Christi Junior on Nostr: So the original Metroid Prime is obviously amazing (hot take, I know), but what does ...
So the original Metroid Prime is obviously amazing (hot take, I know), but what does the remaster add to it? Well, for starters it adds the various new control options that I talked about at the beginning, and certainly motion aiming alone is a big improvement over the GameCube original. It’s been so many years since I played the Wii port that I can’t reliably say which one has the better motion aiming, but I certainly had no complaints about gyro aiming in the remaster *once I figured out how to enable it in the customization options*.
However, the BIG change is obviously in the graphics department, where the game looks like it has been redone from the ground up. I remember not being all that impressed by what I saw during the Nintendo Direct, but that footage obviously didn’t do the game justice, because the actual graphical upgrade is massive. Far from being just a simple upscaling, this old GameCube game has been turned into what’s EASILY one of the best-looking games on the Switch, looking super clean, sharp and detailed, with a wonderful art direction, as well as great lighting and textures by Switch standards. With exception of a couple of shoddy-looking explosions that kinda betray its GameCube origins, Metroid Prime Remastered is right up there with Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Kirby: The Forgotten Land as far as Switch eye candy goes.
Thanks to these enhancements, Metroid Prime 1 both looks and plays like a dream, barely ever showing its age. Which is good news in more ways than one, because this certainly bodes well for the upcoming Metroid Prime 4. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Metroid Prime Remastered ends up being the better-looking games of the two, for the same reason that Xenoblade: Definitive Edition ended up boasting both a higher resolution and a more consistent framerate than Xenoblade 3. Simply put, GameCube and Wii games will almost inevitably be less ambitious, not just in terms of execution, but also in terms of concept compared to their HD console sequels. Metroid Prime 4 is pretty much guaranteed to feature bigger and busier areas than Prime 1, along with putting more monsters on screen at the same time while probably being a bigger game in general, and given the Switch’s obvious technical limitations, that will probably come at the cost of either resolution or framerate, possibly both. A game like Prime 1 by contrast did nothing that would seriously tax the Switch, so the guys behind the remaster could just focus on making the game a feast for the eyes, while at the same time managing to keep the remaster locked at 60 FPS.
While I’ve absolutely loved Metroid Prime Remastered, I do consider it somewhat overrated in at least one regard. Ever since it came out, people and journalists have been referring to the game as one of, if not the best Nintendo remasters ever, which definitely seems excessive. As well as the remaster does everything it sets out do, at the end of the day it’s not all that ambitious, the enhancements primarily amounting to a big graphical upgrade, more control options and various minor tweaks, along with other minor changes that hardcore Metroid Prime fans have called out as outright downgrades (like a clunkier charge shot, worse Space Pirate AI and even some missing visual details and nice little touches from the original). Now, I hadn’t revisited Prime 1 for many years prior to playing the remaster, so none of those issues (except the charge shot change) really resonated with me, but they are nonetheless worth noting, and while they don’t prevent Prime Remastered from easily being the best version of Prime 1, it does further call its “Perfect Remaster” status into question.
Obviously it’s a far superior remaster compared to the lazy rushjob that the first three 3D Mario games got in the Mario 3D All-Stars. It’s also obviously superior to something like Twilight Princess HD, which received a much more underwhelming HD overhaul and still basically looks dated and somewhat unappealing. But even another supposedly low-effort remaster in the form of Skyward Sword HD actually made A LOT of real, substantial improvements to the original game, while also making it far more accessible by adding a full button-control setup as an alternative to its trademark motion controls. The more stylized art style of SS had also aged pretty well, some goofy faces notwithstanding, and the game now runs at 1080p/60 FPS, the gold standard for Switch games. The Wind Waker HD meanwhile fixed most of the original game’s glaring issues, while also representing a huge visual upgrade. Is it really THAT obvious that Metroid Prime Remastered is a better *remaster* than those two? And they aren’t even the best Nintendo remasters out there: Ocarina of Time 3D added portability (many years before the Switch became a thing), a huge visual upgrade, various control- and interface improvements, as well as additional content, including the entire GameCube-era Master Quest version of the game, with all of OoT 3D’s other improvements enhancing that experience as well. Xenoblade: Definitive Edition meanwhile gave Xenoblade 1 a massive graphical upgrade, added tons of quality of life improvements and new features AND added brand new content in the form of a Challenge Mode and a 10 hour long epilogue campaign.
And it’s not like there was *nothing* that needed fixing in Prime 1. For starters, it has a shocking amount of missable scans (enemies, bosses, objects etc) for a game that keeps track of your completion as closely as a Prime 1 does. Enemies respawn at an excessive rate (if you’ve exited one room, then immediately remember that there was something else you wanted to do there and return, chances are you’ll be greeted by some old “friends”), and while Metroid Dread might have gone too far in outright showing which rooms contained uncollected power-ups, there’s no reason Prime 1 couldn’t have taken another page out of OoT’s book and simply showed on the (otherwise excellent) map which rooms and areas had been 100% cleared of collectibles. There are plenty of other similar tweaks the people behind the remaster could have made, but didn’t. That doesn’t stop it from being a wonderful remaster overall, but it’s certainly not nearly as perfect as some people make it out to be.
However, the BIG change is obviously in the graphics department, where the game looks like it has been redone from the ground up. I remember not being all that impressed by what I saw during the Nintendo Direct, but that footage obviously didn’t do the game justice, because the actual graphical upgrade is massive. Far from being just a simple upscaling, this old GameCube game has been turned into what’s EASILY one of the best-looking games on the Switch, looking super clean, sharp and detailed, with a wonderful art direction, as well as great lighting and textures by Switch standards. With exception of a couple of shoddy-looking explosions that kinda betray its GameCube origins, Metroid Prime Remastered is right up there with Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Kirby: The Forgotten Land as far as Switch eye candy goes.
Thanks to these enhancements, Metroid Prime 1 both looks and plays like a dream, barely ever showing its age. Which is good news in more ways than one, because this certainly bodes well for the upcoming Metroid Prime 4. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Metroid Prime Remastered ends up being the better-looking games of the two, for the same reason that Xenoblade: Definitive Edition ended up boasting both a higher resolution and a more consistent framerate than Xenoblade 3. Simply put, GameCube and Wii games will almost inevitably be less ambitious, not just in terms of execution, but also in terms of concept compared to their HD console sequels. Metroid Prime 4 is pretty much guaranteed to feature bigger and busier areas than Prime 1, along with putting more monsters on screen at the same time while probably being a bigger game in general, and given the Switch’s obvious technical limitations, that will probably come at the cost of either resolution or framerate, possibly both. A game like Prime 1 by contrast did nothing that would seriously tax the Switch, so the guys behind the remaster could just focus on making the game a feast for the eyes, while at the same time managing to keep the remaster locked at 60 FPS.
While I’ve absolutely loved Metroid Prime Remastered, I do consider it somewhat overrated in at least one regard. Ever since it came out, people and journalists have been referring to the game as one of, if not the best Nintendo remasters ever, which definitely seems excessive. As well as the remaster does everything it sets out do, at the end of the day it’s not all that ambitious, the enhancements primarily amounting to a big graphical upgrade, more control options and various minor tweaks, along with other minor changes that hardcore Metroid Prime fans have called out as outright downgrades (like a clunkier charge shot, worse Space Pirate AI and even some missing visual details and nice little touches from the original). Now, I hadn’t revisited Prime 1 for many years prior to playing the remaster, so none of those issues (except the charge shot change) really resonated with me, but they are nonetheless worth noting, and while they don’t prevent Prime Remastered from easily being the best version of Prime 1, it does further call its “Perfect Remaster” status into question.
Obviously it’s a far superior remaster compared to the lazy rushjob that the first three 3D Mario games got in the Mario 3D All-Stars. It’s also obviously superior to something like Twilight Princess HD, which received a much more underwhelming HD overhaul and still basically looks dated and somewhat unappealing. But even another supposedly low-effort remaster in the form of Skyward Sword HD actually made A LOT of real, substantial improvements to the original game, while also making it far more accessible by adding a full button-control setup as an alternative to its trademark motion controls. The more stylized art style of SS had also aged pretty well, some goofy faces notwithstanding, and the game now runs at 1080p/60 FPS, the gold standard for Switch games. The Wind Waker HD meanwhile fixed most of the original game’s glaring issues, while also representing a huge visual upgrade. Is it really THAT obvious that Metroid Prime Remastered is a better *remaster* than those two? And they aren’t even the best Nintendo remasters out there: Ocarina of Time 3D added portability (many years before the Switch became a thing), a huge visual upgrade, various control- and interface improvements, as well as additional content, including the entire GameCube-era Master Quest version of the game, with all of OoT 3D’s other improvements enhancing that experience as well. Xenoblade: Definitive Edition meanwhile gave Xenoblade 1 a massive graphical upgrade, added tons of quality of life improvements and new features AND added brand new content in the form of a Challenge Mode and a 10 hour long epilogue campaign.
And it’s not like there was *nothing* that needed fixing in Prime 1. For starters, it has a shocking amount of missable scans (enemies, bosses, objects etc) for a game that keeps track of your completion as closely as a Prime 1 does. Enemies respawn at an excessive rate (if you’ve exited one room, then immediately remember that there was something else you wanted to do there and return, chances are you’ll be greeted by some old “friends”), and while Metroid Dread might have gone too far in outright showing which rooms contained uncollected power-ups, there’s no reason Prime 1 couldn’t have taken another page out of OoT’s book and simply showed on the (otherwise excellent) map which rooms and areas had been 100% cleared of collectibles. There are plenty of other similar tweaks the people behind the remaster could have made, but didn’t. That doesn’t stop it from being a wonderful remaster overall, but it’s certainly not nearly as perfect as some people make it out to be.