One of the Phazon Mines’ core themes is its industrial setting. Finally, the Phazon Mines can only be accessed through either the Magmoor Caverns (which is relied on too much as a quasi-fast-travel system) or the sunken frigate (which is even more linear than the Caverns and a major hassle to run through), which makes entering and exiting the area as burdensome as navigating it.
While in an area like the Phendrana Drifts the varied architecture and distinct settings make it relatively easy to find a specific room, the Phazon Mines feel as though they were designed under significant time and budgetary constraints, leading to level design antithetical to that of the game’s more deliberately constructed areas. While Metroid Prime’s map can be seen as groundbreaking in some regards, the windy, repetitious, confusing layout of the Phazon Mines emphasizes this map system’s shortcomings and adds insult to injury by asking the player to connect the dots between levels rather than depicting them as part of the same whole. Unfortunately, this is only exacerbated by the Mines being divided up into three levels and the map not dealing with these levels as effectively as it should. Part of the reason for this is that so many of these rooms look and feel identical and none of them are very memorable in terms of art or design.
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The Mines’ layout continues this trend of cookie-cutter repetition, which snowballs with its bland aesthetic to ultimately culminate in a lengthy series of rooms that are boring, confusing, and frustrating to navigate. Intentional or not, the Phazon Mines are successful at evoking the aesthetic mediocrity of a power-obsessed society over-reliant on technology. The total lack of plant life, heavy Phazon pollution, hazy sky, and factory-like architecture stand in stark contrast to both Metroid Prime’s lush and diverse biospheres as well as the Chozo’s more respectful and sustainable settlement. Yet while much of the art here is expressionless (and sometimes gross), it also underscores how poorly the Space Pirates have treated their environment. Prime bucks this trend in every other area, but unfortunately the Mines fall into such tried-and-tired aesthetic tropes. Its tans, topes, and grays with noisy textures are relics of a bygone era where many AAA games and first-person shooters all looked drab and dreary. While these environments might seem to hint at an especially diverse art style, the Phazon Mines are actually the most visually bland and generic region in Metroid Prime. The mines are divided into three levels, including a surface level that features heavy machinery and takes place both indoors and outdoors, a lower level that houses several laboratories, and an even lower level of dark passageways riddled with fungi and Phazon. Its load of scannable lore detail the history of the Mines and the Pirates’ various research projects in great detail, sometimes with scans so densely packed the obsessive scanning they inspire can detract from other aspects of gameplay. This massive mechanized realm is the home base of Space Pirate research on Tallon IV, and where the Pirates mine and conduct experiments with Phazon. In this entry, I will look at the game’s sixth area: Phazon Mines.Īfter exploring Phendrana Drifts, Samus eventually treks through the crashed Frigate Orpheon to gain entrance to the Phazon Mines. Tally-ho, Tallon IV - it’s time to scan you region-by-region.
But how does the Gamecube’s killer app hold up a decade and a half later? In celebration of Metroid Prime’s return, I will be systematically analyzing the design of each of the original’s main areas. And while Metroid Fusion remains a fondly remembered game, Metroid Prime stole the show, bringing the franchise into 3D while collecting countless accolades. It was as if history had nearly repeated itself, as fifteen years earlier the simultaneous release of Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime ended another near-decade-long dry spell. But then E3 2017 landed the one-two knockout of Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Prime 4. Up until last June, series devotees were in a record-long drought, having waited seven years for word of a…soccer-less Metroid game. Samus downloads the Map data for the Ruins.For the Metroid fan, it’s either feast or famine.
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