Samus jumps into the third dimension in this remaster of the GameCube action platformer.
What Is It? It feels weird calling a Metroid game a Metroidvania. I’m not sure why, because it is technically a correct categorization, but it feels a bit yucky. Anyway, Metroid Prime Remastered is a first person 3D Metroidvania. Samus lands on a strange planet, her powers are drained, and she spends the next 12 hours recovering them, unlocking secrets, and, eventually, taking down the whole thing.
The game plays exactly like you would expect a 3D Metroid to play. You start off with almost nothing, slowly build up your suit to allow you to kill more bad guys, reach new areas to explore, and repeat until you get off of the planet.
The game handles the exploration piece really well. It feels good to run and roll around in this 3D world, whether you’re trying to find hidden energy tanks or simply trying to figure out where to go next. The game hits those beats from the 2D games perfectly. Many of the familiar pieces of gear are here, from morph ball to power bombs and various suit augmentations to protect against different weather conditions. Even the grapple makes a return and, true to form, it is the worst controlling mechanic in the game, but it is a massive improvement over the one in Super Metroid, to be fair. It feels really great to explore this planet with the smooth movement, floaty controls, and secrets in nearly every room.
The other half of any Metroidvania is combat and that is much more of a mixed bag in Metroid Prime. The basics here are really quite good. The first person view works well when combined with the left trigger locking onto targets. Running through the early parts of the game with late game weapons and blasting away the enemies is a really fun, satisfying experience and a tease on what could have been.
Problems come into play with some really poorly designed HP sponge enemies that dominate the late game areas. First, the game does not include a proper dodge mechanic, making avoiding their attacks annoyingly difficult. Second, they all take multiple fully charged shots to defeat. This all comes to a head with one of the worst boss fights I can remember; Omega Pirate. The boss itself is quite good, actually, but the game throws a slew of these HP sponges at you and you very much do not have time to take them out and deal damage to Omega Pirate in the small window where it is open for getting hit. I almost quit at this point, not because of difficulty, but because a fight where the intended (and only valid) strategy is to simply ignore groups of enemies and constantly take their hits is bad design.
Visually, the game looks fine. It has smoothed out the GameCube edges a bit, but you can tell this is a 20+ year old game.
The main goal of the game is to collect artifacts. You will uncover hints about their locations, but they are still quite well hidden which feeds into the sense of exploration the game leans on. Find them all, fight a boss, and onto the next adventure. Normal Samus stuff, really.
The Best Part: The Ridley boss fight. This isn’t perfect, as the last 10% of it drags on way too long, but this is a very good fight overall and a really great example of making interesting combat in a 3D Metroid game. You need to learn patterns, how to dodge, when to attack, when to play it safe, etc… Basically, all of the things you expect from a Metroid boss fight! The final boss in this game might be even better, but I won’t spoil anything there.
The Worst Part: The HP sponge common enemies; the various pirates and the metroids. Each of these come in various colors which require you to hit them with specific weapons. They also each take multiple fully charged shots with those weapons to defeat. They slow exploration to a crawl and are simply not a fun time.
The Verdict: The most remarkable thing about Metroid Prime Remastered to me was just how unremarkable it was. That’s not meant in a negative way, just to say that this game is almost exactly what you would expect from an attempt at taking Metroid and transitioning it into the 3D space. It hits so many of the same notes as Super Metroid without adding many original ideas to the mix. I think this is a totally reasonable route to take on a first crack at 3D, but it also left me thinking “I’d rather be playing Super Metroid” more than a few times during my playthrough.
This game is far from bad, but it is ultimately not great either due to limited innovation and some brutally boring common enemies. These hit sponges that do nothing but drag out your playtime by making you kill them before exploring an area to find the artifacts you miss are simply not fun. Combined with lack of good dodge mechanics, you will spend an uncomfortable amount of your late game playtime holding down the charge button and trying to awkwardly avoid the shots coming at you. It is unfortunate that this is my lasting impression from this game because, otherwise, it was a lot of fun to play Metroid in 3D! There were some really good boss fights, wonderful exploration, secrets at every corner, and a great sense of progression. All of the things that make Metroid great are here, they are just padded with some key misfires that hold this game back.
How to Play: Nintendo Switch*, GameCube (original)
*console played on for this review
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