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

Eeeeehhhm, excuse me, Nintendo Labo actually is a new IP. /s

Labo strikes me as the kind of project that, if it's not possible to be done by one studio alone, you'd want the teams doing each thing (software + peripherals) to communicate as easily as possible. Why involve Retro at all?

Chances are Retro was working on something after Tropical Freeze that got canned or at least heavily reworked mid-production, for whatever reason. 5 years is a long ass time for a prolific ~90 people studio to not put out anything.

The only reason I might think Retro developed Labo is that Nintendo is being very coy about who developed Labo. They may fear a backlash if it's revealed that that is what Retro has been working on.

@Haru17 Horror isn't as unprecedented as you make it out to be. They did publish Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem after all, and to a lesser extent Geist (such a mediocre game for an amazing concept... though it was resurrected in some ways with Super Mario Odyssey)

I'm not sure how to take the rumor of Bandai Namco working on Prime 4, but I can only hope that a lot of QA checking in about...well, EVERYTHING is going on. Granted, I'm still taking this with some salt until we know for 100% certainty. (Though there seems to be some credence to this rumor)

As for Retro....While I suspect it may be another DKC game of sorts, knowing their track record, it's bound to be a decent game.

As someone who was skeptical about MercurySteam's involvement with Samus Returns, Bamco deserves the vote of confidence. They've worked on Smash, Mario Kart, Pokkén and Star Fox, off the top of my mind, and it's not like the team won't be heavily supervised by Nintendo reps.

@MarcelRguez The (rumoured) team behind Prime 4 didn't make those games though. That would be like saying Kirby is guaranteed to be a good platformer, because Nintendo also made Tropical Freeze. They kinda did, but HAL isn't Retro Studios.

A better comparison would be Star Wars 1313, since it's rumoured that some of the people behind that game are working on Prime 4.

@Octane Of course, but those games weren't developed by the same team either. I'm just pointing out that the teams at Bandai Namco, plural, have worked well enough with Nintendo in the past. I'm not saying it's a guaranteed success, I'm just saying it's not a receipt for disaster.

About the Star Wars 1313 thing, turns out Jason Schreier commented on ERA that it's a bit of a misleading point to make, since the people employed in Bamco weren't the creative drive behind the game, just people doing grunt work. That tampers my excitement a bit, but it's nothing too major.

I honestly feel like this Bandai Namco rumor is overselling Bandai Namco having any relevance to the actual game. I feel like this might be another situation where "YEP NINTENDO SURE DID HIRE GUYS TO HELP MAKE THEIR GAME" with zero interest in anyone in Bandai Namco having significant creative control over anything in the game.

I actually think Bandai Namco could do a great job on Metroid. Don't get me wrong Retro could do a good job but a new team full of new ideas with Nintendo providing a guiding hand well that gets me excited.

...You didn't get what he was saying at all, did you? Point is: Singapore didn't make any of the games you may like Bandai Namco for, they're a support studio at best. Even MercurySteam had lead development on AAA games before. Nintendo probably didn't want to invest and get someone good for a 3D Metroid like they've gone cheap on the majority of their 8th gen releases.

I don't think that, because what does Bandai Namco games have relevance to successfully creating a new Metroid Prime game? Other than "they are good at their job" or "have made other good video games". In which case, they could've hired a wide variety of people in a wide variety of companies?

My point is, I don't see this even being a particularly interesting aspect of developing this game. Like Smash Bros 4 without Pacman, more or less. :V

It's like saying Mario Kart 7 sure did need people from Retro Studios or Star Fox Zero was somehow the idea of Platinum Games.

@Haru17 You seem to be under the impression that the team who made, say, Mario Kart Arcade GP was one of Namco's A-list teams and not a studio of the same caliber as Singapore. What you're saying only applies to Smash and Pokkén, and not to stuff like Assault or MK.

As I said, the main point here is that, historically speaking, Nintendo-Bamco collaborations have been more hit than miss, and I don't believe that to be because of any special talent within Bamco's teams (again, plural) in particular, but because of both companies being good business partners. Koei, for example, is more of a wild card in terms of collaborations, but Bamco? Their track record is good, which is enough for me to believe something good can come out of this.

And surely Nintendo won't just have a lax producer role: I bet they have their own staff working alongside Bamco Singapore (i.e., just like they provided map designers for Samus Returns). So, by that same logic, the least capable Bamco Singapore is, the more Nintendo would have to compensate for that lack of experienced personnel. Getting "someone good" only makes sense if you're letting them free reign. If you're only offloading grunt work onto them, what would be the point?

Any potential issues people are coming up with in their minds just come across as baseless assumptions to me right now. All the more so since we haven't seen a single screenshot of the game yet.

Bandai-Namco is pretty good about internally developed games. I wouldn't worry too much about them.

@MarcelRguez No, you're right, and I agree. I'd like to see a trailer first, preferably gameplay.

I want Metroid Prime to be gooood. Let's hope it's not a Star Fox Zero, or a Colour Splash. Or Star Fox Assault, cause I think that game wasn't good either. Pokken was pretty barebones for a €60 fighting game too. I want them to go all-in with this game, but I have no idea how it will turn out.

Star Fox Assault is my favourite Star Fox game though I did wish it was longer as 10 missions was rather short.

I'm by no means putting down Bamco (their track record is pretty good overall), I just hope that Nintendo closely supervises them with the dev process. I trust them more than MercurySteam (who I didn't necessarily mistrust), and Samus Returns turned out fine. That assumption based on footage and feedback I've seen since I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

Having played all three Prime games relatively recently, I can tell that the bar is set quite high. Nintendo knows a lot is riding on this game, so I'm fully expecting both them and Bamco to pull out all the stops.

_{To fully be up to speed on the Prime universe, I still need to get around to watching plot footage of Hunters and FF....}

@Octane: Out of curiosity, what was wrong with Colour Splash? I own it and was hoping it would get me into the Paper Mario series. I've heard about how bad Sticker Star was, but I've never seen any terrible feedback about that one.

@Tyranexx I haven't played any of the other Paper Mario games, Colour Splash was my first, so I have nothing to compare it with, except itself. And I don't think it's a good game.

First of all, it looks good, music is fine too. The game isn't broken or anything like that either, no bugs. Credit where credit is due.

But there are a few things that annoy me no end. First, the controls. Mandatory touch screen controls shoe-horned into the game. First you need to manually browse through a stack of up to a hundred cards. Then you need to select up to three cards you want to use (and it's easy to select the wrong card on accident). Then you need to colour them by pressing them and watching them fill up with colour. Then, you need to flick them up towards the TV screen and watch the round play out. It drags on for too long. I feel there are a lot of unnecessary steps between choosing your attack and actually using the attack. On top of that, I thought the cards added a unique gameplay element. They don't. You can't reuse cards, so they function effectively as PP in the Pokemon franchise. You got 20 Jump Cards? Means you can use that attack 20 times. Why not turn it into a move select screen in that case? It feels like the cards are only there to give the GamePad a ''purpose''.

There's virtually no strategy whatsoever. I like card games for their strategy, but even though this game uses a card system, all you're doing is choosing between the Jump and Hammer attack, and I guess there are a few special cards for special battles. The only ''strategy'' I could find was realising whether an enemy had a spike on its head or not. If it has, don't use the Jump attack, you'll hurt yourself a bit. If the enemy is flying, don't use the Hammer attack, you'll miss. It's way too simple and easy for something that could have had a lot more strategy to it.

Then there are the optional Roshambo temples. It's basically three rounds of rock-paper-scissors. So you have a 12.5% chance of beating the temple. It's random. The NPCs give you hints on how to beat the first two, but if you lose to the last one, the NPCs don't give you hints anymore. So the second time it's pure RNG. Now, they're optional, but they count towards your completion. And beating all six temples grants you one of the six banners in the main HUB. So it's kinda incentivised to beat them.

The boss battles are quite boring, they're the same old Koopalings and Bowser. No unique boss fights. It's just way too generic.

Lastly, my biggest complain is the Bandit Shy Guy. So hear me out. The game is called Colour Splash, because you have a magic paint hammer and you fill in blank spots in the world to bring back colour to the levels. I've spend hours looking for the last final white spot, because I was stuck at 99% percent. Apparently I missed a small (read: tiny) white pebble on an almost white beach. But, filling in all the spots grants you another banner in the central HUB town. Fine by me. The game is called Colour Splash after all, so I figured that was kinda the premise of the game. However, half-way in, they introduce a guy called Bandit Shy Guy (iirc). He appears on the overworld map (it works like a classic Super Mario Bros. map). He runs towards a level in real time, and starts sucking the colour out of a level using a straw. You get a few seconds to run across the map towards him and challenge him to a battle before he drains all of the colour out of a level. Meaning you need to start all over. Ugh! Now, he appears on a random place, and his target level is also random. I got in a situation where I literally couldn't get to him in time, because he spawned all the way across the map. There was no way. I reset the game a few times, tried a different route. It was impossible (all because it's stupid RNG). Here's an example to give you an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw2T5-s2TSY

I just couldn't bring it to myself to redo the entire level, wasting another hour to do what I already did a few hours back, just because of some stupid RNG. The game had a lot of potential, but a lot of stupid RNG mechanics, generic boss battles, and an unnecessarily complicated move select screen, just no. I haven't played any other Paper Mario game, but if they play anything like this, I don't ever want to play another...

@DarthNocturnal: Good to know. I've read enough about Hunters and FF to know that they're not bad games (despite the internet whining about the latter), just not the type I would really enjoy. The reason I'm even considering watching plot footage was because I've seen rumors about FF's ending that may tie in with Prime 4.

@Octane: That's...discouraging, to say the least. That read like I would probably mess around with the game for a while, but whether or not I complete it is a different matter. TBH the only reason I even have the game was that I put it on my Christmas list a couple of years ago and wasn't really expecting to get it. XD I've been interested in the Paper Mario series for some time, so...maybe it won't hurt me to start with one of the not-so-great ones?

@Tyranexx It sucks, because the game had a lot of potential. I'm fine with the generic Toads. You won't hear me complaining about them. But the rest? Some of those gameplay elements, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to implement them. They're just not fun at all.

That being said, if you own the game anyway, there's no harm in trying it out.