Metroid Prime

The gameplay in this game is completely revolutionary. It's in First Person, but is in no way a first person shooter. Nintendo's given moniker of a FPA is about the best way to put it. I won't give the story here, as this review is long enough as it is. You can check the plot details to find it out. The game works like your usual FPS, only much better. A shoots, and B jumps. X and Y do other functions, such as the morph ball and missiles. What makes things better is that as she goes on, Samus unlocks new weapons and abilities, true to any Metroid game. However, this time, all her weapons remain accessible and usable, with just a swift jolt of the C-Stick, you can switch from the Power Beam, Plasma Beam, Ice Beam, and Wave Beams. Another great feature about the game is that Samus can switch between scan visors. In the beginning of the game you start out with just two visors, the combat visor, which is your normal view-screen, and the scan visor, which allows you to scan objects and enemies, and details most of the plot for you. It can also tell you enemy weaknesses. That's just one of the many things I like about this title. The story is very profound and immersive, but almost none of it progresses during the actual game. You can choose to scan around, learning more and more about what happened here. You can also choose to remain completely oblivious to the events that occurred on Tallon IV. This really adds some more atmosphere and makes the game even more immersive. Even looking up and down is extremely immersive. It would seem clunky at first, then you realize that Samus is in a very heavy suit. Speaking of immersive, this game carries it in spades. You can go anywhere, and mess with almost all of the environment and its creatures. This game is very open-ended…perhaps the most open-ended game I've ever played, allowing you millions of different ways to go about getting the next item on your list. However you like to think, Metroid Prime definitely supports it, and for someone with ANYTHING stimulating their brain cells, this game should definitely be for them. The graphics in this game are among the best ever burned onto a disc or stuffed into a cartridge. Everything is beautiful and extremely accurate and realistic to their certain area. Every villain is drawn wonderful, to the smallest detail, and the areas are perhaps the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Upon landing on Tallon IV I was shaken by just how beautiful the over-world looked. The tropical rains, the lush green forests, and the fact that as I stood in the water and looked into the churning waterfall Samus' face would actually get wet and fog. Magmoor Caverns are the same way. You step into a stream of hot water vapor and you vision wavers and fogs. Phendrana Drifts is perhaps the second most beautiful area I've seen in a game. The perpetual light snow, and those ever-white snowcaps. They just make me want to touch the screen. And the best thing of all? I didn't have a progressive scan cable. The progressive scan cable makes the graphics much sharper than before. Trust me that is a good thing. But the environment and enemies aren't the extent of the graphics of the game. There are some very small subtle touches Retro put in, that they didn't have to. For instance, if you just sit around and wait, Samus' hand will come up, and she will visibly stimulate all five fingers separately. You can see her press buttons on a panel than revolves on her gun arm. While being in your other two scan modes, X-Ray and Infa-Red visors, you can see even other great things. While in the X-Ray visor, you can see Samus' fingers work different functions on your guns and you switch weapons, shoot, charge, and shoot missiles. When there's a bright flash, you can also see her face reflect in her visor. There really aren't any games that are that graphically powerful, and to make things better, there are no load times. The game loads the next area very subtly, as Samus is journeying down to the place on an elevator. The next room loads from the time Samus shoots the door to the time she enter is. Never once is the experience broken by a loading bar. The sound in the game is another pinnacle of gaming. Everything is lush, and very fulfilling sound-wise. The score supplements the way the game works in every way. The fast techno beats goes extremely well with the epic science-fiction feel of the game, and for some reason it makes me wonder just what goes on in Samus' mind. There really isn't much to say about the music and the sound effects in the game. There is nothing to say for voice acting because it is not there. For good reason. It wouldn't make any sense. There's no one on this big, empty, dangerous planet. It's just Samus. There are no speaking parts in the entire game. This game is an achievement for Nintendo, Retro Studios, and gaming itself. I'd never seen a game so immersive and atmospheric before I played this game, and this really is one of the games that changed the way I game…even if I had been gaming for a good ten years + before I got it.

10/10.