Yesterday, I launched my week long feature focusing on my top five favorite console games of all time with my number five selection — Shadow of the Colossus for the PS2. With today’s selection, a theme is beginning to reveal itself: it appears I’m a sucker for exploration. I like being placed in an “alien” environ and then being tasked with making sense of how that unique world works.

Therefore, today’s selection isn’t much of a stretch from my number five choice. Once again, I’ve fallen in love with a game that dropped me in the midst of an organic environment and charged me with making it from Point A to Point B using equal parts brains and brawn.

Without further adieu, I present to you number four:

Metroid Prime

The Metroid series stands in lock step with The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers as games that are just pitch-perfect in execution. All three launched in the ’80s and helped solidify Nintendo as the premiere publisher of A-list titles. All three have seen their roots flourish and have lead to numerous sequels, with each subsequent installment serving to flesh out their respective universe and innovate their game styles.

As a child, I remember shoveling driveways with a buddy for a good five hours during some brutal January snowstorm in order to make enough scratch to head down to the local K-Mart and score a copy of Metroid. This was released in the early days of the NES, and it looked so different from the conventional one-screen fare (Balloon Fight!) that dotted the gaming landscape. Once I applied my grip, I didn’t relax until I’d seen Ridley, Kraid and the Mother Brain to hell. There was something about the game’s massive world that truly charged the adventurous spirit in me. I’m always happier looking for clues, solving puzzles and navigating mazes over blasting away space bats any day of the week. Both this and the Zelda series understand the proper ingredients to mix in order to get to that sweet spot.

In 2002, Metroid was updated to the third dimension with the release of Metroid Prime for the Nintendo Gamecube. While on the surface, the 2D platforming Metroid appeared to have been retrofitted into a first person shooter shell, the game actually revealed itself to be more of a first person adventure. Think Myst with better controls and the ability to blast away at critters every once in awhile.

Like my number five choice, Metroid Prime drops your avatar, Samus Aran, on a desolate planet and charges you with unraveling a mystery involving the disappearance of this planet’s indigenous race. The classic Metroid formula is skillfully brought to the third dimension, where the player negotiates through one large sprawling, interconnected world, seeking clues, solving puzzles, parsing out pieces of the story, battling boss creatures and gaining new weapons and abilities that grant access to previously unreachable areas. While the latter appears to be a stale convention (get a hammer, go back and pound those posts, rinse and repeat) it never seems to get old to me, as just when I’m at a loss as to where to go next, I receive the tools that open up some fresh new avenues to explore.

I’ve always looked at the Metroid and Zelda series as kissing cousins. Both feature large temples or dungeons brimming with brain busters. Both throw epic boss battles at you that require mental and digital agility. And both dole out weapons and power-ups at crucial intervals that expertly goose your drive to keep going, if only to see one more area.

I call these games my Thanksgiving games, as I’ve found there’s nothing more enjoyable than curling up on a late fall evening and applying 10,000 cc’s of adrenaline to counteract all that triptofan coursing through your system. Plus, Nintendo is infamous for dropping one of these titles around Thanksgiving, so it feels like each holiday always finds me immersed in some grand adventure.

Check back tomorrow for number three.