Castlevania, Ori, Axiom Verge, Shadow Complex, Guacamelee.
Without Metroid, none of these games exist.
But when it comes down to Metroid itself,
I am not the biggest fan.
What usually happens, I'll start one up
ya know, I'll have a blast, shootin' aliens, exploring the world
until I hit that part where the game just stops and you go,
"Okay, now what?"
You shoot everything in a room then you backtrack
through this big ass map, looking for a way forward
and this would go on for 20-30 minutes before I just say
"Fuck it. And we're done."
So what was I actually supposed to do?
The answer is some cryptic ass bullshit.
Old games are built on this kind of stuff
but where it's less forgivable is Metroid Fusion,
which came out almost a decade after Super Metroid.
What's ironic is that people say
"This is the most hand-holding linear Metroid"
and yet, I don't know what the fuck to do in this game.
Here's a great example. I'm stuck in this room.
I can't jump out on the left or the right.
So, time to shoot every single tile in the room, right?
Okay, nothing happened at all.
So now I just sit here, trying to wall jump out,
try to bomb the floor with my thing, try to shoot every tile with a missile.
There's no way! You're stuck here. You're stuck here for the rest of the ga-
And fuck this game.
Why in the name of a dog's dick would anyone think to blow that up?
There's no visual cue. No audio cue.
It is literally the same exact tile as every other one on the floor.
Even when I was bombing the shit out of the area
It didn't even get hit!
You have to drop the bomb specifically on the exact right part to get it to come up.
This is what I call a "Metroid Moment™"
Something I noticed about my playthroughs of Super Metroid, Fusion, and Metroid Prime
is that they all ended at the water level.
Now, what's good about Metroid Zero Mission
is that there is no water level.
Instead of 15 or 20 bullshit parts, there's 2.
You get the best of both worlds.
You have the more fluid control scheme of Fusion and the interconnected map design of Super Metroid.
And the glorious reimagining of the NES original.
For my money, this is the Metroid to play.
Samus Returns is a reimagining of the sequel to the NES original,
which came out on the Game Boy
and was recently remade by a fan in a game titled "Another Metroid 2 Remake",
implying that this is one of many fan recreations of Metroid 2.
So why does everyone wanna remake this one so badly?
I don't fucking know!
Structurally, it's kinda dumb. Your goal is to hunt down 40 bosses
except it's not actually 40 bosses.
It's 8 bosses with 4 of them just being constantly repeated throughout the game.
In the face of this year's Hollow Knight,
which had 150 enemies, 27 of those being unique bosses,
the variety of enemies here feels infantile.
This boss in particular is a fucking dickhead.
Whenever he takes enough damage, he'll just leave the room and make you find him
again and again to continue the boss fight.
Whoever came up with this, fuck you.
Mechanically, however, the game is pretty neat.
You can now stand still and aim in a full 360°.
You can aim while hanging from a ledge.
You can slow down time.
The grapple hook is badass.
There's a new melee counter, which if you go around the game,
countering every single enemy, it'll get stale quick.
What's interesting though is their little telegraphed attacks makes them easier to dodge,
giving you a game where it's more exciting
to swerve and evade enemies than to engage them.
I think the magic of Metroid
making the player feel like they've outsmarted the game despite it all being very deliberate.
There's something so absorbing about this formula of collecting power-ups
and having the level evolve alongside you.
Those frustrating Metroid Moments™ are decimated by the new scan pulse
which maps out the areas surrounding you
while also showing you which black to actually shoot in order to progress.
Samus Returns is at its best when you're blazing through the game as fast as possible.
Unfortunately, you tend to hit a lot of little speed bumps.
When you die to a boss, it doesn't knock you all the way back to your last save point anymore.
But you'll frequently encounter these bomb blocks where you just have to sit there
and wait for them to blow up one after another.
There really should have been a power-up that lets you dash through these or something.
You're no longer wasting a half hour to futile backtracking
but that's partly because the game is very linear.
You can replenish your Aeion gauge just by walking over a ball.
Boom. Instantaneous. But to refill your health and missiles, you gotta watch this annoying little cutscene.
Shit starts going down at the end though.
You're cycling through special abilities with the D-pad,
turn stuff on and off with the touch screen, hold the triggers-BAM-switch to analog...
By the time you hit the final bosses, you should be looking like this.
[Dunkey's signature Spin Move™]
This shit is pure intensity.
I can't remember the last time I've despised a 3D model in a video game so vehemently.
Fuck this robot. It was probably him who came up with this shit!
I give Metroid a big,
bigger than that,
BIG ass 3 out of 5.
Had this game been a remake of Fusion or Super Metroid,
this could have been a masterpiece.
Instead, what you get here is a game with a lot of smart ideas and a lot of dumb mistakes.
Like this fucking piece of SHI-
[Outro]