Forum - View topicGAME: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Game Review
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prophet4profit9
Posts: 38 |
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This is a surprise... usually the only thing I've heard about Prime 4 is everyone negatively talking about how much it sucks, what a disappointment it is, and how it's nothing like the Prime they love, and everything about it is bad.
It's uncommon to see a dissenting review that likes something everyone else dislikes for different reasons...... but it's downright rare to see a review literally contradicting everything else everyone hates about a game, by saying the exact diametric opposite. Every positive point listed here is something I've heard everyone else say the opposite of. This review claims the game is everything they know and love about Prime, and everyone else just say this game is a betrayal to everything Metroid Prime stands for and that it's a disappointing failure by Nintendo on just about every level. So either this review is off-base or literally everyone else is. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 995 |
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I found it rather striking that in the older Prime games, where Samus barely if ever had anyone to talk to, you could still see inside her visor in the third person scenes and get a pretty good picture of her mental state just by reading her incredibly well-animated eyes. Prime 4 just... kind of forgets that was ever a thing? The environment and lighting artists absolutely killed it, but beyond that Prime 4 feels like it forgets a lot of the little touches that made the original trilogy what it was.
Even so, it's still an imitation of a recipe that nobody knows how to make anymore, so I'm not really sure what standards I'm supposed to hold MP4 to at all. 2D Metroid imitators are their own whole genre, but nobody really does them in 3D, first-person or otherwise. There still isn't a very good grounds for comparison except within its own series. At worst, I find myself examining the original trilogy more cynically, and wondering if the first Prime really did succeed entirely by copying Super Metroid's homework. Which is not the place I wanted to end up as a Metroid fan. |
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FanGamer24
Posts: 316 |
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Some fans are just being melodramatic. If you enjoyed previous Prime games this game is just more of what made those games fun but also doesn’t really improve on the formula either. It has problems but I still fully enjoyed my 13 hour play through. It’s a solid 8/10 experience but fans really wanted a 9 or 10. |
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SrkSano
 Posts: 277 |
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Never played any of the Metroid Prime games, mostly just the 2D ones so I jumped into this one. I've been enjoying it so far.
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2969 |
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Ain't that the truth of the Metroid fandom. Clearly James didn't have to rush to a deadline and could take his time with the crystal collecting (which if you check out the shrines you should have plenty, and with the Power Bomb you'll have an excess). Rushing Prime games in general is often a bad idea; they're not designed for speed running. As for Prime 4, a lot of stuff I can say feels gestational and kind of need another iteration or two. Like the pieces are there, they just need some more tweaks like with the Psychic Bomb or the Control Beam. I love the Vi-O-La and hope Samus continues to get biker characterization. Also, is it just me or does everything hit WAY harder than in previous games? It seemed like there were times where I was genuinely having to fight for my life and I died way more times to bosses than I did in previous titles (though I still didn't die a lot). But anyway, it's definitely an enjoyable time that feels like a natural progression from Prime 3. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3270 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Thank you for noticing this. Except for when we get review keys under embargo with more than a week to try out, I do not put our reviewers under a rush for game reviews. We want to provide thoughtful reviews that are useful to our audience, but we typically give reviewers two weeks to play and submit a review if we don't receive a code until launch day. This might make us less click-competitive with game-focused sites, but I think it's better overall for reviewers and readers. There are other aspects of game reviews as well, so that pay vs hours put in aren't as disparate. This might mean our reviews don't cover all 40+ hours of content in a game, but our writers aren't getting paid peanuts for what is normally a full-time job's worth of work on a single video game. |
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wolf10
Posts: 995 |
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The Control Beam is moderately better, but I realized from watching trailers (after clearing) that I was expected to be using it way more against the Grievers just for its insane knockback capabilities. There's also basically no time spent with it before you're expected to solve the most complicated Control Beam puzzle in the game. The generally vague wording on scanner entries didn't help much either. I'd almost suspect the game went too long without any outside feedback, so the devs decided "this is fine actually," and ended up not having time to fix things once people who didn't already know all the tricks got their hands on it. The only direct, obvious improvement over past games is the sub-target snapping for lock-on free-aim mode, but that has to be manually turned on in the options.
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BalmungHHQ
Posts: 715 |
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Sounds to me like you've surrounded yourself with a lot of cynicism. I don't really blame you though, because cynicism has become the prevailing voice online for all kinds of things, but video games especially as of late. As someone who played through the game myself, Metroid Prime 4 is an absolutely solid game. It's inherited most things I enjoyed about the original Metroid Prime, and implements new ideas of its own. Admittedly, the desert area was rather basic, and I think the idea had plenty of room to have been better implemented, but the bike itself was rather fun to ride and I think it was a great way to break up the traditional first-person action. Similarly, as meme'd to hell and back Myles MacKenzie was, he and the rest of the Federation characters were rather charming, and forming the kind of fondness I did for them was absolutely one of the goals of the game that gives the ending its power. (It makes me sad how the pre-release online discourse probably soured many players on the characters before they ever had a chance.) I enjoyed my time with the game, but even while I played I could tell that the cynics online would have much to gripe about. It is what it is, unfortunately.
Both can be true you know. Opinions/impressions on a game aren't hardline facts that everyone has to agree to. |
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TheRealMaria
 Posts: 123 |
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The original Prime was the only one I actually liked in the subseries. Echoes felt annoying with the light and dark world mechanic and the third with all the story and other things just didn't vibe. Haven't played this yet but all people I've seen say it's the worst of the Primes. The original seemed like it was the most Metroid before the sequels went off in its own direction. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7220 |
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It’ almost like reviews and feedback on things can differ by individual. Leading to someone hating something another may like and someone liking something another person will hate. |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 766 Location: USA |
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The dialogue can be a tad cringe at times but the controversy has been blown out of proportion. I am a bit disappointed the isolative feeling isn’t present the entire time. Still, the game is gorgeous and not and at all bad. Whoever said it’s a solid 8 but fans wanted a 10/10 is spot on.
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 5979 |
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Fluwm
Moderator
 Posts: 1625 |
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I mean, just as someone who came into the Metroid games fairly recently, I haven't been all that impressed by the Metroid Primes because, for me, the best examples of what "3D Metroidvania" can be are Dark Souls and Bloodborne. It's certainly not an *easy* way to make a game (probably why Fromsoft only ever did it the two times) but it's not exactly dead, either. Likewise, going to play the 2D games like Dread or Super, while I can enjoy them, they don't exactly rank among my favorite Metroidvanias. If anything, the sense I get is that Nintendo just isn't very aware of how the genre has grown and evolved outside of its own games. Like I'm currently playing through MP4 right now, and enjoying it well enough, but it doesn't really feel appreciably different to me than MP1. Even the much-lambasted backlash to the chatty NPCs is something I'm finding to be a very overblown thing, as the vast majority of my time with the game has just been wandering about the levels on my lonesome just like in MP1. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 600 |
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From what I can tell, it seems like the general consensus is that MP4 is overall pretty good, but it has a few parts that are really bad, and your opinion of the game is going to depend on how much those bad parts bother you.
IMO spoiler[letting you overwrite your save past a point of no return at the end and requiring both 100% items and 100% scans to get the true ending is pretty egregious and I don't understand why they would even do that.] |
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 5979 |
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