In the two decades since the original release of Metroid Prime I’ve had no problem giving it my highest recommendation, along with one nagging reservation: The controls take some getting used to. Thanks to the outstanding updates in Metroid Prime Remastered, I can finally drop that caveat: Metroid Prime Remastered is one of the best first-person shooters ever made, full stop. This updated version goes above and beyond the typical coat-of-paint remaster by adding modern controls along with fabulously improved models and textures – it’s a perfect example of how to both honor a lauded classic and bring it up to code. Replaying it feels almost entirely new, evoking that same fresh feeling as the Dead Space remake or Resident Evil 2 and 3 despite not actually being such a drastic remake itself – and it’s a far cry from the disappointing treatment that the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection on Switch received.
What makes Metroid Prime obviously different from other legendary FPS campaigns like Halo, Half-Life, Titanfall 2, and Wolfenstein is its solitary nature. There’s not a single conversation to be had, no radio or AI assistant voices chattering in your ear, and, just for the record, no multiplayer. This is a game about a lone hunter – Samus Aran – on a hostile world, and Prime revels in that setup. Like other great Metroid games (e.g. Super Metroid, Metroid: Zero Mission, and the most recent Metroid Dread), Metroid Prime’s spareness in its storytelling makes for a uniquely moody magnificence. It’s more horror than space opera, no doubt owing to Metroid’s key influence, Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece movie, Alien.
The planet, Tallon IV, has as much or more development than any character, told in its geology, technology, flora, fauna, and “other” – and yes, in much of the encyclopedic lore you acquire via a HUD scanning function. In this way the story is told through experience with your environment alone, and despite the narrative methods not getting any sort of update, it still feels revolutionary and modern compared to all the very talky games we play today. (It must be noted that attempts at adding a bunch of characters hasn’t been great for the Metroid series, specifically, with Metroid: Other M and Metroid Prime: Hunters being especially goofy in their world-building.)
Prime's biggest accomplishment is Tallon IV itself.
There are so many things to laud in Metroid Prime, but its biggest accomplishment is Tallon IV itself. Each room has a purpose and a name, with details that make no two places quite alike. A flowing fountain babbles down the side of a sunny sanctuary hall; a furnace chamber pumps heat through conveniently morph-ball sized vents to other areas; a lab deep underground holds experiments in tubes that act as jump-scare time bombs. It’s all logically laid out to reflect the story and setting, but the world mirrors your progress in a brilliant way: Rooms that once took toil and grit to get through can soon be zipped through with the help of a newly obtained skill or weapon.
Arm Canon
Originally the controls for Metroid Prime on GameCube were so clumsy and awkward that its fans had to argue it was not an FPS at all, but something else, such as a first-person puzzle game. You had to lock onto a target and shoot, instead of allowing full, dual-joystick movement, and trying to go from any other shooter to this was like having to learn to walk again. Since then we’ve seen options to use the Wii-like motion controls established in the Metroid Prime Trilogy collection, or a variant of the original controls on the GameCube controller, but none made it something that was easy for most people to pick up and play. The new dual analog stick controls are indistinguishable from modern shooters, though, and actually make some battles a bit easier. You can strafe, jump, dodge, and control your view with so much more dexterity.
The way you experience the ruins, caves, and laboratories of Tallon IV is through a visor, set in a helmet in your suit, which is a perfect setup for immersion in first-person. The visor’s HUD gives you all of your basic info, like many games have come to do since, but it also acts like a real, hi-tech glass dome: it steams up when blasted with flame, muffles Samus’s cries, and in flashes of bright light it’ll even reflect her own surprised eyes for an instant. These are all brilliant little tricks that cause the barrier between you and the world on your TV or Switch screen to melt away, allowing you to meld dreamily into it – which is why it is all the more jarring (in a good way!) when you pop out into the third-person Morph Ball view.
Brilliant little tricks cause the barrier between you and the world on your TV or Switch screen to melt away.
You can enter your Morph Ball mode at any time, and when you do, the camera flies outward so you can watch as Samus collapses into a knee-high ball and performs a number of rolling, Tony Hawk-like maneuvers to solve puzzles, get through cramped areas, or just zoom really fast while backtracking. Many rooms have a feature that requires you to switch forms, ranging from a simple hidden passageway to a maze-like physics-based contraption you must navigate with precision rolling; it challenges your dexterity in an entirely different way than the first-person shooting or platforming. You’ll get occasional looks at Samus in the third person when she’s not in ball form, such as in the rare (high frame rate, completely and gorgeously remodeled) cutscenes, but sometimes you also get a glimpse of her as the camera rushes back into her helmet, a rare flash that reveals the complexity of building a game around what’s basically a first-person shooter / pinball machine mash-up.
Aside from the third-person Morph Ball, Metroid Prime Remastered has you doing a lot of things a side-scrolling Metroid would: jumping across precarious platforms, swinging from a grappling hook, and ascending huge, vertical spaces, littered with hostile critters. This was all quite novel in 2002 but feels standard today: Clever implementation of a double-jump gives you an extra period of mid-air adjustment to solve so many precision-jumping and grappling issues, and Prime is forgiving with what’s under your feet so there isn’t a lot of replaying areas due to frustrating falls. You can definitely miss a platform, but it’s nothing that wouldn’t happen in Super Mario Bros. as well. What’s interesting is how much better I am at platforming in first-person after 20 years of Halo games, because modern shooters just all do this now and it's in my FPS muscle memory. The Metroid Prime Remaster still sticks the landings – and the jumps.
The Metroid Prime Remaster still sticks the landings – and the jumps.
And while I mostly played on a Pro Controller, the fact that Metroid Prime is portable is still mind-blowing, if less novel six years into the Switch’s life. Of course, all shooters that use triggers are less comfortable on the Switch’s Joy-Con-attached setup, and Prime does have one odd quirk in its default controls that make you hit both the trigger to charge a shot and the shoulder button to fire it. That’s not ideal on either controller setup, but it’s especially cumbersome on the Joy-Cons because those buttons are so small and close together. Wii-style pointer controls using a detached pair of Joy-Cons are included as well, emulating the controls used in the Metroid Prime Trilogy on Wii. They work just as they should, which is a nice addition, but the new dual analog controls are the way to play Prime Remastered.
In Its Prime
Aside from the controls, the big addition to Metroid Prime Remastered is a complete overhaul of the graphics, which never lose sight of the art style that made the original so pretty. Water ripples, steam occludes, insects light the way and cast shadows like lanterns, metal reflects and shines (except for the mirrors; you can no longer see yourself in those for some reason); it all looks exquisite, as beautiful as any modern Switch game.
Of all the beautiful moments exploring Tallon IV, nothing is ever recycled. There are hundreds of rooms, hallways, pools, and arenas, and none of them are alike – as evidenced by the intricate 3D map. Pan out from the map and you can see the insane geometry of Tallon IV. One of my favorite things to do in Prime is to pause, and, while the background music throbs, spin the map and look for tiny outlets that shouldn’t be there, a depression that could hint at a new path, or a door of a color I can’t access yet – those virtually always yield a secret when I investigate. I spend a good amount of playtime planning my routes on that map, too; there’s no fast travel in Metroid Prime, so if you want to be efficient, you need to think carefully about how you’re going to get from point A to point B. This makes collectible runs a blast, because knowing that once you get a new pickup that allows you to blast, roll, or grapple in a different way, you can plan a loop to revisit promising-looking areas with new gear to collect power ups. Of course there are elevators and other shortcuts to unlock, but the real power you amass in Metroid Prime is the ability to move freely over its pitfalls.
It’s the most tactile game I’ve ever played outside of VR.
One thing that surprised me was that, 20 years on, first-person shooters are still largely built around flat planes, straight corridors, and ballooning arenas. But Metroid Prime does something different: The world is molded and organic, with twisted tree roots, curvy mushrooms, and jagged ruins that interrupt deep pools; and that’s fun because a secret could be hidden anywhere. Whether you are scanning the room with your visor for clues, trying different ammo types on odd-looking textures, or attempting to roll up an apparent slope perfectly crafted for Morph Ball tricks, you have to actually feel your way around Prime. It’s the most tactile game I’ve ever played outside of VR.
Metroid Prime Remastered sounds amazing as well. Some of old-school Metroid’s most memorable tunes are redone in the fun cyberpunk electronica of Prime, and the soundtrack’s original songs have stood the test of time themselves. What’s really cool about the remaster is the mix of sound effects you get on modern televisions or over headphones: a crucial aspect of secret hunting is sound, a sort of proximity-based hum you would do well to learn to recognize if you want to 100% Prime. It’s a blast slaughtering a room of screeching enemies just so you can silence them and listen closer to try and sort out where the heck that Missile Tank is hiding. And by the way, to get everything in Metroid Prime Remastered it took me about 13 hours. But I know what I’m doing (I contributed to the strategy guide, and recommend using it for a 100% run!), and the Hard Mode you can unlock by beating it on Normal is worth a second go for a serious challenge.
Remastered Blaster
No matter how many new powers and weapons you unlock, you are never invincible in Metroid Prime – and it’s quite difficult on normal settings, as games go today. If you’re new to it, you might spot certain modern design similarities in the hunt to find your next save spot. Do you risk delving further into the depths of a region, or do you turn back and save the progress you’ve made? After an hour of plundering, your life bar low, and no new save spot in sight, things can get quite tense. This also makes the power ups – mainly life and ammo capacity expansions (but also some optional weapon upgrades I highly recommend) – incredibly meaningful because they increase your ability to explore farther and farther from safety. Unlike so many modern games’ collectible sets, spending time hunting things down really matters in Prime. By the back portion of the campaign you will need to use your full arsenal (and tons of ammo) to reach the end, but what cooler way to grind than to go hunt for secrets with your new gear? It’s an extremely rewarding loop.
But you won’t just need to bulk up for further exploration. Boss fights in Metroid Prime come with multiple forms and large (often invisible) life bars, making them tougher than they appear at first glance. It’s one thing to figure out a boss’s patterns – which attacks you can jump, dodge, or cancel with a counter attack – but another to figure out if you are even doing damage. One boss throws enemies at you while it actually disappears to go recharge its life. You can get stuck in an endless battle if you don’t figure out the secret to interrupting this routine. This is a good example of how combat is made varied and interesting in Metroid Prime: often you will need to figure out which combination of visor (they can see at different wavelengths, exposing weaknesses), beam (you have fire, ice, and some others), and concussive ammo, works on each enemy. Do you freeze and shatter a titular metroid or fry it alive? And then… they adapt to your weapons and you can’t do either. Aside from a few main bosses that trap you, you usually flee tough fights, and sometimes sprinting through infested rooms is the only option.
There are other changes, big and little, that we’ve documented on this Switch Version Differences page, but some of the best besides the controls and graphics are the fast load times (no more waiting for doors to open), and the ability to toggle on the (English) narration that was present in the Japanese and European versions of the original. It’s only a few extra callouts, not enough to ruin the essential feeling of exploring in total solitude, but it’s a nice touch. One other significant change is that the credits for the original Metroid Prime are missing from the Remastered ending, so if you want to see who was responsible for much of the magic, here are the full Metroid Prime credits.
Comments
Post a Comment