Like with most people, there are blind spots in my experiences with gaming as a whole which has lead me to miss some mainstays in the space, like Metroid.

While I do know much of what the series has to offer thanks to its cultural impact and by playing Metroid Dread, I’m still very much a newcomer to Samus and her adventures.

It’s no surprise then that I also missed the original Metroid Prime, especially because I didn’t jump on the GameCube or Wii wagons, with the latter offering the game in the Metroid Prime: Trilogy.

I’ve always been more of a Nintendo handheld kind of guy but now the stars have aligned with Nintendo merging the handheld and home console market, and the fact that Metroid Prime has been remastered.

After downloading the game a few days after its surprise shadow drop, what has the experience been like for me, a Metroid newbie in the year 2023, playing the game for the first time through the unique lens of the modern day and modern expectations.

Well it has been mixed.

Let’s start with the good: the audio visual presentation. While it’s clear that this is not a brand new game with bleeding edge graphics, it does look good. The stylised look of the game is balanced nicely against the alien world of Tallon IV where much of the game is set.

Raw texture quality and art design is not my favourite part of how Metroid Prime Remastered looks, however, but rather the small details that come from the first person view and the fact that you’re playing as Samus in a futuristic suit of armour.

Little touches like heat causing the visor to steam up, and certain light effects reflecting Samus’ visage back into the screen go a massive way towards making the experience more immersive.

Countless games both new and old treat first person games as a simple camera mounted onto the head of the protagonist, instead of spending the time to make it feel more like players are the protagonist instead.

It’s a very subtle difference, but it sets this title apart from many others, including much newer games with much better graphics.

Also endlessly impressive is the music and sound design. It manages to perfectly balance the feelings of “wow this is a jam” with “wow this alien planet music is unsettling”.

The music and the associated sound effects for the different areas each do huge amounts of work towards making said areas distinct. Even two decades ago when the original Metroid Prime came out, gamers were sick of the same old recycling of lava level, ice level, water level and so on ad infinitum.

While this game also has those same expected levels, the audio makes them so unique to the point where you become attached to them. I was legitimately sad when I first left the lava level Magmoor Caverns for the next area, because of how great the atmosphere is there created by the music and ambient sounds.

As for gameplay, well that’s the part that I’m less enthused by. The aforementioned Magmoor Caverns are great because of the sound design, not the game design. This section of the map highlights a lot of problems with how Metroid Prime Remastered plays: platforming in a first person game, imprecise controls in certain areas, enemies and obstacles placed in ways that err completely on the side of annoyance rather than challenge and the list goes on.

Before I get hit with the inevitable “skill issue” or “get good” comments, the difficulty here seems to be mostly attributed the levels being obscure and annoying, not outright difficult.

Instead of beating a level with mechanical skill and learning patterns, here you need to scan every surface to unlock doors and bomb seemingly random walls and falls.

While Metroid Prime Remastered also has four different control methods to suit your taste, incorporating both gyro controls and regular buttons / sticks, none of them change the fact that Samus is floaty to control. The first person view is not precise at all, and the third person Morph Ball sections have crazy moon logic acceleration that has it feeling like a gamble every time you use it.

Despite being a first person shooter, Metroid Prime Remastered has no emphasis at all on shooting. Samus’ legendary Arm Cannon is a glorified puzzle solver, and not a weapon of war. Sure you shoot enemies but the real enemy that you need to overcome is finding out where to go and what objects in the environment you should shoot to progress.

I never felt like I was in any actual combat, but a series of various puzzles. Because of this odd design and the fact that the lock-on mechanic makes aiming pointless, every challenge boils down to puzzles in different skins.

This approach at game design does come with the upside that once you “get” Metroid Prime Remastered, the frustration goes down a lot at the expense of a loss of discovery. Most of the time I was mentally running through a logic chain of: scan the environment, shoot something, shoot a missile at something, try the Morph Ball, try the Morph Ball bomb etc.

After running through all the game’s upgrades one of them will eventually unlock the next portion of the map and you can continue.

While I felt like I was missing something with Metroid Prime and this remaster, looking online will unveil many who are simply not enraptured with this game and its new iteration, and that’s okay.

The game design is simply of a different time and fails to delight in the modern area. So many aspects feel outdated and clunky, even with the remaster aspects.

There is still a lot of fun to be had with Metroid Prime Remastered for newcomers like me and returning veterans, but it just isn’t the be all, end all piece of perfection that so many claim.

After playing I will still fondly remember the sights and especially sounds I had experienced, but I’ll also remember the rougher parts that are why I won’t be playing again.