In a year where remasters and remakes loom large in gaming discourse, Metroid Prime Remastered stands as an example to strive for while asking questions of its own.
Metroid Prime Remastered faithfully maintains what fans of the original loved and what made it a modern classic. The game impressively translates Metroid games into 3D and explores what that extra dimension means for the series. The remaster itself preserves the gameplay while updating the tech, visuals, and controls for the modern hardware. In many ways it's the ideal remaster in that it seeks to change as little as possible from the original version while also making that original version obsolete.
Where it becomes questionable is perhaps where it doesn't update the tech/gameplay. There are a good few quality of life improvements made by this new version, and though I lack the game design experience to know if it would interfere with gameplay I do think it's not great that if you die you have to do EVERYTHING over again. As in even scanning and gathering data.
There were times also that I felt the first-person combat was kind of obnoxious, such as when surrounded by certain enemies. Sure it succeeds in making you feel overwhelmed and surrounded, but it's often also just annoying and frustrating. Sometimes you just get sniped to the bottom of a level because of an enemy you had no chance of seeing too.
All that said, it's a really impressively designed game that translates the best of 2D metroid into a 3D space, and this remaster both looks and runs incredibly on the Switch hardware.
Metroid Prime Remastered faithfully maintains what fans of the original loved and what made it a modern classic. The game impressively translates Metroid games into 3D and explores what that extra dimension means for the series. The remaster itself preserves the gameplay while updating the tech, visuals, and controls for the modern hardware. In many ways it's the ideal remaster in that it seeks to change as little as possible from the original version while also making that original version obsolete.
Where it becomes questionable is perhaps where it doesn't update the tech/gameplay. There are a good few quality of life improvements made by this new version, and though I lack the game design experience to know if it would interfere with gameplay I do think it's not great that if you die you have to do EVERYTHING over again. As in even scanning and gathering data.
There were times also that I felt the first-person combat was kind of obnoxious, such as when surrounded by certain enemies. Sure it succeeds in making you feel overwhelmed and surrounded, but it's often also just annoying and frustrating. Sometimes you just get sniped to the bottom of a level because of an enemy you had no chance of seeing too.
All that said, it's a really impressively designed game that translates the best of 2D metroid into a 3D space, and this remaster both looks and runs incredibly on the Switch hardware.