Metroid Prime is one of the finest games I've ever played. I'm still reeling from how incredible my experience with the game was. More than anything, though, I adore the fact that the negative speculation surrounding Prime's development is now obviously unwarranted. Nintendo made damned sure that Retro Studios' project lived up to the hype and what you're left with is a game that takes the ever-so-precarious leap from 2D to 3D with resounding success.

I need to address something important before getting stuck into the meat of the review. Metroid Prime is absolutely not a first-person shooter. If you're expecting a Quake/Unreal-type action experience, you're in for a shock. Barreling into a new room with guns blazing is possible, but there's so much more to the game than simply gunning down everything in sight. Metroid Prime is an exploration game with excellent platformer overtones -- all of which have been lovingly and faithfully grafted into a 3D world.

It looks incredible too, and it's hard to convey just how solid Retro's graphics engine is. The game always runs at 60 frames-per-second and boasts a level of environmental detail hitherto unseen on any console so far. Supporting full progressive scan mode and of course, the obligatory Dolby Pro Logic II sound encoding, Metroid Prime is a visual and aural masterpiece, although the lack of a native widescreen mode seems like an unfortunate oversight.


Anyone that's familiar with the Metroid series -- created by the late Gumpei Yokoi (father of the Nintendo Game Boy) -- already knows that our delicious bounty hunter heroine, Samus Aran, has had to contend with alien attacks in outer space before. Specifically, she's been battling with a race of aliens known as Metroids -- little critters that feed by sappng energy from living hosts like parasites. Prime is set after the original NES Metroid took place and Samus is called upon to investigate a disturbance on a pirate space station currently orbiting the as-of-yet unexplored planet of Tallon IV. Having encountered the space pirates before in her first adventure, Samus performs a recon mission aboard the space station only to discover the initial findings of a lethal plot to take over the universe.

The pirate faction has discovered an energy source known as Phazon on Tallon IV. The ancient Chozo civilization that once inhabited the planet left behind a ruined culture which speaks of 12 artifacts of power. The pirates are bent on harnessing the energy source in order to create an unstoppable army that would be strong enough to rule the galaxy with an iron fist. It's up to Samus and you to put a stop to the pirates' evil plan.