Retrospective: Metroid Prime

Format: GameCube Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Retro Studios Review: E119

Ignore the cheery red and yellow Space Quarterback trappings: Metroid has always been a restless and difficult series, an introvert among the pixies and plumbers of the Nintendo catalogue. Serious, complex and unfriendly to newcomers, Samus Aran’s adventures trade in elegant dread rather than clear-cut heroics, replacing the smiling clouds and summer skies with slimy rocks and echoing catacombs.

The difference is visible on every level: Mario goes left to right, a breezy sightseer on a predictable journey. Metroid, however, has always been about heading downwards, boring deeper into increasingly remote locations. And rather than the chummy ever-expanding cast of the Mushroom Kingdom or Hyrule, Metroid’s lineup is tiny and largely static. This isn’t about being part of the gang, it’s about quiet, lonely toil on the frontiers of space.

It’s strange, then, that this ageing franchise, away from screens for almost a decade, should beat Mario and Link to become what some would argue is the standout title on the GameCube. But the reason for its triumph turns out to be very simple: Metroid Prime is all about atmosphere and detail.

And the clues were there from the outset. That controversial shift to firstperson, seen as a sign that Retro, an untested developer, was accidentally backing over one of 2D platforming’s most cherished rose gardens, turned out to be a canny move. Rather than suggesting a new focus on gunplay, the change of perspective is there to put you not only into Aran’s helmet, but straight into her world too. Metroid had always been about immersion in an alien environment, so the new viewpoint simply feels like coming home. Maybe, for once, the series just needed technology to catch up with its own best interests.

Our Metroid Prime review: “After Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64, this is possibly the most accomplished three dimensional update of a 2D title Edge has witnessed.”

And from the orbiting Space Pirate laboratory through to the decaying and corrupted planet interior of Tallon IV, it’s the world of Metroid Prime that truly makes it a classic. Like Half-Life 2, the game would rather tell its tale in stone and moss than cutscenes, speaking most coherently through the places that ancient calamity has left behind. Prime deals in archaeology as much as narrative. The caverns you travel through, the long-dead world you explore with its crumbled buildings and forgotten purposes, its ancient security systems and dormant switches, are far more than just the setting for a wider story – they are the story. And it’s a surprisingly downbeat one at that: a tale of consequences and failures, of decaying remains, pollution, and the terrible aching loneliness that follows disaster.

What’s surprising, then, is that the environments themselves at first seem oddly generic. Why get excited about another ice level, another world of lava and fire? These have been the stock set-dressings of videogames since their birth, the props designers reach for when they’re half-asleep or facing a deadline. But with Prime it’s the treatment, the way the game uses tiny details to create a sense of isolation, of oppressive weight above and around you, that makes such tired ideas fresh again. It’s the smashed computer panels, the tumble-down walls, and the terrifying prospect of an empty specimen case. Instead of levels, Metroid Prime has locations that feel real. Instead of enemies, it has developed a believable ecosystem – the creatures you fight emerging from the same environment that powers the story.

But, as ever with Metroid, that perfectly gloomy tale is just one of two narratives at work. The other one is told in the slow but steady accumulation of new weapons and powers, the legacy of a series that understands much more about rewards than Xbox 360’s Achievement system ever could. In Metroid, weapon upgrades are more than just bigger, better toys: they provide an elegant solution to the problem of pacing, opening up new areas and new possibilities, turning the constant backtracking into a deliriously exciting treasure quest. Gamerpoints are one thing, but a morph ball is something else: where will you use it? And how? This is a game that needs you to pay attention, to sit up straight and take notes, a game that asks you to remember whereabouts you saw that tempting gap that you may now be able to pass through.

None of this was new to Metroid Prime, of course, but whereas some iterations of Zelda and Mario feel weighed down by their cumulative history of mechanics and traditions, Prime uses old tricks not because it has to, but because it can make them work; those it can’t use, it ditches with little ceremony. On paper, drip-feeding and backtracking don’t seem to make for a particularly thrilling game. But the results, when they’re as well-judged and unsentimental as this, are both classically traditional and utterly revolutionary. Devastation has never been so colourful, lonely exploration has seldom been so exhilarating, and a game that rates patience and concentration above almost any other virtue has never been so endlessly gripping.

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