Metroid Prime

Looking for a must-have from the early 2000s era? Look no further. Metroid Prime is the greatest single-player game I've seen on the Nintendo GameCube. It's an FPS, but holy shit, it is so much more than just another FPS. Picture a Zelda game set on alien planets and played from a first-person perspective. There's no multiplayer option, but who cares? A game with a "campaign" this good doesn't need to be watered down by level-based deathmatches on a split screen. As far as the FPS genre goes, this is the greatest one I've ever played. That includes all the Halos and Gears games, as well as a handful of other classics like Half-Life and Call of Duty. What makes this game so special is the intricate map design. Enormous landscapes and caverns abound. "Hidden" objects and power-ups aren't really hidden at all for the most part, but placed in strategic locations that you will not be able to access the first time you play through an area of the game. You progress linearly for the most part, but that line is far from straight and often doubles back on itself, loops around, and zigs and zags everywhere. Near the end of the game, you reach a point where you are told to go back throughout the various areas and find 12 artifacts that will open the way to the final boss. This is where I stopped playing the game six years ago, and where I resumed playing it yesterday. I figured I would need to invest a few nights and also peruse some walkthroughs in order to find all 12 objects, but I was delighted by the pace at which I found all 12 artifacts - two hours, maybe three total. And I only used a walkthrough once, and even then, only because I had forgotten about a pivotal special ability my Samus character had acquired prior to my six year hiatus. From there, it was time for a difficult boss (Meta Ridley) and then an incredibly difficult two-stage boss: the titular "Metroid Prime" itself. Now, maybe I can blame my time away from the game a bit, but these last three bosses were really, really challenging. And frankly, I didn't have the patience not to get frustrated by repeated failed attempts at killing them. The very last boss, which is really the second stage of Metroid Prime, actually wasn't that bad, but Metroid Prime's first stage always did such a number on my health and missile supplies that I was always knocking on death's door throughout the battle. The nice part about the game though is that aside from these bosses - and probably a few others earlier in the game - nothing in the game will even come close to killing you. Apparently, this was intentional. The makers wanted the challenge of the game to be exploration-centric, and not just all about killing and avoiding enemies. I love this. You can't really say it's a puzzle game, or even that it contains dungeons with puzzles a la Zelda, but it's certainly a thinking game. Where do I go next? What areas will this new upgrade allow me to access? Allegedly, this is the best game in the Metroid Prime trilogy, but as someone who has played more than half of the second one and even a bit of the third, I can vouch that it's not really a huge drop-off by any means from one game to the next. I look forward to playing and finishing Prime 2: Echoes and Prime 3: Corruption in the near future, schoolwork permitting. It really was just a blast to play this game back in my early high school years. It's not perfect; keep in mind the aforementioned frustration levels and also allow me to admit that there's really no great story and also that the controls are just a tiny bit clunky. Still, again, it's the greatest one-player GameCube game I've played to date. Oh yeah, and rumor has it Sweeney's been playing his own Wii version of Metroid Prime, so if you see a second review pop up anytime soon (or ever), make sure to find out his take. For his sake, I hope it's even half as good as mine. But I'm sure it will be.