I completed Metroid Prime Remastered last week and was blown away by it. It's my game of the year so far.
Below is the entirety of my notes from the game. It's not really a fully fledged review but more like some thoughts and feelings (along with some screenshots) on how the game played.
- It's Zelda like in terms of puzzles, there's lots of times where you really need to search every part of the room to find the thing that needs to be scanned or shot at to progress, its all about being inquisitive
- Took a little bit of time to really master the controls and feel comfortable with the game however its still very approachable, it strikes the right balance
- There's a lot of backtracking, this is (in my understanding) how all Metroid games play but was new for me
- Speaking of backtracking, it's a nice feeling coming back to the same location with better weapons and beat everything easily when you might have struggled the first time
- You have to learn how to read the map in the pause menu, it's integral that you do this, even if you read a guide it can still be somewhat challenging to look at the map and actually find the room you need to get to
- The game is not so much about dying and beating bosses, you feel relatively strong throughout the game, it's mostly about exploration, you should be able to beat bosses after 2-3 tries
- In a couple of sections where there were lots of Space Pirates the game gets a bit harder (Phendrana Drifts and the Phazon Mines), Phendrana Drifts took me quite a few times to beat as its the first time where you need some combat skills, you need to learn the mechanics of the game properly and the attack patterns of the enemies
- The graphics are beautiful, it reminds me in some ways of the Jedi Knight games from the early 2000s, of course because its a remaster it looks way better than those games
- The shooting is really nice, I like how auto lock on works, makes the game much more accessible, jumping also feels really nice, generally moving is fluid, you feel super fast when in morph ball especially when rolling through tight spaces like pipes
- It's cool to have a female lead character
- The "map sections" all feel very different and alive, I feel like grass, fire and snow are a classic way to have different kinds of environments, but its always effective
- Love when the mask Samus is wearing fogs up or gets rain on it, it's really physically effected by the environment
- Music is on point, early 2000s electronic music hits
- Chozo Lore seems pretty interesting, whilst I personally didn't read all the Chozo messages it's a cool extra "story" element of the game, same applies to the Space Pirate logs
- Samus's final suit looks so cool
- The different visors are a cool gameplay element, x-ray and thermal especially
- Love it when the lights go out in the Space Pirate base on Phendrana Drifts, you have to fight your way out using the thermal visor, it really gets the heart racing
- Chozo ghosts are super hard to beat at first as they're invisible, but then you get the x-ray visor and they're super easy
- Progression from power beam to plasma beam feels awesome, plasma beam is so effective against the Space Pirates and you feel like a boss
- Samus looks kind of stressed out when you transition between areas, adds to the feel of tension
- Speaking of, the music really adds to this tension
Based on playing through the entire game I'm so hyped for Prime 4. Hoping it's in the style of the original 3D Prime game.