At first glance, we’ve played this game before. Not just a
first-person shooter, a gaming convention so old that the phrase “WASD”
no longer requires explanation, but Metroid Prime 3, the latest
in Retro Studios’ five-year-old series of 3-D sci-fi.
You’re still armor-clad bounty hunter Samus Aran. Still busy killing
aliens while you hop across planets to figure out puzzles. But what
sets the game apart from hundreds of other FPS games, particularly
looming sci-fi heavy hitters like Halo 3, is the Wii. Nintendo’s
little remote controllers turn a solid, possibly forgettable game into
the console’s biggest must-have yet.
Until someone gets virtual reality right, MP3 will stand for
some time as a big deal in first-person control. Earlier Wii shooters
made clumsy efforts toward this kind of play, in which you point at the
screen to both shoot and move, but developer Retro has nailed it,
tweaking the sensitivity and adding a lock-on feature so the scope
doesn’t sail all over the place. PC gamers still have the edge in
shooting precision, but they can’t boast MP3‘s aiming
fun—and since you spend nearly the entire game aiming, that’s no
minor declaration.
Just like the game’s 8-bit namesake, Metroid Prime is a more
cerebral series, full of backtracking, map checking, and environment
scanning. Often, this actually works out in the action’s favor. After
calmly jumping through a city in the clouds, it’s jarring to be
unexpectedly cornered in a techno-dome by a 20-foot-tall foe. Later,
when you pass through a crowded jail, the game reminds you that your
“success” will soon loose every alien prisoner.
MP3‘s art direction is the heart of these memorable scenes.
Every zone comes with its own ambience, architecture, and inhabitants,
and Retro does another great job impressing upon players how vast this
virtual world is, from a sleek military outpost to a self-contained
society of space pirates to an abandoned ship filled with dead
soldiers. When looking at buildings, horizons, and even bottomless
pits, it’s not uncommon for well-modeled details to stretch out until
your sightline is gone.
The title is no cakewalk; even on the lowest difficulty, you’re apt
to get lost on occasion. But as the most successfully immersive
Prime game yet, MP3 will keep you, and the gun in your
hand, eager to figure the tough puzzles out. 