Several people in the review thread commented that there are reviews dominated by people who played the game on GameCube and already thought of it as a masterpiece. So despite the fact that I've not finished the game, I thought I'd give some thoughts.
- The game is gorgeous and it's a testament to both the original game and to the Remaster. I've seen some comparison shots, and in casual glances, not known which was which. Not because the advances aren't obvious - they are - but because the original's art direction was superb. We talk about how Nintendo's stylized approach seems designed to age well, but this a completely different style that does the same.
- Early on the game feels like a pretty decent conversion of Super Metroid into 3D. The upgrades, the environs, the music. To translate Metroid to first person is a huge accomplishment, but it took a bit for the game to start to develop an identity for me separate from Super.
- I thought I'd find scanning annoying, but the story details are interesting, and the amount of stuff to scan is surprisingly judicious. It does feel like a dated storytelling device - a modern game would use voice acted cut scenes, or computer terminals with novels of text, or nothing at all. This is very well done, but it is one of the things that flags it as not-of-this-era.
- God I hate the HUD. I don't play a lot of FPS, and one of the reasons is the lack of peripheral vision makes it hard for me to orient. Having this thing wibble around lagging on my screen seems like it should be immersive, but really just drives me batty. I turned off the helmet, turned HUD lag on and off, and tweaked the opacity before I gave up and just turned the HUD off entirely.
- The result is weirdly Myst-like? This silent alien landscape with lots of puzzles built around turning on some power system. I like that! But it is another thing that makes the game feel not-of-now - the sort of adventure game puzzle logic. Shoot this animal this way to make them break this thing, to get access to this area. It's a thing that is in a lot of the 2D Metroid as well, and Dread even preserved a bit of, so it's very much of the franchise' DNA. But again, it feels late 90s, early 2000s.
- Some of the puzzles aren't puzzles? They're busy work. There is nothing to solve, just activating a lot of the same morph ball power over and over again, and the game tells you what to do if you scan. So far all of the examples of this feel cool because it feels like you're turning on a great big system - the holographic projection system of all the planets, for example - but they leave the "solving a puzzle" part of my brain turned off, and aren't super satisfying.
- The save system is... also very dated. I'm writing this because I just lost my entire night of playing to a Game Over. The Switch gave me gaming again, by letting me play in bite sized chunks wherever I was. I started playing my last couple hours before bed, and it is gutting to have to start the whole day over. I can't imagine playing this game when I couldn't just suspend the console anytime I needed to walk away. How many kids lost hours of investment because their parents wanted to watch the news?
- Is this the easiest Metroid game ever made, or is turning the HUD off making me more aggressive? I never know how much health or how many missiles I've got, so I'm never hoarding. I'm just going for broke all the time.
- I really liked how Dread handled Super Missiles. Having to change my regular weapon to use Super Missiles is awful, possibly worse than Super Metroid? Maybe not that bad.
- The elevator animation is the same every time, and it feels like the Switch doesn't need it to cover the loading? Would love to not having to watch Samus jump around looking for enemies that will never show up for the millionth time.
- Similarly, every cut scene and save point jars. They all have a jump cut with Samus in a different place than I left her. Walk into a save area, and suddenly Samus is spun around. This feels very dated. There isn't an indication (like letterboxing) to indicate you've lost control of Samus, and despite being in-engine you're not tweening the old avatar position to the new one. Coming out of the cut scene almost always feels good because of a little visor sizzle or info blurb, but going into them, god, please just give me 5-10 frames of fade-in, that's all I ask
- The number of options are great! The accessibility stuff should be praised to the roof! (And should be the minimum standard, frankly). But I never would have figured out how to turn on gyro aiming on my own.
- Also, not being able to set a gamma value is making some of the areas too dark to handle. I understand that the original had light cast by the weapons, which would ameliorate the issue, but I've got poor low light vision (aging!), and the brightness on my OLED is maxed out. Not having tweakable in game gamma sucks.
Metroid Prime's reputation is partly built on being the most gorgeous game on what was a then very powerful console. Simply because of what the Switch is, it cannot be that anymore. Fortunately, It wasn't just technically impressive, it was beautifully designed, and I don't think I've ever seen this much upgrade in technical quality that doesn't seem to change the underlying art style
at all. Even
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition seemed to change the art style in a single gen.
Some of the game play is of its time, but not in a negative way. These things are no longer in style, but they are as fun as they were then, and pretty refreshing here. I loved
Half-Life and to be playing this kind of shooter again - an action game that is secretly a puzzle game, jump scares, environmental storytelling, and absolutely getting your ass handed to you if you don't play smart, with long gaps between some of the action - feels really really good.
Some of the game play is of its time and it
is in a negative way. The save system especially is frustrating, and the long gaps between saves doesn't make the game feel challenging, it makes it feel tedious, forcing you to resolve puzzles you've already solved, and re-scan items to get them in your logbook, in a slog to get back to the bit that killed you. Only to die again and repeat. This is the game's biggest flaw to my mind.
There are a few instances like that, where you just have to recall where you saw something you couldn't previously use (or start searching the map all over again).
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