I originally played Metroid Prime for the GameCube when I was much younger. I never finished it, and remember only making it as far as Phendrana Drifts before I became too frustrated at not knowing where to go, where I then proceeded to put the game down and never pick it back up. Today I have finished Metroid Prime Remastered to make up for my impatience in my youth, and I come away from it thinking, "Yeah, I'd say dropping it over that was pretty justified."
I'd wager most of the appeal for Metroid Prime comes from the feeling you get of being a space adventurer on an unknown planet. After all, Samus Aran is a fantastic character to play as in Metroid and most games don't feel quite as alien in it's aesthetic in quite the same way as Metroid. In Metroid Prime, you're never pointed to go in any direction, only ever trusting your map, data logs, and memory for points of interest along your journey. The game definitely had that affect on me for most of the game, though putting the game down for any long amount of time would result in me needing to spend several minutes going back over the map screen and remembering those points of interests. Like the 2D games, you're given a good amount of freedom to look around an area even with your limited abilities at the beginning of the game, always keeping note to come back through later when you might have a new ability that opens up more of the area.
That's more or less the gameplay loop for Metroid Prime; comb through zones to find new abilities until you finally have all of your arsenal to beat the game (wow it's like a Metroid game or something). The only real issue I take with the gameplay loop in this game is, most of the time, you can never judge if a new location you can access is progress towards a new ability or a dead end. The game has a strange way of giving you an incredibly valuable ability in one room, showing you a door that ability can now open, only for you to hit a dead end immediately upon exploring it. Now is there anything so wrong about finding more rooms that require more abilities to unlock? No, especially in a series that relishes in making the player backtrack as frequently as Metroid does. I guess I just found myself becoming annoyed whenever I found myself creating more mental checkmarks of zones in the future rather than being able to knock out a good chunk of an area when getting a new ability.
Combat is... fine... until it's not. Enemies early on are very simple; you shoot small enemies with your laser beam and big enemies get the missiles. It does the job and can be pretty fun at times, even if most harder enemies before the middle of the game start having weak points only on their back. Later on, you also start to unlock different beam weapons, each one serving a separate use and unique interactions with puzzles and enemies. But where the combat goes from being fine to not fine is once they start introducing enemies that can only be damaged by specific weapon types.
This starts out harmless enough with enemies that are more like stage hazards requiring a specific laser beam weapon to destroy them. But this problem caps once you hit an area where suddenly most enemies in the zone are now color coded, requiring the weapon type that their color matches with to deal any damage. What's worse is these enemies aren't even unique from one another, they all still have the same basic "run around, shoot you at a distance, melee if you get close" move set, no matter which color they are. I can see what they might've been going for, having enemies act as a sort of light puzzle to solve in each room, but this made me end up opting out of combat entirely when needing to backtrack through those rooms later on.
I'll be keeping this review spoiler free as usual (unless revealing gameplay elements like this is a spoiler, in which case, my bad), but just know that I hated this inclusion in the game and it never gets any better from that point onwards; if anything it gets worse.
Overall I'd say that, for most things I enjoyed in this game, it always came with their own frustrations. I love the moment in a Metroid game where you finally have your full arsenal of weapons and moves, but I can't say I enjoyed the frustration of constantly hitting dead ends before getting to that point in this one. Combat in 3D compared to the 2D games still feels like what you'd expect, but falls on it's face later on in a poor attempt at trying to mix things up for the end game. I'd say the positives mostly outweigh the negatives and at least the problem of not knowing where dead ends are is a feeling I wouldn't have again on another replay. I consider myself a fairly big Metroid fan and I'd slept on this game for quite some time, always hearing that it was a beloved classic and a great example of transitioning a style of play from 2D to 3D. I'd say I'd agree with that sentiment, though a part of me does think the game lives in such a positive space because it's well beloved for it's sci-fi aesthetic and impressive graphical fidelity for the time. Everyone likes to remember their favorite childhood game being just as good as they remembered. But Metroid Prime is definitely a game where you have to eventually take off your red rose tinted glasses at times; that enemy you're looking at is purple, after all.
I'd wager most of the appeal for Metroid Prime comes from the feeling you get of being a space adventurer on an unknown planet. After all, Samus Aran is a fantastic character to play as in Metroid and most games don't feel quite as alien in it's aesthetic in quite the same way as Metroid. In Metroid Prime, you're never pointed to go in any direction, only ever trusting your map, data logs, and memory for points of interest along your journey. The game definitely had that affect on me for most of the game, though putting the game down for any long amount of time would result in me needing to spend several minutes going back over the map screen and remembering those points of interests. Like the 2D games, you're given a good amount of freedom to look around an area even with your limited abilities at the beginning of the game, always keeping note to come back through later when you might have a new ability that opens up more of the area.
That's more or less the gameplay loop for Metroid Prime; comb through zones to find new abilities until you finally have all of your arsenal to beat the game (wow it's like a Metroid game or something). The only real issue I take with the gameplay loop in this game is, most of the time, you can never judge if a new location you can access is progress towards a new ability or a dead end. The game has a strange way of giving you an incredibly valuable ability in one room, showing you a door that ability can now open, only for you to hit a dead end immediately upon exploring it. Now is there anything so wrong about finding more rooms that require more abilities to unlock? No, especially in a series that relishes in making the player backtrack as frequently as Metroid does. I guess I just found myself becoming annoyed whenever I found myself creating more mental checkmarks of zones in the future rather than being able to knock out a good chunk of an area when getting a new ability.
Combat is... fine... until it's not. Enemies early on are very simple; you shoot small enemies with your laser beam and big enemies get the missiles. It does the job and can be pretty fun at times, even if most harder enemies before the middle of the game start having weak points only on their back. Later on, you also start to unlock different beam weapons, each one serving a separate use and unique interactions with puzzles and enemies. But where the combat goes from being fine to not fine is once they start introducing enemies that can only be damaged by specific weapon types.
This starts out harmless enough with enemies that are more like stage hazards requiring a specific laser beam weapon to destroy them. But this problem caps once you hit an area where suddenly most enemies in the zone are now color coded, requiring the weapon type that their color matches with to deal any damage. What's worse is these enemies aren't even unique from one another, they all still have the same basic "run around, shoot you at a distance, melee if you get close" move set, no matter which color they are. I can see what they might've been going for, having enemies act as a sort of light puzzle to solve in each room, but this made me end up opting out of combat entirely when needing to backtrack through those rooms later on.
I'll be keeping this review spoiler free as usual (unless revealing gameplay elements like this is a spoiler, in which case, my bad), but just know that I hated this inclusion in the game and it never gets any better from that point onwards; if anything it gets worse.
Overall I'd say that, for most things I enjoyed in this game, it always came with their own frustrations. I love the moment in a Metroid game where you finally have your full arsenal of weapons and moves, but I can't say I enjoyed the frustration of constantly hitting dead ends before getting to that point in this one. Combat in 3D compared to the 2D games still feels like what you'd expect, but falls on it's face later on in a poor attempt at trying to mix things up for the end game. I'd say the positives mostly outweigh the negatives and at least the problem of not knowing where dead ends are is a feeling I wouldn't have again on another replay. I consider myself a fairly big Metroid fan and I'd slept on this game for quite some time, always hearing that it was a beloved classic and a great example of transitioning a style of play from 2D to 3D. I'd say I'd agree with that sentiment, though a part of me does think the game lives in such a positive space because it's well beloved for it's sci-fi aesthetic and impressive graphical fidelity for the time. Everyone likes to remember their favorite childhood game being just as good as they remembered. But Metroid Prime is definitely a game where you have to eventually take off your red rose tinted glasses at times; that enemy you're looking at is purple, after all.