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With massive, multi-floor caverns, tight tunnels, and elevation changes galore, Metroid Prime's world is a labyrinth of zones, each of which contains its own stories while also serving as a smaller piece of a much larger puzzle. They are represented on the map in many different shapes and often have uneven ceilings, false floors, hidden alcoves, and jagged edges that contrast the clean square boxes of Prime's 2D predecessors. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find any that feel uniform or cookie-cutter. If you pull up the 3D map and take a look around the various biomes, you will notice the sheer variety of rooms. Metroid Prime never suffers from this sort of fatigue because of an extremely clever world-building philosophy. Many, many games-especially 3D ones-devolve into tedium when requiring you to run through (without fast travel!) the same areas over and over. Metroid Prime does take clear inspiration from an unsurprising place by carrying over the hallmark traits of its side-scrolling predecessors, namely an emphasis on backtracking to reach previously inaccessible areas with the help of new gadgets. The visual enhancements and revamped control scheme certainly make Metroid Prime more palatable in 2023, but the aspects that make the game so great were already present in the original. The remaster simply helps showcase the world with sharper textures, more vibrant colors, improved lighting and shadows, and crisper animations. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the beauty of the world. I even booted up the GameCube to compare and was unsurprised to find that the original version is, well, awkward-even more so than the 'classic' control scheme on Switch due to the GameCube controller's peculiar layout. There's no denying that implementing dual-analog-stick controls makes Metroid Prime control more like a modern first-person shooter. Metroid Prime RemasteredĪt first, it'd be tempting to correlate Metroid Prime Remastered's greatness with the quality-of-life improvements and HD visuals.

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And yet, the Metroid Prime series remains the sole mainstream example of this loop translated to 3D.

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You can find the full DNA of Super Metroid in many, many games. It's quite strange to think about, considering side-scrolling Metroid games were so influential that they helped spawn an entire genre based on their core gameplay loop. But none of these games fit cleanly into the Metroid mold. And BioShock's underwater world of Rapture offers its own take on environmental storytelling inside a perilous world. The interconnected 3D levels of Control, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and the Batman Arkham games have world designs that are somewhat Metroid Prime-like. But to this day, I'd argue that not a single game has meaningfully restructured the foundation laid by the Metroid Prime series.Ĭertain similarities can be found in first-person immersive sims such as Prey and Dishonored. Granted, every touchstone in gaming has been subject to imitations, iterative improvements, or spiritual successors. Despite releasing more than 20 years ago on GameCube, Metroid Prime still has a novel aura about it. Instead, Metroid Prime Remastered remains as fresh and inventive today as it did at launch.

Thankfully, Metroid Prime isn't one of those games. Rather than being a truly timeless classic, it becomes more of a had-to-be-there experience that's maybe even been rendered somewhat obsolete by newer games that took everything you loved about it and made it better. The nostalgia might propel you to the end, but it's always possible you'll set the controller down with the realization that one of your favorite games hasn't aged all that gracefully. Revisiting games you loved as a kid isn't always a pleasant homecoming.

Metroid prime remastered