Following a more than five-year drought since the last Metroid game, Nintendo is bringing back their space adventure franchise with what looks to be a multiplayer-centric first-person game that, at least from its debut trailer, doesnât feature much (or any?) of Samus Aran.
The game is called Metroid Prime Federation Force. The trailer showed three masked soldiers running around on an alien planet. A tagline indicated that the game features four-player co-op missions set in the âMetroid Prime Universe,â a somewhat puzzling reference given that, until now, itâs been assumed that all Metroid games take place in the same franchise universe.
The trailer also showed a mode called Metroid Prime Blastball, which looks like a sport. Nintendo sneakily debuted that part of MPFF on Sunday during the companyâs World Championships tournament. As best we can tell, Blastball supports 3 on 3 matches.
The game is set for release on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016.
If you at all think this is weird, youâre not alone. The most recent Metroid Prime was 2007âs Metroid Prime 3, the third of an acclaimed trilogy of first-person adventure games from Retro Studios. In recent years, Metroid has risen to the top of the list of Weirdly Neglected Nintendo Franchises, but Nintendoâs top two men in charge of game development told me last year that they were hoping to speak soon about the future of the 2D and 3D branches of the Metroid series. We are hoping to deduce what in the world this new game is as E3 progresses.
Hopefully itâs as cool as it is baffling.
