In the Metroid Prime Remastered review, we’ll take a look at the game that came as a surprise to our Nintendo Switch consoles. While we were thinking “What happened to the new Metroid game?”, Metroid Prime Remastered was announced during the Nintendo Direct and you can buy it now. An unexpected but wonderful surprise!
Metroid Prime Remastered review / Nintendo Switch
Released in 2002 for the Nintendo Gamecube, Metroid Prime was beloved by both Metroid fans and other gamers alike, and is still remembered as a favorite game to play even after all these years. What does Metroid Prime Remastered offer us, what changes and innovations are there, is it good enough to make you buy it again if you’ve played it before? Let’s take a look together.
Story: Samus the Bounty Hunter in Action
Receiving a distress signal from a space station, Samus Aran answers the call and finds itself in a research center under attack by space pirates. As the pirates attack, they also cause some of the species being researched to escape. The real surprise is that Ridley, the main antagonist of the series, is still alive and has escaped. We manage to escape before the station destroys itself, but our suit is damaged. Samus follows Ripley to a planet called Tallon IV and her adventure begins here.
The story part of the game progresses in a very unusual way. There is no AI or anyone talking to us, our goal is eleminate enemies and repair our damaged armor. We learn what happened to the planet Tallon IV from the surrounding notes. If you don’t read them I guarantee you won’t have a clue what’s going on, Samus doesn’t even talk to itself. If you ask if this is a bad thing, we all know how badly badly written dialog hurts games. We just saw it with Atomic Heart.
Rocket Door Openers
We play Metroid Prime Remastered from a first-person perspective, but we can’t think of it as an FPS game. It’s very similar to the other games in the Metroid series, you explore the environment and upgrade your equipment, you can enter places you couldn’t reach before with new equipment. I want to say it’s a Metroidvania type of game, but the sentence sounds ridiculous, we’re already playing Metroid. We just have a different perspective.
Once we land on the planet, we are free to go and explore in any direction, the game doesn’t give us any directives. Anyway, most of the time we return to the places we’ve been to with the information that “this door cannot be opened yet”. We are in a 3-dimensional world and sometimes we need to look up or down to find the right path.
On the one hand, we’re dealing with enemies and on the other hand, we’re trying to restore our armor. At the beginning there is only a helmet with a attack mode and scanning. Scan mode gives information about noteworthy spots in the environment. When we scan enemies, it allows us to learn their weak points. Then comes the thermal and X-Ray vision, and we’ll find ourselves in situations.
Initially, the weapon has a normal attack, but with upgrades, it gains additional features such as rockets, charged attack, and different beams. Samus can also curl itself into a ball, roll through difficult places and drop bombs on the ground. These upgrades are useful in combat and also open up parts of the game that are normally inaccessible. It’s also fun to curl into a ball and roll across platforms like you’re playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Every upgrade we find in the game gives us access to more areas.
Don’t worry about the first-person perspective, the gameplay is very comfortable, and offers multiple options for aiming and hitting the target. You can move and attack easily with the dual analog support, and also use auto-aim if you want, which works very well. There’s also motion-sensing aiming support added in the Wii version, but it wasn’t for me, I didn’t use it much.
There are a lot of backtracking in the game, so you’ll be constantly returning to places and using your new equipment there. The map of the area shows you which item will be available, but other than that you have no guidance. So sometimes you’ll be wandering around not knowing what to do. Fortunately, each of the levels is so distinct and differentiated from each other that you won’t wonder “have I been here before?”.
The game has about 12 hours of gameplay. If you’re not used to the genre and have trouble figuring out what to do, it will take longer. I played the Wii version of the game for a short while, but I got lost and left it. Thanks to the Switch version, I had the chance to play it fully for the first time and I finished it in about 14 hours by looking around and reading the text.
Visuals and Performance
The biggest improvement in Metroid Prime Remastered is the visuals. Metroid Prime didn’t look bad, and even now I don’t think it has graphics that are overly distracting to the eye. In fact, when I first saw the Remastered I thought “is there a need”, but I was wrong, the graphics look great. Almost all the skins have been improved, the lighting effects have been enhanced and the environmental details look great. And the game runs at 60 FPS in both dock and handheld mode! And the graphics don’t look like mud in handheld mode!
We play most of the game from a first-person perspective, and the rare times we see Samus from the outside, we’re either in an elevator or in a ball. Metroid Prime Remastered does a great job of giving that “I’m the one behind the helmet” feeling. It’s raining and we see the drops, dust and mud accumulating. The detail I like the most is that we see Samus’ face reflected in the glass during the explosions happening near us. It’s such a small but beautiful detail that I can’t describe it.
The sound and music in the game are very good, I can say that the sounds are cleaner than in the Wii version, but I didn’t hear any serious changes. Since I never played the Gamecube version (I still don’t have a Gamecube console), I can’t comment on that. The soundtrack of the game is very good. They renewed some old music and added some new songs. I’m quite satisfied with it. There is a new section in the main menu where you can listen to the soundtrack and examine the models.
Conclusion
Metroid Prime Remastered is a great surprise for Nintendo Switch users. Metroid Prime is already a timeless classic, and Remastered is a great way to improve it in the best way possible and bring it to a new generation of players. It’s great that they’ve innovated in so many areas to attract new players, while also offering options for older players. The visuals are better than some of the newer games, and the sound and music are fantastic.
There’s one more thing to praise in our Metroid Prime Remastered review. Nintendo surprised us and offered this game for sale on the Nintendo Store for $40. I’m both happy and surprised that they are offering a classic game, and such a well-developed version of it, for $40. I hope they will continue this price policy.
If you own a Nintendo Switch, there are some games that I say you should definitely try, Metroid Prime Remastered easily enters that list. Good luck to Metroid Prime 2 and 3!
