After finishing the game I honestly had that feeling where I’m slightly disappointed but rather than blaming the game I just pulled the “well I guess I just didn’t get it”.
After a week of having the game stew in my memories I feel confident when I say that I liked Metroid Prime….untill I didn’t. I’m sorry if that comes off as really youtube thumbnail clickbait but that’s just how I honestly feel.
For the first 4 to 5 hours of the game I wouldn’t honestly give this game a 10/10; I mean that genuinely. From the amazing opening to the extremely well done first area; everything felt well put together, and the atmosphere was just so well put together and everything from the long list of log entries and visual storytelling felt properly placed and all with a purpose behind them. If there is one thing I will say without a shadow of a doubt is that the game nails it’s atmosphere and does a good job transitioning the series into 3D, everything else thought just starts to decorate as time goes on.
Around the second boss I honestly started dreading the idea of backtracking in this map because unlike past Metroid games the map here honestly felt very haphazardly slept together. It felt like they made the maps with a linear progression first in mind and then placed an entrance and exit near the beginning and end of the map, all the while each room feels structured in a way where combat is required for everything you re-enter a room since enemies respawn every time and some of them can range from being one hit kills or time wasting bullet sponges, so when I had to backtrack to find an upgrade or an item I missed I had to slowly go back through these combat corridors and it got old very fast.
Speaking of that topic the actual combat is honestly really mid. Combat in a Metroid game is honestly the last thing I would care about since the whole game is usually structured around exploration, but here it feels a little reversed so I guess I have to talk about the combat now.
For starters your movement is heavily stunted compared to previous games. Now there's nothing wrong with that and I honestly don’t think you could bring over every aspect of the game’s movement over so I can’t really criticize it too much, but when the combat system also doesn't take into consideration how you’re gonna move around enemies in these combat sections it’s kinda frustrating. Your blaster shots don’t feel like they have impact with any of the enemies your fighting and the only viable way to take most enemies down with a charge shot seems to have this weird bit of delay to it making it more frustrating to deal with, and I don’t know if it was just a me thing or not but no matter how many upgrades I acquired I never felt like I was getting stronger like how I normally felt with older Metroid games; it just felt like I started the same as I ended only know I have a slightly bigger health bar and can’t be hurt by poisonous mushrooms. (again idk if it’s just a me thing but that’s what it felt like).
I think most of these feelings started to really set in around the Phazon Mines area. The whole area felt like one big long series of combat corridors with some of the most bullet sponge enemies in the game along with very little exploration or puzzles to break up the monotony.
I don’t know if they were strapped for time or something but it genuinely felt like they gave up around that section, and then the game just dropped any pretenses of trying to string the player along naturally and just said “ok so to progress you need to find a new item that’s either close or on the other end of the map, ok bye.”. I honestly wanted to stop playing around that point because like I said before, backtracking in this game is a boring slog and I deeply don’t like it. But I still did it and beat the boss of the area, and then the artifact hunt began; I’m not gonna go into details about it so I’ll just say the whole experience was a mix of frustration and the immense look up a walkthrough on YouTube.
By the last cutscene I honestly felt numb. I don’t hate this game hell I might sound really harsh in this but I’m only so harsh because I had pretty high expectations going in, and by the end the only thought going through my mind was “Really? This is the Metroid game that fans are ride or die for? Super and Fusion clear this game by a country mile. What the hell are people talking about?” and honestly I still don’t know. I could chalk it up to this game being many people's first Metroid game (although if it was mine I’d probably never touch this series again.) Or I could take what a friend once said where it’s some copium induced GameCube nostalgia taking hold of a loud minority of people that influence the public's perspective of the game, but even then I just don’t know. Maybe I’m being an asshole for even speculating on why people would even like this game but I’m honestly confused, I could throw as much rationalizations into this as I wanted but at the end of the day I didn’t like it and many other people did so I guess it’s just me being a negative nancy again.
After a week of having the game stew in my memories I feel confident when I say that I liked Metroid Prime….untill I didn’t. I’m sorry if that comes off as really youtube thumbnail clickbait but that’s just how I honestly feel.
For the first 4 to 5 hours of the game I wouldn’t honestly give this game a 10/10; I mean that genuinely. From the amazing opening to the extremely well done first area; everything felt well put together, and the atmosphere was just so well put together and everything from the long list of log entries and visual storytelling felt properly placed and all with a purpose behind them. If there is one thing I will say without a shadow of a doubt is that the game nails it’s atmosphere and does a good job transitioning the series into 3D, everything else thought just starts to decorate as time goes on.
Around the second boss I honestly started dreading the idea of backtracking in this map because unlike past Metroid games the map here honestly felt very haphazardly slept together. It felt like they made the maps with a linear progression first in mind and then placed an entrance and exit near the beginning and end of the map, all the while each room feels structured in a way where combat is required for everything you re-enter a room since enemies respawn every time and some of them can range from being one hit kills or time wasting bullet sponges, so when I had to backtrack to find an upgrade or an item I missed I had to slowly go back through these combat corridors and it got old very fast.
Speaking of that topic the actual combat is honestly really mid. Combat in a Metroid game is honestly the last thing I would care about since the whole game is usually structured around exploration, but here it feels a little reversed so I guess I have to talk about the combat now.
For starters your movement is heavily stunted compared to previous games. Now there's nothing wrong with that and I honestly don’t think you could bring over every aspect of the game’s movement over so I can’t really criticize it too much, but when the combat system also doesn't take into consideration how you’re gonna move around enemies in these combat sections it’s kinda frustrating. Your blaster shots don’t feel like they have impact with any of the enemies your fighting and the only viable way to take most enemies down with a charge shot seems to have this weird bit of delay to it making it more frustrating to deal with, and I don’t know if it was just a me thing or not but no matter how many upgrades I acquired I never felt like I was getting stronger like how I normally felt with older Metroid games; it just felt like I started the same as I ended only know I have a slightly bigger health bar and can’t be hurt by poisonous mushrooms. (again idk if it’s just a me thing but that’s what it felt like).
I think most of these feelings started to really set in around the Phazon Mines area. The whole area felt like one big long series of combat corridors with some of the most bullet sponge enemies in the game along with very little exploration or puzzles to break up the monotony.
I don’t know if they were strapped for time or something but it genuinely felt like they gave up around that section, and then the game just dropped any pretenses of trying to string the player along naturally and just said “ok so to progress you need to find a new item that’s either close or on the other end of the map, ok bye.”. I honestly wanted to stop playing around that point because like I said before, backtracking in this game is a boring slog and I deeply don’t like it. But I still did it and beat the boss of the area, and then the artifact hunt began; I’m not gonna go into details about it so I’ll just say the whole experience was a mix of frustration and the immense look up a walkthrough on YouTube.
By the last cutscene I honestly felt numb. I don’t hate this game hell I might sound really harsh in this but I’m only so harsh because I had pretty high expectations going in, and by the end the only thought going through my mind was “Really? This is the Metroid game that fans are ride or die for? Super and Fusion clear this game by a country mile. What the hell are people talking about?” and honestly I still don’t know. I could chalk it up to this game being many people's first Metroid game (although if it was mine I’d probably never touch this series again.) Or I could take what a friend once said where it’s some copium induced GameCube nostalgia taking hold of a loud minority of people that influence the public's perspective of the game, but even then I just don’t know. Maybe I’m being an asshole for even speculating on why people would even like this game but I’m honestly confused, I could throw as much rationalizations into this as I wanted but at the end of the day I didn’t like it and many other people did so I guess it’s just me being a negative nancy again.
5 Comments
Sorry man, just finished fusion and I think this clears that lol
But super is indeed better than both
And yeah, idk about those statements near the end of this. I was also kinda meh with this game years ago but coming back to it last year, it finally clicked...and it definitely wasnt people of others opinions cuz like I said, I knew people loved it and I just wasnt a fan back then.
Regarding the last paragraph, I'm a relatively new Metroid fan who only got into the series through playing Super Metroid on NSO. When I later played Metroid Prime on the Trilogy version, it instantly became one of my favourite games I've ever played, and I personally think it's a masterpiece in all aspects. This game's reception is (probably) not just a result of GameCube nostalgia or it being people's first Metroid game. I think most people just think it's a really great game.
Weatherby
9 months ago