Wii Sports Club Golf was, and still is, the greatest golf video game experience I've ever had the pleasure of partaking in. In fact, it's the one reason I keep my Wii U plugged in.
We'll never have another golf game hitting the ball off a screen on the floor into the fairway on the tv using motion controls. Salute to Wii Sports Club. 🫡
Psalms 22:16 (1,000 yrs before Christ)
They pierced My hands and feet
Isaiah 53:5 (700 yrs before Christ)
He was pierced for our transgressions
Encouragement help, tips very welcome for snow boss Keratos.
I have been enjoying the game on casual mode, but this boss seems overwhelming. The first few youtube videos I found were not very encouraging. Keratos seems purposely designed to break boss design conventions. Keratos inners flash yellow when you shoot them, but doesn't harm them. It's a deeply deceptive visual cue.
Is there any point to shooting the ice when keratos spins?
Encouragement help, tips very welcome for snow boss Keratos.
I have been enjoying the game on casual mode, but this boss seems overwhelming. The first few youtube videos I found were not very encouraging. Keratos seems purposely designed to break boss design conventions. Keratos inners flash yellow when you shoot them, but doesn't harm them. It's a deeply deceptive visual cue.
Is there any point to shooting the ice when keratos spins?
Yes, absolutely. Not only does it prematurely end that attack phase, but it also drops a ton of items when it breaks. Do you like getting more health and ammo? Because if you do: break that ice ring.
Also, I'm not sure I could describe the fight as "deceptive". The yellow flashes do indicate success: they indicate that you are inflicting stun and advancing the boss towards its stun state, which allows you to hit its vulnerable spot for real damage. Its just a classic "Must get boss to expose weak point" design, except that you can actually contribute to the process rather than simply waiting.
I got to the Mines. And like...maybe be a bit less obvious on how we're just re-using the biomes from Prime 1 guys. And they have such generic names for no reason. Do I dare ask in this Nintendo game why this civilization is so much less creative with naming than the Chozo or Luminoth or whoever else? Unless I missed something and the Galactic Federation made up these names instead.
Armstrong is the first character to make me feel something outside of Myles making a bad first impression btw. Though I'm undecided if she's genuinely charming or so bad she's good. But I did chuckle, so, success.
I once again hope these are not the things that made the game not great apparently, because that would be very weird and confusing. Someday I hope to find what made the game bad to any normal Metroid player, just for my own sanity.
Almost any other game, I wouldn't feel a need to make a long post about completing a game, especially outside of the completed games thread. But as a follow up (to the follow up to the follow up) to my favorite game of all time, 18 years after the last one, I feel I need to say a lot. This is a weird one since I knew how I felt about the game for quite a while and then a thing happened.
I'm going to start with the positives. The core game, as a Metroid Prime game, is a proper return to form. This specific gameplay has not had a true replacement that I am aware of. Like there are moments in Bioshock and maybe even Portal...Doom 2016 felt at times like the ideal version of a combat heavy version of a Metroid Prime (if the speed booster was more of a speed buff :V). But those are all still wildly different games. So on the basic level of being Metroid Prime, it is a success. Especially with its fantastic graphics and world environment and great music. There have been one too many modern games I've played, especially on Switch, where I've just not been into the music, and the exceptions have too often been bringing back music from another Nintendo game (multiple of which being BOTW), and from straight up remakes (or remakes of songs for Neo:TWEWY). Partially on what I've been playing I'm sure and what I haven't played (Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Kirby), but especially for Metroid, literally the last good Metroid soundtrack was the last Metroid Prime. It's been too long, these things alone automatically make this a quality game. Also the bosses are maybe the most consistently great in the series, or at least out of the 3D games. Just consistently, fun, exciting, solid difficulty curve, cool use of abilities.
The puzzles are also...cool enough. The more I played though, bosses aside, the less I wanted it to be a combat focused game and the most I wanted it to be a puzzle game. Bring back the tether mechanic in Prime 5 and expand on it in cool ways. In general, would've been cool with more focus on them, even taking into account how familiar the abilities were. Like its...honestly just funny how everything is just Psychic (Metroid ability). It's not a new ability just because you put a new word in front of it lol.
And there comes the problems with the game with the game. And its...interesting. First of all, even now, I'm still bewildered by the backlash to the game. For...the majority of the game, I don't understand what people are talking about. Like all of Nintendo this year, they have entirely mis-diagnosed the issue here. The desert is...fine. The bike is...fine. The GF soldiers are...fine. A lot of these new elements to this particular game are...fine. They are ok. So Yahtzee, classic Youtube comedy reviewer, put this as his 5th blandest game on his year review video. And while I'm not sure how much I'd agree, and I didn't watch that segment because of not wanting to hear too much about it before I finished it, it is at least a far more reasonable thought about the game than the people who were treating it as some cringey, bloated disaster. I beat it in less than 19 hours (which ok, I don't think is the actual time, feels like it decides all scans and menus etc don't count but that's also true of past games), which for what the game adds is not a dramatic shift. Play Arkham City and then Knight if you want to see what bloated game design can do to a game no matter how good its core gameplay is. But the game's real problem to me is that ultimately, most of what it added was not worth having strong feelings about. The best part of the game is that it is a Metroid Prime game, and most other things are just...there. Like during the ice area, it gives the perfect chance with its atmosphere and build up to pull off a cool horror segment, actually fantastic set up for it, but it curiously never does much with it. I can so easily imagine something living up to the chase scenes in Fusion and Dread, but as its own thing but there's just...nothing really.
So overall, this is a return to form for Metroid, but a lot of its new elements outside of some gameplay mechanics and bosses were underwhelming, its a little bit bloated, it vaguely modernizes the Metroid formula and is a kind of great but nowhere near all timer game. Also apparently its a weird compromise between a different vision of this numbered entry in this series that was from different people that feels kinda awkward when it feels like it doesn't feel like it wants to be that game that strongly. So to me, this is actually quite similar to Samus Returns more than anything. They feel like they fit in the same place, including the general quality. The lower end of greatness from a Nintendo series people expect greatness from. Which is fine, as much as I adore Metroid Prime, 2 and 3 never lived up to that. It's not like 3D Mario or Zelda where borderline every brand new release is a widely beloved masterpiece, but its also still at a pretty high quality so oh well. This being a little below that, especially with the issues it had is fine. Just hope that like Samus Returns, the next one can be more its own thing and hit a homerun.
...But there's another caveat. These were all the thoughts I had about the game...until I reached the late game, try to find all remaining items, collect the new items to get to the finale...part that all the Metroid Primes have. I think I see the issue a little more now. First of all, Switch 1 load times. I never need to see that animation going back to the forest area again. When I probably end up playing it on Switch 2 in the future, gonna appreciate what I have to assume are better load times. But that's not the big issue. The big issue is that the desert crystals were mindless trash. At first, its ok. Once I reached this point of the game, having only gotten a little over half of them, getting the rest makes Hyrule Warriors combat, before getting any upgrades, feel like Bayonetta combat after the upgrades. Ugh no. There is nothing to this, and too much of the cool part of the bike (the speed) is compromised when you have to stop and turn around, or...try to do a turn in the right direction to guarantee hit it and slow down and you hit the fruit at too slow a speed. This shouldn't be a thing, not to this degree. Between that and the lack of enemies or...much of anything to do, it ruins what was honestly a nice atmospheric little place at first. And if this is supposed to be like Hyrule Field in OOT...um...maybe Hyrule Field is not the best part of a video game. I was there in 1998 so I understand nothing can compete with what that felt like in a game at that time, but...there's not a ton to it. And the big poe quest is kinda...bad in its own way. But even that overrated area at least had...some life to it. This is like if you were made to travel Pokemon Colosseum's world, ugh, no wonder you had fast travel there. And I had some enjoyment of it at first, but the late game and trying to get all those crystals just overwhelms any positives about it, by far. Learn from Paper Mario's mistakes and don't just try to do this "but good this time we promise" 2 more times. Maybe don't do this overworld again, certainly never do the crystals like this or anything remotely like that, again.
Other issue though, going back to old areas, I've never felt the combat feel so tedious in these games. It was not like that for a large portion of the game, but after the mine really focused on that combat, doing the same but with less excitement, with seemingly less variation in enemies to fight and less strategy than those past games, is not great. Especially since the elemental weapons feel...kinda pointless most times? No matter what I choose, it just feels like "stun with it and then shoot until you win". Somehow these subweapons feel like they have less variation than the Prime 1 weapons, where I at least felt slight differences enough of the time. And the expanded super missile equivalents to them didn't feels as necessary to get through areas of the same couple of enemy types, endlessly, with rarely any different strategy needed. Like regular pirates, flying pirates, elemental/hidden pirates, the ice beasts you shoot behind them, the water enemies that have to be near you to attack then, Metroids, let alone various smaller enemies, and larger areas to fight them more often than not. Feels like elemental weaknesses also mattered more? Instead, backtracking in most of these areas were focused on doing the same attack in the same way, nothing else mattered. Kinda feel like in hindsight, most times I should've just ran through or at most done the electric charge to wipe them out.
So yeah, for the most part I'm reasonably defensive of the game, it is quite good despite its underwhelming new ideas but...I dunno about that late game. And being not sure about 100% a Metroid game, that not being the way to play the game arguably, kinda does really bum me out.
I guess to be a bit more kind to the game, backlash to the characters is weird. But I think the problem is I don't see how this is worse than any other...group of space marine types in a video game. This is not exciting storytelling for me. Halo pulled it off pretty well but otherwise...I don't get it. Like why is it bad here but Titanfall 2's story is so well liked? That I...mostly do not get, outside of maybe questioning it as a Metroid narrative specifically (especially with mute Samus here). But its also hard to argue this was some huge improvement. Maybe Metroid should just be its own thing in terms of narrative, it'd be cool to have a cast of characters to be really invested in, I'd love that, but I'd prefer it to be the best Metroid than to be a mid version of an already mid idea for video game narratives. And put that extra power into larger Metroidvania environments, that's what I'm actually looking for, and it feels like a better use of everyone's time instead of doing what everyone else is doing with obligatory open world selling point.
@kkslider5552000 Thanks for sharing, and I'm genuinely pleased to find that other people are enjoying the game - despite me personally bouncing off it quite hard.
I think the backlash is indeed overblown, and especially the NPC hate campaign against Myles/Miles.... he's annoying for sure, but IMO there are far larger issues with this game than a yappy quip machine (!)
I side with a lot of the points made by SkillUp in his review, but ultimately I think I'm just really disappointed by how average and outdated the game felt. Metroidvania titles have really come leaps and bounds in the last decade or so, with a wealth of amazing titles (Nine Sols, HK, Silksong, Metroid Dread, PoP Lost Crown, Blasphemous 1/2, Ori 1/2 etc) and MP4 just feels really regressive and linear.... bordering on boring for me.
In its favour - the game looks and plays amazingly, perhaps the best looking Switch2 title I've played so far. It (seems to) run at a locked 60fps in handheld, and I didn't notice a single drop - which is quite something considering how many recent titles are borked and/or sloppy ports. The controls and accessibility are also first-class, so many tweaks and adjustments + mouse mode is pretty cool (also arguably surplus to requirement due to auto-lockon mechanic)
I guess I just didn't get that 'wow' moment like I did with other Nintendo series latest titles.... I actually far far prefer Metroid Dread, which I still believe is a really great MV title.
Also - 2025 spoilt me with some really excellent titles.... Hades 2, E33, Silksong, FF Tactics, Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, Blue Prince, Simogo Legacy Collection (!) + my personal GOTY Seance of Blake Manor. 2025 was such a killer year, that MP4 probably fell flatter than it would have otherwise. I'd still give it a 6 or 7 out of 10, and its certainly far from a disaster, but I just wanted so much more.
I really hope that MP4 can be a learning experience for Nintendo/Retro, and the next title is an improvement. I wonder if Mercury Steam are cooking up a Dread sequel?!
I do wonder if this game is a sign of issues that other games in the industry are about to run into, or have been for sometime.
People note, and Nintendo noted, the advancements in certain gameplay or genres over the past decade.
When a game takes too long to make, it misses all those advancements and feels outdated.
In that regard though, it's quite clear what people say they want is just Metroid Prime again. But if they got that, that'd be the problem. It's just Metroid Prime again. Evolving it is almost impossible, as Prime 2 and 3 are regarded less than the first game, albeit not by much and both for different reasons. But they also tried new wrinkles and ideas.
Maybe it's better to shelve this side series. They clearly can't change the gameplay much without it not being Metroid Prime, but they also need to evolve it beyond what it was.
Then again, Metroid Prime could largely be described as hated when it was first shown off. So who knows. Probably helps the game, much like Ocarina of Time, was just "the SNES game in 3D".
But yeah...I dunno. As much as I love Metroid Prime, I can't help but feel like all the asking for it was a mistake. That's clearly why they did it (people didn't shut up about it), but the story was done. Yeah there was a teaser in Prime 3, but that's all it was, a teaser.
It's probably the same boat Smash finds itself in, or Animal Crossing. You've done it....now what do you do?
Now Playing: Mario & Luigi Brothership, Sonic x Shadow Generations
Now Streaming: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
I do think the big issues Metroid Prime ran into is probably a mix of outdated ideas and two versions of a game from two different teams trying to co-exist. It is impressive the game is as good and playable as it is and it only runs into massive issues for me late game ala a Wind Waker, all things considered.
That being said, I do think the weirdest part is that it feels outdated even for when they started making it. In a lot of ways this is what I would've expected if they made it on the Wii U. I can so easily imagine that and...I dunno you'd only be able to see the scan visor with the gamepad or something. (might even be a slight improvement if the menus/map were on that screen, especially without pausing like what BOTW was supposed to do)
I also forgot to mention, I'm sorry, reviewers were too nice to Other M. I try not to hate on games, I don't even hate Other M, but Metroid Prime 4 at least somewhat understands the appeal of this type of game, it is a success at what it is, even for all its faults. Other M is the opposite of Metroid's appeal in many ways, and does that opposite way pretty poorly for a large chunk of its time. And unfortunately Other M fans trying to tell people that I, person whose most anticipated game was Other M before release, that I hated the game for what it was attempting instead of its execution, made me have no patience for treating Other M as anything better than a failed experiment. It's at least a funny failed experiment now that we know it didn't kill the series, but failure it is. It's only notably better than Sticker Star because it didn't bewilderingly get follow ups. (which also got good reviews, in case you think I'm being mean to game reviewers)
So Other M getting similar review scores is simply a failure of reviewers of that time, and Prime 4 getting similar review scores doesn't mean anything. Honestly I kinda wish Prime 4 was the norm for review scores, where getting below an 85 is considered unplayable by certain people for some insane reason, including seemingly some game reviewers.
My opinion on the overly-kind reviews of Other M: It was a mix of two factors.
1. Critics liking games that are easy to play and beat quickly, since that better fits their professional lifestyle. This biasing their reactions broadly.
2. Critics giving credit for the aspiration of cinematic storytelling, and forgetting that aspiration is mostly meaningless without good execution.
I mean that's true enough. Game critics, even now, are way too invested in games that get close enough to tv or movies. Including when video games become tv or movies let's be honest here.
I do also think outside of the way too much focus on cutscenes that Other M is better paced than Prime 4, especially for a 100% run, I'd actually kinda give them that one. Helps that its shorter.
Honestly I kinda wish Prime 4 was the norm for review scores, where getting below an 85 is considered unplayable by certain people for some insane reason, including seemingly some game reviewers.
I hear you. I think it's a societal thing. If you look up two similar restaurants on Google Maps you'll go to the one rated 4.8/5 and discard the one at 4.7 even though they're both basically fives. And once you've paid the check the waiter asks you to leave a 5-star review on Google, mentioning his name. Teachers have now to justify why students get Bs instead of A minuses. Nowadays you can't buy anything from a shop without getting an e-mail 24 hours later asking you how your 'shopping experience' was and how satisfied you are of the item you purchased. Everyone's just so obsessed with ratings that the grades don't even make sense anymore.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with being concerned about quality ratings, and wanting to measure such. The issue is that people too often fail into one of two failure modes ( sometimes both at the same time! ):
1. Binary thinking. Everything is either The Best Ever or The Worst Ever, with no nuance or gradation in between. Thus they treat any review score or rating that isn't the absolute top of the chart as an equal failure.
2. Unrealistic precision. Rating scores are viewed as scientific measurements that are mathematically meaningful far beyond their actual reality, without any consideration of error bars or degrees of uncertainty. Thus an 8.9 is viewed as terrible because its less than some other game with a 9.0.
Mix that in with the general trend towards narcissism, with too many people absolutely unable to make the leap that a game which doesn't appeal to them might instead appeal to other people, and you get a lot of the problems with game review discourse.
@metaphysician Yeah, this sounds about right. Every minor difference from what would be the perfect game in their minds is inflated to the high heavens and that leads people to exaggerate how good or bad a game is.
Now I can kind of see why this exists. There's a wealth of options of games to play and limited time to play them, so you need to choose wisely on which games you think you'll enjoy. So if you buy into a game that you think you will, only to find it wasn't as good as you thought? Well then you might be mad because you think you made a mistake and wasted time on one game when you could've enjoyed another more.
I myself have been interested in many games on some level and I've bought many thinking I'd get around to playing them only for them to sit on my backlog for literal years. Biggest example of that, I have TotK but haven't set aside time to play it because there's other games I've been more interested in playing (there were also some aspects of BotW's gameplay that I didn't quite vibe with so that's giving me some subconscious reluctance to jumping back into that style). This feels completely blasphemous and yet the massive wealth of options for video games means that's where I stand right now and I've clearly gotten overzealous with some of my purchasing decisions. But that's just the industry now. There are more games you can play on Switch that you'll have time to finish in a lifetime. So you have to pick and choose and hope that game ends up being as good if not better than you imagine.
Anyway, it's perfectly valid to say Prime 4 is a disappointment and not worth the hype and there are a lot of things that Prime 5 needs to do better. But acting like it was the worst game in the world is definitely going too far, there are definitely worse games out there.
The best thing about Metroid Prime 4 is that it is in fact a Metroid Prime 4 and that it felt very clear that they could make a fantastic Metroid Prime if they're allowed to focus exclusively on making a Metroid Prime. I don't envy a dev team having to make a new game combined with the corpse of an old game, and considering the miserable bloat of modern AAA video games (between giant open worlds and intentionally endlessly tedious live service games), I do think the game honestly could've been so much worse. Like I'm imagining them trying to make this closer in size and more focused on being a modern open world game, with the crystals, would've killed the game dead. Even another hour of crystal collection and I might've suggested Metacritic was a bit too kind, not kidding.
Also I don't know why they're in the game, but there is also the implication of a classic video game series being given an open world and voice acting purely because DATS WHAT MODREN VIDE GAMS DO that annoys me even in games I love like BOTW, so it being a more notable issue here does really bug me. Especially since they literally re-released Metroid Prime and it is still peak. And honestly, considering the load time improvements I assume exist in the Switch 2 and knowing where things are now and that I might just ignore the crystals, my game time will probably be really close for both. Just makes this whole thing seem pointless. Which I guess is good, this does mean the game has an easy excuse to nope out of its worst ideas for a sequel. (and again, its not even awful in execution, but I don't need space marine soldier characters in my video game in general, they are almost never that interesting.)
But I also played Federation Force not too long ago, so thankfully, this is way better than that. Yes even in co-op, that game is the most meh game, poor man's Triforce Heroes. Metroid can do worse than this, easily. Many games can quite frankly.
I couldn’t survive the Sylux battle in the first phase even on “filthy casual mode”. Is there a way to cheese the final battle? I don’t want to be stuck on the final boss and not finish the game after putting 25 hours into it. Also do you have to revive the teammates during the first phase?
I've been avoiding this thread until I beat the game so as to not have anything spoiled, so sorry if there's repeated stuff, but I finally beat the game yesterday. But I thought I'd give my two cents.
Overall, I thought it was a great game. Not up to the heights of the original, but not much is (and honestly, I don't think I remember 2 and 3 well enough to compare it to those). I think most of the complaints about the game are grossly overblown. The other Federation soldiers are not that bad. I do wish Myles would let me figure out a little more things before throwing out obvious hints, but I also don't want to spend days wandering the game aimlessly so I didn't mind it that much. Yes, the desert and collecting green crystals was a bit tedious, but not horrible. Plus, you don't have to get them all and it becomes much easier once it gives you the radar to find them.
I thought the boss fights were mostly excellent, especially the fire one and the end battle with Sylux (the big ball was a bit dull, just being a big ball). Probably the worst part of the game was the ending (after the awesome final battle). Hopefully it is setting up a sequel that won't take another 18 years to come. It also seemed easier to me than the other ones, which is strange because I thought most of the previews and reviews talked about how hard it was. I'm pretty sure this was the first Prime I managed to get 100% of the scans and items, even on repeated playthroughs, and I did it on my first playthrough.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. Worth the wait, and a great start to my Switch 2 adventures (just got one a couple of days before Prime 4 came out). Now on to Bananza which I got for Christmas!
@Don Yes, yes you do. Letting your teammates die is an instant game over. One of the most annoying things about this game really, and Sylux really takes the cake because there's no way to stop that lightning attack from doing massive damage to your teammates so you'll probably be spending a lot of time reviving teammates. Good luck, you'll need it.
@NintendoByNature
Yeah will need to do that. Apparently it’s a requirement to not fail the mission. Will watch YouTube and practice the charged thunder bolt and try to deplete Sylux’s health as quickly as possible during the first phase.
Forums
Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Posts 1,481 to 1,500 of 1,533
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic