Games Beaten 2017

[Sarge]

I have to agree, it may have Metroid branding, but it ain't Metroid. It may be an a'ight game, though; I enjoyed Metroid Prime: Hunters, another game that wasn't really Metroid, more of a Quake-like shooter.

A new side-scrolling Metroid on Switch would be splendid. In the meantime, we'll have to make do with the excellent AM2R.

[marurun]

Is there really a place in the market for a side-scrolling Metroid game any longer? I suspect if we get any more Metroid it will have far more in common with Metroid Prime. I just cannot see Nintendo doing any more "traditional" Metroid games in the current market climate.

[Exhuminator]

Is there really a place in the market for a side-scrolling Metroid game any longer?

Axiom Verge's creator said he was very pleased with his game's sales, but his market goal and Nintendo's are surely not equivalent. Perhaps Bloodstained's reception will give us a clearer indicator.

[MrPopo]

Is there really a place in the market for a side-scrolling Metroid game any longer? I suspect if we get any more Metroid it will have far more in common with Metroid Prime. I just cannot see Nintendo doing any more "traditional" Metroid games in the current market climate.

I think if Bloodstained does well getting non-backers to purchase it speaks well for a side scrolling Metroid. And we have successes like Axiom Verge as well.

[Sarge]

If we can get side-scrolling Mario, even now, we can get side-scrolling Metroid. But heck, I'll take another Prime game, too.

[prfsnl_gmr]

How is FRNs music? Is it better than Fzero GX's?

No. The music is not as good. The sound effects - especially with a surround sound system - are fantastic, however. Moreover, it looks better, plays better, moves faster, and it has both more interesting mechanics and a more gradual difficulty curve. I highly recommend it. (If Nintendo had let the developer remix some of F-Zero's music, throw in the Blue Falcon, and slap F-Zero on the title, I think people would have considered it the best game in the F-Zero series.)

Also, we got a new Metroid last year.

That's no Metroid game chief.

See?! People hate it so much that they don't even consider it a Metroid game!

[isiolia]

1. DKC Returns (3DS)
2. √ Letter (PS4)
3. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PC)
4. Spec Ops: The Line (PC)
5. Fire Emblem Heroes (Android)
6. Gears of War Ultimate Edition (Xbox One)
7. Onechanbara Z2 Chaos (PS4)
8. Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)
9. Nioh (PS4)
10. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U)

Played 60-odd hours, possibly closer to 70, offhand, getting 72 shrines, and doing full (far as I saw) "main story" content with the four Divine Beasts, Master Sword, memory locations, and so on. I also made sure to hit up the more interesting looking locations like the labyrinths and the Triforce springs (and their dragons), etc. Stopped due to it becoming (even more of) a grind to upgrade further, but Ganon was a complete joke as I was anyway.

Enjoyed it a lot, certainly far more appealing to me than other more recent Zeldas I've played, and probably going to be a deserving GoTY for a lot of people.

If that's all you wanted to see, then you can silently nod and move on. Spoiled the rest of my speculating/nitpicking/etc.

Generally speaking, I think Nintendo looked at a lot of open world games and MMOs and copied particular elements to create the experience they wanted. Or, at least, the closest they could given the hardware - to say that BoTW pushes the Wii U to its limit is being nice about it. The target framerate is 30fps, usually with a lower bound (per Digitalfoundry) of 20fps, though I had a handful of single-digit slideshows along the way where I almost thought I'd crashed the game. It's also probably not a coincidence that the visual style happens to be one that works with low poly models with low res or no textures to them, etc.
It's still quite playable, but I think Nintendo could have fulfilled their goals even better on more powerful hardware. IE, it would have helped in the scouting out territory if the system could actually draw in details on distant terrain. Maybe things wouldn't just pop in and out of existence, etc.
Still, despite technical performance that would have prompted a day one patch on PS4, it's given a pass...because it's on Wii U, and pretty clearly wrings every last pixel out of it.

Primarily, it excels in encouraging and supporting exploration, both in the terrain, and to a fair point, in how you interact with the world. It only goes so far, again maybe due to hardware limits, or as discussed here before, balance issues...but it does encourage players to be creative.
To me, it might have been nice if a teensy bit more effort could have been put into the combat itself. To be fair, there are a lot of tactics that do work, but the camera and targeting tended to be so-so for me. I also never warmed up to the weapon degradation system.

In a way, that system highlights a lot of the mixed bag elements (to me). On the one hand, the practical benefit of the design is that it does allow for relative nonlinearity without completely throwing off the rest of the game. Plus, it does mean you'll probably make use of a wide variety of items and tactics.
On the other hand, it turns weapons into consumables, which make them feel less special, and harder to rely on. More or less, a consolation prize because the game didn't want to assume that you'd find the particular shrine/chest/etc that the reward was in. As opposed to armor, some of which needed to be readily apparent and available so that you could get to a quest area conveniently.

I think the design does let the game have a Diablo or MMO style effort/reward loop though, which has probably helped in make it appealing to a lot of people. You're just constantly finding/obtaining stuff, slowly upgrading your stats or (eventually, potentially) farming and farming and farming to grind out upgraded armor sets and the like. Still, there's the potential to always have something just out of reach that tends to pull people in.
Similar to those kinds of games, the story isn't as much of a motivation. Most of it is solid enough, but par for the course. Zelda is written well, with something resembling a character arc. Others...not so much, again possibly a concession to nonlinearity.

Arguably, too, there are a lot of elements that are just kind of there. Even the shrines have a nominal purpose, but are generally disconnected from the overworld in gameplay mechanics (almost complete lack of climbing, for example, as has been mentioned in this thread). The quest-based ones are integrated better, despite often lacking the typical Zelda puzzling that others do. Combat ones are meh, and gyro puzzle ones are terrible. I don't know about on Switch, but on Wii U, they control like complete shit, and like the Captain Toad parts of 3D World require the use of the Gamepad regardless of what controller you were actually using.

Where I think Nintendo did put a different spin on things compared to most (recent) examples of similar games though, is guidance. There are some map markers placed, but by and large, there's a lot more general direction given. Places referred to with a brief glimpse of what they look like, or even by what they're called. It's not that nothing has ever done it before, but more that fewer and fewer have since (I guess?) WoW came out and clearly labelled everything. An improvement over making things deliberately vague (*cough*FFXI*cough), but perhaps taking away from exploration. Little actually gets labelled on BoTW's map until you've actually been there, and using landmarks more lends itself to keeping your eyes open. Waypoints tend to result in a bit of tunnel vision, which is minimized here...which is good, because it's also detrimental.

Plenty of games use the general convention of pointing you in the direction of the next thing, anticipating you'll discover more stuff on the way... but BoTW also removes the barriers that most would use to determine your path to get there. Open games usually still effectively funnel players to gates or zonelines via terrain, but given that you can just climb it (unless it's f'ing raining, again) chances are, you'll never quite travel the same path twice.

In rolling back some of the modern convenience type additions that games have - especially evident in MMOs or "offline MMO" type open games - Nintendo also chips away at the elements that serve to make those game worlds "smaller". BoTW's Hyrule is fairly large anyway, even if parts of it can be sparse (something, I suspect, that better allows for background loading). You can end up zipping around it fairly efficiently, just...probably not exactly where you're heading for, and your goal probably won't be a map marker, but part of the landscape.

Still, there are enough other options that, say, horses are kind of a moot point. I barely used them. They can't climb or glide and I can't pick stuff from on one. It's not a unique thing - mounts in Horizon Zero Dawn were kind of pointless too, given that you were constantly stopping to pick herbs and whatnot. BoTW has a lot of stuff like that. There's the core game, and then like, the other half of the map. Far more than the primary quest actually uses, or that you ever need to mess with to complete it...but there if you want to explore or challenge yourself.

In favor of experimentation, the save system is pretty forgiving, both auto-saving regularly, allowing you to manually save most of the time, and maintaining a bunch of save files. You don't usually get bumped back far if you have to reload, and you can likely roll back further if needed. Not always the standard, depending on the goals of the game - not at all how Souls games work for instance - but a smart choice here.

Overall, just a lot of smart choices on Nintendo's part. Not necessarily things we haven't seen before, but maybe not quite all in one game. Even the things I wasn't as keen on I could see why they did that way. Except the gyro puzzles.

[marurun]

I think if Bloodstained does well getting non-backers to purchase it speaks well for a side scrolling Metroid. And we have successes like Axiom Verge as well.

I think even if Bloodstained does great, with its sales across multiple platforms, that probably wouldn't be enough for a Nintendo marquee title. Nintendo took a risk with Team Ninja and it failed. I'm sure they are a bit more risk averse, now.

If we can get side-scrolling Mario, even now, we can get side-scrolling Metroid. But heck, I'll take another Prime game, too.

My understanding is that the New Super Mario Bros. games are not nearly as solid as those from the NES and SNES era. And Nintendo still is making 3D Mario games. Mario is also a much safer, higher-selling franchise.

I guess I need to admit that I would indeed love to see a new 2D Metroid title, but I just cannot imagine what would have to happen in the games market for Nintendo to decide it's worth doing. Kickstarter and indie titles are just not, I think, the kinds of titles Nintendo will be looking at for benchmarks.

[Sarge]

True, but the 2D entries also outsold the 3D entries by a significant margin.

(That being said, NSMB Wii was really, really good, despite my qualms with the NSMB physics.)

[Exhuminator]

Nintendo took a risk with Team Ninja and it failed.

Everything that's wrong with that game is Yoshio Sakamoto's fault, not Team Ninja.