PixlBit

 Number 4

 

Metroid was a franchise I was introduced to when I played SSB. I learned about who Samus was, what her adventures were like based on what info I could get from trophies in Smash. But it wasn’t till late 2008 that I got to try my first Metroid game. I always wanted to play the Metroid games, but you know I could only play so much back when I was a teen, especially when you don’t have a lot of money. And like I said previously, problems is something I had a lot of at that time. 

Around the time I got to try my first Metroid game in 2008, I started noticing problems. Health problems. I started eating less and would tire very easily. I started to notice it too in my job. I couldn’t work efficiently either. After 5 minutes or so, I had to sit down. I was careless and just dismissed it because I had a job, and I was helping support my family with bills and stuff.

 I started eating less and less and I would tire more easily. Everytime I came home, I would just shower and head directly to bed. I assumed I didn’t get enough sleep. But it still didn’t explain why I ate less. Eventually I started to have stomach pain, until one day at work I felt a tremendous pain inside of me like nothing I have ever felt, I felt like something snapped inside of me, I fell and the pain was so painful that I think I must have blacked out for a few minutes.

From then on I knew something was really wrong but I was so stupid that I continued to ignore it. The stomach pains got worse and worse and my back also started to feel pain. I couldn’t take it anymore and told my dad to take me to a doctor. He gave me some medicine for my back and for the stomachache, it eased the pain but it really didn’t help. I remember getting Pokemon Platinum on a Sunday, the day of its launch, then the next day I went back to the doc, and he noticed something odd with me. He sent me to a hospital nearby and after hours of wait in the emergency room, my life took a turn for the worst and it changed forever.

It was a terrible time in my life. I spent a lot of time in 4 different hospitals because a lot of the docs didn’t know what they could do with my case. Eventually around the third hospital, I was allowed to go home for a few weeks. During that time my bros got me a get well present. It was a copy of the Metroid Prime Trilogy.

Not just any, but the special edition version that came with a tin box, and with the bonus shirt and poster. Nothing at that time could make me happy, but this indeed did. I was really happy too because I never got to try the Prime games on the Gamecube. I had originally tried Prime 3 which was the first game I tried, but never finished it at the time.

Metroid Prime was a really great game. A lot of people compare it to 3D first-person version of Super Metroid. I didn’t know since I never tried it at that point. All I know is that I loved this game. Exploration was fun as well as the weapons. I loved going back to previously inaccessible areas with new weapons and upgrades. The environment looked great and music envoke a feeling of loneliness but with a touch of exploration. And for once it did show you why Samus didn’t start off with all her upgrades, but it gave you the basic ones to start exploring at the start.

Metroid Prime 2 is the one people have mixed feelings on. I like it and feel it is a great game, but there are some things that it doesn’t do too well. The game takes place on Aether (no not the name of Ike’s sword move) and the planet has been divided into 2 parallel worlds known as Light Aether and Dark Aether and 2 races of beings known as the Luminoth and the Ing are fighting for control of the planet. You travel through both worlds and they work like parallel worlds in Zelda games. Light Aether is basically Hyrule and Dark Aether was the Dark World. You lose health when you travel to Dark Aether and the only areas you are safe on is these safezone like areas that recover your health. The problem with this is that Metroid is a franchise that is known for its exploration, but you can’t really do much of that on Dark Aether because staying out of those safezone areas drain your damage and you can’t afford to be out in its poisonous environment or you’ll die. That and towards the end of the game, you have to find items called the Sky Temple keys and those things are hard to find and this quest takes you through both Light and Dark Aether. I never finished it because I got lost at some point. It’s not a bad game, I like it, like the new abilities and power-ups, but there are some things that weren’t done well.   

Metroid Prime 3 might be my favorite for various reasons and one that really resonated with me well during that dark period of my life. Prime 3 takes place after Prime 2, chronologically it takes place after Metroid Prime Hunters (I think) but I never played it. First off, this was the very first Metroid game I ever played. I originally had this on the Wii but at the time I never finished it. I knew I already was fairly well through the game in Prime 3 but decided to start anew on the Trilogy disc.

Samus and a group of bounty hunters are on a Galactic Federation mission to stop bad guys on a planet. However Samus learns that a Phazon meteor called a Leviathan is about to impact the planet they are on and they have to activate the planet’s defense weapons to destroy it. However the Hunters and Samus confront Dark Samus before they can access the planet’s defense weapons. Dark Samus lets out a Phazon attack that hits all the hunters. She disappears and Samus barely manages to activate the weapons. Some time passes and everyone has been infected by Phazon due to the confrontation with Dark Samus, but the Federation takes advantage of this by converting that Phazon into weapons, including Samus’s Varia Suit, which has been upgraded to use the Phazon inside of her, and convert it into Phazon based-weaponry.
This time the game is more action heavy than the previous games. I don’t think it’s a bad thing in my opinion but they could of found a way to balance it out with the exploration. As for the exploration, I thought it was pretty fun. This time you explore various planets rather than just one. Some planets are good while others are okay, but the Pirate Homeworld is easily the best of the explorable planets. One thing I also loved about this is that you can now use Samus’s Gunship for more than just saving and recovering. You can use it to explore far away areas of the planet you’re on and you can also use it to tow objects and fire missile strikes on enemy defenses. It’s also what you’ll be using for outerspace travel. You can also see the inside of it and do various things too.

  
Phazon-based power-ups are neat too and make Samus more powerful than she already was by entering the new Hypermode. In this mode, you you convert one of your energy tanks into Phazon energy to use Phazon based weaponry. But it is more of a double-edged sword because later on in the game, if you enter Hypermode, you run the risk of getting Corrupted and getting a game over if you don’t vent the Phazon energy. So, you can become an unstoppable force, but at a high price.

MP3 is also one of the times we actually see a human side to Samus. Well it was the first time I saw it. Later on in the game, Samus has to fight her fellow bounty hunters because they too have been corrupted by the Phazon they had. In one scene, she shows hesitation to finish off one of her fellow hunters, she hesitates but she has no choice but to finish them off. Samus really isn’t the cold-hearted killer we make her out to be. Sure she kills, and she has single-handedly wiped out an alien species to extinction, but I see it as something she has to do to complete her mission, rather than something she wants to do.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, Metroid Prime 3 was a game that resonated with me well in 2009. Samus was infected by the Phazon energy inside of her, she was slowly being corrupted and she was dying. I knew how she probably felt because I was dying on the inside too with the illness that had infected me. Samus knew what was going on, but she knew she had to carry out her mission. Kinda like how I knew, but kept working. She kept going with her mission, like as I kept going trying to survive. I sort of shared a sort of relationship with her in that respect. I understood what she was going through, and I knew I had to finish this game to see if she made it out okay or not, incase that year was my very last on this planet. I eventually made it out of that chapter in my life around late October, I was very weak but I was better and alive. I got to see Samus complete her mission and she had lived and she was cured of her Phazon Corruption. I felt accomplished because I too was cured. I felt really good that I began working towards finishing my original copy of Prime 3 on the Wii.

And that’s all I can say about Metroid Prime Trilogy. I know this choice is cheating but I really couldn’t see it any other way. The games are some of Nintendo and Retro’s finest, and really are the finest that the Gamecube and Wii had to offer. I will say that the only regret I had was that I never tried out the first 2 Prime games when I was younger. Don’t get me wrong, I love the games, what I’m trying to say that I would of loved to try them at the age I was discovering Nintendo’s other franchises for the first time, and these games would of came at a great time in my life. But better late than never I suppose. It is without a doubt my favorite sci-fi trilogy out there, and you too can try them on the Wii U eShop as the trilogy has been out since early this year.

Well that’s all for this one. Which is your favorite of the Metroid Prime games? Perhaps you’re more of a fan of the classic styled games? Thanks for reading and later.