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Simply Simon posted:If you don't know that it's coming, you probably never noticed half-pipes just traversing through the game as something special, and there is only one besides the one you have to take for the space jump boots I can think of right now (entrance to Chozo Ruins right after that one). There's several other half-pipes in the game, actually. Most of which are mandatory for progression. And if you're playing the game as intended, scanning everything ever, you will get a few scan prompts on the earlier half-pipes that point out that the surface is curved peculiarly. And then there's the built-in hint system just blatantly telling you "HEY DO A SICK JUMP OFFA THIS HERE HALF PIPE!" Phendrana feels big when you first arrive because you're wowed by the atmosphere and looks. And you're taking your time, looking in every nook and cranny, messing up jumps a bunch of times, dying hopelessly to baby Sheegoths and trying to get to areas you're not supposed to go yet.
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Dec 1, 2015 00:28
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Geemer posted:And then there's the built-in hint system just blatantly telling you "HEY DO A SICK JUMP OFFA THIS HERE HALF PIPE!" I always hated the hints bothering me all the time. I'm just trying to explore! Leave me alone!
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Dec 1, 2015 11:06
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Geemer posted:There's several other half-pipes in the game, actually. Most of which are mandatory for progression. It's still not very organic to set up "blast your way through to Phendrana, okay now go back to the beginning of the game, okay now go back to Phendrana." Even with the very important artifacts detour, it still just feels kinda off
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Dec 1, 2015 11:43
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AllisonByProxy posted:I always hated the hints bothering me all the time. I'm just trying to explore! Leave me alone! At least you can turn the hint system off. I understand why it's there, though; there's a fairly large contingent of players who like Metroid-style gameplay except for the part where you get "lost" and can't figure out where to go next.
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Dec 1, 2015 16:27
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:At least you can turn the hint system off. I understand why it's there, though; there's a fairly large contingent of players who like Metroid-style gameplay except for the part where you get "lost" and can't figure out where to go next. I think the hint system is awesome, because when you're sequence breaking it shows all these little hints in the map for equipment that you skipped. But, more seriously, the Metroid Prime series' hint system is great. Primarily because you can choose to turn it on and off at any point. Most games just force their hints to be on, or only allow you to go all-or-nothing right when starting a new game. I prefer 'nothing' in those cases, but I can imagine it being very frustrating for people that just want the one hint on where to go next.
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Dec 1, 2015 21:35
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:At least you can turn the hint system off. I understand why it's there, though; there's a fairly large contingent of players who like Metroid-style gameplay except for the part where you get "lost" and can't figure out where to go next. I think the Prime games' map system helps with this though; each room having a name and super unique geometry makes them way more individually memorable on a map than rows of blocky hallways
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Dec 1, 2015 22:10
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Geemer posted:I think the hint system is awesome, because when you're sequence breaking it shows all these little hints in the map for equipment that you skipped. I like the Torin's Passage method best. There's a hint button that you can click at any time for a vague hint (becoming less vague if you repeatedly ask for hints for the same puzzle) at the cost of some points, but when you score points or take a hint, the button is disabled for a configurable timeout period to give you time to think. If you can figure everything out on your own, you never need to hit the button. If you can't figure anything out, you can get all the hints you need. The game never automatically gives you any hints. I'm sure many other games have done it this way, but the button in Torin's Passage pops up and becomes an hourglass when it's inactive. That's neat.
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Dec 2, 2015 00:52
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Nidoking posted:I like the Torin's Passage method best. There's a hint button that you can click at any time for a vague hint (becoming less vague if you repeatedly ask for hints for the same puzzle) at the cost of some points, but when you score points or take a hint, the button is disabled for a configurable timeout period to give you time to think. If you can figure everything out on your own, you never need to hit the button. If you can't figure anything out, you can get all the hints you need. The game never automatically gives you any hints. I'm sure many other games have done it this way, but the button in Torin's Passage pops up and becomes an hourglass when it's inactive. That's neat. Samus, can you be an axe?
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Dec 2, 2015 01:17
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Geemer posted:I think the hint system is awesome, because when you're sequence breaking it shows all these little hints in the map for equipment that you skipped. Isn't it pretty much always on in Prime 3? Or am I remembering that game wrong? I vaguely remember some old lady that just wouldn't shut up about Phazon here, Galactic Federation the..wait they've been wiped out, Space Pirates there. Course, it could've been the neighbor.
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Dec 2, 2015 02:35
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BMS posted:Isn't it pretty much always on in Prime 3? Or am I remembering that game wrong? I vaguely remember some old lady that just wouldn't shut up about Phazon here, Galactic Federation the..wait they've been wiped out, Space Pirates there. It's been years since I played Prime 3, but I do remember it being more handhold-y than the previous two games, simply because you're always running errands for the Federation. We need to protect this shield reactor. Whoops it blew up let's dispatch the hunters to these different locations. Oh hey that hunter's gone rogue, could you fix that? Yadda yadda yadda nothing but yapping and following orders. Nintendo evidently didn't realize that the #1 defining characteristic of Samus isn't that she's female, or a badass cyborg, or someone who gains in power over the course of the game, but that she's alone. That feeling of isolation and "well poo poo, I'd better hope I can make it through to the end of this hellscape because I've gone too far to turn back and there's sure not going to be anyone coming to rescue me" is really the defining characteristic of the series.
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Dec 2, 2015 02:53
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I still like Prime 3.
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Dec 2, 2015 02:58
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I also remembered Phendrana as taking longer, but that's because the last time I played this game I got the double-spaced boots earlier.
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Dec 2, 2015 03:05
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Watching this game be played gives me the sad reminder that the last real entry in Metroid games was the laughably awful Other M. The Prime series was so drat good, and 1 is especially nostalgia fueled for me. You're doing a great job with this, keep it up. Also Phendrana Drifts was mind blowing to me when I played this game at launch. And that music!
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Dec 2, 2015 03:41
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sulley posted:Watching this game be played gives me the sad reminder that the last real entry in Metroid games was the laughably awful Other M. What are you talking about? The last Metroid game was Prime 3. They haven't done a 3D third-person Metroid.  If you want to play more Metroid games, there's a pretty healthy Super Metroid ROM hacking community. Super Metroid: Eris in particular is amazing. Of course they're generally harder than the original games, because ROM hackers and their audiences have played the originals to death.
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Dec 2, 2015 03:47
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:What are you talking about? The last Metroid game was Prime 3. They haven't done a 3D third-person Metroid. poo poo, you know you might be right. It's mostly a haze, but some weird compulsion several years back forced me to light 50 bucks on fire one day. I have these visions of one of the worst games I've ever experienced, but in retrospect I think someone doused the bills in PCP and the fumes got to me. It was all just a bad trip. What a relief.
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Dec 2, 2015 04:00
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:What are you talking about? The last Metroid game was Prime 3. They haven't done a 3D third-person Metroid. Can you recommend a hack that doesn't overly rely on shine-sparking? I always hated that mechanic. Also, I guess I never realized that you could turn the hints off. Or more likely I kept telling myself that I should but never remembered to do it.
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Dec 2, 2015 04:14
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AllisonByProxy posted:Can you recommend a hack that doesn't overly rely on shine-sparking? I always hated that mechanic. Um. It's been ages since I played most of these. I remember Stardust being fairly easy though. I want to say that most of the hacks don't have mandatory absurd shinesparking, but a lot of them use it for optional puzzles and several of them also abuse weird physics behaviors that no normal player is going to think to check (e.g. going from in-air to in-water lets you jump super high, poo poo like that). EDIT: I would say of the overhaul hacks that I remember, I'd rank them Eris > Phazon > Super Zero Mission (too goddamn huge, but well-made). Redesign is a technical marvel (for Super Metroid ROM hacking, anyway) but makes bad design decisions. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 04:23
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Um. It's been ages since I played most of these. I remember Stardust being fairly easy though. I want to say that most of the hacks don't have mandatory absurd shinesparking, but a lot of them use it for optional puzzles and several of them also abuse weird physics behaviors that no normal player is going to think to check (e.g. going from in-air to in-water lets you jump super high, poo poo like that). I loved Redesign, and the amount of editing is insane in there, it was almost like playing an entirely different game. But holy gently caress was it hard, and a lot of times for the wrong reasons (level/area layouts). Of course there's always the beauty Super Metroid Impossible, a.k.a. Spikes The Game a.k.a. How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Varia-less Norfair Run. Bruceski posted:I still like Prime 3. Oh don't get me wrong, I loved the hell out of Prime 3! The first phase of the final boss fight was truly an amazing thing! It's just more hand-holdy than I'm used to for a Metroid game. Granted, it's designed to be that way, that you are actually taking active contracts from the GF, so you're not supposed to feel TOTALLY alone. Much like Fusion with the Perfect Military Buddy. Only Fusion forced your rear end to do each area in a specific way or else, NO I WON'T AUTHORIZE THE DOOR TO OPEN FOR YOU.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:42
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Fusion was great.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:44
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AllisonByProxy posted:Can you recommend a hack that doesn't overly rely on shine-sparking? I always hated that mechanic. Hyper Metroid is another good one, and it's pretty well balanced. The site for it actually lets you configure the IPS patch (or has multiple versions, I forget) depending on how different from Super Metroid you actually want it to be.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:50
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alcharagia posted:Fusion Too bad the cross-game content suit looks like hilarious garbage  .But as it IS hilarious, I still regularly played with it. so smooth so lumpy
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Dec 3, 2015 08:31
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that suit made my eyes bleed a little when I first turned it on, even though I remember it looking really cool in Metroid Fusion. I got used to it but yeah something definitely went wrong in translation
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Dec 4, 2015 01:53
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It never bothered me as much as the bad textures on Varia's chest and cannon.
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Dec 4, 2015 02:20
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The Fusion Suits in Metroid Prime looked a hell of a lot better than that hot mess of pixel vomit they were in Metroid Fusion. I still liked the normal suits over them though. Especially the final suit is worlds better.
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Dec 4, 2015 14:54
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I always preferred the Varia Suit model from Prime 2 to the Prime 1 version, personally. There are actually mods for Prime 1 to use the Prime 2 suits, but while they work for the most part, the animation rigs are different between the two games and the result is a little bit odd at times.
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Dec 4, 2015 15:01
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Prime 1 has pretty cool suits, Prime 2 has loving amazing suits. You can say about Prime 2 what you will (personally I love it, but I can understand differing opinions) but the art design was top-notch. Okay apart from the first wasteland world, maybe.
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Dec 4, 2015 16:28
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Simply Simon posted:Prime 1 has pretty cool suits, Prime 2 has loving amazing suits. You can say about Prime 2 what you will (personally I love it, but I can understand differing opinions) but the art design was top-notch. Honestly my only real issue with Prime 2 is that they did that dumb "we have two versions of every environment, except one is just a dark gloomy version of the other" thing. You want to do parallel worlds? Look at Link to the Past, where the Dark World was still colorful and varied and fun. There's gotta be better ways to tell the player "You're in the evil dimension" besides selecting from a palette of greys and browns.
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Dec 4, 2015 16:58
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Honestly my only real issue with Prime 2 is that they did that dumb "we have two versions of every environment, except one is just a dark gloomy version of the other" thing. You want to do parallel worlds? Look at Link to the Past, where the Dark World was still colorful and varied and fun. There's gotta be better ways to tell the player "You're in the evil dimension" besides selecting from a palette of greys and browns. Dark Aether's palette was primarily purple and red. Probably one of purplest places I have ever seen. Grey and brown was Light World Agon Wastes. You do have a point about the saminess of the Dark World, though; almost everywhere was extremely similar, except perhaps for the more technological bits of the Ing Hive. The best aesthetic in Prime 2 was definitely the Sanctuary, though. Probably the best aesthetic in the whole of the Prime series, which is saying a lot. I think one of my favorite moments was noticing that the "rain" was actually tracing thin circuitboard patterns from the bottom up.
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Dec 4, 2015 18:56
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The new suits in Echoes looked too caddywompus for my tastes. I actually really liked the suit appearance in Corruption.
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Dec 6, 2015 02:59
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Prime 2 had a great redesign of the Varia suit, however, the dark and light suits, while a novel idea with a relevant and cool functionality to them, were....a bit on the ugly side. Couldn't decide if I was playing as Samus, or the USS Rust-Oleum. But the difficulty, the motivation for being there on the planet and throughout the game, all of it combined make Prime 2 my favorite. The suit in Corruption was again, novel, and not quite as ugly as in Prime 2, but nothing that just stunned me. Although seeing the corruption take hold through the game was pretty cool. So here's a one off question. Is there anybody here that actually LIKED Other M? I mean, I thought some of the gameplay was pretty neat, but my god, the story, the VA, the sheer lunacy of the explanation given as to why Samus isn't using her top notch abilities. My god Sakamoto why. And also this, Sakamoto's Vision, curtesy of GimbalLock, and it should be posted in every Metroid thread at some point. 
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Dec 6, 2015 05:13
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well someone with archives can trawl through Olive Branch's LP thread from...what was that 4 years ago now? I seem to recall the reactions to Other M was "surely this game can't get worse, right?" to "oh God Sakomoto, WHYYYYY?!" As a matter of fact I pointed a friend (who LOVES Metroid) to that LP when she was considering picking up Other M. I just said "I think you should watch at least the first video to understand why you should save your money"
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Dec 6, 2015 07:04
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Aces High posted:well someone with archives can trawl through Olive Branch's LP thread from...what was that 4 years ago now? I seem to recall the reactions to Other M was "surely this game can't get worse, right?" to "oh God Sakomoto, WHYYYYY?!" You can see the LP in the Archive here: http://lparchive.org/Metroid-Other-M/
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Dec 6, 2015 16:17
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I remember one guy at the very end of that LP coming in and claiming not only that he liked Other M but that it was good and that Maple Leaf wasn't being fair to the game or its misogyny. Needless to say he was soundly mocked, but they exist.
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Dec 6, 2015 16:18
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Other M was a game of many, many, flaws. The only good things I can say about it are that it had decent graphics (not models, graphics) and animations. And that the game finally starts feeling like a Metroid game at the very end where you're exploring without objectives. Also, I guess, the bonus boss was rad. I'm not even gonna talk about the story.  The station is bland, continually has needless little knee-high barriers perfectly spaced to prevent you from speed-boosting through the endless empty corridors. The controls are frustrating and combat just boils down to mashing directions and the fire button for a couple of minutes. There's invisible walls to prevent you from using the space jump/screw attack to get around, the only good piece of sound design was that they used the charge beam sound effect from Metroid Prime. Watching the theater mode actually gives you a slightly less terrible experience than playing the game yourself because it doesn't properly simulate the abundant parts where you're pixel-hunting for 30 minutes. Sakamoto is a perfect example of what can go wrong in game and character design.
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Dec 6, 2015 18:06
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after watching many speedruns of both Super Metroid and the Prime games it honestly feels like Other M was designed with Sakomoto going "gently caress your sequence breaking, you are going to play this game the way I intended it to be done" and that feels like the wrong way to make a Metroid game (or at least make a FUN Metroid game) Also, apologies Maple Leaf, Olive Branch. I got the names switched around
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Dec 6, 2015 18:11
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I mean I liked playing the game. I also bought the Ridley trauma stuff in general. But entire parts of the plot just going completely missing was really really off-putting.
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Dec 6, 2015 18:57
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Geemer posted:Other M was a game of many, many, flaws. The only good things I can say about it are that it had decent graphics (not models, graphics) and animations. And that the game finally starts feeling like a Metroid game at the very end where you're exploring without objectives. Also, I guess, the bonus boss was rad. Other M was sort of Sakamoto's reward for producing several of Nintendo's handheld hits with Nintendo SPD. It's possible he gets another chance at a vanity project if the casual games he produces, such as Tomodachi Collection, continue to be hits.
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Dec 7, 2015 04:58
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Other M is absolutely the worst game I ever played. Yes, it is more functional than Sonic 06, it looks (and arguably plays better, but that's not much of an accomplishment) than Megaman X7, and you of course cannot compare it to lovely licensed games on the SNES. But I have never experienced a game that made me hate it so much. I mean, of course it starts with the story, MOM lost its case from the very first second. But it doesn't stop there. I have to stress that point, because I had the argument that I only hated MOM because the story is abysmal, and I wasn't giving the controls and gameplay a fair shake. Which is not entirely wrong, as the rest of the game would have to be pitch-perfect to make me ignore how disgusting the story is, but a) the controls and gameplay actually are loving bad and it's cool if you had fun regardless, but I severely question your taste in videogames then, and b) why is it a requirement for me to be fair to MOM? I'm saying I didn't have fun from even before the gameplay started, of course the gameplay won't win me over then, it's the most subjective thing possible to still put into words, how is this even something to debate about? Of course I'm going into this biased, that's the entire point of arguing about videogames! So anyway, to not get into too long a rant again, what irks me possibly the most about MOM is how little respect it has for the player. There are many games who are exceedingly linear and don't want people to just do what they want, and I usually frown at anyone who whines that the gameplay isn't emergent enough or whatever. But MOM subtly - and openly! - mocks you every step of the way, it's truly baffling how you can make such a spiteful game. It starts with the story again, making the most hated part of Fusion into THE most important character (because Samus sure as hell ain't doing poo poo in MOM), continues on with the controls trying to be as little Prime as possible with the insane "no Nunchuk" policy and culminates in a stupendous amount of small gently caress yous, of which the biggest has already been mentioned: knee-high walls in endless empty corridors to tell you no, you won't even get the satisfaction of speed-boosting through here. Because gently caress you, and really, it's such a small thing but it's so telling. It's a literal speedbump for your fun. Sonic 06 was hamstrung by its development, X7 is simply inept, licensed games didn't care a bit, but MOM could be replaced by goatse and a sign that says "why are you rear end in a top hat even playing this" and it would be improved.
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Dec 7, 2015 10:42
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Simply Simon posted:So anyway, to not get into too long a rant again, what irks me possibly the most about MOM is how little respect it has for the player. There are many games who are exceedingly linear and don't want people to just do what they want, and I usually frown at anyone who whines that the gameplay isn't emergent enough or whatever. But MOM subtly - and openly! - mocks you every step of the way, it's truly baffling how you can make such a spiteful game. Contrast that with Fusion. The story feels forced, and with the constant orders and pointers it's definitely a tube. Other than that, though, getting from A to B is left up to you and it's through stages that don't *look* like a tube. You need to find the right path, and sometimes that's more difficult than others. Most Metroidvanias have an intended gameplay path that's reinforced through skil access and/or difficulty (I believe one of the Castlevania ones gives you early access to a spot where enemies are WAY out of your league), Fusion and MOM are just overt about it and do the most clamping down on leaving that path. For me Fusion is fine (though I can see why some would find it too constricting) while MOM clearly goes too far. It really depends on how interesting they manage to make the tube between story beats, and MOM failed on all counts, there.
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Dec 7, 2015 22:19
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Thing is, Metroid games shouldn't even have a story that's told through anything beyond a) some basic scenesetting (a pre-game text scroll or cinematic), and b) things the player discovers on their own. Holy poo poo, there's a dead guy in a suit that looks kind of like mine here! Wait, isn't that capsule the one from the opening cinematic, except broken? Wow, all these machines I'm passing have been smashed to poo poo! It's no surprise that the best-received Metroid games (Super Metroid, Zero Mission, Primes 1/2) had very minimal forced plot. People don't play Metroid games for the plot (I mean come on, it's super-basic space opera revenge fic). You were free to scan everything in Prime 2 and find out what's going down between the Space Pirates and Dark Samus or the backstory with the Aetherians or whatever their name was, but it was by no means required to enjoy the game. Zero Mission's totality of cutscenes lasts maybe, what, a minute and a half? And they're almost all textless.
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Dec 7, 2015 22:39
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