Boosting through the desert grinding for crystals (apparently there is a hard requirement in order to finish the game and there is a grind) gave me Ratchet and Clank vibes
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Don’t make me wanna play this
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I do kinda want to collect all those sewer crystals again… and replay Jak 3… and get all those clue bottles in Sly…
Prime 4 really is a GameCube game in disguise
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I’m resisting buying this game but it does seem really remarkable in some ambiguously historically/artistically significant way that this is pretty much just a freeze-dried 2008 gamecube game microwaved for 2025. It’s always interesting to see a big corporate work of art that’s totally at odds with its era’s prevailing trends, conventions, and aesthetics. It’s like that terrible Bullet Train movie from a couple years ago that felt like a lost transmission from the mid-2000’s wave of lame Tarantino clones.
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I also think that (weird, accurate) characterization is somehow not critical enough as read because the work coming out of Nintendo had gotten much worse by 2008 than it was in the middle of the Gamecube’s life
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Crossing a desert on a bike reminds me of No More Heroes 3
https://x.com/personasama/status/1457619832325632006?s=20
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nevermind. christmas came early this year.
i’m sure i’ll have some opinions by the end of the week.
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when I typed this earlier today I didn’t even realize that this already characterized most first-party Wii games of that era, like Gamecube designs gone stale, but I guess “Wii game” means something else in most people’s minds than “hypothetical 2008 Gamecube game” even if that’s more or less what it was
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Oh no its this year’s Balan.
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Hm! True in some respects but this doesn’t seem halfway as interesting as I ultimately found Balan. Balan is like if Gamecube era Sonic Team was trapped in the Oldboy hotel for 20 years, with only a devkit to keep them occupied. It iterates on the 3D platformer in insane and mediocre ways… Metroid Prime 4 seems like it has plenty of mediocrity but not enough passionate and personal lunacy.
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I saw someone say “I liked it more than Metroid Prime 2”, which is one of the most damning things I’ve ever heard as I stopped playing that game and I was depressed at the time.
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“i liked it more than replaying a slow, grey, low-visibility underwater puzzle section because completing it locks you out of the last save point before throwing you at a boss who can only be damaged in the fractions of a second in which it charges straight toward you”
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it had some pretty interesting suit designs though!
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Kinda thought 2 was my favourite because every time I replay 1 I find the backtracking a slog, but I think 2 made me kinda miserable too. I’m firmly a 2D Metroid kinda guy.
Where is the platforming and morph ball gameplay in Prime 4!!!
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Prime 2 is the most I’ve enjoyed the series so maybe Prime 4 is up my street after all. The issue these days is an alt control scheme or difficulty modifiers. Metroid badly needs an automatic fire option
Come to think of it, all the best Metroid games have a 2 in the title
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2 makes you grind through multiple sweeps of (multiple versions of) each area in sequence, but it doesn’t have as much cross-country trekking over the whole map, so it’s a matter of taste.
the fact that the dark world is only used in brief strips to go around an obstruction feels particularly insulting in this series as that’s already what the morph ball tunnels do.
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having not played it yet, i’m still confident you are giving metroid prime 4 vastly too much credit. balan has verve!
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I love that SB is the unofficial home of the only fans Balan will ever have who weren’t under the age of 13 when they played it; kids glom onto weird games sometimes and this is a good thing, and maybe they will find SB when they are older, see a random post about how weird (good) Balan is, and know they have found home.
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SB Balan novel reading club
I read that a long time ago. You don’t need to. You really do not need to.
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