggressive Space Pirates, machines, and creatures native to Tallon IV, some of them predatory and some of them harmless. The plasma beam catches enemies on fire or burns them to ashes, but that is as "graphic" as the game gets.
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