Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

I saw a video from an actual content creator worth watching, and I think he best summed up my feelings on this game. The game is genuinely good, but the long wait and the likelihood of another long wait, when these games used to only take 3 years to come out, is the biggest issue. I hate that I had to wait 8 years and did not get a game that lived up to the original trilogy and I hate that I will have to wait, if I'm really lucky, 4-5 years for the game that Prime 4 should've been. That's the real issue of the game, even more than the actual issues with the game.

Literally Majora's Mask the next game in terms of asset re-use, I don't care.

@kkslider5552000 Not to mention that there was a 10 year wait for this game to even get announced in addition to the development restart because Metroid was largely dormant in the 2010s. There was a whopping 18 year gap in between Prime 3 and Prime 4. With a wait that long, you need to put your best foot forward to remind the industry why the Prime series is so beloved in the first place. Prime 4 fell FAR short of that, so it still almost feels like the Prime series is still dormant.

Metroid wasn't exactly dormant during the 2010s. We had Other M, Federation Force and Samus Returns, after all. It was more a case of the series lacking a coherent direction and I'd think that it still doesn't really have one.

We still don't know whether there's going to be a sequel to either Dread or Prime 4, whether Prime 2 and 3 will get the Remastered treatment, or which of the currently missing games will make it to Switch Online.

Maybe there are plans afoot and Nintendo just doesn't want to jump the gun and promise something that be subject to delay or cancellation, but there's also the distinct possibility that it's rubbing shoulders with Kid Icarus and Star Fox on the IP scrapheap right now.

There was 6 years in between Other M and Federation Force, and there wasn't a new main series Metroid at all for 11 years. That's a fairly lengthy drought that I think would qualify as dormancy.

It's a fairly safe bet MercurySteam is working on some kind of 2D Metroid after Dread became the highest selling Metroid game. They want to build on that. We should see that announcement soon (probably either this year or next year). I'm not worried about 2D Metroid, I suspect it'll be safe in MercurySteam's hands for the foreseeable future. Now do we know that it's happening? No. But there's little reason to be concerned about 2D Metroid's prospects when its most recent entry was Metroid's biggest success so far.

It's Metroid Prime that's more concerning. Tanabe seemed to have a poor vision for it (the interviews seem to indicate that most of the things people hate about Prime 4 were Tanabe's ideas), they seem to be struggling to find a competent developer for it, and now Prime 4 underwhelmed. That's where the coherent vision is really lacking, no one at NIntendo right now seems to know how to make 3D Metroid appealing. Luckily Tanabe is retiring so maybe Tabata has something and getting Retro in at the start might help as well, but it's still on shaky ground until we see Prime 5.

Honestly, I do love the 3d outings, but I’d much rather have 2d games coming out every few years with a big 3d every 8-10. Dread was so damn good.

I hate modern day AAA game development I swear to god...

"every 8-10" turns into a skeleton

@Bolt_Strike The problem is that Other M bombed so hard that it wouldn't have been worth making a sequel and there was no plan B. At least with Federation Force they had a remake lined up to fill the schedule.

So far as 2D Metroid goes, we've had nothing but rumors for nearly five years now and that's a long wait for something that shouldn't be technically difficult to develop. If there ever was a plan to make a quick sequel, I'd think that it must have fallen by the wayside.

Meanwhile, Mercury Steam's latest game bombed and there have been some very unflattering comments made about the studio from ex-employees. Maybe they've been working on a new Metroid game in parallel with it, and in secret, in which case the wait might be nearing an end. I'd like the reassurance of some sort of official announcement before getting excited, though.

On the plus side, at least we know that Retro Studios are hiring, so they're working on something. Even if it's not Prime 5, it should be interesting.

I'm at the part where I'm in the lightning factory and the bike is being built.

Loving it! So immersive. So snappy to control. The psychic stuff is fun - has a nice feel to the gameplay even if it's nothing revolutionary.

The internet-manufactured outrage about Miles is even more hilarious (and sad) to me now. More seriously, it's pretty illustrative how something like that character, who is such a minor presence in the game and isn't even "bad" to begin with, can affect the review scores being given to a game... by professional outlets, no less! What a joke. Miles is the poster for the internet always needing something to pick apart.

Anyway, loving the game even though Metroid isn't my thing, but I wanted to experience it.

There is something where I could at least understand the annoyance a little more later (even if it didn't bother me much), but as a whole, it was definitely one of the dumbest controversies I've seen in quite some time. To be fair, I did strongly dislike his very first scene, bad first impression, but other than that he is the most not worth commenting on character.

I think the underlying drive had less to do with the game itself, and more to do with a subset of consumers having a visceral hatred for anything resembling a quip. I assume some variation on the "Stop putting jokes in my Serious Adult Hobby!" sensibility.

The Marvel backlash has been a serious detriment to online discussions (including my own personal pet peeve that most of the worst Marvel quips aren't even from Marvel).

I think High on Life, Saints Row reboot and Forspoken were real turning points for video games specifically, which to be fair, were all justified for those specifically, but the reaction to any quip or comedic direction in a serious story anywhere as the same thing or any quirky character that isn't an immediate 10/10 is very weird.

I don't even think Prime 4 was good at it, I just think those aspects earned zero strong feelings from anyone for any reason lol.

There's a time and a place for quips, they can be good to break up the tension depending on the tone. But usually the correct tone is either downtime in between action segments or at the height of an intense action to relieve the tension. For the most part, I don't think they really struck this balance correctly (although there are some, I think the cutscene when they first discovered Base Camp and tried to get it operational is a good time for quips). Quips could potentially work for Metroid, but I think they need a really good writing team to execute it well.

In my honest opinion...Metroid tends to be rather serious but there are subtle bits of humor every now & then. Mostly in the Prime series. But quips or witty dialog seems just a tad jarring for a series, like Metroid. But as @Bolt_Strike said...a really good writing team & good execution can definitely (or...at least possibly) work.

Though...I'm questioning if that's worth the time trying to attempt or not.

Like I said, having just played through it and almost out of the motorcycle factory place... I even kind of liked when I met Miles. It was fine. Good, even. I didn't feel like my immersion was ruined or anything (lol?).

But I'm not a hardcore Metroid fan, so whatever - I don't need to align my impressions to any marching orders lol I'm just a guy who likes to play video games.

I think the problem is that Metroid Prime is very good at being Metroid Prime, including its use of scanning for lore, and does not have actual writers that can make normal character writing like the game attempts be particularly worthwhile. It's not actively painful but its not really worth praising either. But to be fair, again, I also don't understand why everyone loved the story in Titanfall 2, which is only mildly better tbh.

It's just one of those things where maybe a thing should just be the best version of itself instead of trying to be something its not and coming across as mid, especially if it doesn't have the people who can do that sort of thing well. You don't have the writers of Sony's or Rockstar's big games or the better written indie games or JRPGs, so you don't have to try to go in that direction. No one has bought this game for those aspects, clearly.

Which you could argue is niche, but you could also argue the same for Monster Hunter or Yakuza or Persona or From Software games or various other series that actually built up to huge successes by consistently positive fan word of mouth over the years. While Metroid wasted the 2010s (with the only good game being on 3DS after everyone stopped playing 3DS), and then this comes out as soon as we finally have some great releases again. Which is doubly frustrating since there's a lot that's really good about it underneath its more questionable decisions. They should just be putting out good Metroid games at a reliable pace until they find a formula within Metroidvania that could actually grab a larger audience, ala a Monster Hunter World or an Elden Ring. Instead its like Final Fantasy, which has been on and off struggling for more than a decade now, or Sonic the Hedgehog, whose games do well enough but not nearly as well considering the series' popularity, including some of the most popular movies of this decade, except both those series have at least had more popular high points.

I do still hope either via an update or speedrunners pulling something out that at least the green crystals could be made more tolerable on repeat, because it would suck to have a Metroid game like this where I have to actively recommend against 100% playthroughs in order to fully enjoy them. Because that one aspect is maybe a bigger issue to me than perhaps all the others combined.

Just finished - about 12 hours. 91% scans, 62% items. Not a Metroid person, so I wasn’t going for 100% in the slightest.

Had a really fun time overall! Some stuff was stupid: the green crystals were pretty harmless, honestly, but still just kind of underwhelming as an ongoing quest. Teleporting the mech parts at the end felt like another busy task, and those extra bosses for two of them were meh (only thing I had to look up in the entire game was how to damage that stupid thing that swallows the mech battery lol).

But the stuff that really counts, the fun factor in the gameplay and everything: top notch. Some really creative moments here, for sure. Had a good time, glad I played it even if it’s outside my wheelhouse, and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a great 1st-person shooter/adventure game.