We Play, You Play: Metroid Prime Remastered

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Speaker 1 All right, Samus Aaron. You've returned from your latest expedition as a bounty hunter.

Speaker 1 Yes. I'm

Speaker 1 general.

Speaker 4 Thank you for having me today.

Speaker 1 Yes, I see in your report you filed that you went to Talon 4 to

Speaker 1 investigate the space pirates and their biological experiments.

Speaker 4 That's correct. That's correct.
This is a previously undocumented planet. I found evidence of a vast civilization.

Speaker 4 Really a remarkable.

Speaker 4 It was a remarkable experience.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 We sent you there because we knew you'd be the person for the job. And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I've just, I've, I've gone through this report several times at this point. And

Speaker 1 if my understanding is to be correct.

Speaker 4 Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 You didn't just log every single creature on here.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I used the scan. I used the scan feature on my visor and I documented

Speaker 4 notable artifacts on the planet and also all the life forms.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was your primary objective. And you carried that out admirably.
You have 100% completion percentage on scanning things with your scan visor.

Speaker 1 But also it says that you switched your combat visor and shot the shit out of things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like just started blasting?

Speaker 4 First off, you weren't there. So you don't know what I was going through.
There's this one time I was in a hallway and this bug came out at me.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 4 And I charged up.

Speaker 4 My beam and I shot that bug, but you don't know what it was like. I was scared.

Speaker 1 It sounds like from what you just said

Speaker 1 that the bug was already there and you came in and shot it. Let's be clear.
When we're saying bugs, we're talking about things that would be present on prehistoric earth.

Speaker 1 This is like the bug in question was like four meters in diameter.

Speaker 4 There were like little guys on the ground.

Speaker 1 Cool. Compared to you.

Speaker 4 They were like running around and they were like going, you know, like jibbity, jibbity, jibbity. And I, yeah, you weren't there.
They were speaking. You don't know what it was like.

Speaker 1 I'm going to stop you right there. Huh?

Speaker 1 We do not go to another planet and imitate the speech of the creatures.

Speaker 1 It was kind of cute. We do not do that.
Yeah, we don't do that. It was kind of cute, but we don't.
We don't do it.

Speaker 4 Well, it was the last time they ever said it. I had 100% execution rate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we did note your execution rate.

Speaker 4 Using ice beam and plasma beam

Speaker 4 on those little gibbity guys.

Speaker 1 Can we talk about in addition you know because part of your expedition it appears that you've discovered a bunch of ancient artifacts uh left by the chozo yes a race that was you know long for long gone in our current reality and you were uh you just started dropping power bombs on them sir if you have a problem with my methods why don't you take it up with me

Speaker 1 I mean, that's

Speaker 1 exactly what we're saying. That's the purpose of this.
This is like an example.

Speaker 4 If you have an issue with how I handle these ancient civilizations,

Speaker 4 these priceless archaeological, space archaeological artifacts, then

Speaker 4 I suggest

Speaker 4 you give me that reprimand.

Speaker 4 Don't bring me into this room and chat your way around it.

Speaker 1 She's jiu-jitsuing us. I don't know what this is exactly.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I guess,

Speaker 1 I guess we're not mad.

Speaker 1 I guess

Speaker 1 you're free to go. Yeah, and I'm turning in my badge.
And

Speaker 4 next time you listen to yourselves, before you bring up a topic like this.

Speaker 1 That's fair.

Speaker 4 And don't forget, I've got hyper beam.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 she does get a lot of beam.

Speaker 1 Hey, before we let you go, Samus, one request.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Can you show me how to do that morph ball thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm trying to see if I can

Speaker 1 do something. Oh, wait.
Oh, what?

Speaker 1 We blast space pirates with super missiles and curl into impossibly small spheres as we play you play updated GameCube classic Metroid Prime Remastered this week on Get Played.

Speaker 4 Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

Speaker 4 It's time to get

Speaker 1 played.

Speaker 4 I'm your host, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nicholas Weiger.

Speaker 1 Oh, hey, that's me, Nicholas Weiger. I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.
Hello, everyone.

Speaker 4 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Get Played, your premiere video game podcast.

Speaker 4 Once a month, we play a game and you play a game, and that's the episode this week. We played it and you played it.

Speaker 1 We play,

Speaker 4 you play.

Speaker 1 And also, if you didn't play it, like, you're not in trouble. No.
Like, that's it's fine.

Speaker 1 You get if you just want to listen to us talk about a game we played, or maybe you played it when it came out and you just, you know, you didn't revisit it this time, that's fine too.

Speaker 1 You know, don't feel pressured to be a part of the you play of We Play Uplay, but you can be. We're trying to be inclusive here.
You can play this.

Speaker 4 But the truth is, if you didn't finish, if you picked this game up and you didn't finish it, I'm in the same boat as you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It wasn't physically possible for me over the course of the last few weeks, but

Speaker 4 I'm here to talk about that game. I'm here to listen to that game.
I'm here to share that game with my co-hosts, Matt and Nick.

Speaker 1 That's right. And that's what it's all about, baby.
That's right. And you know what? Hey,

Speaker 1 it's great that this game has been remastered, is available in a new format,

Speaker 1 on a new platform for a lot of people who maybe experienced it years ago and want to revisit it or maybe have never experienced it before and want to see what all the fuss is about.

Speaker 1 But you know, Nintendo being Nintendo, they've also, they're also going the other direction at the same time, closing the Wii U and 3DS shops, e-shops forever.

Speaker 1 I think next week. What is that then? On the 27th.
Real, real soon. Which because of release.

Speaker 1 I'm almost wondering, like, it almost has me thinking, like, I think I might need to scramble to buy, and this is what they fucking want. But what choice do I have? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I do, I'm like, I probably should scramble to buy a few games before

Speaker 1 the shop is closed forever. The e-shop is closed forever.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I know. I thought about this the other day.
I thought about getting a new 3DS.

Speaker 1 Wow. Do you not have a 3DS? I do have a 3DS, but mine's kind of busted.
Well, you don't have to buy a new one right away. I almost thought about it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 But I guess, yeah, if I just buy the stuff, if I want to play it later, I can just get a new one. It's going to be on your account.
Yeah. Well, unless they deprecate that.
Yeah, then who knows? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, you know,

Speaker 1 it's crazy that they can just do that.

Speaker 4 I highly recommend downloading the

Speaker 4 Guide to the Louvre

Speaker 4 on your 3DS.

Speaker 1 That's fun.

Speaker 4 Because you can look at all the paintings in the collection and all the sculptures in 3D.

Speaker 4 That's right. It is one of the rarest pieces of actual physical software.
So the chances of you getting it in the future are only diminishing.

Speaker 1 But I can just go to the Louvre whenever I want.

Speaker 4 You can also bring it to the Louvre and it works as an audio guide. That's cool.

Speaker 1 Oh, that is cool. And you can get street pass if somebody has their 3DS on them too.

Speaker 4 Well, did you know they that's how they do audio guides at the Louvre is they hand out 3DS's and I'm not joking.

Speaker 1 Is that still the case?

Speaker 4 Yes, still the case. I brought Mary over Christmas to Paris,

Speaker 4 which I've mentioned before on this podcast. So I'm not being bougie.
No, sucker.

Speaker 4 And we went to the Louvre and I and I was like, I'm going to get the software because you can only get it from the Louvre gift shop.

Speaker 4 But I was having a panic attack from the side of the crowds, size of the crowds, and wearing a mask for hours on end. So instead, I was like, we have to get out of here.
I cannot go to the gift shop.

Speaker 4 We have to go. But people are walking around with these lanyards and the 3DS hanging off of their with the little headphones.

Speaker 1 That's those, and those are heavy. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're like, not, they're not like heavy, heavy, but like to have hanging around your neck, that's a lot. It's heavy enough.
It would cause some neck strain over time. I'd also just have that.

Speaker 1 I was like, well, fuck. I might as well play some pick cross.
I got some here. Yeah.
Well, I might as well be playing Metal Gear Solid 3D. Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, I highly recommend if you're ever in a place where they offer an audio tour for a museum,

Speaker 1 if you're in a place where you don't speak the language, do it. It's so fucking fun.
It's great. It's a nice way to spend some time.

Speaker 1 You're saying get it get like the tour in the language you speak. Yes.
Not okay. Don't do a foreign language.
No, yeah. If you want to be more confused, go nut.

Speaker 1 That's why I was like, I thought you were saying that in terms of, oh, it's fun because it's so disoriented. No, you could do that on your own for free.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But like pay the four bucks or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Sometimes, you know, well, it's not bucks there. It could be Euros.
Sure. It depends on where you are.
Pay the currency of the place you're in

Speaker 1 and get the audio tutor in the language that you understand.

Speaker 1 This is a travel tip for me. It's kind of, you know, it's what I'm known for now.
This is a new segment. Yeah.
Travel tips from Matt. Okay, great.
Yeah. Great.

Speaker 1 My travel tip, anytime you're using a public restroom and you got to sit down, take some toilet paper and wipe the seat down first. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because Because here's what it does: first off, you're not going to sit in someone else's bits and shit. Yes.

Speaker 1 Secondly, it makes it so that you're like, okay, I have now verified that there's toilet paper in the stall before I get to work. That's good.
Yeah. And you're going to do some work.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're going to call you in a bomb thread after you get out of there. Yeah.
But I, but I'm like, you know, because you put the little seat cover down, but that doesn't double check that you have TP.

Speaker 1 And also, those seat covers, some liquid will will come through. Worthless.
Yeah. And also, when you're done, wipe your ass.
Yeah. Do that too.
Yeah, do it.

Speaker 4 I have a travel tip. What's that?

Speaker 4 If you're traveling outside of the United States of America, stop at any bar and order yourself a Havana Klube or Havana Klub rum, which is illegal in the United States because of our embargo against Cuba, but you can get it literally everywhere else.

Speaker 4 And it's a really good drink.

Speaker 1 That's fun.

Speaker 4 Just have yourself a, just have yourself a nice little sip of rum at a local bar anywhere on planet Earth that isn't here.

Speaker 1 And to that point as well, if you're traveling somewhere that's not the United States, from the United States, stay there and don't come back.

Speaker 1 It sucks here.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'd say I'd say the same perspective, but just I'd say love it or leave it. So oh, yeah, yeah.
Same, just two sides of the same cost of the same coin.

Speaker 1 We have a video game I'm very, very excited to talk about today. I have a lot of thoughts on this, this month's We Play, You Play.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But before we get to that, we first, as we always do, should begin by discussing other video games that we're currently playing. It's time for

Speaker 1 what are you playing?

Speaker 4 Hey, guys, what are you playing?

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 There's usually there's like a character who comes in here, usually. Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 4 I've seen some

Speaker 4 aggressive vitriol towards that character on Reddit.

Speaker 4 and interesting being being that i and i think also on the discord being that i retired my relationship with the resident evil merchant because of the haters interesting i i

Speaker 1 i wonder how bubsy

Speaker 4 will respond to the uh like aggressive like

Speaker 4 People say,

Speaker 4 oh, they're doing this so that we miss the Resident Evil Merchant. I'm like, there's no forethought.
There was no planning. There's no,

Speaker 4 this isn't an agenda. This isn't 4D chess.
No, it just

Speaker 1 shows up. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And the asshole does what he wants.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And, you know,

Speaker 1 never mind. No, say, what, say what you're going to say?

Speaker 1 Go fucking touch grass. Go like, go see the ocean.

Speaker 1 Good God.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 1 Walk right into it too while you're at it.

Speaker 4 I'm of the opposite opinion. I do this show for the listeners.

Speaker 4 So do I. It is only because of the

Speaker 4 sort of friction between the growing community, the growing Fortnite community

Speaker 4 and the people who fucking hate that I talk about Fortnite every week that I continue to talk about Fortnite.

Speaker 1 We don't talk about Fortnite, no.

Speaker 4 But I am interested in what... What are you playing, Nick?

Speaker 1 I do have an announcement. Yeah.
Oh, you do? There's a guest coming in right now. And this is like kind of like a huge thing because, you know, we're at Sirius XM right now.

Speaker 1 And there are sometimes really famous people here. So can I just let this guest in real quick? Of course, sure.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 anybody see any comic books in here? Wow. It's Joel from The Last of Us.
Joel! Joel. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Excited to see you. I've been looking for some comic books for Ellie.
Joel, this is, you're kind of coming in on writing a wave of success with the HBO series, doing gangbusters.

Speaker 1 I don't watch TV. I just kind of wander around, look for

Speaker 1 screws and

Speaker 1 the like. Yeah.
And occasionally a comic book for Ellie. A fragment of a plastic bottle.
A note.

Speaker 1 And yeah, like a handwritten letter. Right, sure.

Speaker 1 Detailing what's going on in the current environment. Well, maybe you're not up to speed on pop culture, but you are very zeitgeisty right now.

Speaker 1 You know, game's obviously very popular, but also your show was a hit too. Well, yeah, you know, that just it it feels good to be the king and

Speaker 1 I do I do appreciate the just the the outpouring of just just generosity and

Speaker 1 in people's comments. So I appreciate that.
You know, it's funny because we used to have another horror icon in from video games in the studio regularly, the Resident Evil merchant.

Speaker 1 And then we had a different sort of horror in here, which was a pun-spouting feline Bubsy. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And now we've got you in here, who's probably the maybe the most famous video game horror character of all at this point. And this is kind of it for me.

Speaker 1 I'm just kind of a guy, you know. Yeah, you're a man.
I'm just a normal man. That's what's amazing about you as a protagonist: hey, he's just a guy who's got some skills, but he's mostly a guy.

Speaker 1 That's first and foremost, that's how I'm known. I'm a father first, a guy second, and a and a murderer

Speaker 1 and a in a just a flat-out murderous man. You have quite the body count.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. In both ways that you can say that phrase.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Need to hear about you being a fuck machine. Yeah.
I had a 14-year-old daughter when I was 32.

Speaker 1 You do the math.

Speaker 1 When I nut, I nut.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Holy shit. Anyway, I was just looking for some comic books because

Speaker 1 the girl that I look after, Ellie, she loves comic books. And sometimes I'll find them and say, hey, Ellie, this is one of them comic books you're reading.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I happened to find one that she hasn't read yet, which is nice. Yeah, I mean, I got some comics of my own, but maybe not age-appropriate for Ellie.

Speaker 1 I'd like to see those.

Speaker 1 Heather, you got any questions for me?

Speaker 4 No, I don't.

Speaker 1 I'm a little distressed.

Speaker 4 You seem out of sorts.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? I mean, oh, yeah, you would be too if, you know, you're the most popular man on TV, played by the hottest person on earth, and you also lived that experience time and time again.

Speaker 1 Right. And not to mention, you know, taking like a two by four and, you know.

Speaker 1 clubbing

Speaker 1 what used to be a school teacher, but is now turned into a bloater in the face. Yeah, it's it's it's brutal.
I didn't, you know, I've suffered. I've had loss.
Yeah, that's gnarly.

Speaker 1 And nobody ever dared to ask me what I was playing. Yeah.

Speaker 4 What are you playing, Joel?

Speaker 1 I'm just running out the clock. Oh, geez.
Got to find a way to keep going. That's the thing I took away from you.

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Speaker 4 So, I've got a question for all the gamers out there. Are you seriously,

Speaker 4 seriously gonna miss out on Alienware's biggest gaming sale of the year? I mean, these are Black Friday prices we're talking about. So it's not just another sale.

Speaker 4 I took a look with these eye holes, and this is some pretty big bang for your buck.

Speaker 4 You know, it's Alienware with some of the most advanced engineering out there, with systems at the top of reviewers' lists. And what about a gift for yourself?

Speaker 4 Gift yourself. Give yourself a new Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop! I mean, this thing's got performance at the absolute next level with Intel Core Ultra processors!

Speaker 4 And even better, you can get it during BLACK FRIDAY!

Speaker 4 Plus, you can save on all kinds of displays and accessories like the Alienware 274K QD O LED gaming monitor for ultimate visual fidelity.

Speaker 4 These really are incredible deals on PCs with otherworldly performance. So I'd visit alienware.com slash girls soon and grab what you can before their biggest sale of the year goes dark.

Speaker 1 Well, Heather, what are you playing?

Speaker 4 Uh, hey, Matt, you want to hit that music cue I gave you?

Speaker 1 Oh, sure.

Speaker 4 Welcome to your local Fortnite news.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell.

Speaker 4 I'm here with Corncob,

Speaker 4 Pie Face.

Speaker 4 On Weather and Sports,

Speaker 4 it's Kylo Wren.

Speaker 4 On

Speaker 4 local interest,

Speaker 4 I know, I should have written this out.

Speaker 4 You wanted it. You asked for it.
It's Fortnite news here on Get Played.

Speaker 4 Well, guys, let me tell you, this week marked the inaugural private Get Played Fortnite server matchup.

Speaker 4 Thanks to the creator who's on our Discord, Splith,

Speaker 4 we had a private match on Monday where only get played people were fighting against get played people.

Speaker 4 So if you're out there listening and you're like, I'm so fucking tired, I am, I don't want to, I'd turn off the fucking news if it was Fortnite news. I don't

Speaker 4 fuck you, Heather. Well, guess what? The community is only growing and it is only getting stronger.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 And we played multiple matches together as a group of friends

Speaker 4 with an open Discord audio chat so we could all hear each other at the same time.

Speaker 4 So 60, 70 people all giving, taking, being polite, sharing the conversation while we also hunted each other down on a private island with nobody else. It was transformative.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 It was one of the best video game experiences of my entire fucking life. It's amazing.
And I'm not just saying that because I won and crowned the first match.

Speaker 4 It was, it was awesome. And there are like people saved replays.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 People

Speaker 4 like if you got eliminated, you were watching other people play whose names you recognized from the get played Discord in a

Speaker 4 community of

Speaker 4 relationships. that are like

Speaker 4 sort of uh

Speaker 4 what's the word when you when you

Speaker 4 uh emergent like emergent relationships, emergent play, like when you when you try you're doing one thing, but then you you're like I play the game,

Speaker 4 hey, let's let's uh

Speaker 4 hi it's it we're only hijacking trains in Red Dead Redemption. That's all we're doing, you know, sure, yeah, emergent playthrough.

Speaker 4 So, I don't even know there's some word I'm looking for, and I can't find it anyway.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 4 plus

Speaker 4 the announcement this week that the Unreal Engine editor is now public. Yes.
So you can fucking make anything in Fortnite. And people are already like, there's a Counter-Strike, like a full-blown

Speaker 4 pseudo-photorealistic war game that you can now play within the Fortnite meta engine. There are, there is like a role-playing game that somebody's made, and that's just from like the launch.

Speaker 4 Like in three weeks, I'll be like, I was playing The Last of Us in Fortnite as Spider-Man with a sword.

Speaker 4 I used, I used Deku's

Speaker 4 United States of Smash

Speaker 1 on a clicker

Speaker 4 in

Speaker 4 Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas. Wow.
It's going to be great.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I'm. That's amazing.

Speaker 4 It's been a fucking week, man, for Fortnite. And I am really, really, really, really happy to be playing that game.
It makes me feel awesome.

Speaker 1 I'm really interested in, because I saw some of the stuff you sent, and I'm interested in, and

Speaker 1 you should probably dig into this, this Unreal Engine Fortnite integration, because

Speaker 1 like, you know, you could do it.

Speaker 1 I'm just curious what the tools are because it's kind of amazing how quickly people made things.

Speaker 1 And I wonder if it's like, it can't, I don't, I I don't think it's just the existing Unreal Engine tool set.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, it is.

Speaker 1 But, but is it like, is it like, oh, I have to know Unreal Engine to the degree of proficiency, but it's just like that, you know, you already kind of have to do to build something of that scale?

Speaker 1 Or is it like, oh, this is built into Fortnite with much more user, you know, much more approachable tools for a user?

Speaker 4 That I can't, that I can't answer.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm interested in digging into.

Speaker 4 That people are just importing existing Unreal assets directly into Fortnite. And then you can edit on your computer and live play your adaptations on the PS5.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 that's, I mean,

Speaker 4 it's fucking insane.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I was wondering, is it like something, is it like dreams, you know, for PS4, which kind of like, you know, you could, you could,

Speaker 1 you could create games within that, but it was also like, hey, it was something you could do with a PlayStation 4, you could do with a DualShock 4, you know, with a controller.

Speaker 1 I wonder if it's on that level or somewhere in between, or if it's just like, oh, yeah, it's,

Speaker 1 I'm curious to dig into it, but it is one of those kind of just like, like, oh, yeah, they can do that.

Speaker 4 They can fucking do it.

Speaker 1 Because it's all epic. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I think they're making $9 billion a year and the game's free.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 do that math.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 4 also, don't do that math because I think it's pretty exploitational in some way. Like,

Speaker 4 I'm sure they're tricking kids into being like,

Speaker 1 hey,

Speaker 1 it's Ash

Speaker 4 from the Evil Dead. I want him for 20 bucks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how they got me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I bought Giannis. I never fucking played around with him.
Just like, I better get this guy. Artificial scarcity.
It's a whole thing. And then also, you'll always have

Speaker 1 50 fewer V-Bucks than you need. So you have to get more V-Bucks.
That's the thing. The V-Buck to, you know, real-world currency.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a whole, that's a whole fucking fucking, another variable they have control over.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it's so, it's fun. Yeah.
And that's okay. Yeah.
It's still fun.

Speaker 1 And you're allowed to like it. And it's so good that you're having a great time with it.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I'm not just having a great time.

Speaker 1 You're having a time of your life.

Speaker 4 The community is inspiring.

Speaker 1 Oh, God bless you. Like, God bless the community.

Speaker 4 It's a fucking, like, there's a full channel on our Discord that is dedicated to Fortnite. And fuck is it active?

Speaker 1 Wow. I love it.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 I love you guys.

Speaker 1 You're the best. Wow.
Wow. Thanks, Heather.
Yeah, thanks, Heather. What a nice thing to say.
Nope.

Speaker 4 Nope. Talking to the people.

Speaker 1 I'm a woman of the people.

Speaker 1 You said it to people you don't even look at.

Speaker 4 Nope.

Speaker 4 Nick, what are you playing?

Speaker 1 I have been messing around with this game called The Last Spell. This is an indie game that was developed by Ishtar Games, who are based in France.
And this is...

Speaker 1 By the way, Heather is eating soup as I'm talking, which is very alpha.

Speaker 1 Is that the,

Speaker 1 you say there's a Tomka soup? what do you what do you say what are you eating

Speaker 1 um is that i am eating tomka soup because it's not a comic book joel

Speaker 4 my schedule is so packed that we're recording this during my lunch break from work

Speaker 4 uh so i am i pulled away from the mic so that i wouldn't be distractive we're not we're not distracting we're not in the same space it's true smell the soup it's true but as you speak i was having a mouthful of soup yeah look good i'm not shaming you for having your soup i got my hot tea right here here.

Speaker 1 I don't give a what do you you're what? I got hot tea right here.

Speaker 4 Oh, I thought I thought you had soup in a mug.

Speaker 1 I got a mug full of soup right here. He calls tomato soup hot tea.

Speaker 1 So it's a local thing.

Speaker 1 It's a SoCal dialect.

Speaker 1 So the last spell is a roguelite town building slash party-based tactical RPG. So kind of the combat is, you know, like an XCOM, like an into the breach, like a Final Fantasy tactics.

Speaker 1 You've got party members, though, that you're leveling up and giving new armaments to.

Speaker 1 And, you know, you're, so you've got an equipment loadout for them.

Speaker 1 And then you're also in between tactical encounters, you are building a town, which gives additional boost to your heroes and, you know, to your kind of general battlefield proficiency.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot going on in this game. I would characterize it as overwhelming.
I had heard some extremely positive word of mouth about this game.

Speaker 1 I just heard, you know, people like, oh, this is amazing. I've sunk so many hours into it.

Speaker 1 But it is a lot to take in. There's a Yiddish word that I really like that's really useful, which is, you know, one, it means one too many things, ungapachka.

Speaker 1 And I feel like this game is just leaning fully into ungapachka. It's just like so much shit is going on.
That said, it's really cool. It's aesthetically just, you know,

Speaker 1 it's got this gorgeous pixel art

Speaker 1 in the isometric from the isometric POV. It's also got really cool music.
The score is by

Speaker 1 the composer, I believe, is the algorithm.

Speaker 1 And Matt, can we play a little track from The Last Spell? This is Distant Memories.

Speaker 1 It's kind of chip-tune, kind of thrash metal.

Speaker 4 It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's real good stuff.

Speaker 1 Play this up for a little bit more. It's going to turn a little bit.

Speaker 1 It's like I'm in that club in the Matrix. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's also kind of like if

Speaker 1 Slayer scored a Sega CD game.

Speaker 1 So it's really, really gorgeous to look at, really cool to listen to.

Speaker 1 It's just a lot to take in, and I feel like it's the kind of game that would completely overtake my life if I let it. I've also read that, you know, it is a roguelite, but runs are like super long.

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like the roguelikes I like, it's like, hey, I can do a run in 25 minutes, the episode of a sitcom. And this one, you know, it's hours and hours.
So

Speaker 1 yeah, I don't know how much more I'm going to commit to this. It is in 1.0 now.
It was in early access for a while. So, this is the, you know, the retail official release.

Speaker 1 But I might wait a little bit to sink too much more time. And I'm going to mess around with that a little bit more.
But anyway, all I was going to say is if games like

Speaker 1 if a hybrid of, you know, Darkest Dungeon,

Speaker 1 Final Fantasy Tactics,

Speaker 1 and I'm trying to think of

Speaker 1 an RPG where you build your, or I'm thinking of some town building element, and like heroes of might and magic kind of like if all those things kind of smushed together sounds like it appeals to you then this could be a game that works for you uh I definitely think it's I definitely don't regret playing it I mean it I think I think it's just really really cool it is just also just completely overwhelming it's just a lot to take in wow but yeah it's a last step

Speaker 1 It is cool. I'm playing.
I'm like, I really admire this design. I'm really impressed by all the detail that's into this.

Speaker 1 You know, it's things like it's also, you'll get a character and they'll have an attribute where it's like, oh, this character is,

Speaker 1 you know, they are, they are greedy and cowardly. So they have like, so they have a certain bonus that they get from each of these attributes,

Speaker 1 but also sometimes a certain penalty they'll have for each of these attributes that'll affect their status. And

Speaker 1 yeah, it's just, it's just so many, so many fucking variables to consider.

Speaker 1 Basically, it's like they like, it's like, oops, all mechanics. It's like everything we can think of is going into this fucking game, but it's cool.

Speaker 1 Matt, what are you playing? Okay, well, I'm still playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on the Steam Deck, which I'm really, really just taking my time with and loving it.

Speaker 1 Loving it again, I should say, because I have played it before.

Speaker 1 But over the weekend, I spent some time with the Diablo 4 Early Access Beta.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I wanted to play that, and I was playing this month's We Play You Play instead. Yeah, I definitely should have played that for truly just a little bit longer,

Speaker 1 which we'll we'll get to later but um

Speaker 1 i i i

Speaker 1 the the beta window is open for this weekend for early access if you pre-ordered it and it's uh there's an open beta uh

Speaker 1 this coming weekend as we record it'll have been last weekend uh by the time uh this comes out um

Speaker 1 but i got in there i've only played

Speaker 1 i've only completed diablo three uh as like a story and then like did some of the rifts and things like that uh on switch sure and i have only ever really played Diablo on Switch. I got the Diablo 2,

Speaker 1 was it not remastered, but

Speaker 1 whatever it's called, resurrected

Speaker 1 for Switch as well.

Speaker 1 But it was appealing to me to play Diablo

Speaker 1 the way that it was originally played with mouse and keyboard. So I got...
the Diablo 4 beta running on my PC

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I immediately assessed that this is going to be a fucking problem.

Speaker 1 It was so fun. Yeah.
It's so fun to just click around. Yeah.
I had no fucking idea. That's the whole, that's like, that was, that's the whole like, like, Dio, like, meme going back to like Diablo 2.

Speaker 1 It's just a,

Speaker 1 yeah. Just that incessant clicking sounds.
It's a fucking blast. It's so great.
It, um,

Speaker 1 you know, like, I don't know how much like

Speaker 1 like story like comes into into Diablo or what people take away from a Diablo story, really.

Speaker 1 But, you know, seems like same old, same old kind of thing where like there's a big evil that has re-emerged. Yeah, that's entirely it.

Speaker 1 The story of Diablo is I watched this once the first time I play through the campaign and then skipping every cutscene and every dialogue moving forward. That's basically how most people play it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I'm just kind of going through there, taking it all in.

Speaker 1 There's like, because I've never played it online, like online even, like, like, or with other people or seeing other people in the environment.

Speaker 1 I played with you when we played the, um, when we played the California 2 resurrected beta. Um, but I'd not seen, like, just random people out in the wild.

Speaker 1 And, like, you can go while you're in between quests on

Speaker 1 just like other little sub-things that are like, or there's like encounters that you can see with other people, and you can see people attacking this thing, and you'll be like, well, I'll get in the fucking mix.

Speaker 1 I'll start hitting this fucker. And then you go in there, and you'll get all this loot.
So it's just, it's so fun. I can't wait for for the full release.

Speaker 1 I can't wait for the, I can't wait for tomorrow to play the new beta again, or to the open, uh, the open beta again. What class were you playing? I'm sorry if I missed this.

Speaker 1 No, I, I rolled a sorcerer specifically because I wanted to see if there was a beam. I, uh, because I love the beam from Diablo 3.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The Diablo Immortal beam is all right, but I liked the beam from three a lot.

Speaker 1 So far, I have not encountered a beam because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get to fully level up because I didn't get to spend that much time with it.

Speaker 1 It was open for, I think, like 72 hours or something, and you could get up to like level 25, I think.

Speaker 1 But I think I only got to like level like 13 or something in the amount of time that I played. But I have a flamethrower, which is beam adjacent, but not quite.

Speaker 1 Not quite scratching that itch. But there was a class that I want to play that wasn't available in the beta, the druid class.
And I love playing druids in Dungeons and Dragons. So

Speaker 1 maybe when it's fully released, I might

Speaker 1 re-roll a Druid. But so far, really, really loving it.

Speaker 1 Can't wait to squat up. Yeah, I mean, I'll plan on playing some during the open beta.
So we can find some time. Let's do it.
Cause it fucking rocks. I was like, it's so good.
It's so fun.

Speaker 1 It's just fun to click around.

Speaker 1 The buttons, or not the keys, the keys that you need from the keyboard are so intuitive. You want the map? Press M.

Speaker 1 I love this. This is great.
Yeah, unfortunately, you can't do that. Like, you run out at a certain point.
It's like, okay, M is map. I is inventory.
Yeah. C is like character, I guess.

Speaker 1 A is abilities, yeah. And then at a certain point, it's like,

Speaker 1 wait, wait, I'm what is doing what? What is, you know, it's, it's, they don't all add up. And I'm not quite used to it yet.
So sometimes I'm hitting Q for

Speaker 1 to heal, but I actually meant to hit one

Speaker 1 for an ability. And I'm wasting

Speaker 1 your num, your query row for your num row. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta uh do that again.
But, you know, it's it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 I love Diablo. I didn't know.
I had no idea. Great franchise.
One of my favorite franchises. It's so great.
And it's, I can't, I, I just can't wait to get back in there.

Speaker 1 But that's, that's it for me, really. That's all I've been, that's all I did.
And then I play, of course, played this game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hey, if you like beams,

Speaker 1 this month's we play, you play, Metroid Prime Remastered.

Speaker 1 I'll take a little bit of a, of a long road into this. So Metroid Prime.
Oh, I love a long road.

Speaker 4 Let me adjust my seat belt.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Do you want to get another soup?

Speaker 4 Well, I'll get this.

Speaker 1 Scroll down the window like halfway. It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 We got a long road ahead of us, Ellie. Oh, Joel.
Joel. No, this will be fun.
It's not a thing you have to endure. You're going to need a comic book.
Endure and survive. Endure and survive.

Speaker 1 Let's do it. This is more a trip down memory lane than any of you.
I'm not sure to lose you.

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Speaker 1 So, MetroPrime was originally released in November of 2002 for Nintendo GameCube. And you may not realize this.
I didn't realize this until I read this. I knew they came out around the same time.

Speaker 1 It was released the same day as Metroid Fusion on Game Boy Advance. Holy shit.
Basically, Nintendo had Super Metroid that came out in 1994. So it's an eight-year gap between entries.

Speaker 1 And they're like, fuck it. We'll hit you with a one-two punch.
Here's Metroid Prime on the home console.

Speaker 1 Here's Metroid Fusion on your handheld. There you fucking go.
Two in one day. Both come out, both pretty rapturously received by the fandom and critically.

Speaker 1 Developed by Retro Studios with heavy creative input from Nintendo of Japan. More on that in a second.
Published by Nintendo and the director at Retro,

Speaker 1 Mark Puccini.

Speaker 1 Let's start here with this Nintendo Space World 2000 demo reel. So again, for context, 1994, Super Metroid comes out, considered the apex of the series to this day by many fans.

Speaker 1 People usually haggle over,

Speaker 1 is it Super Metroid? Is it Metroid Prime? There's some johnny come lately's who really like metroid dread but uh but you know the definitely at the time was considered

Speaker 1 the the you know the the the best entry in this this fairly uh fairly new franchise uh so there there'd been this long period where there'd been nothing no news on metroid no new games and then this demo reel hits this is when the gamecube is still uh yet to be officially unveiled so we're starting and we're seeing as this plays matt there's a little bit of footage for a game that never got released i believe.

Speaker 1 I think that was called Meowth's Party.

Speaker 1 And now we're seeing some Wave Race, and we're hearing

Speaker 1 the crowd reactions there to Wave Racers. Now here's Samus.

Speaker 1 And then Shoes of the, and then we're going on to Rogue Leaders the next one. All right, we can end it.
But just that fucking pop, that rapturous reception.

Speaker 1 to fucking Samus emerging and running down a hallway in third person. And no one has any sense of what the game is going to be at this point.
No, there's no. No one knows it.

Speaker 1 They're just like, oh my God, Samus is back. Oh, my God.
Nintendo has acknowledged Samus. Well, this is from somebody who's sort of new to the Metroid franchise, from what I glean,

Speaker 1 it seems like every few years, Nintendo remembers that they have Metroid. Well, okay, yes, that's a big thing.

Speaker 1 And a big part of it, and this is largely in, you know, some of the retro developers have said this.

Speaker 1 This is also a thing that a lot of people have just inferred from Nintendo's practices is so much comes from Miyamoto.

Speaker 1 And since this is not one of Miyamoto's franchises, this was Gunpei Yokoi, R.I.P., was one of the people who spearheaded Metroid, the original, back in the day.

Speaker 1 It is like, like, he's never really considered it on the same level as like a Mario or a Zelda or even Pikmin, like, in his mind.

Speaker 1 And that's partly how it ends up in Retro's hands, is that he's kind of like, I don't know, he's a fucking, we gotta have Metroid. You guys can mess around with that.

Speaker 1 Looks like you're working on something similar. So, yeah, again, it hasn't been a Metroid since Super Metroid, and there was such a wild hype cycle for Metroid Prime.

Speaker 1 And so much of that had to do with people being skeptical about they've got this beloved franchise, they have this unproven American developer called Retro based in Austin that has not published a game at this point, and they're making it an FPS.

Speaker 1 Like, not only are they making it taking a 2D game, translating it to 3D, they're making it an FPS. There's no way this is going to fucking work.

Speaker 1 Retro themselves was founded by this eccentric personality in gaming called Jeff Spangenberg.

Speaker 1 He had been into iguana, who had developed Arrow the Acrobat, Turok Dinosaur Hunter, and they had a proof of concept game in development codenamed Action Adventure.

Speaker 1 It was officially named Metaforce, and it had three female protagonists. And a lot of this comes from a Did You Know gaming developer interview video, which is really, really good.

Speaker 1 And we could link that in the show description.

Speaker 1 But Nintendo was basically like, okay, this looks good. Simplify it and make it one protagonist.
And so they had this alien kind of cybernetic creature.

Speaker 1 And at a certain point, Miyamoto was like, you you know, this is a lot like Samus. This situation is a lot like Metroid.
Just make it a fucking Metroid.

Speaker 1 All right, sure. And part of that is because they're so impressed by Retro's in-house engine, their art quality, and they kind of just say, fuck it.

Speaker 1 And Miyamoto himself actually pushed it for it to be first person. It was originally a third-person adventure.

Speaker 1 And, you know, because they then figured out camera angles, they hadn't quite figured out how shooting in particular was kind of like unproven in 3D at that point, certainly from third person.

Speaker 1 Here's a little bit of context from Miyamoto's involvement. This comes from a 2004 IGN piece that was also published in concert with NCIDR.

Speaker 1 In April of 2000, Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto traveled all the way to Texas to visit Retro Studios, and he didn't drop by to chat either. Upon arrival, Mr.

Speaker 1 Miyamoto reviewed and checked up on the progress of each of Retro's many projects. Discussing the visit, one source told EGM that it was like the Emperor visiting the Death Star.

Speaker 1 He didn't seem to like any of the games very much, especially the racing title, which was probably our best looking. The impression was that he wasn't too thrilled.

Speaker 1 So he comes from a place of skepticism initially, but eventually is swayed and just kind of gives them a crack at Metroid. And it being an FPS made sense.

Speaker 1 This racing game.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah. Destroy it.

Speaker 1 They had, yeah, they had like a racing game in development. They had like a football game, like an NFL game in development.

Speaker 1 They had a bunch of different things, and they all kind of eventually get scrapped.

Speaker 1 No fucking way.

Speaker 1 And they end up just focusing on Metroid. The team had a lot of veterans of Western-developed FPS games like Quake, Half-Life, the aforementioned Turox.
That kind of was a weirdly natural fit.

Speaker 1 And then Nintendo is so satisfied with where the game is going that shortly before its release, they bought out Retro, made it first party, and they forced out Spangenberg.

Speaker 1 And Spangenberg has a next project that he does with another studio. Does either of you want to guess what it is? You won't guess it if you hadn't read it.
But you want to guess?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Crash Team. Crash Team Racing.
Not Crash Team Racing.

Speaker 1 He makes the Guy game.

Speaker 1 The Guy Game, for people who don't know it. This infamous game that was actually taken off of shelves.
It was a PlayStation quiz game where women would quiz you with like dude questions.

Speaker 1 And if you got the answers right, they'd

Speaker 1 dump them out. They'd flash.
Dump them out. They'd dump them out.
Dump them. And then they'd dump them out.

Speaker 4 They'd shit on the ground?

Speaker 1 No, dump them. No, it's

Speaker 1 again, this is maybe another regionalism.

Speaker 1 You pull your shirt up and you dump them out. Oh, my God.
Put them on the glasses. Oh, boobies.
Yeah, boobies. Yeah.
They flash.

Speaker 4 In Chicago, when you dump them out, you're just shitting on the floor.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. I've heard of Chicago.

Speaker 1 Those Midwest diets. What choice do you have? So, all right.
So all this context leads us to Metroid Prime Remastered.

Speaker 4 I want to, I want to do a small, a small, um,

Speaker 4 I don't know, footnote here.

Speaker 1 Please do.

Speaker 4 Which is that the reason I knew that these games were produced on the same day is because I was

Speaker 4 evangelical about any time you could link the Game Boy link cable to a GameCube game. One of my favorite least explored features of the GameCube.

Speaker 4 And I almost bought Metroid Prime simply because you could link it up to the Game Boy Advanced game and get like unlockables.

Speaker 1 Yeah, to Fusion. And yeah, you unlock, I think, new skins for Samus.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a bunch of extra content that's available just through the link cable. And I don't know if that's actually present in the remaster.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't know how they do it.

Speaker 4 What are are you going to like? Knock a Switch up against a GBA?

Speaker 1 When they did Metroid Prime Trilogy, when they did that,

Speaker 1 when they released that, I think they just had it be a toggle. So that toggle might be somewhere in the menus, but I didn't look for it.

Speaker 1 Anyway, this was a surprise release for Nintendo Switch on February 8th of 2023 of this year.

Speaker 1 Retro developed the remaster along with Iron Galaxy, a developer who reported Skyrim and Overwatch to Switch.

Speaker 1 And there's also, like, if you look in the credits, there's like eight other studios that worked on it.

Speaker 1 Obviously, there's like a ton of labor that went into making this look and feel like a contemporary game,

Speaker 1 which I think it does. I would say a big thing.
I rolled credits on this yesterday morning.

Speaker 1 It mostly feels and plays like a fully modern game, except for a few things. But it mostly is just like, oh, this feels like something that could be released in 2023.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, there's a new Metroid and this 3D Metroid here. Yeah, but it was surprise released, we should say.
Right?

Speaker 1 But I heard they had it on their fucking shelf for like two years. Yes, this was a thing that would apparently could have been released in 2021, much like the new Advanced Wars.

Speaker 1 It's like a thing that's just been sitting there for a while. Who knows what else they have? Who knows? Like Prince and his discography, just in a vault.
It's true.

Speaker 1 They could have the next four Pokemon games, well, at the state that they come out nowadays,

Speaker 1 maybe they are just putting them out

Speaker 1 the way that they are. No, I think they begin work on a new Pokemon game like about six weeks out from release.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck. Let's scramble in there.
Make this happen. It's just, it's wild to think about that they had this, something this good, something that people would really want.

Speaker 1 And they're just like, oh, we'll just hold on to that. And we'll work on it in secret.

Speaker 1 Also, everything about this company is so inscrutable and bizarre, but you know, whatever they make, they make awesome shit that you just feel like you have to play. And this is one of those.

Speaker 1 It's one thing I'll say is that the

Speaker 1 having played this back in the day, the modern control scheme is transformative. And if you try to play this with the OG control scheme, it's just, it feels so strange.

Speaker 1 After, you know, 20 years of playing other console FPS games with the, you know, two stick controls, one stick for movement, one stick for looking, it feels so bizarre to have one dedicated stick for movement and turning.

Speaker 1 Like it's like, it's not, it's not strafing. It's for you're turning in place.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 like you have to hold down a button to look around.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then if you lock onto something, something, that's the only way you can strafe. Every element of it feels really unnatural.
And then playing it with the twin sticks being able to

Speaker 1 move like a normal FPS, but also having the lock on, I think it actually,

Speaker 1 it works really well.

Speaker 1 It feels contemporary, but it also feels like the original game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I never played the original. I remember being aware of it and thinking that looks cool, but I just didn't have a GameCube.
And I also wasn't like

Speaker 1 when I was playing games when I was younger, FPS would have turned me off. I was not really into FPS at all.
And even still now, it's not my favorite, but I'll do it.

Speaker 1 Like, and I don't really have a problem doing it. So getting to this, I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 I wish my life, I had lived my life having played this before. It's so,

Speaker 1 I, I don't know. I, I, I was blown away by it.
But you can play it now. And you know what, Matt, who, you know, who was skeptical about FPS games on consoles back in 2002? fucking everybody.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, like everyone who had a Nintendo console was just like, this isn't going to work. This isn't Metroid.
This is going to, they're going to fucking ruin it.

Speaker 1 They're with this that this came in with so much negative buzz and skepticism and was able to still come out and be undeniably good is just, it's, it's a, it's a triumph of, uh, of their, for their development team.

Speaker 1 But yeah, until honestly, until Halo, which is the previous year, there really wasn't a

Speaker 1 console FPS that worked. You could say GoldenEye, but GoldenEye was its own unique thing.
Also, this is another thing we were just talking about before when we were having lunch beforehand, Matt.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 A five-year gap between GoldenEye, which we covered last month, and Metroid Prime, which comes out this month, which feels, it's just like, this is,

Speaker 1 it's like a full generation of hardware, obviously, but just like that plus five years of development is able to result in this from that. It just feels like an amazing, like a huge goal.

Speaker 1 It's like there's like three lifetimes in between somehow. It's unbelievable

Speaker 1 the difference like a game from five years ago now is like what like uncharted three exactly well no not even that honestly no it's like red dead redemption two honestly yeah like it's like it's like the this that that still feels like a like a the this the gap is just hard to wrap your mind around in contemporary terms uh can i can i can i insert a hot take here about this game

Speaker 1 it's fucking good oh i love it this i'd love to hear it this

Speaker 1 i'm fucking pumped

Speaker 1 let's back it up for a second because Heather, this is, you're not someone, Matt is pretty new to the Metroid franchise. This is a franchise I've loved since the NES.

Speaker 1 Heather, you're fairly new to Metroid.

Speaker 4 Yeah, 0% Metroid.

Speaker 1 0% Metroid.

Speaker 4 Okay, good.

Speaker 4 I played the NES version at some point and I was like, oof, this is not for me. Yeah.
And then I played the Super NES version. I was like, nope, still not for me.

Speaker 1 Skipped this.

Speaker 4 Even though I considered it because of the link cable. And I was like, I gotta get any game.

Speaker 1 They'll use a link cable. Yeah.
Skipped it.

Speaker 4 Never played anything. No Metroid since.
No Metroid from 2002 till now.

Speaker 1 And Matt, this is your first like 3D Metroid, your first of the Prime sort of series. Yeah.
My very first Metroid was, oddly enough, the

Speaker 1 Metroid Prime, not Metroid Prime, Metroid Samus Returns 3D for the 3DS. Okay.
That was the first one I got. I never finished it, but I want to get back into that.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't play Metroid again until Metroid Dread.

Speaker 1 And then I got through Metroid Dread. I also have not beaten that.
I'm at the final boss. I did it basically, but I haven't taken down the final boss.

Speaker 1 And then I completed Zero Mission on my analog pocket and started Fusion, but I might pick Fusion back up on Nintendo Switch Online just because you can

Speaker 1 rewind and stuff. But this, yeah, this is my first 3D Metroid.
And

Speaker 1 what's shocking to me about it

Speaker 1 is that it doesn't feel like a first-person shooter game, it feels like a Metroid game still. Like, it feels like you're doing Metroid.
That's the triumph of this design. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that, and from what I, what I heard of the development and what I read about the development is they just spent so much time just playing the shit out of all the previous Metroids.

Speaker 1 And they really figured out how to translate all the 2D Metroid conventions to 3D so elegantly

Speaker 1 to the point where it's just like things that shouldn't make sense, they shouldn't have been able to do it.

Speaker 1 But like the morph ball is like, this, the morph ball feels so good and also so recreates what it was like to play to use the morph ball in 2D.

Speaker 1 And, you know, doors, even like, you know, shooting to open doors is like a thing that's just like, how are they going to do those bubble doors?

Speaker 1 You just look at all the stuff that they did in the 2D Metroids. It's like, this seems impossible.

Speaker 1 It's not exactly the same because they have this hexagonal shape that they figured out as a way to approximate that.

Speaker 1 You know, and it's a different sort of animation, but it still like feels like those games. And it's still the same sort of phenomena.

Speaker 1 Even fucking Metroids, the titular Metroids, like they did a good job of recreating in 3D. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'd like to compare and contrast the execution of the Metroid feeling in Metroid Prime with this clip from Captain N the Game Master, a Saturday morning cartoon that also featured Metroid characters.

Speaker 4 I think what we're about to see here is from an episode about Mother Brain from from Metroid. I have not previewed this.
It may be offensive. Let's find out live together.
Great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, why they gave Mother Brain that voice.

Speaker 4 I think it's Audrey, too,

Speaker 1 from Little Shop

Speaker 1 inspired.

Speaker 1 A-Plant Wizard from

Speaker 1 Forkin Icarus is there, as well as King Hippo from Punch Out.

Speaker 4 Captain and the Game Master was a short-lived Saturday morning show that mashed together Nintendo IP with no oversight. Right.
So it's just chaos.

Speaker 1 It's, I mean, they've got like third-party characters too. Like Simon Belmont is in it and Mega Man.
They all look like shit. They all sound nothing like you think the characters should sound like.

Speaker 1 And then the main character is this like preppy teen in a letterman's jacket with an N on it. It's every part of it is nonsense.

Speaker 1 The thing about this is that if they made something like this today, it would also suck. It would still

Speaker 1 be so fucking bad. If it was like The Mandalorian and like Homer Simpson and you know, whoever else, yeah, so you sew Space Jam is what you're describing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's never been good, but the only time that it's worked is, um,

Speaker 1 uh, of course, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Chip and Dales movie did a pretty good job with it as well. Yeah, it worked.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 4 so back to my previous point, this game's fucking good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love to hear this from you.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 there was

Speaker 4 an energy in these mid-2000s games that I've talked about here on the show before, about lonely gaming.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I feel like Metroid Prime is immensely lonely. Like it is,

Speaker 4 there's like a sort of melancholy to how like these spaces that you're in and these puzzles are all like from dead people or like the ones the only flashes you get of yourself are like in the reflection of your visor during an explosion still an awesome like

Speaker 4 really great excellent effect but like it's a it is a

Speaker 4 like you you compare it with sort of the like jingoistic patriotism of a halo where it's like you're like rocking through these spaces and people are talking to you and they're like Master Chief, you gotta, you gotta blow the dick off that guy.

Speaker 4 Use the warthog. Like it's like, there's like a, like a bravado to it that isn't present in this game.

Speaker 4 And it is as much the feeling of controlling the game, exploring these spaces, scanning fucking everything because it's there. Why wouldn't you scan it? Yes.
Like that's the game.

Speaker 4 It's an interactive Wikipedia. Like, oh, fuck.
I want to scan that. I want to.
Like, I'm scanning a fucking light bulb and it's like, this is a light bulb.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, yes. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Great.

Speaker 1 That's my favorite. When When you're trying to, if you're trying to complete all the scanning, you reach to a certain point where you're just like, I guess I'll just scan this health capsule.
And

Speaker 1 you're just scanning the most the most benign things in the game. But yeah, you're right.
Feeling of loneliness. Keep going.

Speaker 4 I went in thinking this is not the game for me. And despite

Speaker 4 my inability to finish the game in the time allotted, I fucking loved it.

Speaker 1 I'm so thought about it. I'm so glad you were there.
I was so shocked.

Speaker 1 I was worried that we did something bad to you.

Speaker 4 No, man, I liked locking on the fucking enemy. Like I love lock-on technology in a first-person shooter.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 4 It's awesome. Man, this feels both like Zelda and

Speaker 4 Halo, Call of Duty, whatever,

Speaker 4 simultaneously. You don't have to lock on, but you can.
And it feels like a cool experience

Speaker 4 of fighting.

Speaker 1 It feels great. It also feels like you're taking advantage of the, you know, like you're in the suit.
And, you know, like the HUD being part of Samus's reality, like all that sort of like, like

Speaker 1 it makes sense in the world and the lock-on sort of works in the same way of like, oh, this is letting me track where, you know, Meta Ridley is, even when I, when I can't, I can't see them.

Speaker 1 Like, like, that's part of it. That's something maybe my computer could do, my onboard computer, my suit.
But yes, back to your feeling of isolation. That's what I think the game does so well is

Speaker 1 to your Halo in comparison, aside from

Speaker 1 the latent jingoism in that franchise and the authoritarianism

Speaker 1 baked into it,

Speaker 1 there's Cortana. There's NPCs, there's dialogue.
None of that is present in this game. It's all like emergent storytelling from

Speaker 1 reading logs, from exploring your environment, from scanning things, making inferences based off of the architecture of what individual room you're in.

Speaker 1 All that stuff just comes about from you being by yourself and having no one to talk to. The closest thing you come to encounter to being you is,

Speaker 1 you know, space pirates who don't even speak your language. Yeah.
And so it's, yeah, it is,

Speaker 1 that is, I think, like kind of the great feeling of just kind of being lost in space that this game evokes so well. And yeah, that's a really good point, Heather.

Speaker 1 Just talking about the other things this game does well, no franchise.

Speaker 1 And one thing I love about Metroid, the word biome is overused in discussion about gaming, but no franchise does biomes like Metroid. Like when you go into the lava zone, you go into the ice zone.

Speaker 1 It's the same, like they do that so, so well here.

Speaker 1 The environments feel so different. And also, I'd like structurally the design of this particular world, when you're like, okay, I'm just going to slide in for a little bit.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to get a taste of this biome. But really, this is just a little, like, this is just my shortcut to this next biome where I'm really going to spend some time.

Speaker 1 Then I'm going to come back to it when I have some abilities I can use that could allow me to more fully explore this first one. So you're getting a taste of what you're going to explore next.

Speaker 1 And they do that throughout. And it's really well paced.

Speaker 1 So much of it just feel, like, just to even just go back a second, like Heather describing the feel of it.

Speaker 1 I don't know if there's a, I mean, I love the double jump in Elden Ring. This is a fantastic double jump in this.

Speaker 1 It's a great double jump, but the platforming doesn't really feel great until you get the double jump. But once you get the double jump, you're like, oh, I can really move here.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And again, it kind of makes a little bit more sense than it does in other games. It's like, oh, it's the space jump.
It's something that I use to outfit my suit.

Speaker 1 I get it. And then you sort of get, you do get slight cosmetic changes as you go along and you get more upgrades too.

Speaker 1 I think the gravity suit. is a really slick looking suit.
It's got some purple. It's got some blue.
It's really, really nice. Yeah, that one's really sharp.

Speaker 1 That phase-on suit is no slouch either. I'm getting close to it.

Speaker 1 I just came shy of completing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but this also speaks to, and we'll get back to that in a second, but this also speaks to the development of this game, which is so much of it was like, oh, it's going to be third person, and it ends up being a first-person game, but they have this amazing character model of Samus that they still want to show off, but they show off just a little bit.

Speaker 1 Like, you don't see Samus from

Speaker 1 outside of your perspective, from first-person perspective, all that often. When you do, it's like, this model is stunning.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And it's, it kind of defined what samus looked like in 3d i mean it's certainly what it what what she looks like in smash brothers yeah it's it's i mean

Speaker 1 all of this works because it also just looks great too like yes it just they did they did a really stellar job bringing this to uh modern hardware and it's maddening

Speaker 1 It's it's it's it's maddening that they held on to it for so long and also didn't release the other two.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, and also that they're just like they they like oh, they have the Metroid Prime trilogy that they release, and they're just like, Okay, that's that's enough of that.

Speaker 1 We'll just not worry about 3D Metroids for a while, yeah. Um, you know, and Metroid Prime 4 supposedly is going to come out at some point, though.
Who knows?

Speaker 4 Do you have you guys?

Speaker 4 There's also like a like, speaking of the detail level in this game and like the model that you never really get to see, but when you like all of that shit, right?

Speaker 4 So, there are different icons for each of the powers that you acquire for your shooter. I don't know what the fuck the weapon itself is called, your blaster, right?

Speaker 4 And each of these icons, the power beam, the wave beam, the ice beam, et cetera, have

Speaker 4 what look to be like, almost like hands that describe them. When you get the x-ray ability in

Speaker 4 Metroid,

Speaker 4 you can look at your arm. And she's making those gestures inside of the gun

Speaker 4 in order to

Speaker 4 use those powers.

Speaker 1 It's the completely unnecessary level of polish that you always admire when you pick up on it. It's like, holy shit.
Like, they really did not have to do this.

Speaker 4 They really didn't have to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 They, they super fucking didn't have to do it.

Speaker 1 Power beams kind of throwing up the horns. Pretty, pretty sick.

Speaker 1 Don't even get me fucking started on beams, dude. This game,

Speaker 1 they got a beam for everything. They sure do.

Speaker 1 It's awesome. And that was the really fun thing about this game is that, like,

Speaker 1 yeah, like it's an exploration game. Like, so that sort of is like a puzzle aspect of it.

Speaker 1 But I don't ever feel like it gets like too puzzly because you sort of know that you're going to come back, right? Like, you sort of, like, it definitely is that. Yeah, it's there.

Speaker 1 It's, it's that, I wish there was a good word for it. Maybe some journalist or critic has cracked this, but like, there's like the kind of puzzles that you encounter that aren't really puzzles.

Speaker 1 They're just like obstacles. They're They're like near puzzles.
Yes. Like I know exactly what I need to do here.
I just maybe don't have what I need to do it.

Speaker 1 Or, you know, and there's a lot of that in this game. Like I would get to a spot and be like, oh, I can't wait to come back to this.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know what the fuck I'm going to be able to do to get over there.

Speaker 1 And then you find out you get a grapple gun and you can go across a fucking lake of magma. Yes.

Speaker 1 I think that's a big part of what makes Metroid games, the Metroidvania genre so satisfying and why that loop works for me so well is just like, because you're continually getting like,

Speaker 1 oh, I'm going to come back here.

Speaker 1 Oh, I can't do that yet, but I'm going to get to do that at some point. And you kind of like put all these things into your brain and into your,

Speaker 1 like into the, the, the, your, your neural map of the game world. Yeah.
And then you can return to those spots later. And it's, it's so satisfying to,

Speaker 1 you know, traverse back in the opposite direction and, and, and, and clean up and collect all that stuff. What do you think about this, about like the Metroid franchise?

Speaker 1 Like there are, like, you know, there's three Metroid Primes. There are five, I think, Metroid,

Speaker 1 like just regular Metroid games. If you don't count like Zero Mission, which is a remake, right? Or a few, or even Samus Returns.

Speaker 1 A lot of these other Nintendo properties, they have a lot more games. Like, I don't know how many Kirby games there are.

Speaker 1 I don't know how many, I mean, Zelda has quite a few games, but they're all pretty good. This may be a bad analogy because everything I'm thinking of is Nintendo and they're all really good.

Speaker 1 There are so few Metroid games, there aren't enough of them to be bad. I know that the other M is supposedly not great,

Speaker 1 but they're all pretty, like pretty well received as a franchise. I think

Speaker 1 it's a banger franchise. It's a formula they've ironed out and even the spin-offs like the Metroid Prime Hunters and Metroid Prime Pinball are like still kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 I want to go back to

Speaker 1 the environmental storytelling thing, which we were touching on a second second ago.

Speaker 1 So I just really like how you're going through all the logs and you're sort of learning both, you know,

Speaker 1 in parallel tracks, what's going on with the Chozo, who are kind of this ancient Rito-like race who inhabited this planet, and then also the space pirates.

Speaker 1 And also just like anytime you get elements of what they, how they perceive Samus or what they think of Samus, like coming through those, where it's like the Chozo, there's like a hint of like they're kind of foreseeing Samus, they're kind of foreseeing a human coming, being like a Messiah-like creature to free them from the worm.

Speaker 1 And then there's also like the space pirates are kind of having these I am legend reactions towards Samus. It's just like, well, shit, we got to figure this out.

Speaker 1 We got to like, like, we're going to adapt some of her technology for our own super soldiers. All that stuff is really cool and like centers the player in like a just a really interesting way.

Speaker 1 I love how all of that is developed.

Speaker 1 I've played a lot of the Metroid games, and I still feel like I just don't know shit about the lore because it's just so complicated. And it's also like so,

Speaker 1 it's trickled out. You have to really be paying attention and piece stuff together on your own.

Speaker 1 And it was funny to, as I was, as I was doing some prep for this episode, to read some of the stuff where it's like retro, the developer, were like, okay, well, this is like a guide-in.

Speaker 1 This is like its own thing.

Speaker 1 This is like a spin-off series. And then Nintendo kind of comes in later and is like, no, this is canon.
This goes in between Metroid one and two. And there's like, oh, all right.

Speaker 1 I guess so.

Speaker 1 There's also an

Speaker 1 Nintendo, because Samus has always been like a bounty hunter. Yeah.
And so the, and Retro is like, okay, a bounty hunter, like Boba Fett, like, sure, like, yeah.

Speaker 1 She's, she's in it for the money. She's, this is a capitalist enterprise for her, you know.
And then Nintendo's like, wait, no, that's not no. She, she's, she's altruistic.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, wait, so she's an altruistic bounty hunter? Like, dog, the bounty hunter. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the thing about that,

Speaker 1 she doesn't do that. Like, you're not really collecting bounty.
No, you're not. She's not really bounty hunter at all.

Speaker 1 And it makes you kind of think, like, I wonder if it was just a translation thing where they were like, okay, bounty hunter is like a space adventurer. That's how they were thinking about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You also, you told me something that you had learned in one of these lore videos.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a Metroid manga that I haven't read, but apparently in one of them, it's revealed

Speaker 1 canonically that

Speaker 1 Samus Aaron's parents are named Rod Aaron and Virginia Aaron.

Speaker 1 Love it. Hey.

Speaker 4 Hey, Rod.

Speaker 1 Yes, Virginia.

Speaker 4 What should we name our daughter?

Speaker 1 Karen?

Speaker 4 Kelly?

Speaker 1 Samus.

Speaker 1 That's great.

Speaker 1 The beams you were talking about. Freeze beam, so great.
Another thing that they just like,

Speaker 1 it feels like how it feels in 2d they did a great job of just uh you recreating that so satisfying to freeze something and shatter it with a missile that fucking never gets old

Speaker 1 it's so it's such a

Speaker 1 it's a funny thing to think about from the other side of it yeah like if you freeze a space pirate and they're like oh shit i'm frozen and then you blow them up they're like ah

Speaker 1 but you could also help use that to like your advantage too like i learned that you can freeze those flamethrowers That's so cool.

Speaker 1 That's such a great and like because there's these timed flamethrowes in this like in the lava area that pose a threat to you if you know they're sort of like you have to time your your your your your your navigation through toward a through a tunnel with uh these flamethrowers, but you don't have to do that if you just fucking freeze them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's great. Yeah,

Speaker 1 and I also love that

Speaker 1 some of these space pirates too, some of these enemies have

Speaker 1 uh, you have to use a specific gun on them. Like, you can't just go through the entire game with one gun.

Speaker 1 You can, you have to like be really being like, oh, that's one of, that's a wave pirate. I got to use my wave gun on the wave pirate.
I got to use my

Speaker 1 power beam on the other one. It rocks.
Yeah. And to Heather's point about scanning, it's like you pick that up through scanning them.

Speaker 1 So that's a whole thing of just like, okay, you're in a combat encounter. You have to take a second to make yourself vulnerable and just

Speaker 1 bust out your scan visor and scan an enemy, and that will maybe give you some sort of clue as to their vulnerabilities.

Speaker 1 And yeah, you learn all of these soldiers, super soldiers that are using your weapons against you are vulnerable to those same weapons.

Speaker 1 So it kind of forces your hand out of just like you, just spamming super missiles or whatever. Yeah, which you don't want to do because sometimes resources can be scarce.
That's another thing.

Speaker 1 And speaking of scarce, the one thing that I wish they had updated with this remaster in terms of just making it more approachable to modern gamers is oh man. No, no, let me let me let me finish.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 4 I'm hoping you're gonna say what I feel.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's why I'm like, oh man, well, well, we might have opposite feelings here. This will be interesting.
I'm just gonna say it. Okay.
I love that there's no fast travel.

Speaker 1 I love that you have to make your way through all these environments. I think that's so cool.

Speaker 1 And it makes me be like, I wish there would be more games that would dare to make the player walk through these environments and just like allow

Speaker 1 include more goodies that you'll get through via retroversal.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I wish they had some sort of update to the save system. I don't know what that is

Speaker 1 in terms of adding, like adding more save rooms, probably impractical.

Speaker 1 They got to redo the world, but maybe just like, I don't want to say just like, because it's never a trivial thing in game development. These things can have all sorts of external effects.

Speaker 1 They can break other things when it seems like a minor addition. But I like just a pitch I had.

Speaker 1 Every time you like acquire a key item, if there was just an auto save, or if you acquire like a missile expansion or an energy tank, if there was just an auto save there, you know, just little things to make it so that you don't necessarily have to have a 60-minute chunk of gameplay between save points.

Speaker 1 And if you die between those save points, and if you're playing this game for the first time,

Speaker 1 you probably will die a few times. I certainly died revisiting it.

Speaker 1 It's an old school system where you lose everything if you die.

Speaker 1 It's not like it's like, oh, well, I keep the the missiles I collected and I keep the items that I found between save points, but I got to restart the save point.

Speaker 1 It's like, no, you have to do all that shit again. So that can be, I think, very tedious for people who are used to modern conveniences.

Speaker 1 And the gate, also, the save points are so far apart that, yeah, I would have liked something where

Speaker 1 some sort of a nod to modernism there. Just a checkpoint auto-save.
That would be so nice. Our auto-save would have been so huge.
Cause even

Speaker 4 I don't mind it. No, I mean, like, I don't mind your complaint.
I completely agree with it. Like,

Speaker 1 that was my complaint yeah because like they they updated the controls yeah like that and that that felt like pretty modern like that was the sort of the one thing that was like i was trying to get through a lot of it yesterday and there's that chunk uh in in the phase on minds where it's like an hour between saves that that in particular is the point where i was like this is excessive it's

Speaker 1 brutal it was like this is so fucking hard yeah and then I also just got to a point where I got through that got to a save but I didn't have any more power um bombs and I needed a power bomb to proceed.

Speaker 1 So I had to go back, and I went back so far, just like shooting every crate I could find, shooting every enemy I could find to get one power bomb.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because the drop rates for power bombs, it's not necessarily like, oh, well, okay, they know you're depleted, so they're going to drop more power bombs.

Speaker 1 It's like, no, you just might have to play for 20 minutes before you even find one. Yeah, that sort of shit is kind of is a little bit annoying.

Speaker 1 That could be another thing where maybe there's a mode where, hey, maybe there's a retro mode, you know, that's like, this plays like the old way, and now there's a modern, more modern mode.

Speaker 1 I didn't see what casual difficulty was, and I don't remember if that was what was, that was also in the original game.

Speaker 1 So maybe this does this, but if there was a mode where it's like, hey, when you save, it refills all your missiles and bombs. Even like, that would have been helpful.
I have the Samus

Speaker 1 Metroid Dread amiibo. And when you use that in Metroid Dread, it refills your health and weapons.
And I wish I could have used it. for this.

Speaker 1 If they would have just been like, hey, you could use that amiibo for this too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It would have been nice. And, you know, dual-purpose amiibo.
And it's funny because you, you mentioned that phase on minds section.

Speaker 1 And as I was saying to you, Matt, when we were having lunch beforehand, I think that's the highlight of the game. Like,

Speaker 1 that's such a great chunk of gameplay. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 Which is also, it's so rare for that to happen that deep into get into progression, where it's like basically the third act of the game is like, holy shit, that's firing on all cylinders here.

Speaker 1 And the thing you got to know about this part of the game, Heather, you get to this point

Speaker 1 and you have some upgrades. You have like a handful of upgrades when you get to this point.
But then in this section of the game, you get like five more upgrades. You get like a barrage of upgrades.

Speaker 1 You can use so many and like this late in the game. You're sort of like, oh, shit.
I thought it was wrecking house before. Yeah.
Now I'm fucking everybody up. I have a fucking

Speaker 1 plasma gun that melts people. Yeah, that gun's great.
It's so good. But that all comes in like, there's like a boss fight, you know, with one of the phase on elites like in the middle of it.

Speaker 1 And then you play for like another 30 minutes. And then there's that puzzle with like

Speaker 1 electricity and that

Speaker 1 maze. It's like you're on one ass cheek doing that, and you get the power bomb, then you finally have access to a save point.
Yeah, it's just a little too much.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're probably dwelling on this point a little bit, but but, uh, but, but I, I think that's the thing, the one thing that makes it not super approachable people playing for this, for this, in a modern sense.

Speaker 1 My favorite puzzle in that section and in uh a subsequent section, there are these puzzles where you have the spider ball, which gives you the power to roll upward

Speaker 1 in, um, you know, on a wall. It feels awesome.
It feels great. But then there's this puzzle that where you do that for

Speaker 1 it's like 15 minutes. It's like quite a long stretch of puzzle.
Is this in Magmore? Yes. Yes.
Yeah, yeah. And you're sort of like on this wall and there are gaps in between the other tracks.

Speaker 1 So you have to like bomb your way onto another one or in some cases, drop and hope that you magnetize at the right time when you get to the other one.

Speaker 1 I was like, I wish this was the whole game.

Speaker 1 I love this. That section's great.
And it's got like a kind of a great fuck you at the end of it, which is that you're right over a rock pile and you have to like power bomb that.

Speaker 1 But if you don't, if you just try to drop onto the rock pile, you'll fall off into the lava at the very end. It happens.
It's great. Yeah.
It can happen to me.

Speaker 1 I think, all that said, I think the actual end game is a bit of a slog because after you finish all this, you got to find all these artifacts and you got to go through the whole world and collect them, which was, I feel like that was a big, Heather, this was a big like GameCube cube or just that era of gaming convention i feel like it's like here's the end of the game i mean wind waker has this it's like go visit the whole world and get something from all of the like like like this is your this is your bit of cleanup quiz it's just a little tedious i luckily have gotten some of those a lot of them um i think i have eight of the 12 yeah at the point that i'm at and uh but i know that i missed a couple early on that I'm going to be like, where the fuck are these?

Speaker 1 Well, and also some of them are, you need the late game armaments

Speaker 1 and abilities in order to unlock them, even if they're in earlier areas. And then also, like, I feel like the final bosses are both just kind of bullet sponges.

Speaker 1 They're not even like with very limited vulnerability windows, and it's less challenge and more just like tedium,

Speaker 1 which is, which is just a little bit, but it's, it's such a minor thing because the rest of the game, I think, rips so much.

Speaker 1 Can we do a little bit about the music real quick? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just want to play, I got a few tracks here. Let's let's just play a couple because I know we're going over time.
Let's play the.

Speaker 1 This is, I think, the track that everyone remembers: Fendrana Drift's main theme.

Speaker 1 Music is by Kenji Yamamoto, who has been with the franchise, I think, since the beginning, done a lot of music for

Speaker 1 Nintendo, and then also Koichi Kiyuma.

Speaker 1 This is the snow world.

Speaker 1 That's just good. It's good, good ass shit.
And then also a higher energy track. Let's play the Talon overworld depths.

Speaker 1 You come back to Talon in the late game, and it's got a little bit more of an intense feel.

Speaker 4 Fucking Y2K sounding.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, it sounds like the music for like a DVD menu.

Speaker 1 So good. It's good as shit.

Speaker 4 Learning more about your Toyota.

Speaker 4 Did you know the power windows can be set into low and medium locked positions?

Speaker 1 It's also got really good sound design. I think just all the alien creatures, all the, you know, the ambiance, the, the, the beam sounds, the grappling, you know, the

Speaker 1 sounds that are kind of like have been with the series since the beginning, like the bomb dropping sound they updated

Speaker 1 in a really cool way. It's, it's all, yeah.
It's all an audiovisual delight. This,

Speaker 1 for me, is an absolute all-timer. Yeah, it's a, it's a staggering masterpiece.
It's one of those things where you just like, you read about his development and how many people were involved and

Speaker 1 that was able to come together

Speaker 1 as it is. It's kind of a miracle in the same way that Gold and I was.
It's like it kind of doesn't make sense why this was able to come together and yet it did.

Speaker 1 I don't want to push too much Metroid on you, Heather, but I feel like if you liked this in your limited play, I think you really might like Metroid Dread because Metroid Dread has some of the quality of life things that we're talking about, like sort of like auto-saves and stuff, and you don't have to go all the way back.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it has the challenge of like a souls-like game that I think you might enjoy.

Speaker 1 I also like how we're talking about, like, to Heather, of like, yeah, the limited time you spent with it. She's talking about the X-ray visor, which means you spent like 10 to 12 hours with the game.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're probably just behind me. Like, you're

Speaker 1 I only read 600 pages of this 800-page book, so I don't know. I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 But the, speaking of the x-ray,

Speaker 1 great. A great visor.
It's sick. The visors are sick.
And that's like the one, like, okay, we're in 3D. We're from Samus's perspective.
Let's mess around with this.

Speaker 1 And this is like the new technological element. And it works really well.
And I think if, you know, it maybe gets a point where it feels a little overused, where it's like, some of this is just like,

Speaker 1 well, this is a 20-year-old game.

Speaker 1 What do we expect? Some of this is just byproducts of the era.

Speaker 1 but there are things where it's like, ah, I maybe wish there was a shortcut here, or maybe once you clear out this area where there's low light and you have to use the heat visor, the thermal visor, when you return to it, maybe it's just full wash, so you don't have to switch to that visor.

Speaker 1 But it is really cool when it's used. I wish there was like a

Speaker 1 way to do like, because I don't think it's like...

Speaker 1 too cumbersome to switch between guns or switch between visors like on the fly but i wish it was a little smoother like there was like um like even like cycling through guns in like The Last of Us is pretty quick.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You have to sort of like really like hold down another button and then press a direction.

Speaker 1 But if you accidentally don't hold the right button down, you press the direction that you're going, you're switching visors. It's just too similar of a mechanic or

Speaker 1 too similar of a like of a of an input. So I wish it was just like a little bit different or like there was another way to like cycle through guns like with a trigger or something.

Speaker 1 That's the kind of thing where I think that's just a byproduct of it being on the GameCube where originally you're doing all that with a C-stick, but now you're using the right stick to look so it's been remapped and it feels a little clunky.

Speaker 1 I'm with you.

Speaker 1 Can you read a little bit?

Speaker 1 I know I've been talking a lot, but I have a little bit from our buddy Gene Park, who ranked all the Metroid games upon the release of Dread.

Speaker 1 And this is just a little excerpt of him putting Metroid Prime as number one on the list. To this day, there is no game quite like Metroid Prime.

Speaker 1 Rather than copying the first-person shooter formula that remains popular today, Prime implemented a lock-on feature that accomplished many things, including allow our player freedom and movement during combat, narrowing the experience to dodging and movement rather than precision.

Speaker 1 Dodging does feel really good in this game, too.

Speaker 1 This lock-on mechanic extended the game's visor scan, which became a far better way to convey environmental storytelling beyond the tired audio log trope established by System Shock in 1994.

Speaker 1 That's the brilliance of Metroid Prime.

Speaker 1 It was a meaningful, polished innovation on immersive first-person storytelling, all while retaining the character, action, mystery, and pacing of a Metroid game.

Speaker 1 Well said. Yeah.
Thanks, Gene.

Speaker 4 Extremely well said.

Speaker 4 Guys should be a red. He's a smart dude.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, he's smart.
It's cool, funny.

Speaker 4 I compared that to my review of Metroid Prime from 2002.

Speaker 1 It doesn't exist.

Speaker 4 Well, yeah, it doesn't exist. And there goes my bit.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I thought you wanted me to do it.

Speaker 1 I was so

Speaker 1 just enraptured in the concept

Speaker 1 I feel like I've been I've been annoyingly dominating the conversation here and also have not like I there's so much shit I've missed too it's this is this is one of those daunting games to talk about it's hard to talk about it in a way we're not where everything you say about it isn't just this fucking rocks this is cool this rules I I love it when the three of us all like a thing yeah it's it's not all and and there were moments in this where I was like it better not be a fucking puzzle, but it's not a puzzle.

Speaker 4 They're like environmental obstacles.

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 It's not like, oh, fuck, like,

Speaker 4 like the,

Speaker 4 you know, oh, I'm gonna need to get some power up to be able to do this is different from

Speaker 4 I'm gonna need to

Speaker 4 go find a fucking like key card off of a like that shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There are things where it's like, oh, I gotta, I gotta scan for talismans here, but that's still like also just kind of a satisfying bit of exploration.
And it's not really like a puzzle in the

Speaker 1 traditional.

Speaker 4 It's like, oh, I need to explore more is different from

Speaker 4 there's an artificial

Speaker 4 I don't know how to just like it's it's I don't have to like set up

Speaker 4 like a microscope to be able to beam sunlight into a coin

Speaker 1 so that like a gear check like I don't need that shit I mean I do need that shit but I I like that it's not in this game.

Speaker 4 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 And also, when you solve one of those, you get that really sad...

Speaker 1 That's really good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Some great little stingers in this game. Some great stingers.
And

Speaker 1 I'm not even talking about the bugs.

Speaker 1 There's bugs in there. A lot of bugs.
No shortage of bugs. Big bug game.

Speaker 1 Is there anything I missed? Anything that anyone wants to touch on? I mean,

Speaker 1 I was just thinking about this. We talked about scanning earlier.
Yeah. Scanning is so fun.
It's super satisfying. It's like it's the homework part of the game and it still rules.

Speaker 1 Like it's really fun. Well,

Speaker 1 I'm trying to figure out like what, crack, why that is. It's like, it's, it's like finding something scannable is satisfying.
Locking onto it is satisfying.

Speaker 1 That bar filling up, that little bit of like, oh, it's great. I've got to find out.
And then you get the reward of that being revealed. And because like the thing about that.
It's like four rewards.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that thing about that bar filling up too, is that it doesn't take too long. No.

Speaker 1 It's exactly the the right amount of length to fill it up. You're like, okay, good.
But then sometimes there's five things in front of you to scan and you're like, I'm at a fucking buffet here.

Speaker 1 I'm going to learn so much

Speaker 1 and not retain any of it because it's a lot of it is inscrutable. Yeah.
But it is.

Speaker 1 I just love the, I love the vibe. The aesthetics are good.

Speaker 1 But the, it's just, it's just, it's just an all-timer.

Speaker 1 It's just, I don't know what else to say about it other than it's maybe it's it's skyrocketing to top five for me it's unbelievable wow yeah I was like I was even like ah should we even cover it and Matt you kind of pushed for us to cover it I'm glad you did because I because I I probably I might not have played through all the way uh yeah if you hadn't but I'm really glad I I saw the sucker through to the end uh this playthrough heather any other thoughts nope I I think we we've covered a wide variety of thoughts about this surprisingly quality game

Speaker 1 um i metacritic has the best of gamecube right, like their rankings. They have Metroid Prime as number one, just based off of MetaScore.
Resident Evil 4, number two.

Speaker 1 Zelda Twilight Princess number three. Wind Waker number four.

Speaker 1 When I think of best GameCube game,

Speaker 1 I think I probably still say Smash Brothers Melee, but Metroid Prime is maybe number two. I might have said Resident Evil 4.

Speaker 1 I mean, maybe I'll be back to saying Resident Evil 4 after we play that remaster, but

Speaker 1 it's arguably the best game on a console that had a lot of really, really strong games.

Speaker 4 It's a great little system.

Speaker 1 Great system. I wish I had been a GameCube guy.
This is making me regret not having a GameCube. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do? Can't go back. Never too late.
Endure and survive.

Speaker 1 Hey, it's time for the U-play portion of our WePlay. You play.
It's your review crew, the Ryu crew. Hello, Gurden.
The

Speaker 1 friend

Speaker 1 the ill friend

Speaker 1 all right these are all sourced from our discord discord.gg slash get played and so here we go i'm just gonna start reading these off this one's from cam one of my favorite games growing up until i had to go underwater and it was then one of my least favorite games growing up cam doesn't like going underwater well the underwater sucks until you get the gravity Yes.

Speaker 1 Because you also can't see shit. You can't see.

Speaker 1 That's the movement is slow. Yeah, the rest of the chant I hear at indie wrestling shows when guys are doing a spot in the audience and

Speaker 1 you can't see it from your angle because they're in the ring anymore. And everyone's like, can't see shit.
Can't see shit. That's how you feel underwater.

Speaker 1 There is a thing. Like, again, the platforming feels a little clunky until you get the double jump.
The underwater feels really bad until you get the gravity suit.

Speaker 1 But I mean, that's part of why you feel powerful when you do get those things.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I totally understand that from a younger person's perspective. It would stop me, you know? Sure.
I'd be like, oh, I'm done with this, but I know that, I mean, I had an exercise to do.

Speaker 1 I had to finish this thing. And I'm going to.
I'm very close.

Speaker 1 I think when I go home tonight and I start playing it, I'm going to finish it. I'm going to finish it today.
Let me know when you do. Yeah, it might be tomorrow.

Speaker 1 For the next 48 hours, the game will be completed. This next one is from

Speaker 1 Metroguevania Enthusiast.

Speaker 1 It's good, but they should have released the trilogy wholesale instead of piecemeal. And I agree, but Nintendo is going to Nintendo.

Speaker 1 If they can release each of these for 40 bucks a piece, they're going to fucking do it. Yeah.
And I'm.

Speaker 1 I'll buy them all like a fucking idiot. Yeah.
Hey, Nintendo, you want your 80 bucks? Come take it from me gladly.

Speaker 1 This one's from Go-Kart Mozart.

Speaker 1 If a Metroid wore shoes, would it put one on every claw or just one big shoe?

Speaker 1 Hmm. Like it kind of like

Speaker 1 tuck itself into a shoe like in Super Mario Bros. 3? Yeah,

Speaker 1 something like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's cute.
Yeah, like a big boot.

Speaker 1 I like that. Because otherwise it would be like little baby shoes, right?

Speaker 1 That feels horrifying. Never worn.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Four baby shoes.

Speaker 1 How many prongs does a Metroid have? I think four, yeah. Yeah, four or four little baby shoes.

Speaker 1 That's a nightmare. That makes it scarier.
And then there's those other ones that are more like

Speaker 1 squids more than like...

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, the hunter Metroids. I don't know what they're doing, and I don't want to know.
They'll fucking hit you with their own beam. Nasty.

Speaker 1 Metroids, again, speaking of how they realize things in 3D here, they jump on your face. Which in first-person perspective is horrifying.

Speaker 1 And this is a thing that no doubt was inspired somewhat by the head crabs in Half-Life, but you know, the Orol Boros of influence of like the Metroids were influenced probably by face huggers from aliens, and then

Speaker 1 that leads to, you know, face huggers, or that leads to head crabs in Half-Life, which leads to them inspiring that implementation inspiring how they're realized in Metroid Prime.

Speaker 1 But it does, it is really spooky and it is really cool to like, yeah, hey, I got to go into a morph ball and bomb out of this

Speaker 1 keeping attention. i do uh

Speaker 1 i do like that it is like i don't want to get sucked up by the metroids but whenever i have to do it i'm like oh here we go you know it's satisfying though when they go they rear back in one of those and you fucking nail them with an ice beam while they're in mid-air oh and then you missile them into oblivion i didn't realize that the um that the power beam is more effective on them than missiles are like missiles You'll spend like seven missiles trying to take down one Metroid, and then it's like three charged power beam blasts, and they're done basically.

Speaker 1 We didn't even talk about the charging, all the charging is really, really fun because charging is good, but it also sucks stuff up. Yeah.
So, like health and

Speaker 1 no, that's a magnetic effect. Yeah, all the pickups.
It's so good. Uh, this one's from Green Tea Duck.

Speaker 1 My first Metroid game, and I had a great time. But if I have to use the morph ball again on a half pipe, I'll go insane.
Lots of fun. We didn't even talk about the half pipe.
That's my shit.

Speaker 1 I do like the half pipes. That was like made for you.

Speaker 1 I was like, I already liked this game. Now I'm fucking Tony Hawk.

Speaker 1 I'm doing the 900 on his half pipe. Once you figure out the timing of when exactly in the ramp,

Speaker 1 you're supposed to boost to

Speaker 1 increase your height, it's super satisfying. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 In the desert

Speaker 1 biome, there's that one half pipe, but then there's that guy that's like, I never could.

Speaker 1 I don't know how to hit him.

Speaker 1 Like you could shoot him. You have to shoot him from the back, but he's always coming at you.
So I don't know how to get around him fast enough to shoot him in the back.

Speaker 1 So he'd always get in the way of my half pipe, and I'm just like half piping around him because I'm like, he won't leave me the fuck alone.

Speaker 1 Let's see here.

Speaker 1 This one's from Ty Gutax.

Speaker 1 And they write, tried playing the GameCube version about 10 years ago and couldn't get over the control scheme. This new version solves pretty much all of my controller problems and looks fantastic.

Speaker 1 Absolutely love this game and the franchise may be my favorite Nintendo IP. Wow, wow,

Speaker 1 I'm starting to, I'm starting to

Speaker 1 think the same.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I can get enough Metroid, but I don't want them to do so much where it's like, this is too, we got a lot. We're not, we're stop, we got enough.

Speaker 1 But, you know, it'd be nice if they remembered that they had Metroid every so often. Yeah, I think I've said this before, but more like Metroid.

Speaker 1 Okay, now that's good. Yes, I like it.

Speaker 4 I like it. It's not funny, but I like it.

Speaker 1 Um, and then finally, this one's from Esoteric Nebula. It's definitely one of the best

Speaker 1 GameCube games ever released, easily top three for me. It holds up surprisingly well for a game of its era.

Speaker 1 Like, it's hard to imagine that it was released the same year as Ratchet and Clank, which feels like a much older game.

Speaker 1 Interesting. That's interesting.
I haven't returned to the original Ratchet and Clank in a while. Neither have I.

Speaker 1 But what's that? 2003, 2002? 2002 is when this

Speaker 1 came out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I've revisited revisited some games from that era, and

Speaker 1 I mean, this is this has a new coat of paint, so it doesn't, you know, it's not getting the full effect. I've never played the original, but it is the same core gameplay, yeah.

Speaker 1 And that all, that, that's the way, you know, they, they, they did the, they took the step of doing the modern control scheme, and that goes 90% of the way towards making it feel like a modern game.

Speaker 1 Go with me on this for a second. Metroid is the thinking man's, the thinking person's

Speaker 1 Nintendo franchise. Because, yeah, you got Kirby, Kirby's cute.
Kirby's got all the sucking up. That's easy.
Mario. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You got to think. You got to think in all these games.

Speaker 1 But all of them are a sort of mascot, like cute. Uh-huh.
Metroid.

Speaker 1 That's like a cigar. You know what you're asking for? Lots of wine.
You know what you're asking for, Matt?

Speaker 1 You're asking for all the fire emblem stands to pull your pants down and point at your bare ass. I'm talking about the thinking man's fucking cute Nintendo franchise.
Point at it. Okay.

Speaker 1 Here's my ass.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.

Speaker 1 Three houses? Suck my dick.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Not even an attempt at a pun there.

Speaker 1 And that's it for the WePlay You Play or the Riyu, the Riyu crew. Thanks so much for sending those in.

Speaker 1 I hope you guys had enough time to send them to me. That also was the end of the WePlay you play for Metroid Prime Remastered.

Speaker 1 And that's this week's episode. Links to our social media are in the episode description.
Our engineerings by Jordan Duffy, Jordan K. Duffy on Instagram.
Also, check out Get Animate.

Speaker 1 Heather, we're still talking about Blue Lock.

Speaker 4 We're watching Blue Lock. We're talking Blue Lock.
It's Blue Talk about Blue Lock.

Speaker 4 And I think this week we're covering episodes 11 and 12 on Blue Lock.

Speaker 4 The sports anime that's actually a combat anime, just dressed up like a sports anime, but is really about combat, which is why we love it, folks.

Speaker 4 That and people screaming at each other when they're trying to kick a goal.

Speaker 1 It's a great show, screaming, thinking about kicking the ball.

Speaker 1 It's great. It's a lot of fun.
It's good stuff. Patreon.com/slash get played or on Stitcher Premium.
And Matt, you know, you and I are here in the studio. Yes.

Speaker 1 Heather is remote, but you ever notice this little nook over here that's got like a rock in front of it? Oh, yeah. I think

Speaker 1 I think I can blast through that guy.

Speaker 1 You want to roll into a ball and fucking drop a bomb?

Speaker 1 I think that's Bendesium.

Speaker 1 So that thing's going to fucking shatter into a million pieces by the time I'm done with it. Yeah, I'm going to go in this little hole over here, Heather.
I'll see you later. All right, great.

Speaker 1 Mat just got played. Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 It's full of shit in here.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 What's going on? It's Lamarne Morris.

Speaker 4 And Hannah Simone.

Speaker 1 And we host The Mess Around, a New Girl Rewatch podcast now on Headgum. Now, here's the thing.
Every single week we chat about an episode of New Girl and we really get into it.

Speaker 1 Like we get up in there. We get up in there.
You know, we reminisce about our times on set. We share behind the scenes tea.
We react to re-watching episodes that we haven't seen in years.

Speaker 1 We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog f ⁇ ing.

Speaker 4 That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet.
I'm talking Prince, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

Speaker 1 We're just two BFFs having a good old time, okay? Sometimes we even talk to other co-stars like Zoe Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Waynes Jr.

Speaker 1 And your dad, we talked to your dad on this show as well.

Speaker 4 Make sure you subscribe to the mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.