Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

@JaxonH I think its just a modern internet problem. Arguably flat out an internet problem, where even justified criticisms get obnoxiously hyperbolic. I first noticed this during the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy and it has been consistently a problem since. See, this one part of the game looks bad, so the game must be bad. Famously, beloved video games lack annoying parts!

There is a real, semi-consistent issue I've had with Nintendo this year, but whenever I see people feel the same it just becomes annoying and I don't even want to bother saying much more, outside of my comparatively unique thoughts. (main one this year being that I don't even think 70 dollars is the real problem with Nintendo's pricing) Doubly annoying since all their complaining meant nothing so I had to deal with all that only for it to fail and justify it all from Nintendo's perspective so we're not even getting a better deal from all that.

oh and look the updates for mario kart have been good its almost like the game was inevitably going to have improvements as a mario kart launch title whose previous game sold consistently well for a decade it was silly to judge the game at launch (which you could have an issue with it not being as good at launch but like...this is not surprising, stop pretending this wasn't obviously going to happen! This was comically predictable!)

@kkslider5552000 The first $90 game (in my currency) launching unfinished isn’t OK. Call me hyperbolic or whatever but MKW is a warning to me that Nintendo will rush out even their flagship series, charge ridiculous amounts of money for it, and still treat it like an early access game, even if it’s more polished than most.

Yes I own it. No I don’t think it warrants the price, and it sloooowly inching towards a barely minimum release after half a year of minor patches isn’t acceptable to me.

Anyone play it yet, what's it like ?

Being a real fan doesn't mean blindly liking and consuming everything regardless of quality. It's BECAUSE I'm passionate about Metroid that I don't support entries that aren't up to snuff and don't contain the aspects of them that I enjoy about Metroid. And honestly I find the sheer number of people that seem to blindly support franchises (and products in general, this seems to be a larger issue beyond just video games) is extremely harmful.

Furthermore, I really don't see a different between this and something like Other M or Color Splash. A controversial game is a controversial game.

That being said, I have decided to buy it now. But that's only been after I've heard about how the final product fares from reviews and a friend of mine that downloaded the Australian digital version and is already playing it. I stand by that the marketing for this game is absolutely botched and there are definitely some questionable design decisions. From what I can tell, some people do feel like the controversies hold the game back from being even better, it's just that even if it is an issue for some people the game is still good in spite of those issues. That's not always a guarantee, which is why I needed to see reviews.

It's 3am in the morning and I'm still up playing this game. I actually had to suspend it, set the controller down and I'm currently pacing back and forth because my nerves got overloaded from so much awesomeness and excitement while playing. I'm not even joking.

The last time this happened to me, where a game was this freaking good to the point I had to pause and reflect, was Fire Emblem Awakening 12 years ago. And that was my first ever turn based RPG game (or RPG period) so I was floored with how insane the music was and the emotional roller coaster of story events.

This is so rare. So so so rare. In fact I'd forgotten that happened tbh, certainly never expected to experience such a thing again.

@Ninfan
I've been playing all day.

I kid you not. METROID PRIME 4 IS THAT GAME. It's that game my guy.

I’m thoroughly convinced that the internet wants to be the arbiters of success and failure. Like, honestly, that’s what motivates most people online. They don’t actually care about the game, the movie, whatever - they just want the perceived feeling of power over something’s fortunes.

That could be true but I also think different reviewers have different tastes and some just won't like the game as much. There has been loads of highly rated games that I haven't liked and loads of poorly reviewed games that I really enjoyed. I feel for different genres I am more easily pleased or less easily pleased. I think when you get an overall metacritic score of 80/100 that shows a very good game but perhaps not a great game for the vast majority. Out of interest I did have a look at a rom site and can see the game is already there, such a shame really. ROM sites should be about older games for obsolete consoles and the Switch 1 is still actively sold. That didn't take long at all. Probably as I write this videos of the game emulated at high resolutions are being uploaded to youtube assuming the game is compatible with emulators immediately. I will be interested to see how it looks emulated. A quick look shows a Ultra 5 125H system is struggling to provide stable frame rates, it was dipping below 40 fps at times but mostly in the 50s and that is at native 1080p. I guess it would have to go to 720p to improve frame rates, i.e. portable mode. That chipset has up to 4 Teraflops of GPU performance and 21,000 passmark cpu. The Switch 1 docked version is around 600 passmark CPU and 390 Gflops so for the game to struggle to be emulated at full speed shows incredible optimisation on the part of Retro. In fact the best example of past games that are far more difficult to emulate compared to other games on the platform are the Rogue Squadron games on Gamecube. They seem to need a PC 3x as powerful a PC that can emulate simpler Gamecube games at full speed.

Metroid's are not my kind of games, but I take great joy in seeing how much @JaxonH is enjoying this. I love the positivity.

@JaxonH Ahh nice. Yeah I visited Dingle in Co Kerry before and even I couldn't get over how beautiful it was. I live in Meath which is roughly 240 miles away and I find it to be rather dreary in comparison.

I’m 1 hour in, and I cannot wait to get done with work and spend more time with it. I haven’t met Miles yet, but have a feeling he’s close by.
Initial impressions - simply fantastic. Playing on SW2 handheld. 1st, the game just looks so good. It’s shocking that this is a SW1 game. The music, sound is every bit as good as the visuals. Gameplay is silky smooth. All of the basics 10/10.
The intro battle is very fun. It’s not difficult at all, but a fantastic re-introduction into the Prime world. And once you get to the main campaign, it just rules. So much intrigue, I am instantly hooked by the story. This game has one of the better introductions in recent memory. It begins with action, then sends you into an interesting and beautiful world that I cannot wait to continue to explore. Initial impressions, this has a good chance at being my game of 2025. It’s slightly ahead of Bonanza, and about on par with Silksong (which is my favorite game this year).
I’ll share more updates when I can 🙂

Curious if its been mentioned in the topic before (its a big topic) but i hear the music feature one of the amiibo's unlocks can actually be unlocked through in game means (and the amiibo is more just a quick way) and wondered if this has been confirmed yet or not, (can be hard to find info nowadays)

@Olliemar28 Can you enlighten us of the ^above question, please?

I played the game all the way to the same point twice already, once on NSW1 and once on NSW2. Was gonna transfer my save but I had enjoyed it so much I started all the way over on NSW2 last night.

@Mgalens
Not sure about that. The cutscenes can be unlocked in game, that I know, cause that's actually part of the game, but stuff like BGM from past games to play when in the hub area and changing Viola's color, I think, are just little bonus extras the amiibo give you. But I could be wrong.

@BonzoBanana
For sure, you're right about some people just having different taste. Sometimes we forget there is no objective "rating" for a game. However, I would argue while that is certainly true, there's something going on well beyond just differences of taste. Because Metroid Prime Remastered released to... what was it... a 95? And as someone who's played and beaten every Prime game and am well into the 4th, I think I can confidently say this is better than that one was.

Not that everyone will feel that way- after all I place MP2 at the top, MP3 2nd, and actually rank the original MP dead last. BUT keep that in context. It's still a masterpiece, I just like the other 2 a bit more.

But for some to be scoring it a 6, to aggregate around Pokemon Legends Z-A and Hyrule Warriors? Come on. Even you have to admit something fishy is going on.

The internet loves seeing games fail. For a whole host of reasons, but you see it all the time. Rage baiters always trashing anything Ubisoft does, or anything EA does, and look, I get those companies deserve a lot of the flak, but they can release bangers and all you'll see is rage bait about them.

And I think reviewers get a feel for what they perceive the gamership desires, and whether consciously or subconsciously, they tend to rank games according to what they think their viewership wants to see. And if a game has all this uproar and controversy before launch, they perceive that as... "ok, I better not score this too highly or they'll think I'm not doing my job."

Now I can't prove this one way or the other, but as with everything in life we base our beliefs on probabilities after assessing all the evidence. And having now played enough of Prime 4 to start forming an opinion, and comparing it's quality and fun-factor to previous entries, I cannot reconcile the reception with the reality of how good it is. I certainly can't reconcile it being ranked alongside Legends Z-A and Hyrule Warriors. Prime 4 is 10x the game they are, and I don't mean to rag on them- I think they're both great games, but they're not on the level of Prime 4... not even close.

I think that's what they're referring to. We all acknowledge there will be a diversity of taste and preference and opinion, but I don't think I'm alone in saying hmm... this isn't adding up.

@Lazz
I played about 3 or so hours on NSW1 OLED before switching over to the NSW2 version and redoing everything from scratch, then making it even further ahead.

It's a really impressive NSW1 game. That's for sure. But I gotta say, it's breathtaking on NSW2. Couple things surprised me actually.

For one, I wasn't expecting to feel a difference with the 120 fps mode. I was wrong. I actually could tell a difference, both in feel and in visual smoothness. For two, I was taken aback by how crisp the image is. Even in 120 fps mode it looked noticeably better than on NSW1. And in 4k mode? Wow. It's stunning.

Not to take anything away from the NSW1 version though. Aside from a cutscene stutter in the opening section with Sylux and the Artifact, it was easily one of the most impressive Switch games I've played.

And boy is it difficult at times! I've died twice already. Speaking of which- one thing nobody has talked about yet is the fact you can "Restart From Checkpoint" if you die. It doesn't put you all the way back at the last Save Station! That's huge for this series!

Some of these enemies are brutal. I was all tensed up the entire time making my way through the latter parts of Volt Forge, cause I'd be on my last energy tank almost every time I finished a combat section.

One of my favorite shots...

I GOT IT! And it was the S2E too. It was sold out in a lot of places if you didn't pre-order, my local Gamestop and Walmart (about 5 minutes away from me) were both sold out, but it was still in stock at the Walmart the next town over (about 20 minutes away). I drove over there and GOT THE VERY LAST COPY! Going to start it tonight, I have some dailies in some other games I'm playing that I need to finish first.

@Bolt_Strike
FYI, if you value gyro aiming like I do, here's the cheat sheet for settings I recommend.

Choose Dual Stick control scheme, then tab down to CAMERA and check the box to "Enable Motion Controls", then tab down to CURSOR and increase the "Motion Sensitivity Y-axis" from 10 to 13, to match the X-axis sensitivity.

You may also want to increase the motion threshold for which you can break away from target lock into free aim. I tend to move my controller quite a bit when playing, so I had to increase the threshold to where it stayed locked on even during small movements, but keep it low enough I could break out of lock-on when needed.

And don't forget there are 5 different marker symbols you can use on the map to remember where secrets are to come back to later.

To expand on what I said, the wait to experience the game myself would've been way less annoying if the game industry was less stupid, because there's no good reason no one in 18 years would make a worthy Metroid Prime substitute to some degree. I can think of several 3D Zelda-ish games(Megaman Legends, Okami, Beyond Good and Evil, Darksiders), and that was also fewer than there should have been, but at least they exist. Like if Metroid Dread was underwhelming, it'd suck, I'd hate for that to happen, but at least you couldn't say it was difficult to find another quality Metroidvania on the Switch. We don't need Mother 4 for similar reasons. But it is this or nothing, and that sucks regardless of Prime 4's quality. As my favorite game of all time, the fact that Metroid Prime isn't a bigger influence in first person (or 3D at all) games is absurd to me. I can't understand it, especially since its ridiculously acclaimed to this day.

That's completely fair. It is a bad trend.

In a related note, I don't buy brand new video games much if ever anymore lol

I'm enjoying it, if not quite so much as Jaxon.

I think that it's at its best when it's doing the classic Metroid Prime gameplay, and there's plenty of it, but the attempts to update the formula are a bit hit and miss, so I'm not surprised that a lot of reviewers are seeing them as padding.

That said, I don't think there's anything letting the side down badly enough to ruin the experience, and the performance and visuals are stunning, even on a Switch Lite.

That's the thing. Ignoring the fact Mario Kart World was $50 for anyone who really didn't want to pay more, it's still a situation where I feel like hey, if I don't think something's worth the price I simply won't buy it. I'm not gonna sit around and complain about it. If it's worth it, then all good. If it's not, then I'll wait for a sale or skip entirely. But it just doesn't bother me either way. I can't convince myself to care beyond that.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is a perfect example. Do I think it's worth $60 with no gyro or mouse aiming and sub-30 fps drops? Negative. Am I complaining about it? Also negative. I just skip it and move on. I don't talk about, I'm not upset over it, I'm not holding some grudge in my heart because of it. It's simple transactional economics. Either it's worth buying or it's not. And if game is soooo bad then I'm just not gonna buy it, rather then get it and proceed to complain about it all the time.

Kirby Air Riders was not worth the $70 imo. And I bought it! Am I complaining? No. Oh well. It happens. I move on. But some ppl just brood over and ruminate about stuff. And as much as I hate to say it, we only have ourselves to blame if we buy a game we dislike. I am the one at fault for buying Kirby Air Riders. It was on me to do my research and know what I was buying beforehand, and judge rightly. I misjudged, and that's on me.