Metroid Prime is one of those games that most marked the generation GameCube, quickly becoming a sort of milestone revered in the years to come, perhaps excessively compared to its real qualities. Developed by Retro Studios and released by Nintendo in 2002, the original game is a first-person adventure that combines action, exploration and puzzles typical of the Metroid series, but all framed in an unprecedented subjective view. Not a shooter in the strict sense, but an intriguing new way to explore an alien world as a Samus Aran. With Metroid Prime Remastered Nintendo therefore decided to dust off this little classic from the past, giving it new life on the only console that could pay homage to it properly, namely Switch. Perhaps, even to distract users from that Metroid Prime 4 that nobody knows anything about anymore.
Welcome back Samus
The story of Metroid Prime Remastered is exactly what we remembered: Samus Aran is sent on a mysterious planet called Tallon IV to investigate a series of mysterious signals coming from a space base. Once landed, Samus discovers who the planet is infested with alien creatures and from a radioactive substance known as phazonwhich has caused the contamination and death of a large part of the fauna and flora.
The heroine soon learns that the space base from which the signals came belonged to the Galactic Federation, which was conducting some research on the Phazon, also coveted by a group of Space Pirates unscrupulous intent on exploiting the substance for their purposes not properly. With the help of an AI called Aurora Unit 242Samus will be called upon to discover the origin of the Phazon, while also trying to stop the Space Pirates and destroy the source of the Phazon before it can cause further damage to the planet.
As mentioned above, Nintendo has decided to revive the first, historic, Metroid Prime in a new robe that meets the current generations of gamers. An operation that, without affecting the charm of the original game, manages to file the defects of the original title, which it wasn’t quite perfect. Listless homework, then? Not at all, since actually Metroid Prime Remastered has turned out to be one of the best-conceived remasters from the Grande Ndespite some shadows attributable mostly to the 2002 game.
First Person Adventure, today like yesterday
The gameplay of Metroid Prime is, in fact, a first-person Metroidvania (or ‘First Person Adventure’, as many like to remember it), capable of mixing action and first-person exploration, well before the genre became inflated. The control system it needed, unsurprisingly, one woken up, and so it was: the mechanism based on the double analog – one dedicated to Samus’ movement and one dedicated to moving the view – works, and is capable of meeting today’s standards. Incredible how the game works so well two decades after the original release, which underlines all the manpower put in place by Retro Studios.
Where the same cannot be said, unfortunately, is in regards to the level design of Metroid Prime Remastered, able to show not only the weight of the years, but also some questionable design choices that hadn’t convinced even at the time: the non-linear progression and the alternation between exploration and shooter phases are flanked by a asphyxiating backtrackingmade even more unbearable by the continuous respawn of enemies. If initially it does not seem to affect much, it is around the tenth hour of the game that boredom and frustration will begin to be felt. An auto-rescue system would certainly have helped to solve the problem, but apparently it has not even been taken into consideration in the slightest.
luck that, from a technical point of view, Metroid Prime Remastered does everything to please. From the glacial silence of Phendrana to the magma geysers of the Magmoor Caves, the various locations that Samus will be called upon to explore will continually surprise with her landscapes, as fascinating as they are architecturally complex. If with Super Mario 3D All-Stars and The Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword HD the remastering work had been harshly criticized by users, with Metroid Prime Remastered Retro Studios has shown that he can do it, properly squeezing a “small” console that still has a lot to say, especially on the technical side. Every explorable area has been redone from the ground up, adapting it to the 16:9 format against the 4:3 of the GameCube version, thanks also to a more fluid framing and reduced weapon swing, which translates into gunplay that remains anchored on 60 frames per second even in the most chaotic gaming sessions (and with instantaneous port loading).
In short, net of some distortions inherited from the original released over 20 years ago, Metroid Prime Remastered is a title that must be rediscovered, given that Samus’s debut in three dimensions is and remains a small jewel of inventiveness, today like yesterday.
Review
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Metroid Prime Remastered (Tried on Switch)
7.9Final vote
After more than 20 years since the original release, Samus has returned to explore the mysterious planet Tallon IV in her subjective view, for a remastering that brings with it strengths but also defects. Metroid Prime Remastered is in fact a great game, marred however by asphyxiating backtracking and a truly unacceptable respawn of enemies, capable of undermining an experience that is still intriguing and well conceived today. To be recovered, therefore, only if you are inveterate nostalgic or if you want to rediscover a small piece of history of the GameCube generation.
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