Metroid Prime Preview

By Tom Bramwell Published 29 May, 2002

Preview - Samus is back, and she's looking different

Not The Samus

'Metroid Prime' Screenshot e3-01b

Female bounty hunters - the perfect blend of ruthlessness and charm

Metroid Prime is not simply a modern day reworking of the formula; it's the same formula applied to a 3D world, and the first step to translating the game was to come up with a believable alternative to the 2D side-scrolling measures of the past. Choosing the first person perspective was brave, but using a visor's eye view and third person sections to roll around in ball form was like a leap of faith.

Fortunately Retro has done a great job graphically, with all sorts of neat little touches like spinning through the inside of a Metroid for the title screen and flamboyant interface changes on Samus' visor, alongside battered environments at the heart of a scientific disaster, each packed with Alien-style piping, grates, exhaust vents and dingy lighting. The screenshots littering this page stand as testament to Retro's abilities, and the reportedly constant framerate does likewise.

Looking out through the visor was a great idea, because it really does immerse you in the world of Metroid Prime. With all the confined spaces and creepy corridors Samus has to wander down, surely there was no other way to do it. The player can switch between combat and scanning modes for the visor by hitting one of the D-pad directions. Combat lets you look upon your surroundings without any visual adjustments, while scanning highlights objects that can be examined, leaving you vulnerable to attack but also alerting you to consumables and bits of information used to help plunge you deep into Metroid mythos. Other benefits of the visor include offering a nice vehicle for a creative GUI, and a way of showing the player environmental hazards before they fall foul of them.

Keep The Faith

'Metroid Prime' Screenshot e3-02b

It's a jungle out there, Samus

The control system is typically simple, with the left analogue stick moving you forwards and backwards and turning you from side to side, the A and B buttons shooting and jumping, the Y button toggling special weapons, and the C-stick switching between regular items in your arsenal. Hitting X takes the player into the morphing ball form, allowing Samus to clamber through confined spaces and drop bombs with the A button.

Belying this early simplicity though are a number of useful extras. The left shoulder button can be used to lock onto enemies and strafe round them, while the right shoulder gives you access to the pitch control. By default most of the action doesn't require you to look up and down, but with the R button depressed you may, and you can also take advantage of Samus' grappling hook, which uses a third person view to give you the best opportunity to land where you mean to.

Early impressions indicate that the game is designed around the control system, and not vice versa, which is an interesting but sensible approach. Creating a first person shooter clearly wasn't the intention, and instead Metroid is considered an adventure game with action elements, including the early boss fight with the Parasite Queen on display at E3. Sceptics of the control system were apparently humbled by the ease with which the Queen is dispatched, with players easily warming to Samus' new perspective on life and death.

Conclusion

As a huge Metroid fan, I'm delighted to hear that people were pleased with the E3 demo, but I'm prepared to accept that as with so much of what we see at E3, it will probably be a lot less impressive by the time it actually arrives. Nevertheless, if the Miyamoto-directed team at Retro can marry this superb control and camera system to an engaging narrative and keep the design refreshing, Prime could be one of the biggest Cube games of the year, and a respectable return for the mistress of Metroid.

My only other hope is that completing the game quickly rewards you in the same way as it did on the Super Nintendo…

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (50) Latest comment 10 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • otto #1 10 years ago

    Having taken a gander at the E3 videos I have to say that the screenshots don't do it justice. I think the screenies are a bit confusing, especially with the various visor views, but these become clearer once you see how they're supposed to work in action.

    edit - oh, and are you going to tell us what happens if you finish the game quickly on the SNES then...??
    Edited by 1 at 29/05/02 @ 12:19

  • otto #2 10 years ago

    *wishing I'd never mentioned it*

  • Jesus: Action Figure #3 10 years ago

    True, the control was pretty good. Though just a demo, I did notice a lot of the environment repeating itself (IE same corridors over and over again).

    Hopefully this will be remedied in the real game...

  • bystander #4 10 years ago

    edit - oh, and are you going to tell us what happens if you finish the game quickly on the SNES then...??

    Well depending on how quickly you completed the game, it affected how much of Samus you saw in the ending credits.

  • benjamin #5 10 years ago

    "edit - oh, and are you going to tell us what happens if you finish the game quickly on the SNES then...??"

    i'm assuming tom means the gratuitous samus-in-a-dayglo-leotard shot (well, it was the 80s). extra marks to nintendo if they reproduce it exactly, ie as a 2-colour 20 pixel high sprite, although a 'metroid extreme volleyball' affair would probably go down better with the current state of 'look! bouncies!' regression the industry seems to be going through...

    edit - er, like bystander says.
    Edited by 2 at 29/05/02 @ 13:07

  • Blerk #6 10 years ago

    The control system is typically simple

    So you don't have to aim your gun separately like you do in most console first-person shooters? Hey... I might even get on with this one. It's the 'move your guy with one stick, move your gun sight with the other, somehow find enough fingers to fire' thing that I hate. All of a sudden I'm interested again.

  • linkster #7 10 years ago

    but I’m prepared to accept that as with so much of what we see at E3, it will probably be a lot less impressive by the time it actually arrives

    sheesh, what a miserable git.

  • linkster #8 10 years ago

    So you don't have to aim your gun separately like you do in most console first-person shooters? Hey... I might even get on with this one. It's the 'move your guy with one stick, move your gun sight with the other, somehow find enough fingers to fire' thing that I hate. All of a sudden I'm interested again.

    So you've not played Halo or TimeSplitters to any great extent? Shame, it works brilliantly once you get accustomed to it.

  • Blerk #9 10 years ago

    it works brilliantly once you get accustomed to it

    I've tried to get to grips with TimeSplitters many times, but I just can't. I find it a bit like 'patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time' - possible, but irritatingly difficult. I also find the analogue aiming infuriatingly difficult to position accurately - I end up whizzing wildly past my target or creeping up to it so slowly that I'm dead before I get there. After using mouse control on FPS games I fear I've been spoiled.

  • linkster #10 10 years ago

    I've tried to get to grips with TimeSplitters many times, but I just can't.

    I know what you mean, I found Halo a breeze because I'd been through the pain barrier on Free Radical's game, really was a mare for the first couple of hours, but worth it.

  • terminalterror #11 10 years ago

    Does anyone know what will happen if you link up metroid Prime with Fusuion? Nnintendo would be crazy to miss out on at least something

  • #12 10 years ago

    ah, looking forward to this.... well, back to Metroid 2, there's still 20 Metroids left to kill.

  • #13 10 years ago

    Gameplay-wise (most important part of the game) this game could certainly beat Halo. To have better graphics than Halo though, is impossible. GameCube can't do Halo graphics.

    But having said that, I'm definitely looking forward to this game, and will most certainly get it the day it's released. I hope to God it isn't delayed to 2003 though, that would be terrible for GameCube.

  • #14 10 years ago

    GameCube doesn't have the texture capabilities. 3mb's of texture memory? Ew. There's no way just that can do all the nice textures on top of all those polys.

    And have you ever played Halo? You'll notice a "Loading" message that'll appear every few times during a level along with a little stutter. That's the game loading information off the harddrive-- something GameCube doesn't have. Halo's impossible on GameCube.

  • #15 10 years ago

    George, the "mini-disk is small so it loads faster" is probably one of the worst arguments a GameCube fan can make. The change in loadtimes is so minimal that it shouldn't even be brought up. The smaller the "circle" on the disk is, the faster the load. But XBox disks cover the same ground as GameCubes, there's just a lot more space.

    There's no way in hell GameCube could load it on the fly. It's too much information, it needs a harddrive.

    And you're right, textures are the best part of the GameCube, but Xbox's textures are better. Metroid's coming out a year later than Halo, and it's textures don't look to be even getting anywhere near what Halo's got. You can phrase quotes from Nintendo all you want, but until you can show me an actual GameCube game that has better textures than Halo and with levels as large, then this conversation will have to stay firmly in my favor.

  • Blerk #16 10 years ago

    There's no way in hell GameCube could load it on the fly

    Games like Soul Reaver 2 on the PS2 (and the original Soul Reaver on PS1) have proven that it's possible to have a massive, detailed world spooled directly from disc. With a bit of hard work and some tight code I don't see any reason why you couldn't spool just about anything from disc... Never say never, or someone will go out and prove you wrong just to be annoying. :-)

  • Max Diablos #17 10 years ago

    ES,

    And you're right, textures are the best part of the GameCube, but Xbox's textures are better. Metroid's coming out a year later than Halo, and it's textures don't look to be even getting anywhere near what Halo's got.

    Another disguised Microsoft fanboy comment. *yawn*

    Slick visuals alone don't make for a good game, and the GC has plenty of potential for good games. The whole world doesn't revolve around FPS. Get a clue.

  • beep #18 10 years ago

    "George, the "mini-disk is small so it loads faster" is probably one of the worst arguments a GameCube fan can make. The change in loadtimes is so minimal that it shouldn't even be brought up. The smaller the "circle" on the disk is, the faster the load. But XBox disks cover the same ground as GameCubes, there's just a lot more space. "

    I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that both Xbox & Gamecube discs were designed to read from the outside in as opposed to inside out. This would result in faster loads/reading because rotational speed is greater on the edges.

    Or maybe I'm just deluded...

  • bystander #19 10 years ago

    GameCube doesn't have the texture capabilities. 3mb's of texture memory? Ew. There's no way just that can do all the nice textures on top of all those polys.

    Actually the GC has a 1MB texture cache and a 2MB frame buffer and S3TC and so it(texture cache) can store about 6MB of textures. Note that you can use the GC main memory to store textures as well.

    The texture cache is merely there to help speed up access to frequently used textures. In fact the GC can store around 72-108MB of textures depending on how much the code and geometry takes up in GC memory. Here's my Source

  • bystander #20 10 years ago

    I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that both Xbox & Gamecube discs were designed to read from the outside in as opposed to inside out. This would result in faster loads/reading because rotational speed is greater on the edges.

    beep you're right on the ball.

    "Speed roughly comparable to a 13x to 20x CD-ROM. Developers would store information on the outer tracks first, so 20x speed would be more common. Not all that fast, but not all that slow." Source

  • AnotherMartin #21 10 years ago

    I'm sure I heard that the GC load times where also down to Nintendo using their own format not just the size of the disks. People keep calling them mini DVD's but technicaly I don't think they are. Nintendo's two big selling points where load times and security, both of these where attributed to their proprietry (spelling?) format.

    People keep saying that Halo was done on dev kits not final h/w but how different where the dev kits to the final h/w? It's not like they couldn't just go and buy the h/w of the shlef and slap it together.

    I mean, that's what M$ did after all ;-)

  • Super Stu #22 10 years ago

    European Scum : And you're right, textures are the best part of the GameCube, but Xbox's textures are better

    I wouldn't normally respond to you, butI will here because I can at least back it up fact and not opinion (for links, see the URLs provided by Bystander earlier).

    With reference to Bystander's earlier comments, the the GC has an exmtremly fast memory bus to shuffle texture back and forth main ram and the cache. This combined with spooling (which has been proven most recently in The Getaway) means the GC is more than a match for the Xbox in terms of texturing. You might want to frequent websites of those involved with development of games - you'll see that the Cube is widely acknowledged as the superior in terms of texture mapping, despite its lower overall polygon throughput. You may wish to obtain the Starfox screenshots for a demonstration of the Cube's abilities - I've yet to see a more realistic representation of hair/fur on any system.

    As correctly pointed out by AnotherMartin, the Cube and Xbox have data arranged on the outside of the disc and working inwards. Apart from piracy issues, this speeds up data access and undoutedly contributes to the Cube's extremely fast loading times.

    There's no way in hell GameCube could load it on the fly. It's too much information, it needs a harddrive.

    Utterly incorrect. Spooling is a proven technique. You could indeed copy the information to the HDD for improved spooling speeds, but this eats up HDD space and may cause problems if you owned a lot of titles (unless of course the temporary texture cache was wiped from the HDD when the next game was inserted, but a delay whilst the textures were copied to the HDD would be present).

    Before claims of fanboyism are put forward (as is often the case here), I'm an impartial PS2 owner who will argue the toss when incorrect statements are made.

  • otto #23 10 years ago

    super stu - 0wnage ;)

  • Super Stu #24 10 years ago

    one thing super Stu, gamecube needs 15 seconds to load tony hawks pro skater 3, and PS2 needs 35 seconds...got the point?!

    No I don't, so please feel free to enlighten me.

    Guesses:

    a) Anti-PS2 comment
    b) pro Cube comment, due to misreading my post

  • otto #25 10 years ago

    stu - er, est-bee o-tee nore-igee im-hee ;)

  • Max Diablos #26 10 years ago

    super stu - 0wnage ;)

    ^^^ Man in suit trying to look cool. ;)

  • otto #27 10 years ago

    You talkin' to ME???

    Cos I ain't wearin' no suit!!

    oh actually yes I am

    *blushes*

  • Nemesis #28 10 years ago

    Otto SuitMonkey - there goes your cred RIGHT out the window!
    Edited by 1 at 30/05/02 @ 11:12

  • otto #29 10 years ago

    You ain't seen the colour of the shirt I'm wearing ;)

  • ssuellid #30 10 years ago

    "You ain't seen the colour of the shirt I'm wearing ;)" - I hope you are not wearing some cheesy cartoon tie or other similar older bloke trying to look "hip" tie.

  • Nemesis #31 10 years ago

    Does it meet Euro standards in bad taste?

    Shhhhhhhh, keep it quiet, but I'm suited up as well. The bad thing about being a contractor in London I guess. I won't begin to tell you the dress code here /small sigh/

  • Max Diablos #32 10 years ago

    You ain't seen the colour of the shirt I'm wearing ;)

    Sod shirts. Polo necks go with everything. Suits, blazers, tracksuit bottoms, and jeans. They're also low maintenance.

  • otto #33 10 years ago

    My sartorial standards are very high. Catch me in a cartoon tie - cuh! >:(

    It's a fine pink gingham double-cuffed poplin with a navy woven silk tie akshully

  • Nemesis #34 10 years ago

    PINK.

    Is it a genuine "I chose this colour" or "Who put red in with my white shirts"

    ...

  • ssuellid #35 10 years ago

    It might just be all the places that I have worked at in the past ten years, but the vast majority of suit wearers in the software development business are the scruffy bastards. Cheap ill fitting suits, dodgy shirts and the usual "tie I got for christmas". I will never work for a company that insists I wear a shirt and tie ever again.

  • Nemesis #36 10 years ago

    Weeeeeeeell, ok Diablo, but I hope it's not like this......

    http://64.33.45.67/ b/370ps383.jpg

    (edited link)
    Edited by 1 at 30/05/02 @ 11:31

  • otto #37 10 years ago

    "the vast majority of suit wearers in the software development business are the scruffy bastards"

    yeah but I'm not in the software dev business ;)

    Yes it's genuine pink. I'm not ashamed.

  • otto #38 10 years ago

    Nem, er I think you got your url & text confused there but no, it's more like this...

    edit - gah, another b0rked link!
    Edited by 1 at 30/05/02 @ 11:33

  • Nemesis #39 10 years ago

    Otto I went and fixed mine, yours doesn't work either!

  • ssuellid #40 10 years ago

    "yeah but I'm not in the software dev business ;)" we all know that you are EU minister in charge of web counter incrementation :)

    Seriously I have never seen so many scruffy people in suits in any other industry.

  • otto #41 10 years ago

    "EU minister in charge of web counter incrementation"

    lol! I have *got* to get that into my job description :)

  • Nemesis #42 10 years ago

    Bus drivers are worse. Scruffy and a little bit grubby.

  • Max Diablos #43 10 years ago

    It's a fine pink gingham double-cuffed poplin with a navy woven silk tie akshully

    otto's beginning to sound more glammed-up than Pim Fontayne.

  • otto #44 10 years ago

    Fortuyn - and actually I quite liked the way he dressed :) But we part ways there...

  • ssuellid #45 10 years ago

    "It's a fine pink gingham double-cuffed poplin"

    along with a blue suit, black shoes, analogue watch and a branded pair of specs?

  • otto #46 10 years ago

    "along with a blue suit, black shoes, analogue watch and a branded pair of specs?"

    *cough*

    Did I leave my webcam on?

  • Nemesis #47 10 years ago

    Otto

  • otto #48 10 years ago

    I was *waiting* for someone to do that - and no, not even close! ;)

  • ssuellid #49 10 years ago

    "Did I leave my webcam on?"

    No the pink shirt and navy tie gave the game away.

    Are those shirts from thomaspink any good then?

  • otto #50 10 years ago

    Thomas Pink shirts are really not bad, but they're too expensive and they have a tendency to shrink (also the collars curl). Blazer used to do the best shirts imo but they've gone now. Pink is pretty much the only place left in the UK to get decent shirts (I've got a few Paul Smith ones too but they're even more pricey).

    edit - lunchtime - sushi & jaffacakes :)
    Edited by 1 at 30/05/02 @ 11:50

  • Nemesis #51 10 years ago

    Just don't buy anything from Next shirt-wise.

  • Max Diablos #52 10 years ago

    Fortuyn - and actually I quite liked the way he dressed :) But we part ways there...

    Actually, I like a dash of the flamboyant myself.

  • beep #53 10 years ago

    "Actually the larger the circle on the disk the faster the load. As you should know the disc spins with Constant Angular velocity (CAV) so the outer part of the disc spins faster (more displacement per second) than the inner part of the disc which means faster loading times for data in the outer parts of the disc. Gamecube discs have the disadvantage of not being able to reach the same speeds in its outer parts because of its reduced radius. "

    Par, that was the point I was trying to make. Do you not read entire posts?

  • FWB #54 10 years ago

    I just saw a video on the new Mario title and I must say that from what I saw there were some brilliant textures, one in particularly involving a large round mirror bouncing a ball off it. I can't back anything up on a technical side because like Manuel, I know nothing.