It seems like there are basically two types of Metroid game.
There are games like Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, where Samus is alone and isolated,
in the caverns of an uncharted alien planet.
And there are games like Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Other M, where Samus is told what
to do and where to go, by characters and computers who bark orders down her headset.
Metroid Prime 3 can’t quite decide what type of Metroid game it wants to be.
This game was released in 2007 for the Wii, and it wastes no time in showing off the unique
possibilities of a motion-controlled Metroid game, with, well, a bunch of goofy, gimmicky
waggle bits for inputting passwords and opening doors.
But also!
A fully realised FPS control scheme that remains pretty much unparalleled to this day, and
was so good that developer Retro Studios re-released Metroid Prime 1 and 2 with these controls.
But it also used the added power of the Wii to create moments that make Prime 3 almost
indistinguishable as a Metroid game.
So, when the game begins, on board the GFS Olympus, we get long expository cutscenes
with fully voiced characters.
And then, we blast off to the planet Norion, where we’re working alongside other characters
- being told what to do and where to go, as we race down linear corridors.
Here, you’ll find dramatic set pieces, cinematic explosions, bonkers boss fights, and a last
ditch effort to stop a meteor strike.
I’m sure i’m not the first to say this, but at this point in the game - Prime 3 feels
more like a Halo game than a Metroid one.
And it seems like maybe the days of quietly uncovering abilities and backtracking through
spooky caverns are gone - in favour of bombastic action sequences and nannying objective markers.
But it turns out that this is just a prologue.
Not a quick one like Super Metroid’s Ceres Station or Metroid Prime’s space pirate
Frigate, mind you.
This thing takes about 90 minutes to finish.
But it is just a pre-game teaser.
Because at the end of Norion, everything changes
When Samus wakes up a month later - her suit now corrupted by Phazon energy - her allies,
Gandrayda, Ghor, and Rundas, have left the scene, leaving Samus free to explore on her own.
Also, the world opens up: so now Samus can make more choices about where she goes and
what she does.
And the more traditional Metroid structure, of finding items and backtracking to clear
blocked paths, has returned.
So if Prime 3 wants to open up with a crazy action scene to get you all excited, before returning
to more classic Metroid action - then that’s cool by me.
Except… the spectre of that opening section never truly goes away.
So, with the hilarity on Norion out of the way, Samus now has a clear and defining objective:
the meteor blast showered the galaxy with corruptive leviathan seeds, and now Samus
has to go purge them and whatnot.
Usual saving the universe type stuff.
Now, Prime 1 took place in a single, interconnected world - where unique areas like the Phazon
Mines and Phendrana Drifts, criss-crossed into each other with a maze-like network of
elevators.
Prime 2 was similar, but its three areas felt much more self-contained.
They splintered off from a hub world, they were called temples, and for the most part
you focused on one area at a time - all of which made Prime 2’s areas feel almost like
Zelda dungeons.
Prime 3 splits its areas even further apart - like, millions of miles apart.
Because instead of exploring a single planet, Samus uses her gunship to bounce between several.
And that means, yes, Prime 3 marks the first time Samus’s ship actually gets used outside
of the opening and closing cutscenes, which is cool.
So after getting your mission on the GFS Olympus and repelling the space pirate attack on Norion,
you’ll also get to travel to Bryyo: a sort of mini Metroid Prime with ruins, lava chambers,
and icy corridors.
Elysia, a prototype Bioshock Infinite, where Samus uses zip-lines to whip between floating
platforms.
The Pirate Homeworld, which is a military base, beset by pounding acid rain.
And the GFS Valhalla: a wrecked ship, teeming with familiar alien lifeforms.
Each area is memorably distinct, which is good.
Though the street-level layout of the areas can make them a little challenging to navigate.
Elysia looks pretty similar everywhere you go, for example, making it tough to remember
the exact locations of key areas.
And the two main locations, Bryyo and Elysia, are not exactly a knot of interconnected tunnels,
but more stretched out highways that you’ll need to traverse.
Like Metroid Prime 2, these areas are pretty self contained, and you’re often forced
to explore them in a particular order.
In fact, while the game lets you pick between Bryoo and Elysia at the start of your adventure,
you’ll soon find out that the front door to Elysia is completely locked - and won’t
be open until you beat the boss at the end of Bryyo and unlock the Hyper Ball.
Not much of a choice, then.
And so, outside of any sequence breaking silliness, you’ll get the missiles on Olympus, then
the grapple on Norion, before heading off to Bryyo to get a bunch of items and destroy
the seed.
Then more items on Elysia, and destroy the seed there.
And finally off to the Pirate Homeworld to open access to the final boss rush at the
end of the game.
There’s also Valhalla, but more on that later.
Except, just like Prime 2, there are indeed moments where you need to go back to the other
planets.
You’ll hit a dead end on Elysia, forcing you to return to Bryyo and get the screw attack.
And you’ll be stuck in the Pirate Homeworld, if you don’t return to Elysia to get the
spider ball.
Unlike Prime 2, though, the game does tell you to go back to previous planets.
When you enter this wall-jump room, the game says “the item you need may reside on a
world you have previously visited”. and when you get the grapple voltage, you’re
told that there’s “hidden Chozo artifacts on Skytown”.
But while that’s preferable to the situation in Prime 2 - is it really the best solution
to just have some omnipotent voice tell you where to go?
Because Metroid Prime 3 is a game that doesn’t shut up.
Like, as soon as you step off the ship on Bryyo, an organic supercomputer called Aurora
pipes up to let you know what to do and where to go.
There’s a nearby downed ship, apparently, and we need to reach it.
And from that point onwards, the Aurora regularly pipes up, giving you new objectives and directions.
And this is with the hint system turned off, as i’ve played all three Prime games with
hints disabled to see how the game communicates where to go without these nagging tips.
Now, sometimes it’s okay, I guess: the computer tells you where to go, but not how to get there.
You can’t just wander towards the map marker to get to that downed ship, because you’ll
come across this dead end.
Meaning you’ll need to explore elsewhere on Bryyo, find the grapple beam, and come back.
And there are long spells where the computer shuts up for a bit and lets you explore for yourself.
But there are also times where you essentially need these prompts to progress, and that’s
because Prime 3 regularly breaks a key part of the Metroid design formula.
You see, typically in Metroid games, you come across a blocked path - like a corridor filled with lava.
You then find a new ability - like an ice missile.
And then you must make the connection between these two things, remember where the blocked
path was, figure out how to get there, and use your new ability to make further progress.
It’s basically just a series of locks and keys, but it’s those logical connections
between the keys and the locks that allows you to explore Metroid games without a single
word of dialogue
In Prime 3, the lock and key metaphor breaks apart, as new areas unlock at seemingly random
intervals.
When you get the screw attack, the Aurora says you can now go explore the Valhalla ship.
When you find the x-ray visor on the Space Pirate home world, a soldier calls up and
says you can now explore a new zone.
When you fix these panels on Elysia, your ship - which was previously broken - suddenly
becomes repaired and capable of flying.
When there’s no clear cause and effect between these events, between these keys and locks,
the only way the game can communicate where to go is to explicitly tell you,
leading to a lot of the had-holding moments that the game exhibits.
And then, if you’re like me, you get so used to being told where to go and what to
do that it can be overwhelming when you finally have to go find something for yourself.
Like using the plasma beam - found on Elysia - to melt a frozen entrance back on Bryyo.
Because when you’re led to believe that the game will just tell you where to go, you
kinda just stop taking the time to remember where locked doors and obstacles are altogether.
A reccuring aspect of the Prime games is the key hunt: where you must track down a number
of items throughout the game, to unlock something at the end of the adventure.
Metroid Prime had the Chozo artifiacts, and Prime 2 had the Sky Temple Keys.
Both were cool in how they rewarded exploration and let you find them out of order, but both
had issues: especially in how they killed the pace of both games by suddenly asking
you to explore the entire world map before you can finish.
Prime 3 also has a key hunt, but the execution is quite different.
In the game, you’ll come across energy cells: big batteries that you rip out of power conductors.
And these act as keys inside the GFS Valhalla, where sections of the ship are inaccessible
until you turn on the power.
Like the other Prime games, you can get clues about where these energy cells are hidden,
and they are found outside of the main item hunt - meaning you can get them out of order.
But there are differences to Prime 1 and 2.
For one, you can start the hunt very early on, with the first cell becoming available
for pick-up while on Bryyo for the first time, and with only a handful of items under your belt.
There's no need to wait until the end of the game.
And also, you don’t need to get all of the keys.
You only need 5 out of the 9 possible cells to get to the most important room in Valhalla:
a place with the password to the space pirate’s battleship.
The other keys merely unlock secret rooms, containing upgrades and items.
Of course: because you don’t know which doors are optional, you might spend them unnecessarily
and still end up needing to go off and do a last minute key hunt.
But overall: I think this is a good change: those who are ready to just finish the game
don’t need to find all nine, but it does reward players who really take the time to explore
every nook and cranny of the world.
Especially because these cells are sometimes locked behind cool puzzles and optional boss fights.
Energy Cell 4, for example, makes good use of the gunship’s extended abilities.
The ship can be equipped with missiles to blow holes through walls, and also a big grapple beam.
And for this fourth energy cell, you need to build a bridge between two areas, so your
ship can carry a power generator halfway across the planet.
This is the sort of macro-level puzzle that I enjoy in Zelda dungeons, and is often missing
from Metroid.
So while Metroid Prime 3 does have some really cool puzzle box moments with shifting areas
and giant mechanical contraptions, they’re almost always limited to a single room, removing
the need to think beyond the four walls around you.
Anyway.
While the energy cells are cool, one big problem is that there’s really nothing that interesting
to find on Valhalla, beyond the password you need to finish the game.
Other than that, it’s just typical power-ups: there’s an energy tank, a ship missile,
and a few missile tanks.
This is because Prime 3 is the only Prime game without secret weapons or optional upgrades,
like the charge combos in Prime 1 and 2.
And, also, the game is very generous with energy tanks.
You’ll find a bunch on the critical path and a few more very easily, giving you loads
of health.
And so while Prime 3 is the only game in the trilogy where you can show all of the items
on the map, thanks to the handy Chozo observatory, this stuff is really only there for completionists
who want to see 100% on their save file, I reckon.
So Metroid Prime 3 is an interesting game.
In moments, it feels like classic Metroid with interesting environments, cool new power
ups, intriguing contraptions, and so on.
And I think the gunship is a really cool addition to the series, as it ties into exploration,
combat, and puzzle-solving in interesting ways.
Plus, I like the planet hopping nature of the game.
I’m not such a Metroidvania purist that i think the whole game has to take place in
a single contiguous space, and zipping between planets adds to the sci-fi feel of the game
- even if it is just, functionally, a long loading screen.
But at other times, Prime 3 strays closer to the problematic end of the Metroid spectrum,
with long linear paths to traverse and way too much hand-holding.
At one point, when the Aurora computer finally gave Samus permission to dock at a landing
site, it really reminded me of a certain moment in a later Metroid game on Wii.
And there are so many moments in this game that make Metroid stray away from what makes
the series great, like a time where you have to fight an army of enemies while defending
a flying bomb.
It’s at these points that it starts to feel like every other sci-fi shooter.
Because if you want to play Halo, just play Halo.
We play Metroid for exploration, solitude, and adventure - not shooty shooty bang bang.
All in all, Prime 3 is maybe just below the quality of Prime 1 and 2.
And while it brings lots of new ideas to the series, not all of them are successful.
And for many, many years it seemed like a bit of a shame that the Prime series would
end on its weakest point.
But now, with Metroid Prime 4 in development for Switch - at Retro Studios, no less, fingers
crossed that the studio will find that magic again.
Thanks so much for watching!
That brings the Metroid section of Boss Keys to a close, for now, at least.
Next time on the show… well, let’s just say, it’s gonna be a big one.