Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Jan. 10th, 2020 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroA remake of Metroid 2: Return of Samus for the Game Boy, which I actually did a Let’s Play of on Talking Time.* As that was my first real Metroid experience and I’ve also played the fan remake of it, I figured this would also be up my alley.
They make the “action” portion of the game much more complex with the melee counter and ability to aim at various angles; the fact that you’ll need to melee counter most random denizens of SR388 is very irritating. Especially when you consider that most of the creatures in the original game weren’t actually aggressive! 90% of them either walked back and forth along a surface or flew in simple patterns. (The idea that they were just the local wildlife and not actively out to hurt Samus made more sense, given the plot. Everything in this is out to get you. Which makes your mission of genocide slightly more justified, I guess?)
The Metroid battles are much, much more complicated, with even the Alphas having half a dozen different moves you need to learn to dodge or counter. Basically, every Metroid is a boss battle, and there’s enough variety among them (there are “electricity” alphas and “fire” alphas; gammas of both varieties and also gammas that flee to other areas mid-battle; and a variety of arenas that add levels of challenge by restricting your movements). I find it interesting that they almost kept the breakdown of Metroid types from the original game: In the original, there are only three Zetas and they’re all in the same area, making them an oddly transient type. In this, the Alpha in Area 6 (the “little brother” before the first Omega appears) is replaced with a fourth Zeta.
They “explain” the lava/dangerous liquid draining when you kill enough metroids with the addition of statues that you need to feed Metroid DNA into in order to activate them. This, of course, only raises more questions!
The save statues are reasonably well-populated, but the “checkpoint” restore when you die is what really got me through the game: Checkpoints tend to be right before or after bosses, and I died A LOT fighting bosses. (A Metroid can chew through three energy tanks in four or five hits—you can’t tank hits in this game.) My final time according to the game was several hours below my actual time spent.
There are teleport stations for easy backtracking, which I have mixed feelings about—on one hand, it makes for a better game, and you can go back and uncover more secrets in earlier areas once you have power-ups, etc. It also makes the game marginally less linear, despite having the “open areas in a set sequence” setup of the original. On the other hand, the original had a “keep moving forward, ever forward into the darkness” quality to it that was very atmospheric and it’s a shame to lose that.
They added pretty much all of the power-ups introduced in later games, and also made pretty much every upgrade unlock something—there are doors keyed to each of the beams, for instance. The Power Bomb appears to be the last upgrade, so in theory you can do a collect-a-thon by teleporting back to the surface and re-running all of the previous areas. The fact that exploration becomes MUCH less dangerous once you have the Plasma Beam, Gravity Suit and Screw Attack also helps—the difficulty evens out as you collect the upgrades and I think it’s lower in the mid-game than at the beginning.
They added a giant mech monster apparently called a “Diggernaut”, and it’s the worst thing. First you encounter an auto-scrolling chase sequence and I thought, well, that was a really annoying, unpleasant addition, but at least it’s over. (I died easily a dozen times and got seriously frustrated.) But then, after the Area 6 sequence, you fight the thing as a three-stage boss in order to get the Power Bomb, and each stage is an obtuse puzzle. Arrgh.
Honestly, a lot of things in this game are obtuse. I had to look up that you can charge ice beam shots to keep enemies frozen—which is necessary both to make several jumps and also to kill un-evolved Metroids. I learned from a forum post after playing most of the game that you can use the ice beam on Metroids to slow them down and stop the fire/electricity attacks; and that Samus has a wall-jump ability. Also, you can combine Power Bombs and the Spider Ball to fly very far in a straight line, which is necessary for a few hidden items.
This is a mild spoiler, but they add a new final boss when you get back to the ship with the baby. (Which explains why there are a handful of items you can only collect during a “victory lap” with the baby in tow.) I object to the inclusion of this boss after I managed to kill 50 Metroids and their Queen (though admittedly the Queen took me fewer tries than the goddamn Diggernaut), and I’ve declared myself finished without an official time, sitting at 90.7% completion.
* As of this writing, Photobucket is down and my LP is missing all its images. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.)
Overall: They changed a lot, but I think much of it worked. My only real objection was the addition of new, unnecessary bosses in a game that was already about fighting 40 bosses. I’m considering replaying Zero Mission now.
They make the “action” portion of the game much more complex with the melee counter and ability to aim at various angles; the fact that you’ll need to melee counter most random denizens of SR388 is very irritating. Especially when you consider that most of the creatures in the original game weren’t actually aggressive! 90% of them either walked back and forth along a surface or flew in simple patterns. (The idea that they were just the local wildlife and not actively out to hurt Samus made more sense, given the plot. Everything in this is out to get you. Which makes your mission of genocide slightly more justified, I guess?)
The Metroid battles are much, much more complicated, with even the Alphas having half a dozen different moves you need to learn to dodge or counter. Basically, every Metroid is a boss battle, and there’s enough variety among them (there are “electricity” alphas and “fire” alphas; gammas of both varieties and also gammas that flee to other areas mid-battle; and a variety of arenas that add levels of challenge by restricting your movements). I find it interesting that they almost kept the breakdown of Metroid types from the original game: In the original, there are only three Zetas and they’re all in the same area, making them an oddly transient type. In this, the Alpha in Area 6 (the “little brother” before the first Omega appears) is replaced with a fourth Zeta.
They “explain” the lava/dangerous liquid draining when you kill enough metroids with the addition of statues that you need to feed Metroid DNA into in order to activate them. This, of course, only raises more questions!
The save statues are reasonably well-populated, but the “checkpoint” restore when you die is what really got me through the game: Checkpoints tend to be right before or after bosses, and I died A LOT fighting bosses. (A Metroid can chew through three energy tanks in four or five hits—you can’t tank hits in this game.) My final time according to the game was several hours below my actual time spent.
There are teleport stations for easy backtracking, which I have mixed feelings about—on one hand, it makes for a better game, and you can go back and uncover more secrets in earlier areas once you have power-ups, etc. It also makes the game marginally less linear, despite having the “open areas in a set sequence” setup of the original. On the other hand, the original had a “keep moving forward, ever forward into the darkness” quality to it that was very atmospheric and it’s a shame to lose that.
They added pretty much all of the power-ups introduced in later games, and also made pretty much every upgrade unlock something—there are doors keyed to each of the beams, for instance. The Power Bomb appears to be the last upgrade, so in theory you can do a collect-a-thon by teleporting back to the surface and re-running all of the previous areas. The fact that exploration becomes MUCH less dangerous once you have the Plasma Beam, Gravity Suit and Screw Attack also helps—the difficulty evens out as you collect the upgrades and I think it’s lower in the mid-game than at the beginning.
They added a giant mech monster apparently called a “Diggernaut”, and it’s the worst thing. First you encounter an auto-scrolling chase sequence and I thought, well, that was a really annoying, unpleasant addition, but at least it’s over. (I died easily a dozen times and got seriously frustrated.) But then, after the Area 6 sequence, you fight the thing as a three-stage boss in order to get the Power Bomb, and each stage is an obtuse puzzle. Arrgh.
Honestly, a lot of things in this game are obtuse. I had to look up that you can charge ice beam shots to keep enemies frozen—which is necessary both to make several jumps and also to kill un-evolved Metroids. I learned from a forum post after playing most of the game that you can use the ice beam on Metroids to slow them down and stop the fire/electricity attacks; and that Samus has a wall-jump ability. Also, you can combine Power Bombs and the Spider Ball to fly very far in a straight line, which is necessary for a few hidden items.
This is a mild spoiler, but they add a new final boss when you get back to the ship with the baby. (Which explains why there are a handful of items you can only collect during a “victory lap” with the baby in tow.) I object to the inclusion of this boss after I managed to kill 50 Metroids and their Queen (though admittedly the Queen took me fewer tries than the goddamn Diggernaut), and I’ve declared myself finished without an official time, sitting at 90.7% completion.
* As of this writing, Photobucket is down and my LP is missing all its images. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.)
Overall: They changed a lot, but I think much of it worked. My only real objection was the addition of new, unnecessary bosses in a game that was already about fighting 40 bosses. I’m considering replaying Zero Mission now.
