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OG Metroid is just such a rough game that's hard to play in the modern day. The corridors take so long to go through and a lot of key progression elements are hidden in ways that are nearly impossible to guess. Zero Mission may be more linear, but it is such an easier thing to play. I guess technically there's a third option: Metroid: Zebes Invasion Order, the Japanese choose-your-own-adventure book version of the original Metroid. Some internet people have gone through the trouble of translating the book and implementing them into a Twine game, if you've ever wanted to play a text-based version of Metroid. https://metroiddatabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Metroid/Twinetroid/Twinetroid.html
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Feb 21, 2023 02:23
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 01:34 |
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Item Getter posted:Not having played it, I heard Fusion is really on-rails and talky but how does it actually compare to Dread? I went back to Dread for a bit after Prime and yep it sure does like throwing around random waist-high debris and randomly sprouting trees and such to block you off from previous areas at every step. There's stealth sections in Fusion, but they're a lot smaller. There's not really the feeling of things organically opening up to you because the computer just gives you approval for entering the next section, and there are extra things you can get with backtracking, but there's a point towards the end of the game where it locks you out of backtracking without warning. It's otherwise a fine game, just missing a little. I think it's actually less talky than Dread, especially since it feels like less talking without the voiced exposition. Also Samus does some elevator monologues.
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Mar 3, 2023 04:02
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Asterite34 posted:Fusion was a bit more linear than, say, Super Metroid, there's generally a prescribed path for a lot of the game. It's sort of a concession to it being a handheld title, it's deisgned to be played in relatively short stretches such that if you're away from it for a bit and then come back, you won't be hopelessly lost because you forgot where you were going. It's a bit like Metroid 2 for the original Gameboy that way. That said, it does open up a bit in the latter bits as you can start breaking out of the intended path (which is actually something of a plot point) I've heard that Super Metroid's nonlinearity wasn't very well received in Japan, which would maybe indicate why when they finally revisited Metroid they went with a more linear, guided approach. Which maybe the maturation of metroidvanias as a genre in their own right outside of either Metroid or Castlevania might be what promoted the return to more classic form with Dread. I also get the impression that after the videogame industry started getting reliable translation for Japanese games, Japanese devs started to prefer way more text/dialogue-heavy games that closely guide the player entirely unlike the classic NES/SNES era, and these days it's more likely that more silent unguided experiences will be from American devs.
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Mar 3, 2023 22:01
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I Am Just a Box posted:Some of these are fair, but there's no way you could just watch the attract mode perform the crystal flash and intuit how it's done. There isn't a popup on the screen to tell you to hold L+R+Y+↓ after the power bomb. I think a lot of early Nintendo games have the idea that players who had been playing the game forever would try literally anything and everything over time to wring all the secrets out of a game. Like the original Zelda kinda expects you to bomb every tile in the overworld to find all its secrets. Of course, there was also Nintendo Power and the hint hotlines.
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Mar 4, 2023 19:00
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Simply Simon posted:Bottomless pits are a similar principle to lava pools except you don't have to wade through hot sauce to ascend a stairwell of shame after screwing up a Grapple, so the pits win in my books Does Prime do the old Metroid trick of "oh some lava's just not real and you only know when you jump in"?
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Mar 14, 2023 04:14
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Yeah I've been playing Metroid 2 lately, and it's a lot more playable than I expected, fun even. But I sure do like the ability to check a map on the internet. Not just because I can lose my bearings and don't know where I have and haven't been when looking for metroids and upgrades, but because classic Metroid does that thing I hate where there's just some blocks here and there that aren't real, or there's a tiny thing you need to bomb so you'll never really know if you've missed something. The evolved metroids aren't all that hard to fight so far. I can see some of what would later be done in Fusion and Dread, but it's a lot less stressful to fight that sort of enemy as a fight all on its own rather than as a bonus to an already long and stressful big boss fight. What's hardest is more that you get stuck just outside the metroid's aggro range (or maybe it can't really move at all when it's offscreen?) And you need to jump at it in order to get in range to hit it with missiles again.
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Jan 2, 2024 07:37
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At the end of Metroid Fusion Samus has to fight an Omega Metroid, and SA-X either fuses with Samus to help her kill it (as I interpreted it) or it just gives its energy to Samus to help her beat it like the Baby Metroid did in Super Metroid. Either way, it gives her the ability to use the Ice Beam again. Either way, it seems to indicate X-Parasites as capable of...something. Maybe they have intelligent thought if they live long enough. Maybe something of the host is left. Maybe Chozo-discipline can increase the odds of the host shining through the infection or giving the X enough thought to act intelligently. Raven Beak X sure seemed more angry than your average X monster, which could be some of his hate bleeding through. Xenomrph posted:Live-action Metroid movie, is it possible, or even a good idea? It's absolutely doable, but I guess the real question is what kind of story people wanted to tell. Trying to replicate the plot of Alien or Aliens would probably work, but doing a more horror-focused movie would mess with people's expectations of a Nintendo movie, because that wouldn't be very kid-friendly. Samus also isn't just some random person who steps up, she's a trained warrior, so you'd probably have a harder time adding a subplot with other characters to round out the movie. I feel like also when Metroid does get its plot in, it likes being both mournful and sentimental, which is pretty weird for something evoking Alien. Maybe you shouldn't kill off all of these creatures who seemingly pose a threat to all life in the galaxy? I don't know how you get that across.
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Jan 3, 2024 22:33
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A lot of Metroidvanias get kinda desperate for collectables to fill the world with that may not be strictly necessary, but make players feel rewarded for exploring the world. Metroid Prime already has plenty of mobility upgrades and tools that you collect in the process of your journey that you've forgotten about. Missiles might not be that exciting, but other games try to fill that hole with cosmetics or concept art that can be similarly underwhelming. If ammo isn't really that precious for gameplay, that's kind of another thing, and I've never really yearned for the experience of running out of ammo even though I understand its emotional value in games. Maybe they could go back to doors taking 5 missiles to open. Something I kinda resent about Metroid is that a number of its mobility upgrades are always kinda janky and need extra skill to use. You get the shine spark, and okay now you have this ability where you can shoot around like a rocket, but it's this weird timing where you gotta kinda crouch and direct it that I've never been good at. You get the space jump, and it's maybe one of the most powerful jump upgrades out there in metroidvanias, but you can only double jump at a specific point in the arc, and that's pretty hard to do too. The point I'm at in Metroid 2, I had to get through this room full of spikes, and I was kind of just brute-forcing it, but then at the end there's a fight with a new type of metroid in a room full of sand, so I both had to carve out enough room for a missile and discover that since this metroid has feet, it's immune to attacks from below. A real pain. I managed to win the fight with 11 energy left, but since I'd have to go all the way back through the room full of spikes to get back out, I think I'll just have to reload a save state and try something different.
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Jan 8, 2024 00:38
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The main reason to go hunting for all the extras is to have another exuse for the fun of taversing all the way through the game. Maybe ideally it'd help make the game easier, but most games aren't really built for that. Hollow Knight sure doesn't make itself much easier if you decide to go trekking about instead of finishing the game. The problem with offering mechanical rewards for exploration is you might end up with nothing to use the rewards on. Nobody's really making you engage with the game more if you don't want to.
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Jan 8, 2024 20:07
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I didn't realize you were supposed to be thinking about switching beams, I just kinda assumed whatever beam you found next would be better.Simply Simon posted:Hollow Knight rules because instead of Missile Upgrade #23468123, dicking around in the weird corners of the map lets you find sick boss fights, entirely new endings locked behind sicko platforming, and actually meaningful upgrade material that you have a plenty of reasons to need for said bosses, in an arena etc. - I have no idea what planet you're from where exploring that game isn't the bee's knees (sometimes literally). I'm really not sure what you're saying is different about the collectables. I guess there's more of a variety? You got the six pale ores, the pieces of heart, the magic container fragments, the badges, the rancid eggs, and then after that there's outright vendor trash with no purpose but to trade for more Geo. I guess the world of Hollow Knight also has a lot more character and personality than Metroid usually does. There's more background storytelling about the world that you're in even without diving into lore, and I never really got the feeling like the places in the Metroid games were places where people used to live, even though they did trailblaze in making atmospheric areas back in the days of lower technology. Exploration is more of its own reward. NPCs are entirely non-mechanical rewards to be able to talk to, and no I don't think long exposition dumps from Adam counts as the same thing. I want talking to NPCs to be more my choice and not last two minutes. I do think I want to play AM2R sometime, because I know that they established one of the Metroid 2 areas as like a factory, and I think it was really obvious when I ran into that area in the game. Metroid 2 definitely tries to make all of its areas look different even though it is unable to express that with color like Super Metroid did.
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Jan 11, 2024 01:49
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mycot posted:You're forgetting the airdash, the double jump, and the walljump, which all change the way the game is played dramatically. I mean those are the mobility upgrades that are inherent to the Metroidvania formula. The Metroid games have plenty of those. That's not talking about the value of things that you collect, that's just talking about whether you like the basic systems of movement that the games are built around. Which I guess Hollow Knight is generally a bit more fun to traverse and its mobility upgrades don't have the same sort of jank as the space jump, shinespark, and walljump, but a fair amount of Hollow Knight's smoothness is that it's a much newer game designed with better understandings of game design. There's even an advantage to the player character in Hollow Knight being a tiny little guy; the choice of giving Samus a big full-figure sprite meant that the game screen had so much less space to give the player to move around or look at the world around them, and every development of technology zoomed the camera out a bit further to be a bit better about that.
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Jan 11, 2024 04:04
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The whole early era of videogames was fraught with difficulty, but Nintendo's first party games being more coherent and understandable with a lot better game design technically would've made them easier than most. Especially better than the games that descended directly from quarter-munchers. I don't really remember loving or hating Super Metroid's bosses much, but then I'm not much of a boss fights kinda guy. There are times when I'm really not in the mood for the white-knuckled tension of having to do lots of perfect dodges to get through a boss fight, even if it is satisfying when you figure it out. Mother Brain (and the baby mother brains in Dread) is basically a slow and clunky bullet hell. You have to try managing and dodging all these projectiles from the turrets and the hula hoops and the acid, and it's nearly impossible to never be hit, you just gotta manage your best. Hollow Knight gives you much less of a health cushion, and is much harder as a result, and it's generally a lot more demanding of player skill. Metroid does channel a lot of horror movie stuff, but even in Dread with all the forced stealth, you periodically get big moments off badass rear end-kicking (which sometimes feels like it might undermine some of the spirit of the earlier games in its own way; the self-defense mechanic from Samus Returns kinda ruined the vibe of Metroid 2). abraham linksys posted:AM2R goes hard in the other direction by having you get space jump like 40% of the way through the game and it weirdly works; having never played Metroid 2 or Samus Returns I have always wondered when Space Jump pops up in those In Metroid 2 it's at about that point. Maybe a bit earlier. I guess aside from the jankiness limiting it, you're also going mostly downward for much of the game. Corn Burst posted:Counterpoint, you can grind E-tanks where it became a war of attrition. You're definitely not shinesparking if you have dexterity issues.
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Jan 12, 2024 06:54
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I guess narratively Dread doesn't want to be a story about the fun and empowerment of upgrading yourself with cool new weapons, and it might be intentional for the EMMIs to end in an anticlimax, since at the end, Samus's battle rage transmutes her into a monster. Becoming stronger came at a cost. Not that I think Dread was particularly making a good narrative decision with that. Metroid is great with atmosphere, but I'm not sure I really like the stories. Might have to replay to form a better idea about it. Metroid Fusion took a more conventional angle on that with the stalking, looming threat of the SA-X becoming the final boss fight, and that wasn't very fun to me. I don't think that Metroid's mechanics are very good for extended battles with a same-size enemy. (although a large part of my difficulty was the fact that the game locks you out of collecting the rest of the upgrades if you get too close to the final boss). Maybe they could've done a thing with the EMMI's plugging into a larger, more fightable master system? Another Mother Brain? Technically you do kill most EMMIs in more of a puzzley system, maybe they could've had a big more puzzley boss? The Omega Cannon is also kind of a shaggy dog story. FooF posted:The fact that you could hurt/defeat Raven Beak (who literally manhandled the first EMMI per the wall art) but not any of the EMMIs themselves isn't quite a plot hole but is hard to reconcile. It might be funny if you could kill an EMMI if you dished out the same amount of damage that Raven Beak takes.
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Jan 13, 2024 23:01
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There are still a couple bits of Metroid 2 that are a little bullshit to try figuring out (and would be bullshit even with a functional map system) but I think it's less bullshit than NES games tend to be. The technical limitations of the console hold it back, but the game does do its best to depict a difference in areas when it doesn't even have color.
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Feb 4, 2024 05:26
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There are a couple places where you need to figure out what is the right one spot to bomb in Metroid 2. I also don't remember the details but there's an area with a lot of tubes that I'm not really sure how you figure out how that works. Metroid 2 can also be pretty harsh about wearing your health down, so getting E-tanks and finding energy recovery orbs is pretty important even if not strictly necessary.
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Feb 7, 2024 15:01
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The original Zelda was designed around a straightforward grid system that was a lot easier to transfer to a map. The original Metroid is packed full of endless corridors that are a bit more complicated to track. The original Blaster Master also lacked a map. I guess technically there was a sort of map in Metroid's manual. 
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Feb 12, 2024 15:59
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Seeing people throw fits over Hollow Knight having the tiniest little complication on a standard map system has pushed me a lot further in the other way, to the point where I've really started to appreciate what Hideo Kojima was doing for MGS2, or how the Zelda series was allowed to keep going with its whole map and compass thing for a long while. I'm not really sure how lost people can get on the first area of Hollow Knight, it doesn't seem that complicated and Cornifer is in one of the easiest to access rooms, but after you get the first map, there's no real problem. If you're anxious over possibly getting lost in a new area, you can just trek back to the bench. The map is even good enough that it gives you a decent amount of landmarks to get your bearings on without using the "you are here" charm. You know, like how you use an actual real map to get directions like a human being. FPS games regularly don't give players a map, and they have the disadvantage of giving the player far less spatial awareness of the overall game world from the smaller field of view and the fact that you can get actually turned around with the moving camera so you lose your frame of reference. I don't see the issue people have with a game that already generally demands that you push the limits of your ability in other areas to ask you to understand the basic sort of spatial awareness you'd need to leave your home every day.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:08
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ExcessBLarg! posted:What is the game that charges you in-game currency every time you save? That's another bullshit one too Resident Evil? The horror game that wanted to purposefully create anxiety?
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Feb 12, 2024 23:08
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 01:34 |
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With Metroid I feel like the ability to go back and get more upgrades should be a balancing mechanism to help deal with difficult bosses, but I think Dread was calibrated wrong for that. Even at 100% Raven's Beak was a real slog. Dark Souls at its core is just a very challenging game, but there's just enough suckerpunches out of nowhere scattered around to make new players expect it's just going to be bullshit while people who already played through it will have forgotten the nonsense. Hollow Knight I feel is probably more difficult overall but there's less sucker punches to distract you. chiasaur11 posted:Nah. Megaman was one of the nicer NES games. It gave you a lot of options to mitigate its bullshit, taught you about new hazards in safe and controlled environments, and let you try something different when you got sick of one kind of challenge. Megaman 2 even has an easy mode. Being a nicer NES game is kinda damning with faint praise. Most NES games were filled with bullshit. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Mar 29, 2024 |
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Mar 29, 2024 20:59
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