"Disaster struck suddenly. We had a vague, dark foreboding, and it became truth. A meteor appeared from nowhere, casting a shadow of debris over the land with the violence of its impact . . . A Great Poison burst forth into the land, a strange energy that clawed at natural life with a ferocity."
--Chozo log, Metroid Prime Remastered
"Throughout our living nightmare, as we battle with this unyielding darkness, we Chozo see a light. This light glows with promise, chasing the shadows cast by the Great Poison and purifying that which has grown toxic. It is strange, though--at times it looks to our eyes as if the light coalesces into the figure of a woman."
--Chozo log, Metroid Prime Remastered
It has been 21 years since the debut of Metroid Prime on the GameCube, with its lock-on shooter mechanics and its mostly horizon-leveled aiming. First-person games have shifted towards a different control scheme. Different iterations of Metroid have come, from more side-scrolling games to a third-person game (Other M) to a handheld Prime spinoff for the 3DS. Metroid Prime Remastered takes the first major evolution of the series in the sense of gameplay style and brings it to a portable system just over 20 years later. Better graphics, portability, and the Switch's screenshot capabilities make this by far the best way to play this game that is deserving of its reputation as a classic.
Production Values
Even remastered, as improved as the graphics are, the game is still 22 years old, with occasional textures still looking like they are from a previous console generation with their lack of detail. The age of the base game just makes the rest more of a visual triumph. The colors, smoothness, frame rate, and environmental design are incredible accomplishments that hold up well more than two decades after the original release. Metroid Prime has never looked better thanks to graphical enhancements. The diverse environments on Tallon IV showcase the splendor of the art style and graphics well as Samus travels between the surface overworld, a snowy area, a subterranean volcanic region, ruins of the former Chozo inhabitants, an expansive mine, and even underwater sections.
With such a sometimes serpentine set of interconnected areas, the game's hint system can be helpful in streamlining playthroughs. You can take screenshots using the designated button on the Switch to help remember which rooms to revisit or where in them to return to, but periodically, Samus receives vague map data that could highlight new or familiar rooms with an exclamation point. Many times, finding a new ability will also position you fairly close to a room where you can use it. There are many crevices to look in and many rooms to revisit, each region having its own musical theme--concept art and soundtrack and model viewers, unlocked by completing the game and by optional scanning achievements or item collection, exhibit these elements nicely.
Gameplay
The GameCube-style controls are replaced with a default configuration where the left analog stick controls walking or jumping direction and the right analog stick controls aiming, much like with Metroid Prime 3 and the Metroid Prime Trilogy. This smoother, freer setting makes navigating the varied landscapes of Tallon IV, shooting at enemies, and solving puzzles much easier than the first time. In standard Metroid fashion, Samus loses many of her abilities early on and has to gradually reacquire them. More fundamental tools like missiles, a double jump function, the charge beam, and the Varia Suit (which protects against environments with high heat) are obtained one by one, with each allowing access to more rooms, more puzzle solutions, or more enhancements like missile expansions and energy tanks.
There is much backtracking, and new players can find themselves remembering areas where they can utilize newly gained capabilities. Further in the game, upgrades like the plasma beam, which can scorch enemies, and the X-ray visor, which can see otherwise invisible platforms or entities, are found and help Samus get closer and closer to defeating the poisoning creature in the heart of the planet. Scanning items, animals, computer terminals, and more provides additional, optional details about the history of Tallon IV, such as how a great meteor fell and introduced a substance that makes living things it contacts more aggressive or how a humanoid species sealed it away underground. Some unlockables in the main menu can only be attained by scanning everything or finding every collectible, so there is an incentive--beyond familiarity with the lore and upgrading Samus respectively--to carefully search out each item or scan.
Story
Some spoilers are below, though the story is largely communicated without dialogue, by cutscenes or by optional scan logs.
Samus Aran investigates a derelict vessel above Tallon IV after she receives its distress signal, finding a Space Pirate presence and discovering that Ridley has been reformed as a biomechanical organism. As the ship explodes, she chases Meta Ridley to the surface of Tallon IV in her ship, but not before losing many suit capabilities in the escape. The planet once was a Chozo-inhabited world, colonized by the same species that raised her as a child. Their technology, armaments, and structures aid her as she works her way to a crater where the Chozo sealed away a poisoning substance from a meteor crash.
Intellectual Content
As Samus uncovers more about the past Chozo inhabitants of Tallon IV, she reads of their great affinity for general philosophy, spirituality, and science (yes, spirituality and science are subsets of philosophy). Their dealings with the spiritual nature of consciousness and the evolution she observes in the planet's creatures are not even falsely treated as if they conflict: spirits free of their bodies and evolutionary divergences are simultaneously affirmed in this game, with Phazon accelerating genetic evolution to within a single generation without reproduction. The Space Pirates, with their more scientism-esque philosophy and their utilitarianism, seek to use Phazon for whatever malevolent ends would benefit them. In contrast, the Chozo of Tallon IV lived in harmony with nature while not believing in the metaphysical errors and epistemological fallacies of naturalism. They believed in prophetic foresight, for example, an extrasensory premonition that does not correspond to the immediate condition of the physical world, but to its future state. They also became disembodied spirits after shedding their physical forms altogether.
The game mishandles some descriptions of its metaphysics, such as when scanning Chozo ghosts says they are phasing out of existence when they vanish before the combat visor. However, they aren't phasing out of existence as their scan log states, just phasing out of unaided visible perception (the X-ray visor continuously tracks them even when they would blink out of visibility). The contrast between the Chozo and the Space Pirates inevitably leads to differences in the logs they leave behind. One from the Space Pirates addresses how puzzled they are that the life force energy absorbed by Metroid from the victims is immaterial. It is as if they had not realized beforehand that it is at least logically possible for immaterial things to exist (and hell, the necessary laws of logic are and could only be nonphysical, being true in the absence of a material world).
Aside from things like this, the puzzles and exploration of Metroid Prime are preserved excellently and offer intellectual content of a kind other than the directly ideological.
Conclusion
Metroid Prime Remastered is a stellar example of how to update a game and bring it to a contemporary console, all more than two decades after the original release. Improved graphics modernize the aesthetic, which was already very strong to begin with, without encroaching upon the gameplay's structure or execution. Already, Metroid Prime brought its franchise from the side-scrolling style to a first-person exploration shooter in a gloriously handled evolution. The remaster of this title is a triumph of its own. General gaming norms have changed since 2002; quality, nonetheless, is fixed forever, objectively reflecting how well a game succeeds in its aspirations or reaches artistic heights given the technological limitations of its day. This is how to do a remaster well!
Content:
1. Violence: Gunfire and biological attacks are for the most part non-graphic, with some blood appearing at times and missiles blowing some organisms into pieces.
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