Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

I personally think beam combos and bomb/beam combos would be cool to bring to metroid prime - more options is always good if its executed well which is my biggest complaint about metroid prime 3 (ONE BEAM!)

That's another thing I wanted to see, a Dark Ridley fight would be awesome and it's a shame that never materialized in the full game.

Something 4 could do is make each individual uncharged default arm canon shot feel impactful. None of the Trilogy games did that outside of switching beams, and I think the gameplay and rate of fire could use a little slowing down so it's not just mashing at points.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/20/games-inbox-metroid-prime-4-dev...

Imagine dark souls developer making this or platinum games would it shock you guys.

After all from software is one of the developers in that famous pic were all the switch developers were revealed.

@MarcelRguez Stacked beams in Corruption were probably included not because they thought it'd be cool, but out of necessity due to the Hypermode mechanic, same deal with having Ice Missiles. After all, what's really the point in having a multitude of different beams when one of them pretty much trumps almost all scenarios? To say nothing of how often that is the only way to deal reasonable damage at best (with the multitude of Hypermode-toting enemies, particularly at high difficulties), or at all. Not to mention controller real estate.

As for beam combos, I feel the real issue was not their cost, but rather the severe lack of worthy things to use them on. Only two were real duds: Flamethrower and the Sunburst, neither of which dealt the damage to justify their ammo guzzling. The rest work fine, but Super Missile aside, the enemies are rarely compelling enough to use beam combos on except for kicks. It is funny how in the first Prime, the non Power Beam combos have one very specific use:

• Wavebuster makes short work of the Cloaked Drone, and in some versions of the game, Meta Ridley's second form.
• Ice Spreader defeats Metroid Prime's ice shield in one easy hit.
• Flamethrower bypasses Omega Pirate's beam absorption, if you're not willing to Power Bomb him.

  @Haru17 Outside the Power Beam, and Corruption in general due to, again, Hypermode mechanics, I'm not really seeing your point.

• Wave Beam's uncharged shots, due to homing work better at taking out small, annoying fliers. Everything else is better off stunlocked by charged shots.
• Ice Beam, on top of having the slowest rate of fire among all beams, often freezes things in one basic shot, if not outright killing weak ones.
• Plasma Beam's shots are not often used due to charged one-shotting most things, but even the basic ones often send foes reeling with each hit.
• Dark Beam actually fires faster if you press in a rhythm instead of mashing, and can do quite a bit of damage over time this way, often more than even a charged shot.
• Light Beam's basic shots have their piercing effect to hit multiple foes, plus setting them on fire.
• Annihilator Beam is a mix of Power and a souped-up Wave: not super powerful, but incredibly versatile and easy to use.

You know, another thing they had planned for Prime 2 was Power Bomb Beam combos. I wouldn't mind running with that idea and just having a beam customization system in general. So, instead of beam weapons being an alternate beam weapon that you can combine with missiles, they could be elemental abilities that you could assign to a particular weapon (Power Beam, Missiles, Bombs, etc.) and customize.

Yeah, I don't need a Prime game to look like Dark Souls, thanks. Has From even ever done a first-person game? Or a shooter, for that matter? And yeah, the last two times Nintendo outsourced Metroid it didn't go well.

@meleebrawler A lot of the time in Metroid Prime 1 and 2 you're just using the power beam, which never felt that great outside of charge shots.

But separate to that, the different beams in Prime 1 never felt that great outside of disintegration shots with the plasma beam. Echoes and Corruption improved the feedback from shooting greatly, even though the power beam stayed much the same.

@MarcelRguez Yeah, but were those games any good? Lol, and they're not shooters judging by the name.

Agreed....Also, there's only ONE beam in Prime 3? That's disappointing.

Edit: Still catching up, seems I missed the last page.

@Tyranexx No, there's just one beam at the time. It gets upgraded and replaced with better ones. Plus Samus has a super powerful new type of alternate beam mode.

@MarcelRguez I don't really see what swappable beams add to puzzle-solving beyond the minor artificial difficulty of taking time to switch between them. In fact, puzzles and obstacles involving beams never really amount to much more than just making sure you actually have said beam, rather than utilizing any unique quirks about it (such as Light Beam's piercing). They'd work the same with or without stackable beams.

The main benefits to swapping are testing your knowledge with enemy weaknesses, as you mentioned, and simply changing up how you fight.

I think From Software would do an incredible job with Meteoid Prime 4. Id never considered them until hearing the idea here but the more I think about it the more I would love to see it.

If they're going to reimplement them in future prime games, they'd need to make beam swapping and super missiles just... quicker. The lead time on both of them makes them pretty worthless, inconvenient to use open doors, and just not great in combat.

It's a shooter, just have us press a direction on the D-pad and have it be instant.

@Haru17 Most shooters have weapon switching take time for anything other than small weapons like pistols for balance reasons. To punish you for not adapting to your current situation quickly enough, not using cover properly etc.

Prime, of course, isn't nearly as action-oriented so swap speed isn't as critical for the most part. The only time it strikes me as being a problem is with the final boss of 1, who keeps arbitrarily changing his single weakness as the fight progresses, sometimes repeatedly. Besides, the first two games on Gamecube handled swap controls exactly as you described it: push a direction on the C-Stick.

As for Super Missiles, they need that start-up to balance out their power and relatively cheap cost. There's a reason that Super Missiles with no charge time are restricted as limited time powerups in 2's multiplayer.

Edit: Also, load times are a much bigger time-waster at doors than any amount of swapping could ever achieve. You see them on your map, for crying out loud, and so can easily get the beam you need long before you actually open the door.

Yeah, I didn't have any kind of problem with the beam switching speed, it was pretty reasonable. The only thing that really took too long was how long it took for doors to open (presumably because the game couldn't load the next room fast enough).

@meleebrawler It's just more wasting my time in combat. Nothing needs to be balanced by slow beam swapping, it's just slow animations. They should continue to speed up certain aspects of fights, like with the melee counter added in Samus Returns so players have a response for enemies entering close quarters.

And super missiles just miss because they have such a gigantic, annoying lag time on not just charging, but the time between pressing the fire button and the attack leaving your arm canon. It's plainly a flaw when many enemies have missile-reflecting armor anyway.

I wonder if Metroid Prime 4 would have online multiplayer. As far as we know, Switch isn't going to have any 3rd party FPS games (CoD, Overwatch, etc. all skipping Switch) so do you think Nintendo will add in online multiplayer to make up for that?

Online multiplayer is a virtual guarantee. Nintendo's had a lot of success with their multiplayer titles recently and multiplayer helps make their games more evergreen (see: Mario Kart 8, Smash 4, Splatoon. ARMS may be joining that list too), so I can't see them not wanting to put Prime 2's multiplayer online and selling DLC packs for it.

I can see a reason. The fact that no one cares about Metroid Prime 2's multiplayer and that they have far more successful games that use free DLC only.

I could see a different planet / story as expansion DLC. We'll have to see how substantial Breath of the Wild's is though.