Played this game for the first time with the remaster - a heap of praise should go to how good this thing looks and runs at a time in the switch’s lifecycle where new games are starting to strain against the limits of the hardware. Putting it side by side with the original after playing it for a bit I was struck by how much care went into making the remaster look like your memories of what this generation of gaming looked like, while still including enough new creative flourishes that bring it up to parity with modern releases. I left Metroid Prime feeling pretty mixed overall - the game is structurally really interesting and has a lot of cool ideas, but is filled with a bunch of little annoyances that really compound towards the end of the game and left me feeling really sour on it.
I played with hints on and honestly have no idea how you’d play this for the first time without them and not spend hours just throwing spaghetti up against the wall to try and make progress. I get that games of this type are all about memorising things you’ve seen and not been able to interact with yet, but moving through Prime’s world takes so long and is full of so many little irritations that I came to dread coming across a new thing I couldn’t do yet and would have to revisit later.
If the game hadn’t ended with the artifact hunt and filled its last hours with really annoying enemy types, I’d probably feel much better about it overall - but by the end of Prime I kind of just wanted it to be over. Doesn’t quite stand up to the 2D games in the series, but the ways in which it’s bad are at least interesting to think about in a modern context. Being trapped on the GameCube at a time when the PS2 was king means that this game hasn’t been as directly influential as its predecessors, but Prime in interesting enough in what it‘s going for that I want to see more games swing for the huge things it’s trying to accomplish. I probably would have loved this when it came out, but playing it for the first time now with no nostalgia attached left me feeling pretty cold.
I played with hints on and honestly have no idea how you’d play this for the first time without them and not spend hours just throwing spaghetti up against the wall to try and make progress. I get that games of this type are all about memorising things you’ve seen and not been able to interact with yet, but moving through Prime’s world takes so long and is full of so many little irritations that I came to dread coming across a new thing I couldn’t do yet and would have to revisit later.
If the game hadn’t ended with the artifact hunt and filled its last hours with really annoying enemy types, I’d probably feel much better about it overall - but by the end of Prime I kind of just wanted it to be over. Doesn’t quite stand up to the 2D games in the series, but the ways in which it’s bad are at least interesting to think about in a modern context. Being trapped on the GameCube at a time when the PS2 was king means that this game hasn’t been as directly influential as its predecessors, but Prime in interesting enough in what it‘s going for that I want to see more games swing for the huge things it’s trying to accomplish. I probably would have loved this when it came out, but playing it for the first time now with no nostalgia attached left me feeling pretty cold.