Topic: Metroid Prime 4: The Long(er) Wait

@Dezzy There's room for improvement, but it's certainly better than all other types of 'ground clutter.' Frankly I hate it when grass gets in the way of looking at your character and viewing animations. That wasn't a problem 7th gen had.

@Haru17

Why not? I'm not aware of many differences. Or do you just mean because they had less foliage with the less powerful systems?

@Dezzy Yeah. Twilight Princess, Monster Hunter Tri, and Skyrim were excellent with flat, see-able ground. In games with ground clutter — Breath of the Wild included — it becomes a problem just to find dropped items. That's something that got worse in 8th gen.

I think it's hilarious when people talk about Monster Hunter: World looking worse than other PS4 games, because it actually found a way around that issue by setting most of the areas in its forest map in roots and bramble, limiting the tall grass to specific functions like Uncharted 4 and older 3D Zelda games.

The other thing that kept me from jumping off the edge was that I was worried about an automatic game over. It's good to know that nothing too punishing happens from that. XD

I'm curious to see what else Sanctuary Fortress has in store, though hopefully there aren't too many more enemy types (other than, apparently, the temple guardian) worse than the Quads.

Yep! The new all-purpose Metroid thread, though it's more or less catering to the Prime crowd for now.

(Sorry for the delayed response, btw. I've been very busy these last couple of days....)

I'm surprised no one's talked about how awesome rezbits are. I mean, they're annoying, but that's one of the weirdest and coolest enemy attacks I've seen in any game (and I've played the Mother series). And they're also such a random design and how it moves is weird, it's so great.

Again, really would've liked to see a Rezbit boss in the game, a Rezbit boss would be pretty intense.

I wonder if Metroid Prime 4 will stick with save stations and endgame item collection quests. While there is a lot of backtracking, the artifact quest is quite fun in Prime 1. Some of the clues are very obvious but others require thinking.

Rezbits are definitely unique. They're not too annoying, I really like their design, and their virus attack is pretty cool.

(Incoming novel alert)

I played for a decent while last night. First things first, I tried leaving Sanctuary Fortress for a bit to try and hit up some Spider Ball tracks in the other areas. I ran into Dark Samus, who oh so nicely destroyed that awesome bridge. Thankfully, I worked out how to get across while only falling into nothingness a few times.

Past that area, I did a LOT more exploring with my new Spider Ball, though that only yielded a couple more Missile Expansions at first.

I finally got one of those lovely "Data received" messages and found a new portal to Dark Aether around Torvus's Hydrochamber. Surprise surprise, I found the Power Bomb Guardian. This was a fight that I quite enjoyed since it was another puzzle. It wasn't difficult at all, though the Inglets were a pain at one point.

Before I knew it, I had Power Bombs at my disposal. As much as I wanted to abuse them on those yellow doors scattered around, that's hard to do since you only get two charges. I have yet to find any PB Expansions. I DID get another Missile Expansion as a result of the Power Bombs.

I also ran across an interesting area through another Power Bomb door that, eventually (after some puzzling) yielded the Light Burst. That came in handy shortly after as I was beset on by some Dark Troopers. I made (relatively) quick work of them, and the Dark Visor came in handy here so that I could track enemy movements.

Finally going back to the Sanctuary Fortress, I found that the game is more than happy to throw plenty more Ingsmashers my way. I made my way back to an area from before (I forget the exact name, but it's a type of generator room near that awesome save station Haru and I were going on about) and stopped the second rotating piece of machinery. It had a Spider Ball track on it, and though I could easily see that I had to boost through some weakened glass, it took awhile to actually DO that properly, so I fell off and into the bottom...a lot.

When I FINALLY managed to get through the glass, it turns out I had no Power Bomb ammo left for the door on the other side.

[Fast-forward to where Tyranexx finally refilled on Power Bombs]

After blasting the door open, I found Samus's better darker half tangling with some Space Pirates (yay), and then proceed to begin absorbing more Phazon from some containers there (not yay). I refilled on ammo and health in a storage room, prepared for a fight, then...nothing. Dark Samus was gone. At least...until I found the elevator.

First of all, kudos to Retro for how they staged this fight. The build-up to it was great, the elevator "warm-up" was cool, and the area where most of the fight occurred was well-designed. I was definitely way more impressed with Dark Samus this time around than the first (meh) fight.

That said, it was a difficult one. I was constantly moving, dodging, firing, wasting ammo, switching between the Dark Visor and Combat Visor...it was great. A bit frustrating at times, but great. And how the fight ended? The defeated Dark Samus "jumped to its death".

After all that excitement, I was surprised there wasn't an upgrade of sorts waiting. That was remedied by finding a portal to Dark Aether, working out a small puzzle there, phasinf back to Aether, and was then rewarded for my efforts by finding the Echo Visor.

This device is definitely more unique than the Dark Visor. I used it to activate an elevator back down to the area where my fight started, and then unlocked the doors from there. Before leaving to save (at the cool Save Station again) and stop for the night, I noticed that those Phazon containers were now gone. In their place was a hole that had been forcibly ripped open from below....

Hmmm....I definitely don't think I've seen the last of Dark Samus.

@Tyranexx The enemies in the Sunburst room are actually Dark Pirate Commandos. The actual troopers you saw Dark Samus blast were actually Dark Troopers, which puts to rest the possible notion that she's from Dark Aether, let alone affiliated with the Ing.

The Echo Visor is a cool concept, but unfortunately it's extremely situational compared to the Dark one, which offers much better visibility of both enemies and terrain.

I've said it before under spoilers and I'll say it again: I hated that they put the Power Bomb Guardian in Dark Torvus. Ing Hive could've really used an extra boss there, as is there's pretty much nothing to do there except collect Temple Keys, find expansions, and fight the Temple Guardian (you're actually not far from that point now, there's one more mission before you can find the last Hive key to face him). We definitely needed a backtracking mission in Torvus (as backtracking is a major gameplay element), but not for the Power Bomb Guardian, they should've put something else there. That's one of my main disappointments in this game.

As far as where to get more Power Bombs, I can tell you a couple of Power Bomb Expansion locations if you're interested in finding more:

Go nuts. There's a TON of things that open up once you get the Spider Ball and Power Bombs, as you've probably noticed by how many Spider Ball tracks and Denzium obstacles you've seen throughout the game.

And yeah, the Echo Visor is pretty gimmicky, it's like the X-Ray Visor but with the Thermal Visors "activate the nodes" gimmick (which become even more pronounced once you get the last Beam weapon). Again, pretty much a reskin of the last game's abilities.

I think the main areas that could've done with being larger from the first 2 games are Ing Hive, Magmoor Caverns and Phazon Mines. Especially Magmoor Caverns, that area feels more like a forced backtracking region rather than a proper area to explore.

Magmoor Caverns needed a shortcut to be able to unlock to be able to quickly move from the middle to the Chozo Ruins connected entrance

Yeah, those three areas could all do with some expansions and extra missions, they're all so painfully linear and barren. IDK what it is with late game Metroid areas, most of them seem to be linear and not have a lot of content. Even Super Metroid is guilty of that too with Maridia, the entire area is basically a linearfest to Draygon and beyond that it's just expansions and optional powerups.

I have a feeling they might've run out of time with making earlier areas more elaborate. I mean, Ing Hive was probably out of a desire to heavily use the portals too (LOOK AT ALL THE JUMPING BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARK WORLD YOU'RE DOING, IT'S CRAAAAAZY)

It definitely does feel like they ran out of time for some aspects of this game. The big thing that sticks out to me is the lack of a Dark World version of the Splinter Hive, that's such a large and glaring omission and we have that one cutscene with Dark Samus where we go to one room in that section but can't actually explore it. I have a feeling they initially meant for you to access that section from Accursed Lake and instead of getting the Sky Temple Key there you would have to get it in the Splinter Hive. It does seem like they hastily blocked off what would be the door to the next room with Ingclaws.

As for Ing Hive, they definitely could've made better use of the areas even as is. The entire lower section of Ing Hive was pointless other than one scan and another Sky Temple Key.

That doesn't really excuse either issue, since linearity has nothing to do with how far in the game you are, and there's tons of expansions late game. The problem is map design and distribution of power ups. You shouldn't be getting 90% of Samus' abilities 2/3 of the way through the game.

Like Samus, Sylux's giveaway feature is his shoulder pads .

I like to imagine he was the reason that Samus was captured by the Space Pirates, not necessarily working with them directly though in Federation Force. Since the two teasers don't really have any link between them other than Sylux, Prime 3's likely leads into Federation Force whereas the latter will lead to 4.

I've gotta replay FF eventually. Would love to go through it again without the fear for the franchise that I had when I played it the first time

@meleebrawler: Ah, thanks for the corrections. There was a sleep cycle between that long play session and post, so a few of the finer points were a bit foggy. XD I knew those Dark Commandos in the Sunburst room weren't the normal variant, but I couldn't remember the exact type when posting.

The scripted event between the Dark Troopers and Dark Samus started when I was still a decent ways away and not paying attention. She more or less decimated them right as I got to the window, so I didn't know what exact creature type they were other than Troopers. Still, that's interesting that the Ing and DS have no affiliation despite some of the evidence (Phazon) suggesting otherwise.

I'm in general agreement with everyone else at this point regarding the Echo Visor. The concept is cool, but the Dark Visor is definitely more useful.

@Bolt_Strike: Thanks for providing a couple of Power Bomb expansion locations. I may come back and look under the spoilers if I get too fed up looking for expansions.

I'm definitely hoping to "go nuts" even more than I have been. XD

Phazon Mines and Magmoor Caverns from MP1 definitely could have used more work. Phazon Mines was tolerable, but I went from liking the Magmoor area to absolutely hating traipsing across it. The music grated on my nerves before long.

This quite accurately describes my experience with the game last night. I only played for about an hour, and it DID involve a lot of portal jumping.

I finally got my first key for the area from the Dark Aether variant of the room where I fought a lot of Ingsmashers (and Dark Commandos in this variant), finally found a Power Bomb expansion, and later on, a Missile Expansion.

I also fought a sort of maintenance drone or something in a tube, and while the fight was unique, I found it to be a bit meh.

In fairness I don't think I've played a single game with a portal mechanic where the end isn't just you spamming that portal / dimension shift.