A legend renewed

Metroid continues the line of classic Nintendo-franchises getting a new incarnation on GameCube. Unlike the smooth development of company’s other franchises, Metroid’s transition to 3D was more troublesome. The development was given to Nintendo’s rookie second party developer, Retro Studios. Retro was a big question mark at the time, as they had not released anything on a console before. There were many doubts whether Retro could handle the development successfully.

Initially the project seemed disastrous. At one point Retro cancelled or put in hold all of their projects except Metroid, such as their RPG, Raven Blade. In addition rumors flew around that Nintendo was not happy how Metroid was turning out. After a while it was announced that Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s top designer, had started supervising the development. The results were surprising. Retro had abandoned the previous third-person gameplay and started using first-person perspective. This take caused quite an uproar. Old Metroid purists were horrified with the new approach while many others were impressed by the courageous design change. I remember I wasn’t too happy with the change myself, as I don’t favor first-person shooters. Retro Studios clearly saw this coming and announced from the start that the game was a first-person adventure instead of shooter, with more emphasis on the exploring than the action.

Phendrana Drifts

Like in previous Metroids, the main character is Samus Aran, a bounty hunter wrapped in mysterious power suit with more features than average armors offer. In the game’s opening scene, Samus finds herself investigating a distress call from a space station. It doesn’t take too long for her to notice that the station is a wreck; signs of battles are evident around the station and seems that none of the personnel are left alive. Trying to find the cause of this destruction, Samus wanders deeper into the space station. Although the answers are there, the activation of auto destruct mechanism changes her plans from finding to fleeing. During her escape, an explosion damages her power suit, rendering most of the fancy features useless. The trip was not a total bust, though, since according to space station data logs, space pirates are doing something fishy on a nearby planet, Tallon IV. Despite of her damaged power suit she decides to investigate the situation on the planet. That’s the premise of Samus’s latest adventure.

Metroid’s development took quite a time and once it finally came out, it was a big success. The hype surrounding the game was tremendous and – much to my surprise – the game received great reviews all around. I was glad that people liked the game, but had my reservations. After all, Halo got nothing but praise too and I still managed to dislike it. So Metroid stayed off my “must buy” – list. Eventually I chose to give it a chance and borrowed the game from a buddy. After playing for a few days or so I found myself actually enjoying the game! This was rather weird, as the previous first-person action game I remember liking was Unreal Tournament (which is weird. Don’t know why, but I did enjoy it). The result is that there are now two first-person action games I like.

Thermal visor in use

One reason may be Metroid’s focus on exploration instead of blasting away everything in sight. Metroid has that too, of course, but I liked especially the moments when you just investigated your surroundings and scanned things, just to find out more about Tallon IV and what has happened to it. The scanning, which I just referred to, is one of the most important aspects of gameplay in Metroid Prime. Samus’s power suit has multiple visor modes, two of which are initially available: combat mode and scan mode. Combat mode is pretty obvious, it involves a gun and a targeting system, as some of you may’ve guessed. Scan visor, however, is completely different. You don’t get to use weapons while in it, scanning allows you to gain valuable information about the scanned subject. Besides important info concerning enemies, you can also scan lots of things from the environment. This way you’ll get hints about possible weak points on walls, for example. A lot of background information on the story is revealed when actively scanning computers, ancient symbols, etc. The game actually doesn’t require much scanning, but it enhances your playing experience a lot.

Beam cannon will deliver

Weaponry isn’t limited either despite that Samus only has one weapon. The arm cannon on her power suit is very versatile; you start with power beam but gain missiles and ice, plasma and wave beams as the game progresses. Each beam has it’s own strengths and weaknesses. There are also certain pathways that can only be opened by using a particular beam.

Map station

Once you disembark from your ship to Tallon overworld, you’ll find out that all the cool gadgets Samus had in her suit are gone. During the course of game you’ll get them back, but having arm cannon which can blast just regular bursts can be quite depressing. Fortunately exploring Tallon IV rewards you soon with missile launcher and charge capabilities for the cannon. Some of the other upgrades found later on include Varia Suit (Allows Samus to survive undamaged in areas of extreme temperatures), Space Boots (gives Samus the double jump), grapple beam and everyone’s favorite, the Morph Ball.
Morph Ball is probably the coolest gadget in the game. Once Samus has acquired it she can morph into a ball form whenever she wants. Many small corridors and secrets can only be accessed in morph mode. Later upgrades give speed charge and power bombs to the ball. Morph mode switches the game camera away from 1st person to overhead 3rd person, which is, quite obviously, the only way to go perspective-wise (rolling around in first person could be fun for five minutes, though…) . While Samus is very fast in morph mode, her weaponry is limited to bombs so you can’t be too carefree rolling around

Visually Metroid Prime looks great. It is a game that shows people what GameCube can really do graphically when developers have put an effort to it. The environments look great. At times you can see things like Samus’s face reflecting from an icy surface or water dripping on her visor. They may seem like little details but seeing things like that really makes an impression. The game also runs very smoothly despite all the detail, keeping a steady framerate all around. Retro has done a great job here.

Huge creatures in glass tubes always
break free on inconvenient times

Music is another thing that Metroid excels in. It varies from symphonic tunes to slow techno-style tracks. Each piece fits perfectly to the situation you’re in. For instance, going through the mysterious Chozo Ruins for the first time you’re greeted with an eerie ambient tune on the background which changes to an industrial once you return to the ruins after exploring them.

Backtracking has always been traditional in Metroid games and Prime is no exception. You’ll find yourself going through already explored areas many times later on in the game, due to all those pathways you weren’t able to access before until obtaining better gear. Because of that, backtracking can’t be avoided. Still, some people just hate returning to already explored areas more than once. It can’t be avoided, though, for purely logical reasons. It might be a bit difficult making a game with no need to go through previously completed areas when your playing area consists of a freely exploreable planet.

Ice beam tames even the most furious natives

Because of the playing area is as huge as Tallon IV is and the detailed graphics of the game, loading times are obviously an issue. Retro Studios has countered this by splitting different areas with doors. Doors are opened by firing at them and the brief delay between impact and door opening is used in starting to load the next area. This does not disrupt the gameplay in any way as the delay is a few seconds at most. There are no loading screens in-game. The doors are a working solution anyway as they’re familiar from previous Metroids. Obviously placing doors between areas would be strange when traveling outdoors, but Retro has placed caverns and other obstacles between large outdoor areas so that you won’t encounter a field with a wall and a door dividing it to two areas.

Difficulty level isn’t overly high, but boss encounters tend to offer challenge, some of them more than enough, actually. At least to a player who’s not too familiar with the first person genre of games. Revisited areas are occasionally spiced with new types of enemies, so that the trips aren’t always total pushovers. After completing the game hard mode is unlocked, which should add bit of a challenge if the game seemed too easy first time around.
Now that Metroid Prime is a part of Nintendo’s “Player’s Choice” budget series, the price tag should not prevent you from getting one of the must-have games on GameCube.

Samus outside the space station

Space pirate ahead

Divided opinions

Although Mario may be Nintendo’s most popular franchise, many players still value one series even more: The Legend of Zelda. Like Super Mario series, the Zelda franchise also begun on the NES. Both the Legend Of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link were technological masterpieces back then, with a large world and multiple dungeons to explore. Ever since then Zelda games have set the standards for adventure games, always improving. Nintendo 64′s The Ocarina of Time was a huge leap which brought the series to 3D and Nintendo faced a huge challenge with the next installment.

First images for GameCube Zelda were very realistic and detailed, showing Link fighting with his arch nemesis Ganondorf. People were very pleased with what they saw and liked the look. That’s why the showing of Zelda in last year’s E3 show came as quite a shock for most people. While designer of the series, Shigeru Miyamoto was confident with the new, cell shaded, approach, the gaming community wasn’t sold. “They’ve ruined Zelda”, “It looks like a kids game!”, “What’s Miyamoto been smoking?”, “That won’t sell.” were lines many people said. At this point what they saw was mostly just screens from very early versions of the game.

Seeing the game progress made many skeptics change their opinions. The new style turned out quite nice and Zelda is as popular as ever. Perhaps the cell shaded approach Nintendo took wasn’t as stupid as it seemed to be.

One of the main reasons for the new appearance was that cell-shading allowed Nintendo to add easily recognizable facial impressions for the characters, to make them feel more ‘alive’. This feature is used throughout the game and in many points you can spot the important details by just looking at Link’s eyes.

The much criticized graphics are actually excellent. The game looks like a cartoon come alive. It’s simply stunning how much detail Nintendo has managed to add into the game. Grass waves according to the wind, lighting and shadows look great, you even see butterflies fly and clouds go by. The transition from night to day is also worth mentioning. You can see the first rays of the sun slowly appearing as the new day comes.

One of the wonderful things in the game is that if you see something in the horizon, you can travel there and explore it. There are no invisible barriers blocking your way, you can travel as you will. In fact, most of the time in Wind Waker goes while sailing around the massive world. This is a change from traditional Zeldas, as dungeons have always been the focus. This change is a welcome one, I always preferred exploring the world instead of dungeon crawling.

Unlike the most Zeldas, WW’s story has some continuity to previous games. In Wind Waker’s world the events of Ocarina of Time have become a legend. There is a tradition in Outset Island that when a boy comes of age, it’s customary to dress him in green tunic in memory of a legendary hero. To our main character, Link, this tradition is soon becoming reality. Things don’t go as planned, though, as a huge bird spoils the party by kidnapping Link’s sister, Aryll. Something must be done, so Link decides to accompany a pirate ship and travel to rescue his sister.

Wind Waker is much more story driven than other Zeldas. While in Ocarina of Time you got to roam freely and the main quest stayed in the background, Wind Waker has story events throughout the game, instead of something happening only after you’ve gathered all three talismans, for example. While this certainly helps the storytelling, it does take away some of the freedom usual to Zelda series, however.

Strangely I found that the Wind Waker lacked some things that were very traditional for Zelda games. Even though the game world is filled with water, you can’t dive (or swim very far). This is a bit weird, considering that in almost every Zelda you can. Although the huge task to add all the things underneath the surface could be a reasonable explanation for this. More peculiar thing is the complete absence of Zoras. You’d think that from all the races in in Zelda games, the water people would be in Wind Waker, but apparently not. Guess they’ve gone deep deep underwater.

The different colored tunics are also absent, as well as finding secret doors by bombing cracks in walls. Spells are no go too, magic meter is strictly for item use. Iron boots make a comeback but the hover ones or the running shoes are nowhere to be found. Hookshot is accompanied by a newcomer, the grappling hook, which does basically the same thing, except that it clings on to slightly different objects. The shovel is gone (aww, no digging…) but boomerang, bow and arrows do return, alongside with The Most Useful Tool Ever, hammer (It is much bigger than before, but still as slow as ever). Deku leaf is the most interesting new item. It allows Link to hover across the air for short distances (It consumes the magic meter rapidly, though). The leaf can be also used on the ground, where it makes small wind breezes (which are useful mostly on solving puzzles).

Looks good, sounds good

The music is done by Koji Kondo (who has been the main composer of both Zelda and Mario series ever since their beginning), with help from Kenta Nagata (Mario Kart 64), Hajime Wakai (Star Fox 64) and Toru Minegishi (Majora’s Mask). While there’s plenty of new stuff to listen to, fans haven’t been forgotten. Some of the classic Zelda-themes make a comeback in new arrangements. Overall the soundtrack maintains the adventurous feel throughout the game and the music reacts well to game’s events. Like on all Zelda games, the overall quality is high, although I still rank Ocarina of Time’s soundtrack a bit higher.

Music changes dynamically during the game. When night changes to day, the music reacts to that. This goes for battles as well, so when you’re near enemies, the music becomes more intense. When you strike an enemy, music tempo increases and more aggressive chords are played. The bigger combo gets, the more chords you hear. Sounds amazing.

The biggest music-related aspect of the game is the Wind Waker, a magical conductors baton that Link uses to control the wind. It works the same way as the ocarina did. To conduct a melody, you push buttons according to notes of the song. After that Link plays the rest of the song (Ocarina sounded better, by the way), and the magic kicks in. Since most of the game is spent on sailing, the song you get to play most is, surprise, the one that lets you control the direction of the wind. You’ll play it a lot throughout the game.

Controls are similar to Ocarina of Time. Locking on to enemies is done with L-button (opposed to Z-targeting in N64), R-button handles the shield, A is the main action button, B is for sword and Y, Z & X are devoted to item use. C-stick is used for camera control. Jumps are done automatically, so no worries about screwing them up.

The difficulty level isn’t very high. While the Wind Waker isn’t a pushover, only few bosses offer a real challenge. Fortunately the world is vast, there’s plenty to explore and the dungeons are filled with puzzles. Since the game allows you to sail freely, there’s so much to do that the lack of difficulty really isn’t an issue.

Like in most of Nintendo’s GameCube games, Wind Waker uses the GameCube / Game Boy Advance connectivity. At certain point in the game you get an item called the Tingle Tuner which allows you to use GBA to control Tingle. Tingle helps you by dropping bombs on enemies, selling items, giving advice, etc.

ink’s first adventure on GameCube is a successful one, just like its predecessors on Nintendo 64, SNES & NES. There’s a good reason why Zelda is considered to be perhaps the best game franchise ever. Wind Waker proves this. Although the series is more than ten years old, it still has capability to renew itself and always offer something new and exciting for the fans.

While the cell shaded look isn’t for everyone, it’s part of the reason why Wind Waker is such a great game. Many of the things Nintendo has been able to do with it just wouldn’t be possible on realistically styled graphics. If you don’t choke on the graphics, Wind Waker is a must buy for every GameCube owner. It might be a long time before you see another adventure like this one. In fact, you might have to wait for the next Zelda game, so better not pass by Wind Waker.

Stars’ gathering

The last time Nintendo’s characters gathered to beat the crap out of each other was Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 64. SSB had one of the longest life spans for a N64 game. In fact, it was so full of features and secrets that it would still be the game of choice for fighting fans if something better hadn’t come out. The new king of fighting games is Super Smash Bros. Melee for GameCube.
Smash Bros developer HAL laboratories couldn’t wish for a better license – all Nintendo’s greatest stars in one game. It’s not easy to build up from the enormous success of the original game and the easiest way would’ve been to release just a graphical update with minor improvements. It’s good to see that Hal took a different path and decided to make the new Smash Bros better than the original game in every aspect, giving Nintendo’s characters the treatment they deserve.

Super Smash Bros has over 20 characters from pretty much every franchise Nintendo has. Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, Link, Zelda, Pikachu, Kirby, Captain Falcon from F-Zero, Fox McCloud from Star Fox & Samus Aran from Metroid, just to name few of them. Some are available right away, some will become available later on.
In addition to characters, there’s also stages from their games, Eg. Mute City from F-Zero, Brinstar from Metroid, Termina Great Bay from Zelda & Fountain of Dreams from Kirby. Stages and characters aren’t the only things included form the games. The soundtrack consists of new versions of all-time Nintendo favorites.

Melee adds a new game modes not in the original Smash Bros. While Melee is the normal beat’em up mode, adventure mode is a new addition. It’s basically a side-scrolling platformer. The stages vary depending on the game they’re based on. First stage is just like one from the first Mario game. Then there’s F-Zero stage which places you in the middle of race. You’ll have to run towards the goal and avoid being squashed by the F-Zero vehicles passing by once in a while. Metroid stage has you escaping from an exploding planet and on the Zelda-stage you search for the Triforce. The stages aren’t overly complicated but bring a nice change to regular melee every now and then.

Clearing the adventure mode gives you a trophy of the character you completed the game with. You’ll also get trophies from bonus games and by collecting them from the stages. Each trophy you get is placed in your trophy room where you can read tidbits of info about that particular item or character and also view a nice 3d-model of the trophy.
In over 150 trophies there are items from most Nintendo franchises, including Balloon Fight, Ice Climbers, Mario series, Earthbound and not to mention the obscure Japan-only games. The trophies also serve as a glance to the history of Nintendo. Veteran gamers are guaranteed to have a nostalgia trip…

The precise playability of N64 version has moved well to GameCube and the controls are responsive. Graphics are colorful and filled with details. In fact, they’re so detailed that you may have problems distinguishing your character when there are 4 characters battling in front of an animated object in the background. This doesn’t occur very often and wouldn’t even be an issue if SSB Melee’s gameplay wasn’t so fast paced.
Because of the game’s tempo, extreme concentration is required every time you play – unless you wish to get beaten severely. Smash Bros Melee is easy to learn but mastering each character is more difficult. Each one has their strengths and weaknesses and if you wish to gain all trophies you’ll need to be a bit experienced with each character.

One thing I’ll need to mention is the points rewarded after melee battles. There are dozens of different things you may be rewarded for. For example, points are given for the players with most KO’s, who collected the most items, got most power ups, used items hazardously never blocked, etc.
Minus points are awarded for players with most suicides or who resorted to cheap tactics. The points have no relevance to the rest of the game apart from high scores, but since there are so many things you may be rewarded for, it’s always a fun thing to check.

Smash Bros Melee was released soon after GameCube and it’ll be interesting to see if we’ll see a GameCube fighting game that’s as complete and feature-packed as SSB Melee anytime soon. Offering so many challenges and features, SSB Melee set a new standard for fighting games and and is certainly one of the games for GameCube that’ll last for years to come.