A bunch of Metroid Prime 4 thoughts
I've finally finished playing through this game after bouncing off for quite a few months. But it was worth picking it up again. And what shall I say? This game is such a weird release. It took them roughly 8 years and a developer-reset to create a game that ultimately received mediocre reviews, a lot of hate from fans and maybe never was capable to step out of that franchises dense shadow anyways. In the end, the highs are pretty high while the lows indeed are heartbreakingly low. It still ends up being a ride worth taking for me, but it never ceases to depress, thinking at what it could've been.
+ The biggest achievement and something that just doesn’t get enough spotlight is, that this game runs on a Switch 1 at ~60fps. PS5 people might look at this and at least in some areas still think „this ain’t look so bad“ not realizing that this game runs on a portable system that was already outdated when it launched around 9 years ago and consumes something around 7-8 Watts. They should get an award just for that. Also the Switch 2 version is more than just higher resolution and more FPS. There are some locations that are a true joy to look at and show how much the devs actually really wanted this to work.
+ 18 years after the last Metroid Prime game they still have that exact formula of how this franchise needs to feel. The visor, the music, the controls, the way visuals and effects behave, the style, the designlanguage… anyone working in design and understanding what a brandbook for a static brand looks like immediately has endless respect for what they achieved here. Not sure how many people of the OG team were working on this, but apart from its shortcomings it at least feels unbelievably consistent. This alone is a reason why to still recommend this to Metroid Prime fans.
+ unlike corruption, the characters somehow harm the Metroid feeling less than I thought. Still, I believe a Metroid game without any wannabe-blockbuster-dialogue should be doable.
+ the game gains a lot of momentum the longer you play it. At around 70% I really felt like I’m having a good time with the game.
+ This got mentioned but I feel I still have to point out what an amazing demo for mouse mode this is. The implementation and also the use case of jumping back an forth between mouse and analog stick on the fly just as you switch between bike and FPS is the most amazing feature. Also having mouse controls on one hand plus analog controls in the other hand feels like the most superior setting for mouse-movement.
+ The new additions are at times pretty fun. Like the gameplay layer of PSI powers and their corresponding puzzles and tasks. They might still feel a bit underutilized though but I prefer them over that corruption-layer in MP3.
+ The weapons system is also quite OK. I dan’t remember all of the other MP-games systems, but having special ammo for ice, shock and fire and being able to level these 3 weapons worked quite OK.
+ The hookshot in this game reminds me of Twilight Princess’ double hookshot. Which was TPs greatest item. So thats cool.
+ The locationdesign is seriously great at times. They somehow also profit a bit from the game’s more linear approach and are able to implement some more storytelling through events.
~ For better or worse, the good thing with that game’s linear structure is that its easier to get it just done. This shouldn’t be a good thing, but I was able to 100% complete it with ease. And there were at least some nice little morph ball puzzles and the usual stuff you’d expect from that franchise.
~ There’s a very infamous concept of collecting green crystals in this game and its indeed an absolutely weird one. Like a lot of things in the hub-world its like a huge filler-element that will take you a lot of time to just drive around to search for crstals. That being said, I didn’t mind as much as others did. Tune to a podcast and just cruise around. It can be quite relaxing this way. It just doesn’t have anything to do with playing a Metroid Prime game and its kind of sad they had to come up with this. But I found 100% of those crystals, so if I can do it, everyone can.
- Sylux is the most stupid antagonist ever. MP antagonists have never been amazingly creative nor surprising, but this is just something else. The finale was actually really impressive with this white tower and the actual alien setting. Then Sylux comes out of nowhere just for the sake of a boss fight? I mean I kinda liked that boss fight, it just didn’t have any weight as I couldn’t care less about Sylux. Been playing FFVII Remake next to this and maybe I’m spoiled by how crazy of an antagonist Sephiroth is, but no. Sylux just really sucks. I had preferred just another king-monster-alien-thing like they would usually do. When you try to do something more interesting and end up doing the most boring thing.
- not enough cool new gadgets. the Psi-aspect was interesting, but all in all you’ll once again for the 4th time will have to find a very basic set of MP-gadgets like hookshot, super-missiles and so on. Not even a screw attack nor anything that hasn’t been there before. Some might argue „really? theres a whole bike in there???“ … and those might have a point. still the general FPS-gameplay feels sorta samey.
- There are a lot of other negative things to point out here but I feel like most of it has already been said. The Ocarina of Time-world structure, the lack of trust in player’s capabilities to figure out stuff by themselves, a ton of questionable decisions. Those green crystals. Boy. How could this survive any pitch meeting? Such a ridiculous concept.
Conclusion: It's the definition of a mixed bag. Everyone loving Metroid and being cautious due to bad reviews and user opinions: maybe pic it up if you see this at a discount, don’t expect too much, it could award you with some excellent elements from the series and also very cool new elements. I don’t think the game is such a chore to play, actually its kinda straight forward and will lead you through some nice environments. The painful thing here really comes down to what could’ve been and what this series should be heading towards to. But what is here can definitely be enjoyable.
Whether you like it might be totally up to you. Some MP-veterans like myself might be able to really enjoy the MP-parts of the game as they can feel so right at home at times. But they also might not be able to overcome its shortcomings and hate it.
Some people new to the franchise might really love the game for what it is, as their expectations aren’t as spoiled as those of MP-fans. Some might just feel like playing some weird game out of the PS3-era.
For me, the most painful issue I got with this game is just the potential it did have. Looking at games like Bioshock (which was released 20 years ago) there are ways to make 3D Metroidvanias more dynamic, more modern. With newer tech, Retro had the chance to really bring this genre a step further, showing the industry how its done. The structure could’ve been more open, enemies could have spawned more randomly, the world could’ve been more dynamic. games like Bioshock and Prey really innovated that genre and yet …. yet MP4 decided to move backwards. Away from Metroidvania structures toward a more streamlined experience. And the part where its more open feels like a huge deserted dump to randomly place all the stuff that didn’t make it into the actual game. Upgrades, items, collectibles that you could’ve been discovered through cool puzzles or challenges are just spread throughout this hubworld.
The bottomline was that it was quite a nice playthrough which I sometimes enjoyed way more than Metroid Prime 3, but I know I’ll never go back to it again due to it at the same time reminding me of all the things it could’ve been doing. I just hope this didn’t sell so bad they wouldn’t do another game in this series and at the same time bad enough to motivate them to try out some more brave concepts and decisions next time. This text was also published on my Backloggd under my username Valcoholic.