I’ve been playingMetroid Prime Remasteredrecently, and I’ve been shocked by how little of this game I remember despite owning it onGameCubeback in the day. The opening scene, in which Samus briefly has access to her full suite of powers before losing them, was familiar. And I distinctly remember wandering around the landing zone and surrounding area on the Tallon Overworld. But that’s about it.
Did I ever make it to the Magmoor Caverns or did I never even make it past the first real area? I definitely didn’t make it to Phenandra Drifts. How is that possible?
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Well, you have to understand, I was not very smart as a kid. Or, rather, I was good at a narrow set of things — reading and writing, the things that led me to this career — and never really worked to get good at stuff that didn’t come naturally. Using a map was definitely on the list of things that didn’t come naturally.
That means any map. I have never remembered a street name in my life. I had trouble understanding the map inThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, too, and mostly just ignored it and the compass in favor of wandering around until I found something new. That was basically how I playedZeldagames until I started writing about video games professionally and needed to become more efficient.
But Metroid Prime’s map is not just any map. Tallon is represented as a series of 3D corridors and arenas. It’s the kind of holographic layout you can imagine a sci-fi protagonist swiping their hand through the air to navigate. It confused the hell out of me as a kid, and I’m sure it played a big role in my giving up before even reaching the Morph Ball.
But, returning to Metroid Prime now that I’m a full-grown adult, I’m finding the map very easy to use. The 3D rotation can still feel a little weird in your hands — not unlike using Ultrahand inZelda— but I don’t have any trouble making sense of it. So, what changed? Well, for one, I was a 10-year-old then and I’m 29 now. Giving your brain a little time to finish cooking works wonders.
But, I can point to a more specific factor, too. Early on into my games writing career, a ton of Metroidvanias (Chasm, Dead Cells, Guacamelee! 2, The Messenger) came out in the space of about a month, and I somehow ended up reviewing all of them. I had played 2D explore-em-ups before, but this was a baptism by fire and ended up breaking my laissez-faire approach to exploration. Review deadlines meant I didn’t have time to just amble around until I found the way forward.
For the first time, I was paying attention to the map. I was zooming in and finding all the doorways I had left unopened, then systematically checking them to see if I had found the tools I needed to progress. This is probably something that a lot of players figure out early on, but I had mental hangups about making myself work to understand the map.
Now, returning to Metroid Prime, I have a mental routine I can run through if I realize I don’t know where to go. Like Samus Aran, I’m returning to those old locked doors and finding that I now have the skills to blast them open.
