#Metroid prime gameplay series
#Metroid prime gameplay free

An so, now that the 50 Years of Video Games series takes me to questioning what influential and important game I should cover for 2002, the question was less “what game should I cover” as much as “is any game deserving of it more than Metroid Prime?”. When I introduced the Quality Time style of review to the site I asked myself what kind of games I’d likely cover in this deeper look into fantastic titles, and one that came to mind with almost no deliberation was Metroid Prime. Retro Studios wasn’t content to just transition Metroid into this new style of play, they embraced it with incredible attention to detail, the evolution so natural it’s hard to believe anyone ever doubted its potential. However, Metroid Prime tackled this new terrain with the same confidence as its heroic lead, unafraid of what new trials and tribulations would come with trying to get the job done. If the concept had just worked well it would have been an impressive feat for the series, a solid step for the Metroidvania genre that even today still prefers to explore 2D realms since its a much safer bet for the design concepts featured. It would admittedly attempt it in the sequel under pressure, but this first game that had the player and Samus share a pair of eyes for exploring an alien planet embraced the contemplative traversal of a world that engages the player more with interesting navigation and enemies as obstacles rather than making this a string of blood-pumping gun fights. Metroid’s previous entries had been slower paced, atmospheric, and the twitch reflexes to win a firefight would have been a big departure from what the series had done before, but developer Retro Studios wasn’t plunging the series into the realm of the competitive deathmatch. A genre best known for people blowing people away with military grade weaponry, the first person shooter hadn’t quite hit its full-on embrace of the war shooter yet, but you still had the Doom marine and Master Chief blasting aliens to bloody bits in chaotic kill fests as the representatives of the genre. A good experience all things considered, but Metroid Prime was the daring one, bringing the series back after eight years and plunging into the third dimension not only with the same approach to an explorable area expanding as you gain new abilities but also taking the even more bold direction of having it be a first-person shooter. Sure, there was also Metroid Fusion releasing the same year over on the Game Boy Advance, but in some ways that game stepped back some of Super Metroid’s advances for something tighter and more focused on forward progression.

By the time of writing this I’ve played most every Metroid game but there was a brief window where Samus and Metroid weren’t able to capitalize on the spotlight Super Metroid or even Super Smash Bros.

When I first encountered her I thought she was some sort of robot, a misunderstanding made more amusing by the fact her destruction of the space pirate base on Zebes was perhaps the first catastrophic gender reveal party, the bounty hunter’s removal of her helmet to reveal herself as a woman at the end of Metroid one of gaming’s first memorable twists. where Samus earned herself a spot as one of the eight playable characters in the base roster. So, Metroid sat out for a bit, to the point my introduction to the Metroid series was not one of its games but the N64 crossover fighter Super Smash Bros.

#Metroid prime gameplay free

Making an exploration-focused platformer in 2D requires an interconnected world where traversal is a bit richer than just going from left to right, but adding in free movement in all directions would certainly complicate efforts to transfer this game design into a new dimension. It propelled the series to incredible acclaim and the series sits solidly on the goodwill it created with this better realization of what would become called the Metroidvania genre primarily because of its influence…ģD gaming loomed on the horizon and while there was nothing saying you couldn’t make more 2D games, especially on handheld systems, the industry and the audience were hungry for seeing the new direction the video game medium was heading. With the 1994 release of Super Metroid, the Metroid series finally not only refined the exploration-focused platformer into a cleaner and more enjoyable shape than the first game’s flawed execution but provided a truly excellent game experience that has held up over time better than its two predecessors despite the small rough edges.