Metroid Prime Remastered

(available for Nintendo Switch only)

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly six years since we got the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 – only months after the Nintendo Switch was released – and we still have no idea when it’s coming out. The game’s development has gone through hell, with them having to restart completely from scratch at least once, so it’s not surprising but disappointing that we have a while longer till it’s released. Luckily, to make that wait more durable, Nintendo have blessed us with a HD remaster of the original Metroid Prime, that wasn’t only announced in the most recent Nintendo Direct, but was also shadow dropped the exact same day. Seeing as this is something that many Nintendo fans – myself included – have been waiting for, the news was well received.  

Metroid Prime takes place between the events of Metroid and Metroid II Samus Returns. It starts off with the series’ main heroine Samus Aran landing on a spaceship that has been attacked by Space Pirates. After fighting her way through the ship, slaughtering Pirates and ending with a battle against the Parasite Queen, she runs into her recurring nemesis Ridley, who seems to have obtained a number of cybernetic enhancements since her last encounter. She escapes the exploding ship, an explosion causing her suit to malfunction and lose a number of abilities in the process, and chases after Meta Ridley who leads her to the planet Tallon IV. This planet seems to have been once a home to Chozo, but something happened that led to their annihilation. It’s now up to Samus to explore this world, regain her powers and find out what the Space Pirates were researching on this planet. As with most Metroid games, the story doesn’t have much of a presence. While there is lore for you to learn as you explore, you’ll find that the story is more reasoning behind you entering the planet and exploring its surface. 

As you would expect, the game’s presentation has been greatly improved. Everything from enemy designs to environments to Samus herself, even the details of your beams are a lot smoother with added detail and a lot more colour, while maintaining the feel and look of the game. Even the menus and map has been smoothed out and look significantly better with little changed outside of that. The game’s soundtrack still retains that haunting and otherworldly ambience that the original had, with ominous waves and soothing, for lack of better terms, spacey sounds for basic exploration, while upping the tempo for boss fights or battles against tougher enemies. The soundtrack nails it in every situation and environment, easily making this one of the best soundtracks of the sixth generation game consoles that still hold up today. 

Metroid Prime Remastered is a first-person shooter which is heavily focused on exploration and obtaining upgrades as you progress. For starters, I have to give major praise to the controls. In the original game you only used one thumbstick for both movement and turning, and used the face buttons to shoot, which hasn’t aged the best. Luckily, the remaster has updated the controls to match more modern FPS’s, now you move with the left thumbstick and aim with the right and you can now use the shoulder buttons to shoot. After playing with this control scheme I tried out the original’s again, and I don’t think it’s possible to go back, the remaster’s is far superior. However, if you just have to play this game like the original was played, you can change the control scheme to be the same as the original’s from the menu. It even gives you the option to play with motion controls like you can with the Wii port of the game, though it does need recalibrating frequently. 

One thing that this game is more focused on is combat. While combat is still a very important necessity in the 2D Metroid games, it doesn’t quite go into the level of depth as Metroid Prime does. In this game you use four different types of beams that are found as you progress throughout the game. What I like about these is that they don’t feel like clones of one another, each one has a different rate of fire to one another and have their own strengths and weaknesses. While you will find your favourite, don’t think that you’ll be just using the one once you’ve found it, as certain enemies are weaker to one type of beam as opposed to the others and eventually these enemies will be impervious to all but one kind of beam, so you’ll find yourself swapping them around regularly. The type of enemies you’ll face will depend entirely on what area you’re exploring and how far you are in the game. Some enemies will have a particular strategy to defeat them, such as attacking them in a certain weak spot or having to wait until they’re vulnerable to being attacked. Enemies will also change the further along into the game you are, small creatures that are native to Tallon IV will be replaced by Space Pirates or the titular Metroids. In fact a good way to know that you’re going the right way is if a room you’ve previously explored has had a change in enemies. My one major downside to combat is dodging. For starters you’re only able to dodge when you’re locked onto an enemy and you can only dodge when strafing left and right. The reason? Because the dodge button is the same as the jump button… can you see the problem now? There have been numerous times where I was meaning to dodge, but ended up jumping instead because I was going forward, or meaning to jump and dodged instead because I was moving slightly to the right. It would have been a much bigger improvement if they instead gave dodging its own button rather than having it share with jump.

Despite the change in perspective compared to the non-prime games, this does still play like a Metroidvania. You’ll be exploring a labyrinth of corridors and rooms, finding upgrades and ultimately getting lost. Of course there are some areas that you won’t be able to access right away as they will need a particular upgrade or beam to access, meaning that you’ll have to leave and go back there later (meaning more backtracking… yay). While I didn’t get lost too often while playing Metroid Dread for example, I definitely did here as I found the 3D environment more difficult to navigate than the 2D one. One of the things that would have definitely made exploration better would have been map markers, they would have been much more helpful as a way to keep tabs on an area you can’t access because you don’t have the morph ball upgrade, for example, or even just a way to show where you’re going so you aren’t confused between sessions. 

One of the main mechanics that will help you with exploration and combat are the visors. Like with the beams, there are four that you can find and they are incredibly important to ensure you make progress through this game. Two of them are pretty much required to fight against certain enemies and will help you in finding invisible platforms (yeah, those are a thing now) and holes in the wall that hide optional upgrades. The main ones you’ll be using though are your combat visor, which is pretty self explanatory, and the scanner. The scanner is one of the most important mechanics in the entire game, as it’s pretty much essential for basic exploration. There are numerous things you can scan, enemies to items to panels to just the nature of the world, and you’ll get a brief description of what you just scanned that will then be added to your logbook. Some of these descriptions will just be basic information of lore on the Chozo’s that once lived on the planet, but other times it’ll be important text such as the specific weakness of a boss or the solution to a puzzle. Scanning everything you can is even important to completion as it’ll add to your overall percentage. In other words, SCAN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!!!

Upgrades you find throughout the game, both optional and mandatory, are pretty much what you’d expect from Metroid. You have the returning favourites such as the morphball, which has its own list of upgrades, new suits, the multiple beams as I just mentioned. Though one unique edition is that every beam has its own version of the super missile, which are a lot of fun. As for the optional upgrades, you have the usual energy tanks, which will increase your health, and the missile upgrades, which increase the number of missiles at your disposal. While these are optional, it’s still incredibly important that you find as many as you can. While you’ll be okay for the early game, the later threats can and will decimate your health if you don’t upgrade it, and it’s very important that you keep up your missile count as you will be going through a lot of them in the late game as well, both in combat and exploration. 

Now for the bosses, which overall are pretty good. I’m not gonna lie and say that they’re all great as there are definitely some stinkers in this game. Whether it’s due to the boss being too simple or having a weakness that led to the fight taking forever, there are some that did disappoint. That being said though, there are also a number of really fun bosses. While these fights aren’t as hectic as those of the 2D Metroid’s, I do still really enjoy them. Some take certain strategies or can only be attacked at certain times, or some can just be wailed on. Overall I had a lot of fun with most of these bosses. 

If there’s any unmentioned downside to this game, it’s the same as the one I mentioned in my Metroid Dread review, and that’s the lack of checkpoints. If you die at any point throughout the game, you’ll respawn at your last save, nevermind that you may now have to traverse halfway across the map to get back to where you just were, but you lose all your progress as well. In fact, you could argue that it’s worse in this game, as if you fought a boss in Metroid Dread you at least respawned just outside of the boss room, you don’t even get that luxury in this game. While I luckily didn’t die too often in this game, it was still annoying when I did. Another one is with the Chozo Artefacts. At first these seem like optional collectables that will reward you with extra Chozo lore or something like that. Not only did I learn that these things are mandatory, but it was only revealed to me near the end of the game and felt more like an attempt to pad out the game’s play time. I would have much preferred it if they were reserved to an optional collectible or at the very least told me that these were required beforehand so I could have just kept an eye out for them early on. 

Of all the games I wanted for the Nintendo Switch this was easily in my top three, and I am very happy that my wants were well met. While there are still some improvements I would have liked to see in this remaster, the improved graphics and modern controls are more than enough to define this as the definitive version of the game. Despite the original game coming out over twenty years ago, this game proves that it still holds up, and I highly recommend it to any Switch owner. Seeing as it costs a fair bit less than most games on the system, it’s absolutely worth the price. 

9.0/10