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Revisiting Metroid Prime - Sacred Jellybean - 20th September 2023
I was somewhere on another messageboard (yes I cheated, I'm sorry, let's get through this first and then we'll talk about it honey) and a guy was talking up Metroid Prime and how well it's aged, and I'm like yeah, that's a pretty solid game. Came out my freshman year of college and I played the hell out of it, annoying my roommate who later told others that it was annoying that I stayed in so much. Look, if I'm gonna be a shut-in in high school I'm not gonna change for college. It's important to be true to yourself.
So I fired up the ol' GameCube and yeah, this game still rocks. (But I won't say it "rules". I'm actually annoyed that this has been absorbed back into our lexicon. People sound like Beavis and Butthead when they say it. Please stop.)
Yeah, it's graphically dated. But not in the same way N64 games are. With that system, I feel like it's a necessary suffering for classic and awesome gameplay, and while it can be charming at times, you really just need to slog through blocky graphics to have a good time.
More importantly, the gameplay is still solid. I recently listened to an interview with one of those Retro Studio guys, and he said in its first iteration, Prime had a more traditional control setup for FPSs. One stick looks, one stick movies. They said among themselves that okay, maybe it's a little clunky at first, but we think the gamers will see what we're going for with this and adapt.
Miyamoto shuffled right in there and played the game for about 15 minutes and suggested the targeting system, and that the C-Stick should select different arm cannons, not be used for movement. They sat there, amazed at how he simplified it along with making it more intuitive in such a short amount of time. It was a very humbling experience.
I like the different elemental beams. It's a simple concept but they make it fun. I felt empowered when finally getting the plasma beam, and cutting through those fucking flying space pirate gnats got far less annoying.
As a FPS, the game does not have very good platforming, and that's something that felt like a chore at times. I miscalculated and dropped three stories too many times, a great frustration that makes you wonder why they even tried in the first place. Apparently the original plan was for it to be 3rd person, but Nintendo made the decision that the mechanics felt too clunky, and it would work as a FPS better. The retro employees were stubborn about it, but much later, after the game was released and had been out for some time, they grudgingly admitted that Nintendo was right.
It's a shame to hear that but honestly it's better to just remove it altogether. Maneuvering in 2D Metroids felt like smooth butter sliding down a knife in morning heat, I don't know what that means so use your imagination.
The point is, it felt easy and satisfying. I don't think it's possible to make a FPS with fun platforming elements. (didn't sega have some parkour game that took place on top of sky-scrapers? I wonder if they did an okay job with that). Pulling that off is a herculean effort and instead of hubris, Retro should have bowed their heads and excised out all the hoppity riff-raff.
So Metroid Prime was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it a lot.
So I moved onto Echoes because hell why not? Like I got my fill of Metroid but there wasn't really an option to NOT continue. This is the order of things bestowed by God, nature, cosmos, whatever the hell you want to say. I'm not so bold as to violate the importance of tradition.
And my obligation was unfortunate, because Echoes has not aged well. Right off the bat, its aesthetic was pretty meh. Space marines and artificially built environments? It's just not Metroid without a weird alien planet with natural phenomena.
Dude Samus Aran is a silent protagonist, she at times feels almost as alien as the worlds she explores, so pulling in other humans makes it feel like some lame Call of Duty marine camaraderie. I couldn't care less about people, why are you putting people in my Metroid?
But at least they aren't alive like in Prime 3, which I never finished and don't have an inclination to do so. Okay, I'll violate tradition for that.
In Prime 2, I was also miffed to realize that the light/dark beams are ammofied. This is quite off-putting after Prime 1, where you can select a beam and shoot to your heart's content, experimenting, shooting new enemies with it and seeing how it fares, etc. But getting hamstrung by limits on how much you can pew pew the beams is some riffraff. I don't whip out the light/dark beams unless I need to.
I try to shift my thinking and tell myself well, most Metroids don't have different elemental beams. They do, on the other hand, have missiles and power bombs, both of which have limits. So I guess that's true, though in e.g. Super Metroid (and probably Metroid Dread too, been a bit since I played it) the power beam at least gets upgraded. Fuck, now it shoots three beams instead of one? Now it can go through walls? Now it's two thick horizontal squigglies that tear through space pirates like wet tissue? Fuck yeah, time to knock these aliens' dicks in the dirt.
But now it's just the same beam. Oh yeah, I guess super missiles too. But the seeker missiles are some bullshit. Okay hold Y to charge your missiles and select your targets, LOL BTW THAT COSTS A MISSILE. What??? Why would you force me to fire an extra, needless missile when it's about to cost me five? Because it's the same button, and you somehow missed that you couldn't program it to recognize me holding it down vs tapping it?
I literally had to figure out how to trick the game. And I thought "there's no way my dumb ass is alone" but googling doesn't yield results of people bitching about wasted missiles. I did pull up a youtube to see it WAS possible to not fire an extra missile, but it didn't have an explanation. I had to play around to figure it out. You need to hold down the regular beam for a second, then quickly hold down Y just as you release A, and that'll start charging it up without firing a preliminary missile.
Fucking seriously?? This is a Nintendo seal of quality? Like I literally tried another controller because I said "there's no way Nintendo sucks this much, this is some basic bitch thing to notice and swat down in the prototype stages". I can say this as both a software developer and a man of common sense. So, this controller work? Nope not that either, my incredulousness feels embarrassing, but Nintendo set the bar that high.
Anyway, Prime 2 sucks. The thing I liked about Super Metroid and Metroid Dread (which may very well be the best Metroid game ever created) is that finding new areas felt natural and intuitive. Prime 1 was mostly good about this, though there were times when was walking back and forth across different sections and having no idea what was coming next, it felt very tedious. But Prime 2 is even worse, and I don't make the mistake of letting myself wander about until I stumble into the next section, I just youtube that shit, come on life's too short.
Parenthetically, sometimes I wonder if I've just gotten too old and dumb and impatient and that's why these games feel a like a chore these days.
Anyway, I came back here and searched old topics about peoples' impressions of it. And they talked up the fact that it was more difficult. And I said you know, you guys were kind of right, Prime 1 was pretty easy and so maybe a challenge can be fun too.
A challenge like not being able to fully poke around and explore your environment because the atmosphere literally kills you, so spend some mental bandwidth trying to figure out where the next light source is and chill there for 30 seconds to get back some energy, waiting around is totally exhilarating and pumps my nads.
While it's been kind of annoying I guess it's not so terrible as for me to stop. But idk man, I heard Control is a good game (I know I'm literally years behind, I heard a guy on a podcast talk about this game 2 years ago and I feel like it had already been out for a while by that point, don't @ me for not googling it, I frankly lack in the energy for a 15 second search of a thing I care less about than rambling and annoying you).
But I heard it's a good game and a friend of mine recently talked it up, so I should really just drop Echoes 2 like the dark stepchild it is (btw what was with nintendo wanting to incorporate a light/dark theme in every game in that era, that shit got old and dumb) and drop it, it's got its good points but it's a step down from its predecessor, if you were a tall lanky guy and one stride down the steps was trebled from your long legs.
All told, maybe I'll get halfway through the trilogy before losing interest.
BTW, I literally had no idea that they re-released this as a remaster trilogy until I was about 1/3rd of the way through Prime on GameCube. You have to understand, I'm pretty disconnected from video games in the past 15 years so shit that eventually trickles into my radar by osmosis is excruciatingly slow. It was then that I realized that the reason those guys were mentioning it on the messageboard were doing so because it was recently remastered. Fuck. I looked up a youtube of it Prime and it's pretty damn nice. But dude I was 1/3rd through the game, what was I gonna do, start all over? That's asinine.
RE: Revisiting Metroid Prime - Sacred Jellybean - 20th September 2023
As an addendum, I was pretty drunk when I wrote the above (but it was very much sincere and didn't take much proofreading to make it legible and retain the original spirit). So, 4 days removed, I'm still grudgingly coming back to Echoes. I have no idea why. The game is annoying as fuck. I just had to fight a boss where the little scan info said "WHEN YOU STUN THIS ENEMY, SHOOT ITS FOUR WEAK SPOTS".
Okay, cool. Hey, why isn't it working? My beam won't target that. Damn it. Can I hit it manually? No. Will my seeker missiles recognize it? No. Dark Beam, Light Beam? No and no. Yup, back to YouTube to figure out what the fuck I'm doing wrong. It took me a minute, but I figured out that you have to be behind the damn thing to get it to work.
Okay, here's an even worse mistake. In Torvus Bog, the game literally tells you the opposite of what you need to do. "Hey beanjo, shoot the bottom of this platform with a dark beam to get it to flip over!" Okay. Um. It's not doing anything. Do I need to use the charge dark beam? Nope. What??? Back to YouTube. Nope, it's actually the light beam that does it. What in the flying fuck, how did this get past QA??
"Hey, here's a white crystal on the side of a platform, shoot it to activate it. lol nah, it's actually the dark beam that energizes it." Why would you create a white receptacle that requires a dark beam? Don't the light and dark elementals mix together like oil and water? What the HELL are you talking about, Retro? This is entirely implausible. I know engineers aren't always the best with UX design, but come on! Get your shit together, Ing and Luminoth.
RE: Revisiting Metroid Prime - Dark Jaguar - 20th September 2023
Sounds like both of us have been playing some retro shooters lately, though Metroid is quite a bit different than Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Have you given the remakester on Switch a try? The new coat of paint is quite amazing.
Now, here's one thing I can't get behind, and that's how every new revision of Prime gets rid of a few more sequence breaks. While I appreciate that CURRENT Nintendo has embraced the sequence break and unintended gameplay, it's unfortunate that the original Prime team saw skilled jumping to platforms that were intended to be out of reach to get certain items early as a "bug" that needed squashing. As a result, while I generally recommend the new Switch version, my personal favorite is still the very first US revision on Gamecube.
RE: Revisiting Metroid Prime - Sacred Jellybean - 21st September 2023
Oh word, you still working your way through those? Are you gunning (heh) for Perfect Agent (or is it Dark Agent?) and 00 Agent? I just sought out and found your review of PD, should be interesting when I have a chance to read it.
I'd have loved to play the Prime 1 remake on the Switch, but I didn't realize it was out until I was significantly into the first game (maybe 1/3rd?). Real shame, because the videos on the tubes look quite nice, especially side-by-side. I read that Primes 2 and 3 weren't getting the same face lift, so I decided to skip buying the trilogy, since I still have the original games. Part of it is stubbornness. Damn it, if I'm a packrat, I have to reap the benefits of it.
Prime 2 continues to be an exercise in frustration. I was playing the Chykka boss and getting increasingly angrier and more hostile towards the game in the second part, where I barely had an area to dodge her projectile shits of dark matter. I kept falling into the purple "lava" while, at best, still taking 20-50 hit points with each strike.
I got angry enough to throw up my hands and say "Nope! I'm done!" and in a melodramatic fashion, took the game out of the system, yelling at it each step of the way. "This is me removing you from the GameCube. This is me putting you back in the case. This is me putting you on the shelf. You son-of-a-bitch."
And still, AND STILL! I woke up this morning, realizing that I could use the grapple hooks to traverse the four platforms and dodge the lava-puke attacks. Get out of my head! I'm supposed to wash my hands of you! But noooo. After insomnia took hold of me at 4:00am, I sighed and went back to it.
So, that worked. And once I got enough energy off the bastard, she hurled little flying insects at me that I could kill and recoup energy. It was STILL incredibly obnoxious to have to quickly grapple and get behind her to hit her with missiles, and towards the end, probably 80% of the time I'd miss my window and have to spam her with the beam again. But I scraped by.
RE: Revisiting Metroid Prime - Dark Jaguar - 21st September 2023
More like I started over again. I'd 100%ed those way back in the N64 days with the rest of us here, and it was the recent XBox One release of Goldeneye (disappointingly just an emulation of a ROM though it was) that inspired me to go through both it and the 360 release of Perfect Dark and 100% those too. Sorry, I know my reviews of both are pretty wordy. I've just... learned SO MUCH about the development of both games since then I felt a need to gush over those details.
Metroid Prime 2 Echoes does have far more linear sections than 1 did, and I can relate to your growing frustration with the game. I feel like a modern version of the second should get more than just a visual remaster. The third even more so. I wonder just what we can expect from the upcoming Metroid Prime 4?
RE: Revisiting Metroid Prime - Weltall - 31st October 2023
Prime 1 is still really great, it's one of the best GameCube games in my opinion, and I've never liked/been very good at first person games. It is easy, which is why I play on hard mode usually, and I got to become so good at sequence breaking that it's hard to not give in to the urge every time. After all, why shouldn't I have the Plasma Beam the moment I am capable of doing all the bullshit jumps necessary to get to it?
Where it has aged worst, in my opinion, is that we all know how FPS games are supposed to control, using modern controllers, and going back to using shoulder buttons to aim is just not it anymore. It's weird to me that it took developers so many years to figure out what to do with those extra analog sticks!
RE: Revisiting Metroid Prime - Dark Jaguar - 31st October 2023
(31st October 2023, 6:15 AM)Weltall Wrote: Prime 1 is still really great, it's one of the best GameCube games in my opinion, and I've never liked/been very good at first person games. It is easy, which is why I play on hard mode usually, and I got to become so good at sequence breaking that it's hard to not give in to the urge every time. After all, why shouldn't I have the Plasma Beam the moment I am capable of doing all the bullshit jumps necessary to get to it?
Where it has aged worst, in my opinion, is that we all know how FPS games are supposed to control, using modern controllers, and going back to using shoulder buttons to aim is just not it anymore. It's weird to me that it took developers so many years to figure out what to do with those extra analog sticks!
That's where the modern remake or remaster or whatever on Switch comes in. It's got those modern controls, but sadly the sequence breaks are all but gone, which as I mentioned is the kind of bug that should be left in games. Larian recently endorsed a bug that allowed someone to rescue and recruit a character one normally has to be "evil" aligned to get, much to fan's enjoyment. Not all bugs are bad, Nintendo!
As for how awkward FPS controls were back then... yes it's amazing how long it took, but I traced the history of analog controls, and it makes sense in that context. It all stems from "flight stick" controls on early PC DOS games, and the assumption that inverted "up down" looking and side to side "yaw" adjustment would come naturally to players. Which, well, it kind of did. Some of us had played those old DOS flight stick games. But, it meant imagination was rather limited and very few developed something new. Turok, however, solved the controls issue RIGHT from the jump. That "Turok" control style was also in Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, and it's that which later games like Halo would use (while flipping left and right stick functions... if you treat the C buttons of the N64 as a second stick as developers more or less were doing at the time). So much suffering was only resolved in the next gen, and here's the embarrassing part. Halo existed with it's superior controls when Prime came out! They had a direct example, but they intentionally opted not to use it in favor of a scheme that allowed much faster weapon and scanner switching. That's fair, in some ways, but modern controls even improved on that with "quick menus" (which Perfect Dark actually invented themselves). That plus having additional buttons to play with compared to Gamecube meant they now had a solution.