Metroid Prime: Retroview

If you wait 5 years to buy a game, you can get it pretty cheap.

Super Metroid was a classic. It took everything we loved about Metroid and brought it to the next level. Prime brings the series at least the same distance again. The first-person perspective takes a bit of getting used to, but before long you're trudging through the swamps of Talon IV like a pro.

Despite the radical departure from the "platform shooter" format, it stil feels like Metroid. The following things define and preserve the series:

• blowing a hole in a weak wall to find a secret missile expansion


• backtracking through areas I'd already explored because "now I have the Morph Ball"


• atmospheric music

…and they're all still here. Nintendo has added to that successful formula with a mysterious and developed story, and exploration in the third dimension. Prime is a worthy addition to the Metroid story - true to its roots, and treading new ground.