Completion Time: 23h:59m:00s
Rating: 10/10

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Journey to Tallon IV

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Start marking off your Bingo cards as I say this was yet another game that I played a bit of when I was younger, but daunted by the size and scope never finished, let alone completed. I even marked this as one of a handful of games that I've always dreaded going back to, knowing how many "missable" components go into a full completion of the game. But with the fourth title on the way, and Skyrim under my completion belt as of last year, I felt there was no better time than the present to count "Metroid Prime" as a 2025 resolution and five in once more.

Wish I had the wherewithal to properly revere this when I was younger

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Ready Your Charge Beam

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From the time you land on the outskirts of Tallon IV post-prologue, you're alone. This isn't much of a surprise for anyone familiar with the Metroid series, as most of the titles have this eerie feeling of isolation in a hostile environment. But it's something else entirely in a 3D environment with all it's various nooks and crannies. It feels as if you're in an abandoned Halo server, knowing that someone or something else should be present, but only finding a myriad of wildlife trying to end you. These games always do a fantastic job with the atmosphere and ambience, driving home these emotions and magnifying the exploratory nature of the game. The soundtrack plays into that as well, between Magmoor Caverns, Phendrana Drifts, and Phazon Mines, I don't think I could tell you my favorite track, as they each hone in on that crisp solitude in a different way. The terror I felt delving into a wide body of water didn't stem from any inherent fear I have for the ocean, but rather the murky occlusion that would go hand in hand with the inability to relate to anything on this overrun husk of a planet.

I could've played this game during the holidays and been perfectly content

I tend to have a complicated relationship with Metroidvania style games, in that I tend to dislike them more than the opposite. But a lot of that really depends on the construction of the world. There's plenty of backtracking for upgrades and puzzles here, there's no denying that. But the real beauty of the game is in its shortcut construction. The ability to make your life easier SHOULD be the ultimate goal of games like this, but all to often things are just complicated for the sake of prolonging gametime instead of reaching some end. But with "Metroid Prime", there's a joy in being able to revisit and conquer previously unattainable goals. This comes in handy in the second section of the game, as after you've beaten the major bosses of the world, you need to run around and collect the 13 Chozo Artifacts so that you can reach the zone of the final big bad, the titular Metroid Prime. Beating mutant plant boss Flaahgra and it's spiky tentacles (which each count as their own scan...) is one thing, but unlocking a shortcut to the arena in order to battle several Chozo ghosts and obtain the Artifact of Wild is a nice reward in and of itself.

Eew, Flaahgra...

Even the final boss of the game is a treat. While it technically has two phases, it transitions just enough times that it feels like it has about six. But the best aspect of the fight is the ability to utilize everything that you've earned and learned in the game so far. The first phase has you swapping between your different weapon upgrades depending on the color that Prime embodies, being sure to roll into a ball and scoot underneath it whenever it charges towards you. Once you've drained its health just enough, it dives into the depths and becomes it's secondary form. Now in this stage, instead of swapping between your weapons, you have to swap between your unlocked visors to see where it's hiding, entering Hypermode from wells it opens in the floor and blasting it with all your might. It flows so naturally between all the different stages that you don't even realize the breadth of your arsenal until you stop and think about it. A great end to a great game. Although, I wasn't done there.

This little guy is a bigger pain in the ass than the final boss!

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Completing the Game

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Here we are: the section that had me dreading going back into this one after all this time. And thankfully it wasn't all as bad as I remembered. I did make sure to note what scans were missable ahead of time just to keep myself safe, and there were honestly so much less than I thought there were. I was aware of all of the bosses and the like, but even "instructional" scans like maps and blast doors are limited in capacity because eventually you just won't have any more to get. It helped that I didn't really have a problem with getting ahold of the boss scans in particular since they give you MORE than ample time to grab a quick screenshot of their weak spots before they launch into whatever attacks they've got planned.

Hi there! Can't wait to fight you, just gotta grab a pic first!

That's... pretty much it. The scanning is the main component of completion, with two brief caveats. Firstly, you also need to grab all upgrades in the game. This wasn't too hard, though I did reach the end of my primary playthrough and found myself missing several missile upgrades. This was a bit of a pain, involving even more backtracking (which for a "Metroid" game is saying something), and if you were to break down and look up a guide it isn't all that helpful because good luck remembering everything that you've grabbed already. I feel like by now I'm a full on expert when it comes to the structure and layout of every room in the game. I certainly put enough time into the game to warrant that. Which came in handy for the final bit of completion: Hard mode. Yeah, if you want to get each of the gallery segments, you also need to go through and beat hard mode. Which honestly wasn't all that hard. If you remember how to deal with the bosses and know where the upgrades are by this point, you can speedrun the more important upgrades and make it to Prime without any effort at all. A welcome breeze, says I!

Chozo Ghosts are now outlawed, because I make the rules

It's a shame that I took this long to end up getting around to a new favorite of mind, and it's even more unfortunate that I now have two other games that I want to plow through in order to be prepared for the fourth game that's releasing soon. Hell, I even sort of want to give the remaster on the Nintendo Switch a whirl. But I'll give it a bit of a break before I decide to jump right back into Tallon IV again.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 30/652