Metroid Prime – Nintendo GameCube (2002)
Initially, this game terrified me. I remember how excited I was to own it as an 11 year old in Christmas of 2002, and when I finally got my hands on it, I could barely make it through the game’s prologue. The music, the dark corridors, the sudden appearance of Space Pirates and automated turrets around any possible corner overpowered my ability to shoot the power beam properly. Not to mention when you’ve defeated the boss and you’re trying to escape from the ship with a limited amount of time. I died countless times, and then put the game down for months. I picked it up again almost a year later, and when I finally escaped from the exploding space vessel and defeated a Parasite Queen, I could swear I never felt more alive before than that moment. That’s what a Metroid game is supposed to feel like: it thrusts you into an atmospheric, and eerily vertical environment, and you outwit the world’s creatures until you become unstoppably powerful. While most people will point to Prime’s predecessor, Super Metroid, as one of the greatest games of all time, Prime was my first Metroid game, and it achieves everything Super Metroid did, but in 3D. The adrenaline rush that you feel trying to keep Samus alive, despite being in complete isolation, is so mesmerizing, especially when you discover new mysteries in the deep tunnels of a forgotten planet. – Evan Griffin
Advertisement
