Metroid Prime 4 Logbook, Entry 5

Did somebody say Phazon Mines? No? Well, great... There was one last major area to explore with one last Teleporter Key to obtain, before the game is heading into the big finale. And it all feels like a very intentional throwback to the original Metroid Prime with this particular setting...

Scans: 93%
Items: 67%

But before you can go to the Great Mines, there is one more member for your team to find, where they have saved the best one for last. Introducing Vue-995, professional combat robot and smasher of things:

And he's certainly the most useful and entertaining of the bunch. Vue only talks when he has to, but also won't hold back with pure bluntness. And brings some good firepower.

This is part of some backtracking to the Ice Belt, where you can obtain the Psychic Spider Ball, now that you have the Psychic Grapple. It's all "psychic", because purple things can appear out of nowhere... But at least they came up with something new here, where you're getting these slingshot mechanisms, though they don't really need the psychic label, I suppose.

The Spider Ball was the last thing required to enter the Great Mines, which is that huge hole in the desert with an entire facility created above. Here you meet with the team to pose for a Starship Troopers cutscene.

It looked cool, but I wouldn't have minded if part of it had been playable. At least you're seeing enough action in the mines down below... While they are reminiscent of the Phazon Mines, it's luckily not that depressing. It has three levels in total and each of them comes with its own Save Station, which alone makes this more forgiving and less dreadful.

But the Great Mines also come with their own twist by introducing a new threat and game mechanic: the Maul Grievers. They can't see, but they will be attracted by loud noises, where together with the cave setting this somewhat similar to the movie The Descent. But as a result, firing missiles becomes a big no-no. It's actually funny to shoot some anyway and trigger reactions by your teammates. "Stop it with the missiles, Samus!"

And of course you're getting the loudest weaponry in the game as your upgrades in this area – the Not-Psychic Super Missiles and finally the Psychic Power Bombs. Whenever you have to use them to proceed, this will attract more Grievers, which makes things more interesting.

But otherwise you're having good alternatives and that's where the new Thunder Shot really gets to shine. Its lightning attacks are chained, meaning that it will potentially spread to other enemies when you hit one. This is so good that I don't know why you would want to use the other shots any longer, except to benefit from other elemental weaknesses. The Fire Shot might be stronger against individual Grievers, but in these group fights the Thunder Shot lets you vaporize multiple Grievers at once.

The new weapon system is very enjoyable, though. I like how they all simply have charged variants, so you don't have to perform the Charge Combos from the earlier Prime games, which required you to load a normal Charge Beam and then fire a missile. Even the Super Missiles now work like this. The old way still would have been easily doable with the default controls, but it's more natural and convenient when you can simply charge the alt weapons directly.

Unlike in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the ammunition system also doesn't feel as limiting. There is plenty, and when you're eventually out of ammo, you can still rely on the Power Beam quite well. And on missiles, except not in this case. You rarely ever truly need the elemental weapons to proceed.

As already mentioned, you're in the company of the Federation Force through most of this area. First you have Duke and Armstrong, then only Armstrong, and later Vue-995. Each of them will treat you like a member of the Strawhat Pirates, making sure that you can proceed further down into the mines, even willing to sacrifice their lives in the process. Maybe it's good that Samus stays mute, before she says something like, "Even if you die, don't die!"

But of course it's all fine in the end and they all survive... I guess, they are saving the tragedies for the big finale. And I personally didn't mind the company this time, it was far less annoying than during the Flare Pool. They are really trying to make you like these characters, before things get serious. Even Myles gets to shine a bit at the end, despite being notably absent.

If the homage to the Phazon Mines wasn't already obvious enough, you'll get the Omega Griever as the big bad of the area, while the music gives Prime 3 vibes. Design-wise it looks like something out of a DOOM game, so this is a wild mix.

It's also the toughest boss so far. The lock-on won't score you any direct hits, but since I'm playing with the pointer controls this wasn't the issue. Instead, my problem was to keep track when it crawled so quickly over the walls. Once it's on the ground, this gets easier, but it's also hitting much harder.

But for most of the battle you can't even damage it directly, because it doesn't expose its weakspot. So, you have to shoot the limbs and other body parts, until it decides to flip or hold still. So, this fight can wear you down quite a bit, where it was a close call for me in the end. This could become very challenging in Hard Mode.

However, it doesn't give me the same nightmares as the Omega Pirate. When you decrease around a third of its health, it will call some Maul Grievers to its aid, but then just camps in an alcove of its own creation. That's very considerate, because you can just focus on the henchmen. And this game doesn't make you swap beams and visors all the time, which makes the battles more enjoyable for me.

With the Power Bombs at hand, it's now full backtracking time! This goes hand in hand with the classic endgame scavenger hunt, but more on that in the next entry. For now I've cleared the Great Mines, where at their end you also get reminded of the existence of the Scout Bots. You will come across these drones in each area, but can't activate them until you have the Thunder Shot... They will show you the locations of missing items on the maps, like the Elysian satellites did in Metroid Prime 3, which makes going for 100% completion a breeze.

Now... if only I could remember where I have seen the other ones...

The Great Mines also had some nice-looking and more interesting Morph Ball sections. So far I found them quite lacking in the game, where they feel purely like something that just exists for the sake of it, because a Metroid game needs the Morph Ball. And except for the slingshots, which I've mentioned earlier and where you can see one above, there aren't also any new ideas here. Sure, you can now find these Psychic Boost Ball tracks, which go right through the air, but that's not all that creative and just shoots you around on auto pilot.

There also aren't any unique monsters for the Morph Ball tunnels, or at least I don't remember any. And I doubt that this is going to change this late in the game...