Hmm, to be fair it is rather obtuse without the short charge. You'd have to come from the tunnel room, then charge it in the next room whilst avoiding the enemies, then do the shinespark in the grapple room. Pretty ass, but doable still.

Metacritic.com and Opencritic.com are the most popular sites for aggregated game review scores. However, especially with Metacritic.com, which has been around since 2001, I wonder whether today’s reviews can still be compared to those from the past, and whether their scoring system even makes sense anymore.

Years ago, both gaming magazines and review websites typically used either a 100-point (percentage) system or a 10-point system — often with decimal points, making it effectively equivalent to a 100-point scale. These days, many reviewers only use a 5-point system, or even just a 4-point one. And when they do use a 10-point system, it usually doesn’t include decimals.

In other words, 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5, or 4 out of 4 all translate to 100% on Metacritic and OpenCritic. This makes it much easier for genuinely good games to reach the high 90s compared to the past — because with a 5-point or 4-point system, how else are you supposed to rate a really good game other than giving it the maximum score?

On the other hand, merely good or average games end up being either overrated or underrated compared to earlier years. A 4 out of 5 equals 80%, and a 3 out of 4 equals 75%. A game that might previously have received a nuanced 73% or 7.3 would now simply be a 70% under a whole-number 10-point system. A nuanced 78% or 7.8 becomes a flat 80%.

Another major difference compared to the past is that there are far more reviews today that feed into Metacritic and OpenCritic’s calculations. This also means there are many more shallow or low-quality reviews — written by people who either deliberately want to be controversial, lack expertise, or are simply fanboys/girls or haters. This further distorts the aggregated scores on Metacritic and OpenCritic.

Officially down to Other M on meta (79)… oof, it’s not gonna be pretty if this sells below typical Metroid standards too. I really don’t think we’ll get another 3D Metroid for maybe decades again if that happens…

At least initial sales seem to be projecting near series highs. 

For example opened with about 22k in Japan for physical, Switch 2 only. Digital : physical ratios are about 50% in Japan. Once you account for the Switch version and digital, it probably outsold Metroid Prime and maybe even Fusion too. And Japan is Metroid's worst market.

Update on the Japanese sales. 

Japan opening doesn’t tell us much since it’s such a small market for the game, and consider the fact that it still might not beat Other M’s opening there (aka one of the worst selling modern Metroids worldwide). Kind of says it all for how little Japan matters for this franchise.

Other M is actually a middle of the pack sales-wise game in the Metroid franchise. It sold almost as much as Prime 3. 2D Metroids sell better in Japan than 3D Metroids, so that explains a lot of why it is #2 and above all of the Prime series. Prime 4 outselling it is a good sign, not a bad one. 

If you do a regression analysis, first week Japanese sales and lifetime worldwide sales have an R^2 of about .44 with a significant p-value, which is moderately positive relationship. What that means is that 44% of total variance in sales in the Metroid series can be explained by the variance in first week Japanese sales. 

The equation I get from that analysis is Total sales = .3425 + 29.9213 * (Japan First week sales in units of million sales.) If we did that using the Prime 4 estimates, we would get total sales of 1.58 Million to 1.94 Million. That's roughly on par with or slightly higher than Prime 3. 

If we just look at the Prime games, we get an R^2 of .27 (weaker relationship makes sense given prime series is less popular in Japan, more popular worldwide) and an equation of total sales = .1464 + 49.59 * (Japan First week sales in units of million sales.) That would give us sales of 2.2 million to 2.8 million for Prime 4. 

Confidence intervals are pretty large, given the few data-points, but 1.6 million seems to be a baseline here, which while probably isn't what Nintendo wants given the costly development cycle, isn't "below typical Metroid sales numbers." 

Edit: Also where the linear model is off, it is because it mostly underestimates the sales based on Japanese first week, rather than overestimating.

edit: If we try to predict sales by Metacritic score, we get an r^2 of .242, and it isn't significant (p>.179). 

For sales my guess is it'll end up in the 2.5m-3m range which wouldn't be ideal considering the really long development cycle but not disastrous. If reception was at least as strong as Prime 2 I'm confident it'd become the best selling Metroid ever but I doubt that unless legs are notably better than Dread.

Enjoying Metroid Prime 4 a lot so far! Currently, I'm in Flare Pool.