Well, well, lucky number 13. I don't actually believe that 13 is any more or less lucky than any other number, except of course that I do. I can't help it, despite knowing better.
Anyway, I came late to the Metroid franchise. I had heard of Metroid and Samus before, the games looked cool and all, it's just that I didn't ever own an NES and so I had never played the original, to this day I've never seen a copy of II, and Super Metroid was touted to me as the hardest game ever, which is probably not true, but could be. Still, though, I was a big fan of the story, which I'd read on various websites over the years, and I was stoked for Metroid Prime. It was gorgeous, and the reviews were favorable. I didn't own a GameCube, though, nor did I have the wherewithal to buy one when Prime came out, so it looked like I was going to miss another iteration of Metroid. Until a certain crazy man I know decided to buy me a GameCube, just for...um...taking him to the dentist and then home again. I mean, yeah, there was supposed to be more to it, but it turned out to be largely unnecessary. Still, I am not about to turn down free stuff, especially free stuff that cool, so I got it anyway, and at the time, 'Cubes were being offered with a free game of your choice(from a limited pool, of course), and one of the games was Metroid Prime, so I finally had a Metroid game. (Also, we got Resident Evil Zero, which is also very cool, but not anywhere near as good as Metroid.)
That weekend, I played the shit out of that game. My god, it was so fucking good. One of the best games ever, really. And in addition to the gorgeous graphics and entertaining gameplay(it's not really a first-person shooter; it's a first-person platformer, and while I normally despise platforming in FP, this game was built as a platformer, so Samus can actually fucking *jump*, unlike the anemic little hops you make in most first-person games), there are all these little touches, things that made me just stop and look at them and say, "Oh, wow, that is so cool." Like rain on your visor, or the way the barrel of your gun will give off a little heat haze after a protracted burst of firing, or the way you can see Samus's eyes reflected in her visor when there's a flash of light underwater, or the little idle animations where Samus fidgets with her gun. And the X-Ray Visor, which is only useful in-game in a couple spots, but is just so freaking cool to play around with; you can see Samus's bones through the arms of her suit, and, in what I think is actually the coolest touch in the entire game, if you do the Metroid Fusion link thingy that lets you play through wearing the suit from Fusion, when you turn on X-ray vision and look at Samus's hands, you see that her fingers are slightly elongated and end in claws, and I dunno about you, but for me, that is just...Way cool.
Anyway, I was actually planning to write this review about Metroid: Zero Mission, which I picked up the other day and have been playing a lot, but I got lost in gushing about Prime, to the point where I'm going to be late for work, because I am an idiot. Anyway. If you own a 'Cube and not Metroid Prime, I strongly urge you to rectify that situation. If you don't own a 'Cube, well, it's worth it for Prime alone, and Prime is not alone. I have played through Prime to the end 10 times now, which is way more than I've ever finished any other game. I played Prime so much that first weekend that at the end of it my fingers were cramped into that position for a couple days afterward.