{"id":102,"date":"2014-04-05T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T00:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/stories\/?p=102"},"modified":"2022-07-17T18:34:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T22:34:43","slug":"metroid-prime-2q2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/2014\/04\/05\/metroid-prime-2q2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Metroid Prime \u2014 2Q2014<\/span> issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pho\u00adtos cour\u00adtesy of GameSpot.com<\/p><\/div>\n

The return of Samus after 8 years is welcome<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a long\u00adtime fan of the Metroid fran\u00adchise, I sup\u00adpose I could be for\u00adgiv\u00aden for not mak\u00ading the imme\u00addi\u00adate leap onto the Prime band\u00adwag\u00adon. After all, Super Metroid is my bea\u00adcon of hope still shin\u00ading for 2D<\/span> games, a sym\u00adbol of the pin\u00adna\u00adcle that the genre reached. I mean, I plan to name my first\u00adborn daugh\u00adter Samus. That\u2019s how much I love Metroid. So, when Prime hit the shelves, I was duly skep\u00adti\u00adcal. It had been eight long years with\u00adout so much as of a whiff of Samus\u2019 scent in the mar\u00adket of solo games and I was starv\u00ading. Enter Prime.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prime isn\u2019t so much a pure Metroid game as it is a com\u00adbi\u00adna\u00adtion of Metroid and first-per\u00adson shoot\u00aders of the day. What you need to know to under\u00adstand Prime is that it\u2019s set between Metroid and Metroid II<\/span>: Return of Samus, and it\u2019s the first real game in the series to start putting the pieces of the Metroid saga togeth\u00ader. Samus roams around Tal\u00adlon IV<\/span> to uncov\u00ader the past of the Chozo (her care\u00adtak\u00aders after the death of her par\u00adents in a Space Pirate raid), and takes on the vil\u00adlain\u00adous group, who are con\u00adduct\u00ading bio\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal exper\u00adi\u00adments on the plan\u00adet. That\u2019s the meat of the sto\u00adry essen\u00adtial\u00adly, but it most\u00adly means that you\u2019re going to do some explor\u00ading. This being Metroid and all.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first-per\u00adson con\u00adtrols could have been haz\u00adardous to the game\u2019s health but they aren\u2019t. They\u2019re actu\u00adal\u00adly sim\u00adple to use and sur\u00adpris\u00ading\u00adly easy to get used to even if you\u2019re inti\u00admate\u00adly famil\u00adiar with Super Metroid\u2019s set\u00adup. My main con\u00adcern was how does Samus\u2019 action trans\u00adlate to the first-per\u00adson mold? Can she still move around flu\u00adid\u00adly? And, how is the action han\u00addled when she has to switch to Morph Ball mode? All of these ques\u00adtions were imme\u00addi\u00adate\u00adly answered with a sim\u00adple playthrough. Action is flu\u00adid and move\u00adment is clean and paced well. There are no prob\u00adlems with switch\u00ading modes, and I rather liked how that is han\u00addled. It\u2019s almost as if some\u00adone on the devel\u00adop\u00adment team at Retro Stu\u00addios remem\u00adbered what it was like to imag\u00adine you were Samus in the Varia Suit.<\/span><\/p>\n

I appre\u00adci\u00adat\u00aded the atmos\u00adphere of Prime, con\u00adsid\u00ader\u00ading that if a game is to be called Metroid in any way, it must have the \u201cMetroid atmos\u00adphere.\u201d I cer\u00adtain\u00adly got that as I mean\u00addered through maze-like cav\u00aderns with fore\u00adbod\u00ading music play\u00ading gen\u00adtly in the back\u00adground. What I appre\u00adci\u00adat\u00aded about the sound\u00adtrack most\u00adly was the use of old themes to tie the games togeth\u00ader. You can tell you\u2019re play\u00ading a Metroid game if you lis\u00adten hard enough, and I liked that the issue was\u00adn\u2019t thrown in my face con\u00adstant\u00adly. I did\u00adn\u2019t need to be hit over the head repeat\u00aded\u00adly that this is a Metroid tale, and the music was polite about remind\u00ading me.<\/span><\/p>\n

My only prob\u00adlem with Prime is that while it feels like a Metroid game should, I was\u00adn\u2019t that immersed in the tale. Every Metroid game released up to this point, I played through and was engaged thor\u00adough\u00adly. Prime? I real\u00adly could\u00adn\u2019t get into the sto\u00adry that much, and I did\u00adn\u2019t real\u00adly care all that much about the Chozo. I real\u00adized that because of the way Metroid ends, Samus can\u2019t real\u00adly go back to the Moth\u00ader Brain issue. How\u00adev\u00ader, Prime just struck me as boring.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prime was the start of a good thing, obvi\u00adous\u00adly, since there are two sequels and a host of spin\u00adoff games. What I was most pleased with, how\u00adev\u00ader, was the fact that Samus returned in top form. It was about time. Eight years was way too long to go with\u00adout using some ver\u00adsion of the \u201cMetroid instinct.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The return of Samus after 8 years is wel\u00adcome As a long\u00adtime fan of the Metroid fran\u00adchise, I sup\u00adpose I could be for\u00adgiv\u00aden for not mak\u00ading the imme\u00addi\u00adate leap onto the Prime band\u00adwag\u00adon. After all, Super Metroid is my bea\u00adcon \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11,49,58,68,69,82,85,103],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing","tag-2q2014","tag-goq","tag-lyndsey-hicks","tag-metroid","tag-metroid-prime","tag-nintendo","tag-now-playing","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}