Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

@JaxonH ahhhh, right - it was Seth. I agree, his critiques just didn't add up to me. He's entitled to his opinion, but they were a bit flimsy.

Deep into the Ice Belt dungeon now, which is pretty fun: reminds of something from a Resident Evil game. Generally pretty happy with the 'dungeon-based' approach of this game, since I feel like there's a lot less getting lost in this game, and can focus on enjoying the superb atmosphere and art design more than just constantly and often fruitlessly backtracking.

The characters don't detract from the experience at all for me.

Probably the prettiest game on the Switch 2 to date. Retro does amazing work!

@JaxonH I certainly hope so. Prime 4 appears to be divisive from what I have seen, but I think they did a good job. Although having played this, I really want to know what the original plan was with the original development with Namco. I know Nintendo weren't happy, but that just makes me more curious.

If you game in mouse mode or want to game in mouse mode without swapping back and forth into controller mode like I tend to do in Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption, there's a new 3D printed mouse accessory that pushes the face buttons way out to the side, making them so much easier to press as your thumb naturally rests on them.

Perfect for Metroid Prime 4 where you wouldn't need to do all kinds of button remapping. It's on Etsy if anyone is interested.

I made it to the Flare Pool boss this morning. Fantastic Boss, and a fantastic level. I was kind of letting the game's critiques get me down a bit, but when I jumped back into it this morning, I was able to just let myself enjoy the game, and dang - I HAD SO MUCH FUN on this level. Not only was the boss fight fantastic - but the next part was a rush. The NPCs have been one of my favorite parts of this game - but the action and build up within each area has been top notch. 4 keys down, now onto the next one.
*how many times did you jump into the lava hoping something would happen - trying to find a solution ?

@JaxonH
Do you have a link for that particular JoyCon 2 mouse shell, it actually looks somewhat comfortable.

@westman98
Sure! Here it is

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4412765116/3daptive-true-mouse-j...

And ya, it actually makes pressing the face buttons feasible. I don't think any mouse peripheral will result in perfext ergonomics due to the close proximity of the R and ZR buttons, but until a proper real mouse is released that connects as a Right Joycon with buttons, this is honestly as close to perfect as it gets imo.

I still think the official mouse strap is excellent for swapping back and forth from mouse to controller but if you're staying in mouse mode and need to use the buttons comfortably, this accessory blows every other one I've used out the water.

@Lazz
That's what I've been saying- the GF troops are incredible. They enrich the experience so much, even despite not featuring much relatively speaking.

Wait til you get to the Great Mines. You wanna talk suspense and that feeling of nervous tension like Aliens? You'll see soon enough. You still have some backtracking to do but you'll get there in the next couple hours.

I died on that boss twice before beating him, and while I didn't jump in the lava, I just couldn't figure out what to do so he kept coming back to life and I'd have to knock him out again. Then I watched the short cutscene zooming in and I realized aha! That's where I need to go. Then I jumped in the lava trying to get there lol 😆

@JaxonH ha! I'm really excited to see what is in store there.

I just beat the boss in Great Mines with my new mouse peripheral.

Ya, this thing is legit.

Has anyone noticed any issues on the original Switch in the controller mode where the right joy con has major drift and lag and connectivity issues? I started playing today and fighting the first boss was extremely difficult. I even changed to another joy con and had the same issue. It made my right hand really hurt because i had to keep resetting the orientation. I don't recall ever having issues with these joy cons....though I mostly don't use them. I use the pro controller for most games.

@Minionmario Does it happen in other games and on the Switch home screen etc? Cos if so, that's probably the classic OG Joy-Con drift issue, which isn't at all uncommon. I had one start drifting a couple years ago, and so I ordered a replacement joystick (Guilikit hall effect) and swapped into the offending Joy-Con myself, but that's an option for those who don't mind tinkering with electronics, otherwise people probably just buy a new Joy-Con.

EDIT: Sorry, just saw you tried another Joy-Con and same issue. That's... an odd one. Might be worth fully powering down the console and turning it back on again, in case it's some glitch.

Also do any of us think there will be any sequence breaking to be had in this game? I'm just up to the mines, but so far I'm thinking there probably won't be. It seems a little more rigid in the way items are gated in terms of progression. I know Prime games are never like the 2D ones in terms of deliberately designed hidden sequence breaks etc, but I'm curious nonetheless. I believe Prime 1 had a few.

That and I'm curious what speedrunners end up doing with this game.

@Minionmario
That sounds to me like the good ol' Bluetooth connectivity issue with the right joycon antenna and the line of sight required with the console.

If your Switch is on the floor, for example, and your controller in hand doesn't have line of sight, it'll lag and drift and cut out. Connect to the console and if it goes away, that's the problem.

Yo!!!

THIS. FREAKING. GAME. IS. INCREDIBLE!

I don't care what anyone says about Vi-O-La and Sol Valley. That right there, what I just experienced, justified ALL OF IT.

I am so in love with Sol Valley and Vi-O-La. I already enjoyed it, but now I'm at a point where I no longer feel it's, "fun but less fun than the rest", I'm feeling more, "it's just as fun as everything else, and an integral part of why the game's balanced so well- explore for an hour, find some upgrades, defeat a boss, then decompress for 10 minutes in Sol Valley cruising around, grabbing crystals, finding shrines, etc. before diving head first into the next 1-2 hour segment of exploration."

And I think back to why sometimes I'd feel burned out with prior entries. They were so good it didnt matter, but this game does such a great job of offering gameplay variety.

There's exploration, scanning for lore, combat, puzzle solving, boss fights, upgrades, but then there's also high-speed bike gameplay in a sandbox (literally lol) which itself involves exploring for crystals, discovering shrines, solving those shrine puzzles, finding mech parts, finding a certain NPC that's hidden in various different places every time you come back, there's also segments with GF troops, small snippets of story and cutscenes, little conversations they have in the background where a giant robot mech is trying to sing a song the colonel mentioned... it's such variety and makes you actually appreciate the exploration all the more because you're not growing wearisome of it due to lack of gameplay diversity.

OK, the end, finally.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is better than Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. It just is, and tbh I don't even think it's close. Which just a few days ago I maintained Prime 2 was still the best. But... nah.

This game really exposed the flaws of the previous trilogy in a way that makes me wonder if I'll even have the patience to replay Prime 2 and 3 once they inevitably release. Without the checkpoints, so that you can restart right before a boss if you die, without the characters and story and cutscenes, without the intermittent gameplay diversity, without the ability to mark the map to know exactly where to come back to later... Idk if I can go back to the prior games after this.

I know I will, in a heartbeat, but truly... this game will forever affect my enjoyment of the Trilogy, and not for the better. But perhaps they could at least add checkpoints and map markers when the other two get ported. That would go quite a ways in negating that frustration from the demands of long-suffering patience.

This game really did keep getting better and better. The Great Mines is where things really picked up. The only thing I'll say is, make sure you're collecting green crystals naturally as you play. You'll eventually get a mini-map radar that shows their locations but if you've been devoting 10 min to collect them every time you travel through Sol Valley, it's not even gonna be a problem. 15 minutes I was out there chasing them down to get every last one of them, and I did get every single one. Even the giant green rocks that require hyperbombs. I didn't need to, I already filled up the terminal, I just did it because.

This team of Galactic Federation troopers will go down in history as the best thing to ever happen to the franchise, imho. For decades this series has been desperately lacking additional characters. It was so bad they had to keep bringing back Ridley because there was NOBODY ELSE. How sad is that. Not a single memorable ally in 40 years.

I hope, I really truly hope, that one day we'll see Colonel Ezra Duke, Private Nora Armstrong, Sniper Reger Tekabi and Engineer Myles McKenzy return. Though Myles is my favorite, all of them grew on me.

I never thought I'd be seriously saying this, but I want a new Federation Force now, featuring this squad, with proper dual analog gyro aiming, in this art style and HD graphics on NS2, with GameShare and GameChat.

PSA
You can skip a good portion of most transition scenes. For example, when fast traveling in the cannon in Fury Green, the moment Samus steps into the capsule you can mash A to skip the entire sequence and jump straight into the loading segment where it flies through the air. Then, as soon as the capsule lands you'll see "Saving" in the bottom left. The instant that disappears you can mash A to skip the exit scene.

And to move through areas quickly to get back to camp, go into morph ball mode and spam the boost ball (don't hold to charge all the way, just briefly hold and let go). Don't even exit morph ball mode. When you get to a door lay a bomb to open it and keep going.

These tips apply across the board. All areas' loading sequences can be skipped like this, except for the portion where there's actual loading.

It's amazing how fast you can fly through segments of the game utilizing these 2 strategies outlined above.

@JaxonH I had no idea the transition scenes were skippable, cheers.

Out of curiosity: Did you guys who bought the physical Switch 2 edition need to download a upgrade-pack or was it on the cart? I bought the physical Switch version, then bought the upgrade-pack. When downloading it also immediately downloaded the day one update, I think you can't download the upgrade-pack without the latest updates (so keep that in mind if you still want to jump on the wagon).

On a sidenote: Loading my save-file (I had saved at a save-station) it took VERY long, and that on Switch 2 playing the upgraded version. 1 or 2 minutes!! I thought the game had crashed!

@Henmii
The NS2 version has the upgrade on cart. All NS2 Editions are like that.

Idk about your saving. Doesn't take me long. Could be your micro SD, or a random anomaly. Hard to say.