Beaucine

@ShieldHero

Contrary to what a lot of people are saying here, I would absolutely recommend playing the original Metroid. I honestly think it's better than Zero Mission.

However, Zero Mission is a vastly better starting point. It's just more accessible and modern. I would leave NEStroid for last, once you're a Metroid veteran. That's what I did. It's easier to appreciate it if you're already familiar with the franchise.

Out of all the Metroids, the OG remains the absolute best at evoking the feeling of being lost and vulnerable in a strange, maze-like alien landscape. (Fusion is a close second: definitely the creepiest atmosphere out of all the 2D Metroids.) My personal favorite is Super, but that's a cozy game by comparison.

I've never played the originals, but those old Saturn graphics (from what I've seen on YouTube comparisons) have a texture and grit to them that makes them aesthetically interesting. This remaster just looks like plastic shovelware.

I did play the first Panzer Dragoon on Switch. It's a fine game. But I feel the "modernized" graphics are losing something in the transition.

I like an Assist Mode or Story Mode. That allows people who don't want to "get good" to enjoy other aspects of a game, such as the story, the vibe, the atmosphere, the music, and so on.

I also like accessibility options. That's a whole different thing. It has nothing to do with ensuring everyone can beat a game, because you don't actually need to beat a game. It's not a health service. Accessibility options are about leveling the playing field. But the playing field can be an impossible war zone, if that's the intended experience.

(Most game developers won't do that because, you know, they want to sell copies of their game. But they could if they wanted to. It'd be artistically valid. I mean, technically, this is how Halo: Reach ends. You could — if you really wanted to — make a game that's just Halo: Reach's last level. Maybe to make a point about the futility of war. And that'd be totally valid, if not very commercial. And in such a case, accessibility options would ensure that the game is — let's say — equally impossible for everyone. So everyone is on equal footing when it comes to being unable to beat the game. I know I'm using an extreme example here, but hopefully it gets the point across.)

As for difficulty levels, I like how Nintendo approaches them: a relatively easy critical path layered with optional challenges or areas. I also enjoy it when game mechanics, charms, skills, armor, and so on, can become stealth difficult levels: that's how the Dark Souls games do it. Or Hades. I think of these as organic difficulty levels: there's technically just one difficulty level, but your approach to the game — within the game — can modulate the challenge. And as you get better, your relationship to the game world and systems changes.

I don't love selectable levels or sliders, though. I do think a well-tailored, single, canon difficulty is fundamentally better.

As a player, you don't know how good you can get at a game. When you have one intended difficulty, this can push you past challenging areas and force you to learn the game in a deeper way, rather than resorting to an easier difficulty. Remember: most gamers will default to making games boring for themselves through safe, dull strategies.

This can absolutely live alongside a well-labeled Assist Mode or suite of accessibility options, though.

To be fair, Hollow Knight's DLC was so perfectly integrated into the game that I often didn't even realize I had walked into DLC during my first-time playthrough. So I expect something similar in this case.

Also, if Silksong is anything like Hollow Knight, the base game is already going to be 30 to 40 hours long, so it's not like it's going to need the DLC to feel like a full-fledged adventure.

Silksong and Metroid Prime 4 confirmed.

Half-Life 3, it's your turn now.

I played 1 and 2 for the first time last year. Incredible experiences.

If you go in understanding that both games (but especially 1) have a lot of experimental and intentionally tedious aspects to them (not entirely unlike what Death Stranding is doing, closer to our own era) then they become really fascinating and immersive.

You're going to spend five business days opening a cupboard just to watch a cockroach scuttling under the sink, and you're going to like it. I also really appreciated that that protagonist has separate shelves for underwears, shirts, and socks. Very organized young man. Will go far in life.

@Ellie-Moo It's not technically that different, it's more about the mindset you slide into depending on the controls.

Even with the Remastered release, if you switch to Gamecube-style bindings, the experience is suddently so much more methodical — because of how you slowly turn, look, scan, lock on, and so on — that the "First Person Adventure" vibe is more immediately obvious.

@Ellie-Moo Oh, Deus Ex is amazing and I hope it comes to modern consoles. I do think it's likelier we'll get Thief before Deux Ex, though. But we're getting there.

@The_Nintend_Pedant Yeah, I agree with the Zelda comparison, but that's also close to what I'm saying, so... Haha.

@MARl0, I have a Super Metroid avatar. I'm obviously aware of the, uh, connection. But we were talking about Prime not being an FPS. In that context, yeah, Prime, with all the pixel hunting, scanning, puzzle-solving, and machine-activating, plays more like an Adventure game.

And no, I don't feel it's simply Super's gameplay in 3D. Prime is winking at Super all the time, sure, but moment-to-moment it's a very, very different beast. It's much slower, the platforming is easier, the pathing more linear, and the puzzles more Adventury, closer to Myst or, well, Zelda.

@The_Nintend_Pedant Definitely, Metroid Prime is a point-and-click Adventure game with shooting mechanics. But to be fair, that's easier to recognize if you're playing with Gamecube controls. Remastered's twin-stick configuration makes it play more like a traditional FPS. And for some, that's their only reference point.

@OldManHermit For sure. I think that, in spirit, this is way closer to Resident Evil than, say, Quake or Half-Life. From the resource management to the pacing and the purposeful "clunkiness" that adds to the sense of dread.

I feel that it needs to be pointed out (not for the reviewer, but the commenters) that this is not a shooter. It's more of an immersive sim. It's slow-paced and moody. The actual shooting is there, but it's not great and never was. Doom, Unreal, Duke Nukem, Quake, Turok, Half-Life, even Goldeneye — those games were already out. People in 1999 knew what satisfying shooting in first person felt like. This wasn't it. You play System Shock 2 because of the mechanics, the exploration, the sense of dread, the story, etc. Some of these aspects remain peerless. Can't wait to dive back in.

Yeah, I'm getting it. I need to finish it.

I kid you not: I find this game so stressful, I haven't been able to power through it in the 15 years I've been trying. Maybe now's the time?

I love it, though. It's so successful at exactly what it wants to achieve. Just constant dread throughout.

I wonder how much of the jank they'll preserve. It's important to the experience. You're terrified, in perpetual danger, and everything you do is at least a little bit (and probably intentionally) clunky.

I live in Argentina. I have no idea when it'll be available here. Hopefully before 2030.

Still, the only Switch 2 release I'm looking forward to is Metroid Prime 4. And that's still coming to OG Switch.

One of the best games I've played. It's an Adventure game, minus the pointing and clicking. Fun logic puzzles, unmatched atmosphere, and fascinating story. The stealth portions are extremely basic, by design. (I mean, more basic than Metal Gear 2 from 1990.) But they don't get in the way. It's a remarkable experience.

If you like this, I also recommend Still Wakes the Deep, from the makers of Dear Esther. It's more like SOMA than Dear Esther, though. (Chinese Room did, after all, do one of the Amnesia games.) And has much better stealth sequences. (Though the story and overall emotional impact aren't quite at SOMA's level.)

Thankfully, the most important and long-overdue feature — the button remapping — is coming for both consoles.

To be honest, it's only Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that really need it, and I already have a System Preset for them.

But it's obviously more convenient to do everything natively within NSO.

It's a good joke release. I'm assuming it's the other two price tiers they're actually, truly selling here. While the $666 bundle is purely for collectors and YouTubers who are going to get it for free anyway.

There's a French guy on IG and YouTube that jumps across rooftops and risks his life for views. His death-defying parkour is more exciting than this, for sure, but also the same fundamental idea: it's a public performance. These are content creators performing for their public. Like a speedrunner trying to 100% Donkey Kong 64 in one go: excruciating for the performer, but that's the appeal for viewers. Obviously, in this case, no one is going to watch the whole 2-month queue odyssey. But followers will check in at random intervals which, if you have enough followers, means enough people are always watching to then monetize the ordeal.

I will not, however, be checking in at all. Personally.

SOMA is, as everyone's saying, a masterpiece. Sure, the "stealth" sections, although moody, are mechanically too simplistic. That's probably the game's main flaw. Everything else, from atmosphere to storytelling and contextually-logical puzzles, is incredible. A profound experience.

I should note, though, that this game is an adventure game at heart. Or even a borderline "walking simulator," much like last year's Still Wakes the Deep. Don't expect much action or even survival horror. The enemy encounters are very specific and encapsulated: they're scripted moments more than anything else. (Again, a lot like Still Wakes the Deep.) The puzzles are more involved, though: more akin to an adventure game than, say, interactive non-puzzles in the style of Tacoma or Firewatch.

Still, you're playing this game for the vibe and the themes. And boy, it delivers on both ends.

I mean it's obviously a ruff but that won't stop the internet from debating it.

@-wc-

I think it just means that it's closer to the experience of playing an actual physical tabletop game than, say, Baldur's Gate 3.

That being said, having tried and enjoyed the first one, and given the mechanics and pacing of the game, it wouldn't necessarily work with a more elaborate presentation. The simplicity felt like a feature, not a bug.

Definitely a vibe, though! Not for everyone.

I recently played it for the first time on NSO and I thought it was an excellent game with wonderful dungeons, a spectacular final boss fight, some ocassionally opaque signposting — and terrible sidequests. Luckily, I have no compulsion to 100% games. But the sidequests — and their related items — remain obviously and inescapably there, which means they're still visual or gameplay "noise" cluttering the game space. And ignoring this noise is still a cognitive load. So, sure, I didn't drag myself through these sidequests, but I still had to contend with them, to a degree.

@obijuankanoobie @BoFiS

Not sure about Tooie, but other Rare games on NSO, like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Jet Force Gemini, support widescreen because their original releases already did, out of the box. Most of us just didn't have the TVs back then to take advantage of those modes. So, in short: it depends on the game itself and is not an NSO feature.

That said, due to how these widescreen modes were programmed or configured at the time, the scaling on modern TVs can be hit or miss. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark work very well, but Jet Force Gemini requires some tweaking, stretching, and zooming to get it to look good. We'll see how Tooie fares.

I just bought the first one a few days ago!

Entirely because of John Linneman. That Sunsoft video was incredible work.

@VoidSeraph Oh, it's in my backlog! I love Metroidvanias, obviously, so I was going to get around to the new Prince of Persia eventually.

As for the broader discussion, I think people are awkwardly comparing Braid to, say, something like Limbo, Inside, or Unravel. You know, modern cinematic platformers with puzzle elements. But those aren't Braid, which is a much more exacting, meticulous, even rigid game.

The only comparable games I can think of are, I don't know, The Swapper, which isn't as good; or much older classics, like Fire 'n Ice and Solomon's Key. To me, that's the puzzle platforming tradition Braid falls into.

I have no idea what anyone here is saying. Braid is Braid. I haven't played another game like it. I've played loads of indie games doing other things that aren't what Braid is doing. Maybe similar things, maybe better things. But they're not really Braid.

I just think everyone's played it already. It's a landmark game. It holds up, whatever that means. It didn't really need a remaster. I already have it in my Steam library.

@datamonkey I played it for the first time in 2015 or so. Other than the camera (sometimes) and the stealth sections (which aren't game-ruining anyway), it's pretty great. The fact that it doesn't follow today's standards is actually what makes it good (small world, tight experience, great flow).

The NSO apps are what I'm playing most lately. So yes, I'm renewing. It helps that I missed out on so much — or literally everything — from GB, GBA, SNES, NES, Genesis, and even N64, which I did own. I'm still revisiting some old favorites, but most are first-time playthroughs. (Finished Zero Mission just last night.)

Now if they just added in-app button remapping...

@wiiware

Unfortunately, you can't tell the system to automatically adopt a preset for specific NSO games.

However, you can still save a preset in System Settings > Controllers and Sensors > Change Button Mapping. Then select it whenever you want to play Goldeneye or Perfect Dark, or deselect it when you're done. It only takes a few seconds. Not ideal, but also not insurmountable.

Also, I don't know, I really like the second half of the campaign. The opening dataDyne missions are good, but I don't think they're better than the Area 51 missions, or the Air Force One missions, or the Carrington defense missions, or Deep Sea and Attack Ship, etc. Crash Site and Pelagic II kind of drag a bit, but that's it.

The game plays fine. Put in 20 hours already. There are better alternatives through emulation, but if you want to try it out on NSO, do it. Just follow this simple system remap for Goldeneye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QepAQsjUWuo

@link3710 I think the negative comparisons to Prime Remastered make no sense. I thought we were all aware that the entire reason Prime Remastered looked as good as it did was precisely because Retro were using it to develop the tech for Prime 4. I've always assumed both games were going to look very similar.

They showed us the prologue level. I'm not sure why, based on that, we're all typing extremely conclusive, definitive statements about the gameplay and how it pushes or doesn't push the series forward. As Metroid prologues go, that looked cool. I don't know.

Another important point: there is nothing coming out right now with Prime-style gameplay. So more Prime is not exactly saturating the market. It means we now have two Prime games on modern consoles. Not a crowd.

Breath of the Wild was competing against an entire era of open-world titles. Prime 4 is competing against Prime Remastered.

Trying out Perfect Dark. Looking good!

In terms of controls, it's the same deal as Goldeneye: virtually unplayable with the standard mapping on the Pro Controller, but a quick remap at the system level gets the job done. Here's the NL tutorial for Goldeneye, for those who missed it the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QepAQsjUWuo. It's much, much easier than you think, and works just as well with Perfect Dark. I switched my saved preset on and got playing.

Other than that, the widescreen and high-res options work well. And the game certainly feels smoother to play, frame-rate-wise, than back in the day. But I don't have the OG around to test that.

A real fur ball. Didn't see it coming.

Looks fantastic. Day one, obviously. Love the gameplay concept and, yeah, we finally get to play primarily as Zelda in a mainline game.

Ah, Perfect Dark. Replaying Goldeneye on NSO was great — but it's Perfect Dark that I've always loved more. I assume my Goldeneye control preset will work well here, too.

Not keen on Turok. Nightdive's version is right there, as everyone's saying. I'll pick it up someday.

@Sonicka I think the grey/blue environment makes everything look a bit drab. Intentionally so, which is why I didn't mind. It's supposed to look like a desaturated, ruined battleground. I assume the biome we'll be exploring later will lean closer to Prime Remastered's splendor.

I was kinda hoping they'd release the other two Prime games to tide us over, but I'm just glad to get some footage of Prime 4. I assume the trailer is showing us the typical Metroid prologue, before we're deposited in the landscape teased at the end.

On the graphics, I'm not sure what some are complaining about. It looks great to me. A lot like Prime Remastered, which we all knew was going to be the case, because Prime Remastered was explicitly a practice run for this.

@wiiware It's pretty easy to do a system-level rebinding and save it as a Goldeneye preset. I know it "shouldn't" have to be that way, but it's still fairly straightforward. It takes about a minute and makes Goldeneye on NSO actually playable as a twin-stick FPS. Nintendo Life even has a video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QepAQsjUWuo

@Kingy

Yeah, agreed. Options I enjoy, when it comes to bringing classics to modern systems: a tastefully spruced-up version of the original, like Nightdive's Quake or Quake II; a rigorous port, like the Sega Ages line; or a full-blown reimagining that's basically a new game, like FF7 Remake.

What I don't like are middle-of-the-road remakes or remasters that completely change the original art style, vibe, game feel, etc, for the sake of modernization.

Just make the original readily available.

I wouldn't mind a 3D reimagining, like FF7 Remake. But that would be a different game.

It's one of my favorite games, for sure. It's not, however, a game I see myself replaying often.

Hollow Knight is a bit different from other Metroid-likes in that it's actually quite long. The map is huge and the sheer number of optional bosses and items can be overwhelming. It took me around 50 to 60 hours to get the real ending, explore most of the map, and beat most of the optional bosses (not counting the Godhome, which, reportedly, unlocks the really real ending, but I don't have the patience for that gauntlet).

It's not like, well, the game in my avatar, which, even taking my time, finding ways to sequence break it, but absolutely not trying to speedrun it, always takes me somewhere between 5 to 10 hours. That's a game I replay a couple of times a year.

Brevity can be good for Metroid-likes, and Hollow Knight is not brief. It's so good, though. And so immersive.

I think Sakurai's video is a bit more nuanced than just his own preference.

The reality is that it depends on what role the boss fight has in the overall texture of the game. That fight in Ocarina of Time is absolutely a tutorial. It's literally the first boss. Later fights have more strats available to you, though there's usually something or other that you definitely have to do. But Ocarina is more about puzzle solving and narrative experience.

If we're talking about a game where bosses and combat play more of a role, and it's all about your skill and inventiveness, then yeah, more leeway and room for experimentation are awesome. Because I'm gonna be doing a lot of that during the game's runtime.

Probably! But part of me wants to play Mario RPG first, then Paper Mario on NSO, and then this... So, might take a while.

It took me years to beat BOTW. I wanted to find every shrine, do most sidequests, upgrade my favorite sets of armor, and see almost all of Hyrule before meeting the big bad.

TOTK, I beat in a few months. The amount of stuff to do seemed exhausting to me, stretched out over too much terrain, and not terribly interesting. So I set smaller goals for myself and then went straight to Ganondorf.

That being said, the shrines are more consistently good this time around, and the critical path is more compelling: the lead ups to the dungeons are some of the best in the franchise. (The actual dungeons are not.)

I have tons left to do. I keep meaning to go back to it. But the game is not great at making the stuff you do seem meaningful.

I've spent 100s of hours on the NSO classic consoles, so I can't complain. It helps if you skipped out on a massive amount of N64, SNES, Genesis, NES, and Game Boy games, of course. Lots new to play. Recently finished Blast Corps, which was a... blast. Sorry. But it's true. The camera sucks for the late-game secret hunt, and some of the physics and hit detection are funky, but otherwise a stellar experience I was too impatient to appreciate as a kid.

I agree, obviously.

In terms of atmosphere, Fusion is close. I don't think Dread is on the same level as either.

Prime, however, matches Super. But that's a different deal, being 3D and all.

I played the original a few years ago and it was great, but never got around to really sitting down to finish it. Now's my chance!

Nightdive is doing such great work bringing these games back to life. I was too young for them when they came out, so it's great to finally play them — and with some modern bells and whistles, too!