It is a first person shooter, in the sub-genre focused more on non-linear progression and exploration. Deus Ex and System Shock 2 have a lot in common with the Prime games, and they are considered FPS as well. Saying Metroid Prime isn't a FPS is like saying punk or metal aren't related to rock. They derive from the same source (first person shooter) but do things in a different way. Halo is part of the "Doom" style shooter, where the player progresses through "levels" in a linear 1-2-3 manner. Prime progresses in the "find out what needs to be done and do it" manner, where things can be done out of order (in Prime's case, one can get the space jump very early on and skip a good third if the game, despite it being a glitch, it is very much a "Metroid" thing). To say Metroid Prime isn't a "shooter" is a downright lie. But one must always clarify that it is very different from other shooters out there. It does have a LOT of shooting (you open doors by shooting them), but its focus isn't on just going through the game at the pace set by the developers... it is about immersing oneself in the atmosphere and discovering how the game progresses at the player's own pace.foxhound_fox

You know, I hate to disagree with you on this... Actually, that's not true - I love disagreeing with people. But, I do disagree with this. Heck, Nintendo, the people who made the game and are probably one of the oldest and most respected developers in gaming, disagree with this - they've openly and explicitly stated that Metroid Prime isn't a first person shooter. You've been around here a long time, and I'm sure you remember this, which is why I'm going to have to make another point other than Nintendo's authority...

So, aside from the fact that Nintendo's say is worth about a billion times as much as of any of ours in such matters, A game being in the first person perspective and having shooting does not a first person shooter make. If that were true, heck, The Elder Scroll series would be a shooter series since it has plenty of bow shooting and spell shooting from a first person perspective. Who here doesn't circle strafe around ogres while peppering them with arrows? You may say "well, it has TONS of melee though" - heck, so does Halo if you're a sword/gravity hammer type guy, or just like to beat up on things with your basic melee attack. And besides - the last time I played an Elder Scrolls game, I was a wizard and more or less didn't use any melee at all. You can't dub a game a first person shooter just because it has shooting and is in the first person perspective.

If you go into Metroid Prime expecting the things that tend to draw people to FPS games - mainly the action focus - you'll likely be let down as you run around exploring and scanning with combat being an extremely minor element of the game for most of it - casually shooting easy enemies just to keep on exploring. I'm strongly inclined to agree with Nintendo on this one, that Metroid Prime isn't a "first person shooter" any more than Super Metroid was a 2D platformer. A good analogous case actually - Super Metroid isn't considered a 2D platformer like Mario even though it's 2D and you platform all the time - the exploration and upgrade elements set it apart.

I think part of the problem is that the actual first person shooter genre is, oddly enough, a sub genre of games which are first person in which you shoot. It might be more appropriate to call them "first person action shooters" or something like that, but that's not what we do, even though that seems to be the common link between shooters which bear the focus that tends to typify the genre - action and gunplay are the focus of the game. Not exploraion (Metroid Prime), not character building and dialogue (Oblivion, Fallout), but running around blowing stuff up.

Of course, these are all murky lines, but they are lines. There will be crossover and grey aras, but I think to say "Metroid Prime is a first person shooter" isa mistake - even Nintendo realized that they had a game that had a vastly different focus than that of Doom or Duke Nukem.

System Shock 2 was most likely the inspiration for Retro making Prime the way it was... because both games give the player the freedom to move at their own pace instead of the pace set in stone by the design of the levels. From what I've encountered with the whole "comparison" debate between these two games over the years, I find it hard to say that they CAN'T be compared, since so many people do it. A comparison is about which things are similar AND different, not just different. Prime and Halo are both set in a futuristic science-fiction universe, both feature a group of antagonistic enemies that are trying to take over the galaxy, and both feature a lot of shooting. I am definitely an advocate for greater amounts of sub-genres in games (i have argued that in the past with this), but I think one thing that gets ignored quite often is the PARENT genre. I wouldn't consider Halo as something that fits directly in with the many corridor type shooters of the 1990's, so it could even be considered a sub-genre within the FPS "parent" genre. I do think it is fair to compare the games as well, considering how close together they were released, how similar they are (different take on the same idea) and how well-made they both are. For someone to say "nothing on consoles can touch Halo" in the FPS genre, I would most certainly disagree, and like I did, cite Metroid Prime. Now, comparing Halo to Super Metroid or Other M? Doesn't work because both those games belong to very different parent genres, and focus on one thing far more than Prime: platforming. Super especially. But i'll stop rambling... because Halo and Metroid Prime are exceptionally good games, and both approached the same idea in quite different but similar ways. And neither revolutionised anything... but did what they did extremely well, and to a high standard of excellence.foxhound_fox

[QUOTE="Boomshaffted"] Probably a similar reason as to why games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D did poorly on consoles. Even though they were solid ports and spectacular games (heck, DN3D is still my favourite FPS), they came out very late and their day in the sun was largely done. Or I suppose you're going to say "Well, they just weren't that good to begin with when compared to the games already on those platforms they were ported to," which I strong suspect is what you were going to insinuate was the case with Halo coming to the PC ;) Really, got to go. Been fun. And yeah, bitter here, very bitter.Mograine

Something stinks here.

First you come into this thread talking about how Halo revolutionized the FPS genre by giving life to its console branch, then you come up with examples of games that came *before* Halo and try to blame other factors for its failure.

[QUOTE="-RocBoys9489-"]Well for one, it came out later and most people who wanted to play it bought an Xbox strictly for the game.Mograine

And how is that relevant? Considering how good you make it out to be at least *someone* would have been interested in it.

[QUOTE="Boomshaffted"]Here's food for thought. The American Declaration of Independence is widely considered to be a revolutionary document - and rightly so. It has been the inspiration and model for countless constitutions and bills of rights around the world, and in general, is one of the most cherished documents in the political development of the west. The catch is, there is next to nothing - pardon, *nothing* - original in it. The men who penned it didn't set up a think tank and say "We're going to come up with something new, something the world has never seen, and do things in a totally different way - and THAT will be the foundation for our country!" Nope, not even close. Rather, what they did was do some reading... John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, and a few others. They lifted certain ideas from those philosophers, slapped them together into a document which in itself said nothing that hadn't been publicly aired before, and they said "here is our Declaration of Independence." A conglomeration of copied, borrowed, stolen - whatever you want to call it - ideas, which is in itself a revolutionary document because it has actually inspired many other countries to model their important documents after it. After IT - not Locke or Hume or Rousseau's assertions through various treatises and discourses. Or is it? By the standards many of you are setting, John Locke is probably the true revolutionary here, not those who penned the Declaration. On that note, I'm out of this thread. I think a lot of you are - something I'm seeing more and more of these days - just a bunch of bitter PC fanatics who can't give a console game credit where credit is due. Maybe still miffed that Halo was supposed to be a massive open world shooter for the PC years before MS snagged it..Mograine

Enlighten me, why do you think Halo didn't have nearly as much success on PC as it had on Xbox?

I clearly see who the bitter one is right now.

[QUOTE="Boomshaffted"]Why the heck does it have an E on the end of "AAAE"? Can't I play this game on, like, 4 systems now?charizard1605

Thank you SO SO much for this post

edit: Like all games with cover mechanics now are ripping off Gears of War and not Killswitch ;)

-RocBoys9489-

[QUOTE="Boomshaffted"]

Meh, if it had been released in the period with Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Tribes, AvP, Half-Life, Shadow Warrior and all that stuff (late 90's), I'd agree with you, but... What did it have to compete with in the early 2000's? Return to Castle Wolfenstein? No-One Lives forever? The only one I can really think of is Tribes 2 and while I'd probably have taken Tribes 2 ahead of it personally, Halo had a great single player campaign, great co-op, and solid multiplayer, compared to Tribes 2's multiplayer only. It was probably the most complete package of any game I've listed here, having very solid offerings in literally every major are FPS's tended to delve into.

Lucianu

So you're yet another fan that wasn't bored by those horribly repetitive environments? I could never grasp why fans loved the original's campaign, i thought it was a long, tedious slog through endlessly repeating environments. Halo 2 was a far more superior, and impressive game, and Half Life 1 obliterates both in terms of level design, enemy AI and enemy variety.