Metroid Prime - Reception

Reception

Metroid Prime became one of the best-selling games on the GameCube. It was the second best-selling game of November 2002 in North America, behind Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and 250,000 units were sold in one week of its release. The game had since been sold with more than 1.49 million copies in America alone, with earnings more than $50 million in revenue. It was also the eighth best-selling GameCube game in Australia, more than 78,000 copies were sold in Japan, and the game entered the Player's Choice line in the PAL region.

Prime was critically acclaimed. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the game a perfect review score. It was awarded with numerous Game of the Year awards. It was also praised for its detailed graphics, special effects, varied environments, moody soundtrack and sound effects, level design, immersive atmosphere and innovative gameplay centered on exploring as opposed to the action of games such as Halo while staying faithful to the Metroid formula. Criticisms included the unusual control scheme, which Game Informer considered awkward, lack of focus on the story, making Entertainment Weekly compare the game to a "1990s arcade game, filled with over the top battle sequences, spectacular visual effects - and a pretty weak plot", and repetitive backtracking, which GamePro stated that inexperienced players "might find it exhausting to keep revisiting the same old places over and over and over".

On GameRankings, Prime is the 7th highest rated game ever reviewed, with an average score of 96.30% (as of August 2010), making it the 2nd highest reviewed game of the sixth generation, just below Soul Calibur for the Sega Dreamcast. The video game countdown show Filter named Prime as having the Best Graphics of all time.

Prime was also chosen for some lists of best games: 23rd in IGN's Top 100, 29th in a 100 game list chosen by GameFAQs users, and 10th in Nintendo Power's "Top 200 Nintendo Games Ever". IGN named Prime the best GameCube title of all time, while GameSpy ranked it third in a similar list, behind The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Resident Evil 4, while Nintendo Power also ranked it as the sixth best game of the 2000s. Wired included the game in its list of "The 15 Most Influential Games of the Decade" at #10, for popularizing "exploration, puzzle-solving, platforming and story" among first-person shooters, concluding that the game is "breaking the genre free from the clutches of Doom. This GameCube title took one massive stride forward for first-person games." Metroid Prime also became popular among players for speedrunning, with specialized communities being formed to share these speedruns.