Game Review: Metroid Prime Trilogy Must Have

The Press

Metroid Prime Trilogy

From: Nintendo

For: Nintendo Wii

Classification:

RRP: $109

Score: * * * *

The Metroid Prime series is one of the most celebrated first- person shooters to appear on, first, the Nintendo GameCube, and then the Wii.

When Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes appeared on the GameCube, they were praised for their engaging game play. The third game in the series, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, appeared on the Wii and was the first in the series to make the most of the console's motion-sensitive remote and nunchuk.

In Metroid Prime Trilogy, Nintendo have tarted up the two earlier Metroid games with spruced up graphics, widescreen treatment and incorporated the new motion- sensing control scheme. For fans of the beloved series, it's a win-win.

Metroid Prime tells the tale of female bounty hunter Samus Aran, who wages a war against interplanetary pirates after they attacked a galactic federation research ship that was carrying mysterious lifeforms called the Metroid.

Echoes and Corruption continued Aran's battle against the space pirates.

I never played the originals on the GameCube, or the Wii, so I can't use those games as a reference point for the review, but using the Wii remote to control Aran's giant arm-mounted gun/rocket launcher, fire grappling hooks and scan environments feels more natural than I suspect it would using a joypad.

Switching between scan mode and fire mode seemed cumbersome at first, but soon became second nature. Aran can also handily transform into a morph ball and flicking the remote up sharply while in that mode will perform a jump.

There are a lot of modes and controls to master (especially when you are flicking through various visor modes), but Trilogy is a fast- paced, action-packed revisiting of an age-old classic in Nintendo's gaming history that deserves to be in the library of every shooter- loving Wii owner.

Given that the game disc has three games on it, there will be plenty of hours worth of entertainment here.

If you've never controlled famed bounty hunter Samus Aran as she takes on a giant worm-like thing, then now is your chance.

----

More game news

Game reviews