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Reviews Digital Foundry || Metroid Prime Remastered - DF Tech Review - An Essential Buy For Nintendo Switch

JazzPotatoes said:
I'm going to come out and say it: Gyro aiming is still a step back from the IR aiming we had on Wii.

Gyro requires calibration or it becomes prone to drifting. It also, as implemented in most shooters on Switch, has no neutral position. What that means is if you want to move the crosshair right, you move your wrist right and then have to leave it there: moving your wrist left back to neutral means moving the crosshair left. away from the target you just aimed towards.

With IR aiming on the Wii, at least, most developers used floating crosshairs that allowed you to move the cursor left or right to move the screen, then move your wrist back to neutral to keep your gun aiming forwards towards your target.

Metroid Prime Remastered does emulate this at least with the free aiming similar to Trilogy and MP3, but the gyro being prone to drifting is still going to be an issue unless you frequently recalibrate.

Hopefuilly we someday get a joycon that has the IR sensor pointing the other way and that can use something like the Dock to get a constant point of reference.
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Something I always feel the need to correct here is that frequent recalibration isn't needed, frequent recentering is. Recalibration involves keeping the controller still for few seconds, and is needed when the controller is noticably drifting at a steady rate; when you put the controller down, you'll see the camera or pointer steadily move for a second or two, then suddenly stop. Recentering is what happens when your press ZR in this game with pointer controls or Y in Splatoon and Skyward Sword HD. I need to recenter frequently in both titles, sometimes multiple times a minute when playing Skyward Sword HD. But I can go hours without needing to recalibrate.

I don't disagree with your overall point, I just think it's important to keep the terminology straight. As for your last point, I wonder if image processing has gotten advanced enough for Nintendo to bake camera reference points into the HUD of games. It's not IR and likely couldn't be used as a realtime pointer source, but could theoretically be used in conjunction with a gyro as an anchor point, similar to Wii Sports Resort and the original Skyward Sword's implementations. My own work with machine vision would lead me to believe this could work, though I'm not sure how you'd implement that in a Bluetooth controller.

goldenpp72 said:
As someone who refuses to play Splatoon without gyro aiming, and desires gyro aiming in every shooter possible, I was super disappointed in the implementation in Prime, unless there is a way to remove having to hold the pointer to the side of the screen and make it more like mouse movement anyways, if there is, well I might have a replay on the way then.
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Only with dual stick controls, which leaves you with the X swap for beam selection compromise. But you can turn gyro on with dual stick.
 
goldenpp72 said:
Sure they could have
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Everything that follows this isn't needed.

Why? Because in the video they indeed go through the control options, not in as much detail as with the graphics (obviously) but they do, and that's my point: If you're going to speak about something, do it well. It's very unprofessional to suddendly stop the tone make a dismissive chuckle about a control option thet for a lot of people is pretty valid. If gyro in Metroid Prime is bad, i want to be told about it, not just being given a blanket statement about it.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
Would they? Or would they just chalk it up to the DF crew having a fairly dry, nerdy sense of humour about niche gaming subjects?
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They probably would, interest in HDR implementations has grown and it is starting to be considered as essential in high-end gaming, a dismissive chuckle would be considered out of place. Maybe if it were chromatic aberration or vignetting, I'd understand.
 
Hylianhero777 said:
Frankly Prime 4 could look/run worse than Prime Remastered (potentially). If they end up using a lot more modern/expensive rendering techniques or go for much larger areas or something, they may have to make more visual compromises in other areas.
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Yeah it will be interesting to see what Prime 4 looks like. If retro is as great as people say they are then it shouldn’t have the issues you suggested. At minimum the game should be so good that if there are technical issues they are overlooked because people are having so much fun playing the game.
 
Prime 4 will probably be larger in scope, as Prime 3 already scaled up over 1 and 2 with just the small jump in power Wii gave over Gamecube, but there are ways Retro could compensate for this.
For instance, Prime Remastered is a locked 900p; Prime 4 could employ a dynamic resolution to give them more breathing room.

If anyone can make it look great on Switch's modest specs, it's Retro. They've proven themselves time and again to be wizards on both a technical and artistic level.
Remember when there was no point giving Prime a visual overhaul on Switch because the hardware was so weak it would just look like shit? I'm sure they will power bomb doubts about Prime 4 the same way.
 
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Tron1 said:
Yeah it will be interesting to see what Prime 4 looks like. If retro is as great as people say they are then it shouldn’t have the issues you suggested. At minimum the game should be so good that if there are technical issues they are overlooked because people are having so much fun playing the game.
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You're looking at this the wrong way.

Think of it this way, Metroid Prime Remastered, no matter how good it looks, is still is a Gamecube game at the end of the day. It's A.I. is extremely simple, it has loading doors, loading elevators, and no area in the game is absolutely gigantic.

So a Prime 4 that has seamless loading, bigger areas, more complex A.I., and more complex geometry is more likely going to suffer in visuals in one way or another, whether that's resolution (most likely) or otherwise. The game will also probably have better textures and more modern visual solutions, which again makes the game more demanding.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
You're looking at this the wrong way.

Think of it this way, Metroid Prime Remastered, no matter how good it looks, is still is a Gamecube game at the end of the day. It's A.I. is extremely simple, it has loading doors, loading elevators, and no area in the game is absolutely gigantic.

So a Prime 4 that has seamless loading, bigger areas, more complex A.I., and more complex geometry is more likely going to suffer in visuals in one way or another, whether that's resolution (most likely) or otherwise. The game will also probably have better textures and more modern visual solutions, which again makes the game more demanding.
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Yeah. Those shouldn’t be an issue. They should be overlooked because of how the game plays. I’m sure it will look fine either way. The one thing I take away from the remasters visuals is that it’s very clean. Hopefully at minimum it will keep the clean look.
 
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One thing i'd like to talk again, after reading the comments on motion controls. The gyro sensors in JoyCons and Pro Controller are a step back from the WiiU Gamepad. It had actually a 9-Axis gyro and was more presice. Gyro on Switch is fine, but i´d be happy, if Nintendo introduces a JoyCon Pro with better grip and gyro sensors, or even IR pointer again. Imagine playing with a bulkier free hands controller, better gyro and HD-Rumble 2.0. That`s next level gaming!
 
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