Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

I don't think that, because what does Bandai Namco games have relevance to successfully creating a new Metroid Prime game? Other than "they are good at their job" or "have made other good video games". In which case, they could've hired a wide variety of people in a wide variety of companies?

My point is, I don't see this even being a particularly interesting aspect of developing this game. Like Smash Bros 4 without Pacman, more or less. :V

It's like saying Mario Kart 7 sure did need people from Retro Studios or Star Fox Zero was somehow the idea of Platinum Games.

Bandai-Namco is pretty good about internally developed games. I wouldn't worry too much about them.

@MarcelRguez No, you're right, and I agree. I'd like to see a trailer first, preferably gameplay.

I want Metroid Prime to be gooood. Let's hope it's not a Star Fox Zero, or a Colour Splash. Or Star Fox Assault, cause I think that game wasn't good either. Pokken was pretty barebones for a €60 fighting game too. I want them to go all-in with this game, but I have no idea how it will turn out.

Star Fox Assault is my favourite Star Fox game though I did wish it was longer as 10 missions was rather short.

I'm by no means putting down Bamco (their track record is pretty good overall), I just hope that Nintendo closely supervises them with the dev process. I trust them more than MercurySteam (who I didn't necessarily mistrust), and Samus Returns turned out fine. That assumption based on footage and feedback I've seen since I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

Having played all three Prime games relatively recently, I can tell that the bar is set quite high. Nintendo knows a lot is riding on this game, so I'm fully expecting both them and Bamco to pull out all the stops.

_{To fully be up to speed on the Prime universe, I still need to get around to watching plot footage of Hunters and FF....}

@Octane: Out of curiosity, what was wrong with Colour Splash? I own it and was hoping it would get me into the Paper Mario series. I've heard about how bad Sticker Star was, but I've never seen any terrible feedback about that one.

@Tyranexx I haven't played any of the other Paper Mario games, Colour Splash was my first, so I have nothing to compare it with, except itself. And I don't think it's a good game.

First of all, it looks good, music is fine too. The game isn't broken or anything like that either, no bugs. Credit where credit is due.

But there are a few things that annoy me no end. First, the controls. Mandatory touch screen controls shoe-horned into the game. First you need to manually browse through a stack of up to a hundred cards. Then you need to select up to three cards you want to use (and it's easy to select the wrong card on accident). Then you need to colour them by pressing them and watching them fill up with colour. Then, you need to flick them up towards the TV screen and watch the round play out. It drags on for too long. I feel there are a lot of unnecessary steps between choosing your attack and actually using the attack. On top of that, I thought the cards added a unique gameplay element. They don't. You can't reuse cards, so they function effectively as PP in the Pokemon franchise. You got 20 Jump Cards? Means you can use that attack 20 times. Why not turn it into a move select screen in that case? It feels like the cards are only there to give the GamePad a ''purpose''.

There's virtually no strategy whatsoever. I like card games for their strategy, but even though this game uses a card system, all you're doing is choosing between the Jump and Hammer attack, and I guess there are a few special cards for special battles. The only ''strategy'' I could find was realising whether an enemy had a spike on its head or not. If it has, don't use the Jump attack, you'll hurt yourself a bit. If the enemy is flying, don't use the Hammer attack, you'll miss. It's way too simple and easy for something that could have had a lot more strategy to it.

Then there are the optional Roshambo temples. It's basically three rounds of rock-paper-scissors. So you have a 12.5% chance of beating the temple. It's random. The NPCs give you hints on how to beat the first two, but if you lose to the last one, the NPCs don't give you hints anymore. So the second time it's pure RNG. Now, they're optional, but they count towards your completion. And beating all six temples grants you one of the six banners in the main HUB. So it's kinda incentivised to beat them.

The boss battles are quite boring, they're the same old Koopalings and Bowser. No unique boss fights. It's just way too generic.

Lastly, my biggest complain is the Bandit Shy Guy. So hear me out. The game is called Colour Splash, because you have a magic paint hammer and you fill in blank spots in the world to bring back colour to the levels. I've spend hours looking for the last final white spot, because I was stuck at 99% percent. Apparently I missed a small (read: tiny) white pebble on an almost white beach. But, filling in all the spots grants you another banner in the central HUB town. Fine by me. The game is called Colour Splash after all, so I figured that was kinda the premise of the game. However, half-way in, they introduce a guy called Bandit Shy Guy (iirc). He appears on the overworld map (it works like a classic Super Mario Bros. map). He runs towards a level in real time, and starts sucking the colour out of a level using a straw. You get a few seconds to run across the map towards him and challenge him to a battle before he drains all of the colour out of a level. Meaning you need to start all over. Ugh! Now, he appears on a random place, and his target level is also random. I got in a situation where I literally couldn't get to him in time, because he spawned all the way across the map. There was no way. I reset the game a few times, tried a different route. It was impossible (all because it's stupid RNG). Here's an example to give you an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw2T5-s2TSY

I just couldn't bring it to myself to redo the entire level, wasting another hour to do what I already did a few hours back, just because of some stupid RNG. The game had a lot of potential, but a lot of stupid RNG mechanics, generic boss battles, and an unnecessarily complicated move select screen, just no. I haven't played any other Paper Mario game, but if they play anything like this, I don't ever want to play another...

@DarthNocturnal: Good to know. I've read enough about Hunters and FF to know that they're not bad games (despite the internet whining about the latter), just not the type I would really enjoy. The reason I'm even considering watching plot footage was because I've seen rumors about FF's ending that may tie in with Prime 4.

@Octane: That's...discouraging, to say the least. That read like I would probably mess around with the game for a while, but whether or not I complete it is a different matter. TBH the only reason I even have the game was that I put it on my Christmas list a couple of years ago and wasn't really expecting to get it. XD I've been interested in the Paper Mario series for some time, so...maybe it won't hurt me to start with one of the not-so-great ones?

@Tyranexx It sucks, because the game had a lot of potential. I'm fine with the generic Toads. You won't hear me complaining about them. But the rest? Some of those gameplay elements, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to implement them. They're just not fun at all.

That being said, if you own the game anyway, there's no harm in trying it out.

Eurogamer have updated their previous story about Bandai Namco Singapore working on Metroid Prime 4.

[UPDATE: Since publication I've heard Bandai Namco's Japan studio is also working on the project, with the intention it will now take the lead on its development while Singapore moves to focus on another Switch game]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-02-08-yes-namco-bandai...

@Tyranexx I’ve never played Colour Splash - it’s had a mixed reaction - but I’d definitely recommend The Thousand Year Door. It’s so well written and the gameplay systems - while not incredibly deep - are clever and well formed. The meta aspect of the audience watching and rating your battles is pretty genius.

In a lot of ways it feels like a lost sequel to Earthbound with a Mario coating.

I don’t think devs get credit for having a bugless, 4K HDR, 999 fps bad game. Because anyone in their right mind would be playing an ambitious one that’s a little creaky at the edges.

@Tyranexx I thought Colour Splash was really good, just to throw in my two cents. And I've played all of the Paper Mario games

I liked Color Splash with the only major issues being about the World Map Bandit Shy Guy (always beat him in time but it's a stupid idea) and the Roshambo Temples.

I agree 100%. I definitely feel better about this now.

The Paper Mario games I want to try the most are TTYD and SPM, but I currently have no way to play the former. It's part of the reason why I would either like to see it ported or at least see GameCube VC show up on the Switch.

Basically from the reactions in this thread (didn't mean to partially hijack it, sorry), I'm getting vibes that I've seen elsewhere; Color Splash isn't as bad as Sticker Star, but the reception of it seems polarized. I'll just have to judge it for myself, I reckon.

Ironically I've had similar thoughts about trying Other M, though in that case I don't own it yet.

@Tyranexx I thought Other M wasn't that bad at all. But I didn't care for the story in that game. It was alright, nothing special I guess, and I didn't have any expectations for Samus as a character.

Apart from the pixel hunting in the game (which was a terrible shoe-horned in gimmick to add motion controls), the gameplay is pretty good. It's like a mix between 2D and 3D Metroid. It works pretty well.

@Octane: Interesting. I may add it to my backlog eventually since there are still a couple of retail copies floating around where I live at the moment. I've heard that the gameplay in and of itself isn't bad like you describe, but that the story is pants.

One thing's for sure, I'll try to go into it with my expectations low.

Yeah Other M is... ok as a game.

My problem with Other M is more of the lost potential. No Nunchuk means combat is so much more simple than it should be, leading SenseMove to be busted beyond belief. Clunky first-person mode. Pretty bad portrayals of both Samus and Adam. A story that rips off of Fusion's story and retroactively makes both that story and Adam worse off.

The sad thing is, all of those mistakes were all built on great ideas. Well, except maybe the first-person mode thing. But still, with how much it squandered on those ideas, it's just so crushing to see.

The first person mode is like the blowing mechanic in DKC Returns. Completely unnecessary, but it didn't ruin my experience either. Though I will say, it did lead to some... interesting fights, having to swap between third and first person whilst juggling the Wii Remote. Given the fact that you're controlling Samus with a d-pad in a 3D game, it works surprisingly well though. But this a weird artifact from the time Nintendo had a weird obsession with having every game completely playable with a single Wii Remote.

The worst part of Other M are certain butthurt defenders of Other M. The story could not hope to be as bad. Which is impressive in a way.

The funny thing is, even after that, I was not clamoring for a new Metroid Prime. I wouldn't have minded it exactly but even if they brought back Prime's gameplay, I wanted something really different with it. But I eventually realized that if Nintendo wasn't going to make a new Metroid Prime, I would never get anything like it at all. Like, I heard this one obscure indie game on Wii U was a bit like Prime, but otherwise I've never heard any credible/consistent suggestion that literally any game not called Metroid Prime is like Metroid Prime. Like nowadays if you want X game, even if the actual game series is gone, there's probably 1...5...300+ devs making something for you. But the last game like Metroid Prime came out in 2007, and was called Metroid Prime 3.

So between all that, and two great Metroid 2 remakes being great largely on the basis of being 2d Metroid games, I'm just happy we're getting a new Metroid Prime. Nintendo, please never stop making them as long as they are even close to as good as the previous ones.

Other M is one of the few Metroid games I'll never actually bother with. I tried a demo of that game but the controls were way too clunky to be usable, and the map is way too linear. Hard pass on this game.