Heron
Koopa
I'm at the end, collecting the last items before heading off to the final bosses. What a game, after all these years. What a game.
Some thoughts:
What a wonderful shadow drop surprise this was.
Some thoughts:
- I thought I remembered the game back to front, but was happy to realize that I had totally forgotten where the grapple beam and plasma beam were found. Was nice to get at least a bit of that authentically lost Metroid feeling. Otherwise, I remembered basically every room like it was yesterday. Whereas there's games I played last year that I can't even remember playing. Speaks volumes about the level design here.
- I make the same mistake EVERY time I play this game, and go to the sunken frigate after getting the ice beam. I even did it this time KNOWING the gravity suit is in Phendrana!
- Absolutely memory-hole moment for me - I've been saying Phedandra for 20 years. Was it really always Phendrana?
- Remaster work was astonishing, perfect expample of "how I remember it being in my mind". Then you go back and look at the original and realize how much work really went into it. The big disappointment is the beams not lighting environments, but everything else is perfectly judged.
- However, it's clearly running sub-1080p and the muddy texture filtering was a disappointment. This game deserved better hardware than the Switch.
- Normal mode is nowhere near hard enough, and that significantly affected my enjoyment. Re-releases should always have hard mode unlocked from the start, for returning players.
- Combat is just about passable but definitely the weak part of the game design and Metroid Prime 4 will have to come up with something far, far better. MP3 was already making steps forward in this regard.
- Dual stick aiming was nice, but made the game even easier, and I never felt like beam switching felt natural. Never fully got used to the controls, which was strange.
- If you didn't turn on the "look down when jumping" option did you really even play the real Metroid Prime?
- My biggest problem with the game is the same as ever - the bosses are pretty terrible, start to finish. They suffer from all my biggest pet peeves in boss design, the biggest one being forced to wait for an invulnerability period to end. Another being bosses who take too little and deal too little damage, leading to excitement petering out halfway through a battle as it becomes a slow war of attrition. Again, both MP2 and MP3 started to improve hugely here but there's a long way to go.
What a wonderful shadow drop surprise this was.