Metroid general

[DapperShark]

I loved the original Metroid Prime as a kid but for whatever reason I never played the sequels, I'm thinking of going through all 3 games. How's the Prime remaster? Wondering if I should emulate that or the original.

 

[Jason_Cruiser]

7/10

I hate how 7/10 today is treated like a 5 or 6. If a game is tolerable, but not bad, then a 5/10 is reasonable. If the game has its moments and can be fun, but is let down by some intrusive flaws then a 6/10 is fine. It's like in today's conscious 7/10 is treated as mediocre when in reality it should be seen as good.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

I hate how 7/10 today is treated like a 5 or 6. If a game is tolerable, but not bad, then a 5/10 is reasonable. If the game has its moments and can be fun, but is let down by some intrusive flaws then a 6/10 is fine. It's like in today's conscious 7/10 is treated as mediocre when in reality it should be seen as good.

Only if you play games.

The people in this thread don't actually play games.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

I hate how 7/10 today is treated like a 5 or 6. If a game is tolerable, but not bad, then a 5/10 is reasonable. If the game has its moments and can be fun, but is let down by some intrusive flaws then a 6/10 is fine. It's like in today's conscious 7/10 is treated as mediocre when in reality it should be seen as good.

I think the real issue here is games being released without major bugs or performance issues has become such a rare occurrence that people give too much credit to games based on the engine alone. Unreal Engine has shit loading/unloading lag that pauses the entire rest of the game for a stutter while it loads something so if a game is released on UE and it doesn't do that? so smooth because it clears a bar AAA studios often choose to ignore and just don't optimize anything.

So shitty AAA companies ruin the rating systems because their games are always a mess technically and they dictate what reviews are allowed to talk about so they have to soyface about it having marvel humor because that's so last decade instead of actually reviewing anything.

I feel like 10 point scales are too broad anyway. Do a 5 point scale and it's easy to decide if a game is a 2 or a 3 based on th simple question of "are you having fun playing the game or merely playing it to waste time?" Astro Bot was this was for me. It has cute moments but I can't really say I had fun playing it. It was just an acceptable thing to do, inoffensive, but coasting heavily on "no technical hiccups" and "ooh PlayStation nostalgia".

 

[Strangolapreti]

This is the sad thing, they could have done so much more with Samus, even if she never speaks. The amount of times an NPC would be like "Samus, can we count on you" where she doesn't even nod to the person asking her a question is insane. Samus is now officially a non-verbal autistic aro-ace tranny, I guess.

It all comes down to execution really, what should be the tl;dr for any Prime 4 review is the basic concept of "some stuff could have worked on paper, but was executed

I hate how 7/10 today is treated like a 5 or 6. If a game is tolerable, but not bad, then a 5/10 is reasonable. If the game has its moments and can be fun, but is let down by some intrusive flaws then a 6/10 is fine. It's like in today's conscious 7/10 is treated as mediocre when in reality it should be seen as good.

I am gonna repeat myself once more but I strongly believe in this: a mediocre title will always be worse than a bad one.
If you make shit, you and everyone that witnessed it will be forced to learn from your mistakes.
If you make mediocrity, your mistakes will be praised by retards and recycled by either yourself or someone else.

Even without that, speding 8 years of development to make something that's just mid the same year we got the product of almost 6 years that produced peak straight up shows that something went really wrong with MP4.

 

[derapples]

Wondering if I should emulate that or the original.

The remaster is good but I still think Prime hack is the best way to play the Trilogy

 

[mirai gadget 8]

Wondering if I should emulate that or the original.

Emulate the originals. Also don't play primehack, the original controls are still the best way to play all the games because using kb/m controls completely changes the feel of the games (for the worse)

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

If you can't play them on original hardware, chalk it up as a loss and play something else.

 

[CapricornusRex]

Who? Who the fuck said they want an open world Metroid game?? Had they ever played a Metroid game before when they said such a retarded thing???

View attachment 8331458

Fuck they listened to Reddit, didn't they?

We already have an open world Metroid game, it's called Monster Hunter, because that is all open world Metroid would devolve in to. Get new gear, kill monsters. Repeat.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

Get new gear, kill monsters. Repeat.

Sounds great! Maybe add some Dynasty Warriors.

 

[CapricornusRex]

https://arch.b4k.dev/v/thread/680286915/

LMAO. IT'S LITERALLY JUST MONSTER HUNTER.

 

[verissimus]

I hate how 7/10 today is treated like a 5 or 6. If a game is tolerable, but not bad, then a 5/10 is reasonable. If the game has its moments and can be fun, but is let down by some intrusive flaws then a 6/10 is fine. It's like in today's conscious 7/10 is treated as mediocre when in reality it should be seen as good.

Personally I don't even see why people bother with number ratings in the first place. Just rate something along the lines of rent (or perhaps buy at a discount), buy (full price, deluxe edition or whatever), buy and recommend the game to a friend, or don't even bother playing the game for free.

Alternatively tell me how well a particular game measures up to what the consensus considers to be the best of the best for certain types of games. I'm not interested in playing say an RPG that is bad as if not worse than say Avowed.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

Personally I don't even see why people bother with number ratings in the first place. Just rate something along the lines of rent (or perhaps buy at a discount), buy (full price, deluxe edition or whatever), buy and recommend the game to a friend, or don't even bother playing the game for free.

Alternatively tell me how well a particular game measures up to what the consensus considers to be the best of the best for certain types of games. I'm not interested in playing say an RPG that is bad as if not worse than say Avowed.

It was fun!

 

[Lone MacReady II]

I loved the original Metroid Prime as a kid but for whatever reason I never played the sequels, I'm thinking of going through all 3 games. How's the Prime remaster? Wondering if I should emulate that or the original.

Once you see Sanctuary Fortress or Elysia you'll probably understand that while Prime 4 is graphically impressive (for the underpowered switch), it isn't as artistically impressive as older Prime games. It isn't even as artistically consistent. When you see Luminoth tech in Echoes, you know it's Luminoth tech, but in Prime 4 they want you to believe the creators of the volt forge also made the buildings in fury green... You don't go from beautiful nature loving ruins to EVIL SPIKED THUNDER BASE. Volt forge looks like a completely different race and culture created it from fury green or the chrono tower. More evidence there wasn't a singular creative vision in Prime 4. The Luminoth didn't look like the Ing because they were polar opposites. The Chozo did not build like the space pirates because they were polar opposites. The Lamourn's architecture and facilities are all over the place depending on where you go.

A pattern I've noticed with long time Metroid fan's reactions to Prime 4 is they will list everything wrong with the game and unrelentlessly call it dog shit but then at the end of the rant say it was "okay" and give it a 7/10. Vinny Vinesauce finshed the game a few days ago and had pretty much that exact reaction and now Nerrel is doing the same thing

Yeah that shit is annoying and ultimately a cope. Here's the thing, these guys are Metroid fans but caught in "the trap".

"The Trap" is, if they buy nuMetroid, they tell goytendo that this is the Metroid they want more of, but they don't actually want more of this, they want more classic Prime. Yet, if they don't buy it and if they butcher it with bad review scores, they tell goytendo that they don't want more Metroid Prime ever again, which isn't true. So, they think to have their cake and eat it too, which will never work. They want to buy the game to make sure they don't kill Metroid, but they also can't give it perfect scores or jerk it off too much because nuMetroid isn't really what they want - but they also cannot criticize nuMetroid too harshly because again, they don't want to kill Metroid. So they buy the game, feel horrible while playing it, slam it by every metric, then bafflingly settle on a milquetoast, "Yeah there's good and bad to the game, it isn't what I wanted at all but.... 7.5/10".

The thing is, that isn't going to work. Bad sales will get goytendo to shelve it no matter what review score they give it, and good sales regardless of how terrible nuMetroid is will cause goytendo to start dumping out Metroid Prime - Infinites left and right. Goytendo isn't gamers anymore, it is japanese suits, and worse yet they are suits who want to be (((american))) suits to get them shekels forever. Mauler's playthrough was pretty funny, he gave it a 4/10 for being a little below average. The ending was hilarious.

 

[DapperShark]

Once you see Sanctuary Fortress or Elysia you'll probably understand that while Prime 4 is graphically impressive (for the underpowered switch), it isn't as artistically impressive as older Prime games. It isn't even as artistically consistent. When you see Luminoth tech in Echoes, you know it's Luminoth tech, but in Prime 4 they want you to believe the creators of the volt forge also made the buildings in fury green... You don't go from beautiful nature loving ruins to EVIL SPIKED THUNDER BASE. Volt forge looks like a completely different race and culture created it from fury green or the chrono tower. More evidence there wasn't a singular creative vision in Prime 4. The Luminoth didn't look like the Ing because they were polar opposites. The Chozo did not build like the space pirates because they were polar opposites. The Lamourn's architecture and facilities are all over the place depending on where you go.

Based on what I've seen and what people here have been saying, I'm probably not even gonna bother pirating Prime 4 tbh.

 

[Soggy Floppa]

When you see Luminoth tech in Echoes, you know it's Luminoth tech, but in Prime 4 they want you to believe the creators of the volt forge also made the buildings in fury green... You don't go from beautiful nature loving ruins to EVIL SPIKED THUNDER BASE. Volt forge looks like a completely different race and culture created it from fury green or the chrono tower

I actually read some of the scans, there were multiple "ages" where they went from the Machine age into the Psychic age, hence the difference in building style. The scans read more like rough developer notes and some of them even gave of LLM vibes, like if you scan the Sarge guy it says hes (paraphrasing) "known for his impressive strength", that's not a scan, that's just a character description on a concept sheet, not even a good one at that.

 

[Computer Guardian]

Emulate the originals. Also don't play primehack, the original controls are still the best way to play all the games because using kb/m controls completely changes the feel of the games (for the worse)

To be fair though, you can also use controllers with Primehack, which does smooth over the awkward button mapping you have to deal with on Dolphin for the Prime trilogy compared to every other gamecube game needing to work off the non-traditional button layout it had.

 

[Kit Marz]

I loved the original Metroid Prime as a kid but for whatever reason I never played the sequels, I'm thinking of going through all 3 games. How's the Prime remaster? Wondering if I should emulate that or the original.

I like the prime remaster a lot. Main thing I don't like is how blurry the thermal visor is, but everything else is great. Prime hack is good, someone else said they don't like it, but the gamecube controller scheme always gave me motion sickness, even with hud lag turned off. If it doesn't give you motion sickness, then the gamecube versions of one and two on dolphin would be good. I'd still recommend prime hack for prime 3

 

[Retarded Weeb]

With Metroid Prime 4 finally out, I got around to playing... Metroid: Other M. Because I figured why not, I can judge the game for myself

Gameplay was eeeeeh. By the end I got mostly used to the controls and started to sort groove with it, but the big issue is that it never really feels good to play. It can be annoying at times having to rely on the auto-aim to shoot things, I feel retarded having to mash the D-pad in short taps to i-frame dodge attacks instead of just moving out of the way, and having to spin the Wii remote around to aim at the screen to shoot missiles (with you being unable to move or dodge while you're doing it) feels really awkward (that one's the worst point). Enemies also feel like they're too damage-spongy because they want you to use these cinematic finishers to kill them, but it's hard to see among the chaos of a group swarming you when one is in a stunned animation where you can finish them. It can also be annoying how every area has a fixed camera like you're playing a game with pre-rendered backgrounds, since it can be hard to react to shit that's off-screen because you entered a hallway from the far end.

An impression I got is that the animations and fighting is probably closer to what the developers imagine Samus is "really" doing in-universe, without the abstraction of a side-view like the mainline games or the constant first-person of the Prime games. But it's too bad Sakamoto was so insistent on making the game playable with just the Wii remote, because the compromises made to accomplish that brings the whole game down.

The game is super linear too. Even Fusion gives you some more room to run around. Other M doesn't even let you freely explore or collect some upgrades until the story is already over and you're in a post-game scenario. Technically all the Metroid games lock you into a path to an extent, but they usually hide it well. Other M makes it really obvious with how often it arbitrarily locks doors to previous areas, as well as how many rooms are just hallways. Truly the Final Fantasy XIII of the Metroid series. The game also has these like, cinematic set pieces where you need to do something in particular like doing a QTE to progress, but the game feels really bad on conveying what to do or that you need to do anything. I think like 90% of my game overs were from these and not when I playing the game normally. And the thing with set pieces like this is that they need to be easy to do, because if the player has the see and do them again after failing the first time then they mostly feel annoying instead of cool.

Of course, the story is the aspect that was so controversial. Well, I played the game in Japanese, and so I got a bit of different story from the English localization it seems. And my impression is that it was... fine? It was mostly inoffensive concepts with mediocre execution. Samus's English voice acting seems too monotone a lot of the time, but I thought her Japanese voice acting was good. Her personality didn't seem out of line with how she acts in other games, like say Fusion. Adam also comes off pretty reasonable in Japanese, I think the English script and voice direction also fucks with how he comes off. They obviously had some bigger ideas for the other members of Adam's team and the traitor plot, you can see in the in-game gallary they have a bunch of personality description on their concept art that you don't really get any of in the actual game, but yeah, it doesn't feel like it amounts to much in execution. It's funny that the player is shown what they need to to figure out who the traitor is, but Samus never quite gets the information to puzzle it out for sure herself in-universe.

Probably the biggest issue with the writing is that it's just overly wordy. Samus monologues so much stuff that could've just been shown and not told. Sometimes she narrates something happening that we literally see happen at the same time. It makes it feel like the story should have been told as a book and not a video game. Maybe they could have dug into the sub-plots some more then and people wouldn't have hated it so much. The other smaller issue is that conceptually, the plot is too much of a retread of Fusion but taking place before it. Like, this means Samus encountered two different Galactic Federation conspiracies to clone Metroids and produce superweapons in two different biological research satellites, one right after the other. That's just silly. I'll add that the game does have some nice atmosphere and detail to the environments if you really pay attention, but the gameplay really got in the way of getting immersed into things.

Overall I'd give the game uhhhh, a C-. In number terms, like that's like a 5/10. It's worse than any mainline game or the Prime trilogy, but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to replay either Other M or Prime Hunters, I'd probably go with Other M. Trying to play an FPS with a DS touch screen is just awful.

By the way, can any Switch emulator play Prime 4 yet?

 

[derapples]

Talking in this thread made that Metroid itch come back so I started playing a ROM hack called X-Fusion. It actualy got brought up earlier in the thread but it wasn't talked about in too much detail.

People made pretty big deal when it came out so I thought I'd finally give it a shot. Boy lemme tell ya, my play time is only 1:09 but this is already the most impressive Metroid hack I've seen from a technical perspective, and I've played my fair share of Metroid hacks both GBA and Super.
Just gonna list off a bunch of cool shit the mod has shown so far
-4 bosses so far despite only being an hour in. 3 of them are revamped fights from Fusion and Super with new attacks and arenas to make them more challenging and 1 totally unique boss that I loved
-B.O.X. is a controlable mech you use to get past lava, thought a bit jank, I thought it was really cool. You even use him during a boss fight which I found really fun
-A dialogue system, though your choices don't seem to matter it is neat to see.
-And my favourite so far, you can change the water levels in sector AQA. The area has been redesigned around this turning the whole area into a sort of puzzle. Think the water temple from OoT

As far as level design, it is still very Fusion. You are funneled into specific areas and Adam gives you objective markers. So if you hate Fusion you'll likely hate this. I do find it fun to see Fusion's map remade in this way. Areas are recognizable and even specific rooms look exactly like their Fusion counter parts but they're kinda mixed and matched. It reminds me of that "Mario 64 made from memory" mod from a few years ago, but this mixing up of the order and areas is clearly intentional. I also like the way SA-X is handled. It is made clear that there are several SA-X right from the start and you can run into them while exploring. They only spawn in specific rooms and a unique theme will start playing when you enter a room with a SA-X. So when you go through a door and hear that music your options are either turn around or get ready to juke, because if they see you they will chase you through the whole area. And they deal mutiple energy tanks per hit which in the early game is a 1 hit kill.
There's also a bunch of dificulties to choose from.

I'm currently playing through the game on normal. Samus' HP and the damage output of enemies feels on par with Zero Mission's hard mode. Though I think it's harder than Zero Mission's hard mode mainly because the bosses are lot more challenging and dynamic than Zero Mission's. I made another file on hard to see how much of a difference there was, this is when the game really blew me away. Not only is enemy damage increased but the map and areas are changed too. The start of the game on normal goes >initial "fake" boss fight (think first Ridley fight in SM) >escape sequence >small area with minor enemies and save station >first real boss. On the hard it goes >"fake" boss >a different escape sequence with more challenging platforming that has required wall jumps and a SA-X starts chasing you in the second half >one small room with no save station or minor enemies to get health from >first real boss. If you die on the first boss on hard you have to start from the very begining.
All around, I'm really liking it so far and I'll probably make another post once I'm done with the mod.