![]() You can enter your Morph Ball mode at any time, and when you do, the camera flies outward so you can watch as Samus collapses into a knee-high ball and performs a number of rolling, Tony Hawk-like maneuvers to solve puzzles, get through cramped areas, or just zoom really fast while backtracking. Brilliant little tricks cause the barrier between you and the world on your TV or Switch screen to melt away. These are all brilliant little tricks that cause the barrier between you and the world on your TV or Switch screen to melt away, allowing you to meld dreamily into it – which is why it is all the more jarring (in a good way!) when you pop out into the third-person Morph Ball view. The visor’s HUD gives you all of your basic info, like many games have come to do since, but it also acts like a real, hi-tech glass dome: it steams up when blasted with flame, muffles Samus’s cries, and in flashes of bright light it’ll even reflect her own surprised eyes for an instant. The way you experience the ruins, caves, and laboratories of Tallon IV is through a visor, set in a helmet in your suit, which is a perfect setup for immersion in first-person. You can strafe, jump, dodge, and control your view with so much more dexterity. ![]() The new dual analog stick controls are indistinguishable from modern shooters, though, and actually make some battles a bit easier. Since then we’ve seen options to use the Wii-like motion controls established in the Metroid Prime Trilogy collection, or a variant of the original controls on the GameCube controller, but none made it something that was easy for most people to pick up and play. You had to lock onto a target and shoot, instead of allowing full, dual-joystick movement, and trying to go from any other shooter to this was like having to learn to walk again. Originally the controls for Metroid Prime on GameCube were so clumsy and awkward that its fans had to argue it was not an FPS at all, but something else, such as a first-person puzzle game. ![]() ![]() It’s all logically laid out to reflect the story and setting, but the world mirrors your progress in a brilliant way: Rooms that once took toil and grit to get through can soon be zipped through with the help of a newly obtained skill or weapon. A flowing fountain babbles down the side of a sunny sanctuary hall a furnace chamber pumps heat through conveniently morph-ball sized vents to other areas a lab deep underground holds experiments in tubes that act as jump-scare time bombs. Each room has a purpose and a name, with details that make no two places quite alike. There are so many things to laud in Metroid Prime, but its biggest accomplishment is Tallon IV itself. ![]() (It must be noted that attempts at adding a bunch of characters hasn’t been great for the Metroid series, specifically, with Metroid: Other M and Metroid Prime: Hunters being especially goofy in their world-building.) Prime's biggest accomplishment is Tallon IV itself. In this way the story is told through experience with your environment alone, and despite the narrative methods not getting any sort of update, it still feels revolutionary and modern compared to all the very talky games we play today. The planet, Tallon IV, has as much or more development than any character, told in its geology, technology, flora, fauna, and “other” – and yes, in much of the encyclopedic lore you acquire via a HUD scanning function. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |