Mix those up in a blender, add in a stoic female mercenary whose sole personality trait amounts to “badass,” and you’ve got Metroid. meets the item-based exploration of The Legend of Zelda.
METROID PRIME REMASTERED MICROMANIA SERIES
The series began as a merging of Nintendo design philosophies - the precision platforming of Super Mario Bros. Her nemesis is literally named “Ridley” - it ain’t subtle. It’s heavily “inspired” by Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, placing a strong female lead in an isolated horror space surrounded by creatures.
For newcomers, the Metroid series may feel somewhat familiar. Speaking of Samus, it’s good to see her getting her due these last few years. It’s the kind of detail that somehow has eluded 99 percent of first-person games and is what makes Metroid Prime Remastered feel vital, even if it’s retread. It’s best summarized by a single recurring detail: whenever an explosion occurs too close to the player’s visor, they can see a gorgeously rendered reflection of their own face, or rather heroine Samus Aran’s.
Only 2021’s 2D-oriented Metroid Dread comes to mind as a game that’s looked this good on Switch. It’s also surprisingly stable, especially compared to the numerous recent first and second-party Nintendo titles that have struggled to perform on the aging Switch hardware. The level of shading and texture here makes the 2002 iteration look like mud. Sometimes shockingly so, to the point peeping a YouTube clip of the original was appalling.
Prime was famously a gorgeous game - after all, it was built for the GameCube at a time when Nintendo competed in the technical fidelity market rather than relying on unpowered hardware and plucky charm - but this remaster is honestly one of the best looking games on the Switch. Visually too, everything seemed per the rose-tinted memory of the original. I briefly switched back to the “purist” version, a clunky single stick system that relies almost entirely on lock-on aiming as the game did in 2002. It took a while for me to recognize that it was the result of a mechanical overhaul, adding in dual-stick shooter controls that all modern gamers are familiar with (and ironically introduced by this game’s direct competitor, 2001’s Halo). It felt like I was speed running a game I didn’t know I knew so well I was suddenly like Jason Bourne, an amnesiac savant of gaming. After booting up the game for the first time in 20 years, I was able to tear through the first quarter in a trance-like haze, acting almost entirely on muscle memory. And what a beautifully facsimiled memory it is. Visually and mechanically, it does the thing that’s so fashionable these days: Looking and playing as you remember the original, not the way it was. The 2002 version brought the world of Metroid to life in spectacular fashion and this remaster improves it in every possible way. Handwringing aside, there’s much to celebrate about this version of Prime. Few first-person games have ever been as immersive as Prime with its in-visor HUD.
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