The Nintendo Gamecube may have been an unpopular gaming console, but it did enhance what the Super Nintendo 64 featured and brought a handful of extra features for good measure.
Nintendo's answer to the PlayStation2 and the first Xbox gaming console to fully embrace the 3D gaming scene with
One of those games is Metroid Prime.
Metroid Prime History, Gameplay
Metroid Prime is a first-person shooter adventure game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Gamecube in 2002 and developed by Retro Studios, a company owned by Nintendo, per the Metroid Fandom.
The game is the first 3D Metroid game in the series; its predecessor, Metroid Fusion, was playable on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or SNES.
The game is also the first in the series to use a first-person camera, as the Metroid entries before it was side-scrollers. With these changes in mind, Metroid Prime could be considered the pioneer in the series in terms of gameplay and graphics.
Speaking of firsts, the game is the first of the Prime storyline, a narrative that takes place between the first two games, Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus, due to continuity consistency.
The game follows series protagonist Samus Aran in her quest to rid the galaxy of the Space Pirates she initially thought dead and their biological experiments on planet Tallon IV.
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Being the first Metroid game in the series to go 3D, many gamers are skeptical and even cynical about the game's performance on a 3D first-person camera, per Forbes. Many believe that judging distances in a 3D game through a first-person camera is difficult enough in a 3D game; adding a first-person view into the mix only made it worse.
However, the game didn't fail; Retro Studios addressed the issue by making the gaps players had to jump less strict and keeping the level design more compact and simpler. These tweaks meant that players couldn't only navigate an area without getting lost but also not make jumping platform platforms frustrating.
Platforming issue aside, the Metroid Prime's gameplay keeps everything fresh and adequately challenging for the player, though its shooting mechanics leave much to be desired, per IGN. Meanwhile, the game's plot is one of the best in the line-up of video games Nintendo's Gamecube has to offer, with it being compared to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem's plot.
Critic Reception And Remastered Version
Metroid Prime was greatly beloved by critics and players alike, with IGN giving the game a 9.8/10 for being "a must-have masterpiece that all forthcoming adventure titles will be judged by." Meanwhile, IMDb gave the game an 8.9/10 based on 2,080 IMDb user-generated reviews.
Metacritic gave the game a Metascore of 87 "Universal Acclaim" based on 70 professional reviews; it also got a user score of 8.9/10 for its graphics, gameplay, and sound design, though many found its shooting controls to be clanky and its replay value to be low.
Nevertheless, the game was so beloved that Nintendo released its remastered version on Feb. 8 (though a digital-only release at that time), per Nintendo Life. The remastered version was found to be a game that honored its classic roots while fixing many of the problems players encountered in the original 2002 game, making it a must-have for Metroid fans.
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