Number 22: Metroid Prime, Retro Studios 2002
Intro:
The menus run the updated Metroid theme music over very graphically pleasing animations of organic cells wiggling about, taken from a larger system the view moves across for each part of the menu. The player is informed through scrolling text about the details of Samus's current mission, and the player watches her ship park itself on the wrecked space station. Samus is placed on a platform, and the player is in control.
Getting Going:
The controls are pretty straight forward, if very different from typical FPS games. The wreckage outside of the station is used as a training ground for the different controls, which are highly intuitive despite being so different from that of all other FPS games. The enemies are the start aren't terribly difficult, though they put up a little more fight than some games start with.
Fun:
The controls and the lock-on make this game a breeze to control, so the entire experience is focused on exploring a huge, diverse world and destroying everything that breathes with minimal interference from the console. Automatic circling when locked on to enemies is a great feature, allowing the player to focus on evasion over the contant struggle many games present in forcing the players to dodge and constantly adjust aim at the same time. The environments are beautiful, and the music gives the whole game a sense of a huge planet covered with gracefully decaying natural beauty, appropriate to the story.
Visuals:
Despite being limited to more than my fair share of underground tunnels, the varying surroundings and dramatic map design made me feel like I was covering a lot of ground on a planet that was... the size of a planet. Distortion around the gun when it fired strong shots or was just really hot was a wonderful little detail that added a lot to the feeling of *being* Samus Aran, as well as the fog and splatters on the visor. Enemies were visually exciting, and they often looked as tough as they were, which is a nice change from having to learn the difference between guns from the end of the barrel.
Intelligence:
Enemies duck and roll, and teams of them will try to get around you, or they'll wait until you've passed them to attack. They were mostly not too difficult to fight, and the AI wasn't especially imaginative.
Immersion:
LORD ALL MIGHTY. Everything about this game is seamless. Between the visor effects (motion delay, fogging), the entrancing, atmospheric music, and the detailed, appropriately designed environments I often had the "gotta pee, but I gotta finish this first!" moments for an hour or more. Even loading new areas is lightning quick, and I didn't even realize the game was loading until I realized the elevator sequences were the loading screens after going from one zone to another and deciding there was no way the Gamecube could hold all of the game's textures at once. The only time I'm not immersed is when it's turned off. The controls were seamless, and playing the game was PLAYING THE GAME, not the controller.
Cameras:
Mostly first person. The camera on the morphball is usually pretty good, as long as your in a morphball appropriate maze. Once outside the mazes, the camera gets a little funky in tight spots, but nothing terribly frustrating.
Controls:
Retro knows how to pimp that funky controller Nintendo made, and it worked like a dream. I've never felt more in control of a game than this, except for in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I felt like the controller was not even there: it was just me and the game, which helped in bucket-fulls when it came to immersion. And assigning weapon switches to the D-pad the the C-stick, so things could be accessed with one touch, was hugely intuitive and easy to use. Screw joy-look, I'm much happier with the game without having to manually track all of these very athletic enemies.
Ideas:
The easy-to-use controls were key in this game. They helped a lot in taking the franchise from a 2D scroller seamlessly into 3D. The story being revealed through scans instead of just acted out with a voice over is a wonderful idea that I wholly support, and locking on to enemies made the experience so much less about shooting and so much more about exploring and problem solving. The thing that really made this game shine was graphical attention to detail, where everything looked good, not just a few things.
Memory:
The feel of the game is the same as its predecessors, just in a different perspective, and that's impressive and I love them for it. Everything was balanced, and finding and exploiting each enemy's weakness made the experience a little more complex and memorable. This is one of the best games I've ever played, and belongs with fine works of art as great.
The menus run the updated Metroid theme music over very graphically pleasing animations of organic cells wiggling about, taken from a larger system the view moves across for each part of the menu. The player is informed through scrolling text about the details of Samus's current mission, and the player watches her ship park itself on the wrecked space station. Samus is placed on a platform, and the player is in control.
Getting Going:
The controls are pretty straight forward, if very different from typical FPS games. The wreckage outside of the station is used as a training ground for the different controls, which are highly intuitive despite being so different from that of all other FPS games. The enemies are the start aren't terribly difficult, though they put up a little more fight than some games start with.
Fun:
The controls and the lock-on make this game a breeze to control, so the entire experience is focused on exploring a huge, diverse world and destroying everything that breathes with minimal interference from the console. Automatic circling when locked on to enemies is a great feature, allowing the player to focus on evasion over the contant struggle many games present in forcing the players to dodge and constantly adjust aim at the same time. The environments are beautiful, and the music gives the whole game a sense of a huge planet covered with gracefully decaying natural beauty, appropriate to the story.
Visuals:
Despite being limited to more than my fair share of underground tunnels, the varying surroundings and dramatic map design made me feel like I was covering a lot of ground on a planet that was... the size of a planet. Distortion around the gun when it fired strong shots or was just really hot was a wonderful little detail that added a lot to the feeling of *being* Samus Aran, as well as the fog and splatters on the visor. Enemies were visually exciting, and they often looked as tough as they were, which is a nice change from having to learn the difference between guns from the end of the barrel.
Intelligence:
Enemies duck and roll, and teams of them will try to get around you, or they'll wait until you've passed them to attack. They were mostly not too difficult to fight, and the AI wasn't especially imaginative.
Immersion:
LORD ALL MIGHTY. Everything about this game is seamless. Between the visor effects (motion delay, fogging), the entrancing, atmospheric music, and the detailed, appropriately designed environments I often had the "gotta pee, but I gotta finish this first!" moments for an hour or more. Even loading new areas is lightning quick, and I didn't even realize the game was loading until I realized the elevator sequences were the loading screens after going from one zone to another and deciding there was no way the Gamecube could hold all of the game's textures at once. The only time I'm not immersed is when it's turned off. The controls were seamless, and playing the game was PLAYING THE GAME, not the controller.
Cameras:
Mostly first person. The camera on the morphball is usually pretty good, as long as your in a morphball appropriate maze. Once outside the mazes, the camera gets a little funky in tight spots, but nothing terribly frustrating.
Controls:
Retro knows how to pimp that funky controller Nintendo made, and it worked like a dream. I've never felt more in control of a game than this, except for in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I felt like the controller was not even there: it was just me and the game, which helped in bucket-fulls when it came to immersion. And assigning weapon switches to the D-pad the the C-stick, so things could be accessed with one touch, was hugely intuitive and easy to use. Screw joy-look, I'm much happier with the game without having to manually track all of these very athletic enemies.
Ideas:
The easy-to-use controls were key in this game. They helped a lot in taking the franchise from a 2D scroller seamlessly into 3D. The story being revealed through scans instead of just acted out with a voice over is a wonderful idea that I wholly support, and locking on to enemies made the experience so much less about shooting and so much more about exploring and problem solving. The thing that really made this game shine was graphical attention to detail, where everything looked good, not just a few things.
Memory:
The feel of the game is the same as its predecessors, just in a different perspective, and that's impressive and I love them for it. Everything was balanced, and finding and exploiting each enemy's weakness made the experience a little more complex and memorable. This is one of the best games I've ever played, and belongs with fine works of art as great.