20th September 2023, 1:07 AM
(This post was last modified: 20th September 2023, 1:26 AM by Sacred Jellybean.)
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.
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.