Originally, my plan for this review was gonna be making some lame joke and giving the game 5 stars, 'cause at this point I got few to add to the conversation and I didn't want to sound too reiterative... but fuck it. This has become one of my favourites games of all time, so let's give it the respect it deserves.
The Metroid Prime series has always evaded me, it wasn't a matter that I wasn't interested in the games, in fact I'm a huge 2D Metroid fan and had always heard great things about the Prime trilogy, but I never got the chance to get any of the games for the Wii and I never had a Wii U, so my only interaction with the series was playing Prime Hunters on my cousin's DS when I was a kid... and now, Metroid Prime Remastered arrives for the switch, and sufices to say that I bought it as soon as I could, and now here we are.
I wanna start talking about the visuals, since the visual upgrade is whats meant to sell the game to a lot of people, as already practically everyone has said, they are outstandind, especially for the hardware. This is the best Remaster I've played in my entire life in visuals alone, its a huge upgrade, and makes every enviroment, area and enemy feel alive, anf it amounts to a game that seems like it has an entire living world inside of it, and keep in mind, the gamecube original already looked good for the time, but this? This is just incredible. Plus, the new options and the dual stick control scheme make this a really easy game to pick up, with so many ways to play it that everyone can control it at its own like (tho for me the dual stick controls are the best by far).
But those are the changes implemented today, in the year 2023, so the question is, do the mechanichs and design from a game released in 2002 hold u- yes, of course they do.
There are a lot of games that show their age in design alone, Metroid Prime is not one of them. Talon IV is, alongside with places like Hallownest and the Lands-Between , one of the most vibrant and alive world I've seen in any form of media; all of the areas, from the beautiful yet haunting Phendrana, to the agonizing and opressive Phazon Mines, are unique from one another, yet all of them are incredibly well designed and have masterful visual story-telling, anf everything realated to the space pirates blends incredibly well story wise and gives some amazing set pieces. Every enemy and even plants have descriptions, which just adds to the feeling of this being a foreing planet with its own fauna, affected by the influence of the Space Pirates or by the Chozo that inhabitated the planet long ago. Its just amazing and honestly plain surprising that they managed to pull all of this, considering this was the first game of the team at the time and to this day much experienced teams still struggle to pull out this kind of thing.
Gameplay wise, the way Samus moves just feels right, the movement is way slower than its 2D counterpart, but it feel perfect for the 3D enviroment and all of the abilities, visors and beams add both to the way you approach the combat as well as exploration, in fact some upgrades make you travererse more easily the world without the use of violence wich works very well for the themes of the game.
Samus becomes more armed and destructive as the games progresses, but this destruction is only really used against the Pirates and the Great poison that has taken the whole planet like a virus. There's a clear message about imperialism and the perversion that intelling minds can have over the nature, and the contrast between the Chozo and its architechture that seemingly blends with the areas and the metallic and devouring Pirates and the horror of the Phazon its just... perfect, it tells a story both visually and with gameplay, something that all games should strive for.
The game isn't perfect, some boss fights can be a little slow paced the first time around (tho some of them are amazing, especially the final boss, and all of them work very well with the story and messages of the game, and the build up for the major fight is incredible); its true that some of the Chozo artifacts can be a pain to find, even tho some of the were a blast to look out for, to me at least; and honestly, backtracking sometimes could be a little to time-consuming and tedious, and I really belive this game would have benefited greatly with some form of fast-travel.
Not even these otherwise minor nitpicks stain what otherwise has become for me one of the crown achievements of the whole industry, it's not my favourite game, but dam does it come close, its just outstanding. I understand that for some the Metroidvania genre can be a little heavy at times, but trust me, this deserves all of time you can put into it, it's truly a work of art.
The Metroid Prime series has always evaded me, it wasn't a matter that I wasn't interested in the games, in fact I'm a huge 2D Metroid fan and had always heard great things about the Prime trilogy, but I never got the chance to get any of the games for the Wii and I never had a Wii U, so my only interaction with the series was playing Prime Hunters on my cousin's DS when I was a kid... and now, Metroid Prime Remastered arrives for the switch, and sufices to say that I bought it as soon as I could, and now here we are.
I wanna start talking about the visuals, since the visual upgrade is whats meant to sell the game to a lot of people, as already practically everyone has said, they are outstandind, especially for the hardware. This is the best Remaster I've played in my entire life in visuals alone, its a huge upgrade, and makes every enviroment, area and enemy feel alive, anf it amounts to a game that seems like it has an entire living world inside of it, and keep in mind, the gamecube original already looked good for the time, but this? This is just incredible. Plus, the new options and the dual stick control scheme make this a really easy game to pick up, with so many ways to play it that everyone can control it at its own like (tho for me the dual stick controls are the best by far).
But those are the changes implemented today, in the year 2023, so the question is, do the mechanichs and design from a game released in 2002 hold u- yes, of course they do.
There are a lot of games that show their age in design alone, Metroid Prime is not one of them. Talon IV is, alongside with places like Hallownest and the Lands-Between , one of the most vibrant and alive world I've seen in any form of media; all of the areas, from the beautiful yet haunting Phendrana, to the agonizing and opressive Phazon Mines, are unique from one another, yet all of them are incredibly well designed and have masterful visual story-telling, anf everything realated to the space pirates blends incredibly well story wise and gives some amazing set pieces. Every enemy and even plants have descriptions, which just adds to the feeling of this being a foreing planet with its own fauna, affected by the influence of the Space Pirates or by the Chozo that inhabitated the planet long ago. Its just amazing and honestly plain surprising that they managed to pull all of this, considering this was the first game of the team at the time and to this day much experienced teams still struggle to pull out this kind of thing.
Gameplay wise, the way Samus moves just feels right, the movement is way slower than its 2D counterpart, but it feel perfect for the 3D enviroment and all of the abilities, visors and beams add both to the way you approach the combat as well as exploration, in fact some upgrades make you travererse more easily the world without the use of violence wich works very well for the themes of the game.
Samus becomes more armed and destructive as the games progresses, but this destruction is only really used against the Pirates and the Great poison that has taken the whole planet like a virus. There's a clear message about imperialism and the perversion that intelling minds can have over the nature, and the contrast between the Chozo and its architechture that seemingly blends with the areas and the metallic and devouring Pirates and the horror of the Phazon its just... perfect, it tells a story both visually and with gameplay, something that all games should strive for.
The game isn't perfect, some boss fights can be a little slow paced the first time around (tho some of them are amazing, especially the final boss, and all of them work very well with the story and messages of the game, and the build up for the major fight is incredible); its true that some of the Chozo artifacts can be a pain to find, even tho some of the were a blast to look out for, to me at least; and honestly, backtracking sometimes could be a little to time-consuming and tedious, and I really belive this game would have benefited greatly with some form of fast-travel.
Not even these otherwise minor nitpicks stain what otherwise has become for me one of the crown achievements of the whole industry, it's not my favourite game, but dam does it come close, its just outstanding. I understand that for some the Metroidvania genre can be a little heavy at times, but trust me, this deserves all of time you can put into it, it's truly a work of art.
2 Comments
i like reading reviews like this where the person writing it is clearly very passionate and holds a lot of love towards the game. good job !! [:
DeemonAndGames
1 year ago