Metroid Prime Remastered: Evil Returns in HD
Metroid is one of Nintendo’s more famous franchises, starting all the way in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, establishing and codifying an entire game genre overnight alongside Castlevania in the same year. Starring the fully armored Samus Aran, she delves into the depths of an alien world to destroy the eponymous life-energy-consuming parasite and defeat Mother Brain. While the game’s plot is barebones, its gameplay set the formula future metroidvanias would follow, along with a real shocker for its time: Instead of being a man or a robot under the armor, Samus was a woman. Not only that, she was a bonafide badass! And she only became more beloved as the years went by with many more games under her belt.
In 2002, the famous galactic bounty hunter got a new installment on the then-fresh GameCube, known as Metroid Prime. Initially regarded with trepidation and skepticism for its choice of being in first-person, and also being developed by a western studio that was pretty much unknown to the world at large, it soon proved to be a smash hit on release, being a perfectly smooch transition to 3D graphics and delivering an amazing adventure for that funny purple lunchbox.
Such a famous game is well deserving of a remaster, don’t you think?
Metroid Prime: Remastered is the updated rerelease of Metroid Prime, released worldwide digitally for the Nintendo Switch on February 8th, 2023, and then getting a physical version on February 22nd, 2023. In her first journey in the third dimension, Samus Aran investigates the world of Tallon IV to deal with the remnants of the Space Pirates after she destroyed Zebes after the original Metroid. She discovers a secret research base there, but the Space Pirates aren’t the only threat she has to face on the scarred world of Tallon IV…
Featuring revolutionary switchable beam weapons, missile combos and visors, the much beloved logbook for the Scan Visor to record entries for, and a fully traversable 3D world, all given a major visual facelift, Metroid Prime Remastered is sure to be quite a fun time.
Let’s see if it lives up to the hype, shall we?
Story
The main plot is pretty typical for a Metroid game. Samus investigates something strange on an alien planet, fights the indigenous creatures and the Space Pirates, and faces off against massive bosses, while accumulating upgrades along the way. She manages to fight her way to the Impact Crater, destroy the eponymous Metroid Prime, and escape in her ship. So far, nothing special, just business as usual.
The real appeal of the narrative is all the things you can analyze with the Scan Visor and read to discover lore about the planet, or see what the Space Pirates are up to. In particular, there is the plotline where the Chozo of Tallon IV were first afflicted by what they call “the Great Poison” (which in actuality is the catastrophic mutagen known as Phazon), and how for all their efforts, their world continued to slowly die before their eyes. They kept holding out hope for a savior from the stars (ie, Samus) to arrive and save them from certain death… but she never did.
Indeed, by the time Samus makes planetfall, literally none of the Chozo are alive, with the only remnants of their existence being the Phazon-twisted Chozo Ghosts lurking in the Chozo Ruins. It’s rather heartbreaking, given that Samus is closely associated with the Chozo, due to her Power Suit and her abilities being a gift from them. If she had arrived on Tallon IV any earlier, she might have been able to save them, but instead, she can only pick through the ruins and try to stop Phazon from spreading further.
Another interesting side plot is how the Space Pirates’ operations on the planet play out. Initially, they’re scattered, but composed, having narrowly escaped certain death from both Samus and the Galactic Federation, opting to lay low on Tallon for the time being while continuing their experiments with the local Metroids. They’re revealed to be trying to replicate Samus’ gear, and while they are able to copy her Beams to create the Power Troopers, their attempts to mimic her Morph Ball take a heavy turn into dark comedy when it’s revealed that the Pirates volunteering for the tests end up horribly twisted and broken as a result… and it’s noted that Science Team decided to postpone all tests after that.
For the most part they’re treated as cold, ruthless warriors, but they do have a somewhat sillier side due to their penchant for science experiments. And that’s before they realize that Samus is planetside and approaching the Phazon Mines, where they promptly have a collective “OH CRAP SHE’S HERE!” reaction. And even with their experiments with Phazon to create the Elite Pirates and the Omega Pirate, they’re still extremely scared because of her reputation as a one-woman army. Which isn’t without merit, given how she’s capable of wiping the floor with giant monstrosities that would flatten anyone that wasn’t as powerful as her.
Phazon is an interesting addition to the story, being a cancer-like mutagen that transforms and twists anything that it doesn’t immediately kill and consume. It adds a level of nightmare fuel in the later levels, primarily the depths of the Phazon Mines, where the bright radioactive blue material carries an inherent sense of wrongness.
So far, while the main plot isn’t anything to write home about, the worldbuilding and atmosphere is top notch.
Gameplay
Prime takes the 2D gameplay of Metroid and gives it a smooth transition to the third dimension. While a fair bit slower than usual, Samus still has her trademark abilities — the tried-and-true Power Beam, Morph Ball, Missiles, and Grapple Beam. She does lose these at the end of the first level, but she regains them over time, and gets new toys to play with, too.
Being in first person makes you have to think more actively about positioning in both regards to platforming and enemy encounters. To help with this, there is an option to lock onto enemies or targetable objects, and a setting that lets you freely aim your reticule while locked on. It’s similar to how the Metroid Prime Trilogy version of the game adjusted the aiming to match the use of the Wiimote and Nunchuk, just like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. While I highly enjoyed the Trilogy version for feeling very intuitive thanks to the Wiimote, it feels less so when using the control sticks on the Switch Joy-cons, but it’s still enjoyable nonetheless.
Instead of stacking new beam effects on top of each other like in previous games, every beam picked up after the Charge Beam is a separate weapon, which can be switched to in a manner similar to visors. While this does mean you can’t combine the beams in any way, you still get to keep the default Power Beam without being forced to use only the most powerful at the end. Plus, it means you have to actively think about which beam you’re using in a fight, as certain enemies can only be damaged and/or nullified by certain beams, like the eponymous Metroids still being vulnerable to the sheer cold of the Ice Beam, opening them up for a one hit kill via a Missile.
Given the first person perspective, the visors are a natural fit for this game. On top of the default Combat and Scan Visors, there’s also the Thermal and X-Ray Visors that let you see temperature and invisible things, respectively, and are crucial to navigating areas that your other visors aren’t equipped to deal with. My favorite is the Scan Visor, because you will reflexively get the instinct to scan anything and everything for your logbook. If not for the story breadcrumbs, then at least for 100% completion.
For the most part, the game doesn’t hold your hand and tell you directly where to go. Instead, you only occasionally get notifications that point to a general area where the next piece of equipment resides, and from there you can either head there immediately or just keep exploring. This way, you’re allowed to just take in the atmosphere of Tallon IV at your own pace, with only occasional reminders of where to go next.
Overall, the core gameplay of Prime still holds up to this day.
Graphics
While the original release of the game still looks fairly good even decades later, it’s obviously got some age to it, due to the textures, lighting, and models looking cruder and lacking in polygons. But now, after making the jump to the Switch, the game looks so much better!
They really cranked up the details here, making the world of Tallon IV look vastly more beautiful. It’s the exact same game under the hood, but given a major facelift. They also made slight changes to certain models to either make things more apparent, or bring them in line with future games in the Prime series. For example, Meta Ridley’s model got changed to emphasize how slipshod and patchwork he is thanks to his cyborg upgrades, with scarring on his skin and some metal parts looking rusted. It combines to make him look far scarier.
They also updated Samus’ movements slightly, making it so she moves more realistically, like an actual human under there, instead of seeming stiff and robotic. A good example arises when using a Map Station or Missile Station — instead of rigidly lifting her arm and inserting her arm cannon into the slot, she now leans forward a little. It’s subtle, but definitely noticeable.
On top of this, the game runs at an unbroken 60 FPS the whole way, whether docked or handheld. Smooth!
Pros
Prime Remastered delivers on being the same game two decades ago, but with a major graphical update, and it certainly shows. Every asset in the game was redone from the ground up to have far more polish and resolution, turning an already good-looking game from the GameCube days into a fantastic-looking title on the Switch.
Remastered brings more than just a graphical overhaul, though. It also comes with extra fun stuff, like bringing back the narration from the PAL version of the original game for the intro and resuming from a Save Station. One thing I loved in particular was the Character Gallery and Concept Art Gallery — as you progress through the game, you unlock more and more figurines and artwork pieces of various things in the game. I highly approve this, because it means I get to admire all the gorgeous models they put together, and I’m always sad when a game doesn’t let me do that.
All other aspects of the game — the audio, the combat, the puzzles — are either preserved exactly how they were back then, or given a slight improvement. If you ask me, this is exactly how a remaster should be done, where you make some quality of life improvements here and there, and make it run better on modern hardware, but otherwise leave it untouched, so it’s a superior version of the original release.
The updates to Samus’ model in particular please me, because I always thought she looked oddly stiff due to the graphics quality of the time. The fact they adjusted her to move a little more naturally feels a lot nicer to look at, because then we’re reminded she’s actually a human being under that armor, instead of a rigid robot.
Cons
Though the game is basically the same as the original release, this does mean some of the flaws that manifested back then are still present here. Chief among them being that some of the (optional) upgrades, namely the Missile Combos outside of the Super Missile (Wavebuster for Wave Beam, Ice Spreader for Ice Beam, Flamethrower for Plasma Beam). While they can be powerful, the problem is that they eat up a ton of precious Missiles to work, and even then their damage output can be neutered by their short range or otherwise being finicky to work with. The Flamethrower especially is greedy with Missiles for just a short ranged stream of fire, making it feel like a waste compared to just firing Super or regular Missiles nonstop.
The last stretch of the game, being to find the twelve Chozo Artifacts to allow entry into the Impact Crater, slows the pacing of the game to a major crawl. Not only are you blocked off from reaching the final area until you get the Artifacts, you’re also unable to get the majority of them during the rest of the game naturally due to them requiring things like the Grapple Beam or Phazon Suit, which come very late in the game. Instead of feeling satisfaction for finally unlocking the final area, the eleventh hour of the game ends up a tedious slog, even if you’re not going for 100% completion. It feels like a complete pace killer between the Omega Pirate and the eponymous Metroid Prime.
Final Verdict
It’s the same game from over 20 years ago, but given a glorious makeover. It’s mostly unchanged outside of that, which makes it a prime example of how to do a remaster. They could have just increased the resolution and framerate and called it a day, but no, they went the extra mile in making everything far prettier. Now it’s even more timeless!
It’s a solid 9/10 from me!