Let's talk about the coolest part of the game so far, the Ice Belt. In old Metroid Prime fashion you'll find a sleeping laboratory there, but it leads to a different revelation...
Scans: 67%
Items: 27%
First of all, you can't go there directly after the Volt Forge. In my previous entry I left off stating that the Ice Belt will be my next destination, as if I had any say in the matter. Well, I went there, visited the first Save Station, turned off the game and wrote my blog post...
And I was quite excited about the fact that the game is seemingly given you a choice, because this would be a novelty for a Metroid game, which usually gives you a clear sequence for all power-ups and upgrades. I was curious to see how it will play out when it doesn't, but once I returned to the game, I got greeted by a frozen wall:
You shall not pass!
So, whether you like it or not, you have to listen to MacKenzie and go to the volcano first, where the area is called Flare Pool. It's a brief visit, because someone takes down a bridge as you're about to cross it with Vi-O-La.
But you're not going there for nothing. You can still obtain a chip from a plasma-powered mining tool and as we all know from Metroid Prime: Federation Force, integrating Mod Chips is a specialty of Galactic Federation mechanics, so back to MacKenzie you go...
This earns you the Fire Shot, which is the tool needed to get through the door at the Ice Belt. And this is also the perfect time to backtrack through Fury Green. I've made the mistake of doing that right after the Volt Forge, but all you could get is a single Missile Expansion via the Psychic Boots. And with the Fire Shot there is already more to do and find.
The weapon system is indeed quite similar to how it was in Metroid Prime Hunters. You always have your default Power Beam, but you can swap between different secondary weapons, which all require ammunition. There are your Missiles, but also the three different "shots", which use up Shot Ammo and are based on the typical elements of fire, ice and electricity. Breath of the Wild says hi. Though, I'm hoping that your normal beam will get some stacked upgrades as well, or in the very least Charge Beam Combos, like in the first two Prime games.
Back at the Ice Belt, you enter a large, open snowfield, which is where you get attacked by a swarm of Snow Wolves. Yes, that's what they are actually called, so these are not some super mutated creatures, but just a bunch of wolves in the snow. They do certainly act alien by how they trap you inside a snowstorm, though...
And this was an interesting sequence, where eventually you get saved by a Galactic Federation sniper, Tokabi. I was at 31 health at this point, close to my first death in the game, and that makes me wonder whether that was purely by coincidence or the way to trigger the rescue. It could also be triggered by the number of wolves killed or a timer, but whatever it may be, I was very grateful in that moment. Don't mind all those Galactic Federation soldiers, they aren't that bad...!
What follows is some very cliché Science Fiction stuff. The laboratory is out of energy and you have to reactivate the generator. Luckily, it's not completely dark, so you don't have to navigate the whole thing with some thermal visor, because that would have been very awkward.
But you will be in scanning hell, given that you care about this type of stuff. They did not hold back on the scannable objects in this game and half of it even changes its state once the power is back up, so you can scan it again! There are also a number of logbook entries to find, so the scanning isn't just to satisfy some OCD, but there is some interesting lore to this place and Viewros in general. We'll get to that in a second...
And there are so called "TK codes" to find, which are required for psychic locks. So, the game pretty much forces you to run around with the Scan / Psychic visor to vacuum all that lore, because it's going to be important.
On top of that, the Dartwing enemies have been a stern reminder that you want to be scanning as much as possible, in order to not potentially miss anything. They are effectively Shriekbats and then you may remember those "Utragian Shriekbats" from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, where there was only one real chance to scan them or else you would be locked out of 100%. Good times!
Since this got me immediately paranoid, I consulted a guide by Nintendo Life to see how bad it is this time. And it's actually not that bad. You can scan most of the major bosses again at the temple in Fury Green, which lets you display holograms of them. The only tricky one is Carvex, because its tentacles and spores count as extra entries that you can miss, but luckily I had those... And there will be one weird enemy in the Flare Pool, which is easy to miss, so it's probably best that I have looked it up, even though this gave me some slight spoilers for what's ahead.
All this scanning and reading will eventually reveal the truth of what has happened on Viewros: the Lamorn turned into the hostile Grievers, caused by the Green Energy. Wait, whaaaaat...?! Why am I collecting this stuff to infuse more of it into the Mana Tree? Isn't that a bad idea, then...? When you travel from Fury Green to the Ice Belt, after obtaining the Fire Shot, it even rains this green stuff, which makes the Grievers stronger...
Anyway, when we first saw the Grievers in the trailers, they already felt very reminiscent to the Reptilicus from Metroid Prime 3. And this might not be a coincidence, since their story is somewhat similar. On Bryyo the population basically split between those who sought science and those who scorned it, where the primitive side prevailed and then later got turned hostile by the Phazon.
Well, here you don't have a civil war amongst the Lamorn, but the Green Energy splits them apart either way, where it's acting like a zombie virus. At the Ice Belt labs they tried to return the affected Lamorn into their former state, but have failed. And eventually it all went south.
This is such a fantastic setup for what's to come. After digesting all that information, you already know what will happen once you bring back that generator back online and thaw this place up... Oh, oh...!
However, this didn't happen immediately, because I was confused about the generator thing for a bit. Once you've turned on the first turbine, scanning the generator will tell you that it's now producing enough energy for the whole facility. But nothing really happens... You still have to activate the other two turbines by using the Psychic Beam, where it's easy to forget that this is a thing.
But once you've figured it out, the change in atmosphere and visuals will be absolutely stunning. The whole laboratory lights up in these white and yellow tones, which creates a difference of day and night. And Retro Studios has done an amazing job with the texture work, where it's the best looking Nintendo game that I have played so far.
The new Fire Shot sees some good action during this part, where the Ice Grievers will live a few seconds before they incinerate. The weird whistling whenever you fight Grievers is a bit annoying, though, but it might have some story relevance as well. Maybe it has something to do with all the psychic stuff.
When it comes to graphics, I also really liked the ice layer on your arm cannon during the outside sections. That's the attention to detail that you expect from a Metroid Prime game:
But at this point it's also getting clear that the game isn't meant to be much larger than its predecessors. There isn't much to these outside parts and you do get to explore almost all of the lab. And you're not even allowed to use Vi-O-La in the snowfields. So, they have introduced this whole motor cycle thing, only for it to be inaccessible during more than half of the game. That's not so cool...
The boss is where I died for the first time, but not because it was difficult. I simply got confused during the attack where it creates a belt of ice around it and a whirl that draws you into it. This does a ton of damage for some reason and this got me on my first attempt. Well, all you have to do is destroy the ice belt with your Fire Shot, but it takes more hits to melt than any other ice, so I first thought that I had to do something else and panicked.
It's the most original boss so far with its designs. There are some slight similarities to Thardus with how Keratos curls up and rolls towards you, but it's more like a gigantic Geemer / Ice Crawler.
Defeating it earns you the Psychic Boost Ball, because everything now has to be psychic. It's not the same old thing as before, it's the psychic version... woah! You also get a "Psychic Lasso" along the way, where I don't even remember what's so psychic about it, because it works exactly like the Grapple Lasso. But it effectively demonstrates that the Joy-Cons can fully emulate the motion control stuff from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, should you have ever had doubts about it. I didn't.
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