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Fed Force was a solidly fun co-op campaign that I strongly feel would have faired significantly better had Nintendo decided not to shoot their foot clean off by releasing it after a 5-year Metroid hiatus and off the back of Other M. And maybe priced it a bit cheaper. And axed the shite Rocket League wannabe mode Blast Ball rather than making it the primary marketing focus of the whole thing. Next Level developed it, so the actual campaign is a good time if you've got some friends to play it with, and if you're into Metroid lore it's canon to the timeline and touches on some interesting stuff (including what Prime 4 is probably going to be about). It was just released at the worst possible time in the worst possible way.
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Aug 28, 2021 18:22
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:15 |
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I'm not gonna say Metroid 1 is great (it isn't) but I think a lot of games back then were designed very much with the intent that you'd have the instruction book and a map or whatever other supplementary material to hand (either that you'd drawn yourself or borrowed from a friend, or supplied in a gaming mag), and a big part of the feeling that they've aged like hot milk is modern releases don't tend to come with any of that. Going through Metroid 1 fully blind is possible but it's an utterly miserable experience. Modern games (well, basically everything from & after the SNES) baked all that supplementary info into the game itself since it was now actually possible to do that, so nobody's really even thought of bringing up an external map or secrets guide as anything other than light "cheating," but the old NES stuff? Use a map. It brings Metroid 1 all the way up the dizzying heights of "tolerable"
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Aug 29, 2021 14:59
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If anyone wants a bit of a deeper dive into Metroid's game design, Mark Brown's GMTK has an excellent series of videos dedicated to the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUT60DKaEGc Playlist link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_ul4D6OChdWhsNsYY3NA5B2 (first season/half is Zelda)
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Aug 29, 2021 20:48
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McSpanky posted:My first Metroid was Prime, which was pretty great up until the point where I took an elevator out of the sunken area back to my ship and on some of the early disc pressings that would cause an irrevocably save-destroying game freeze. I'll be honest, that sucks that it happened, but it's a weird grudge to hold against an entire series for the following twenty years
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Aug 29, 2021 22:40
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The trilogy's also on Wii U as a downloadable Wii title if you have access to one, for a very reasonable $20/£18, with the extremely superior wiimote controls and 16:9 widescreen of Prime 3 added to the first two games.
Raylax fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 29, 2021 |
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Aug 29, 2021 23:27
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cirus posted:There's an Other M hack that removes the first person missiles (did you know Samus has a full third person missile animation?), does its best to fix the writing, and makes it so the Power Suit was damaged by the Hyper Beam which is why Samus can't use her upgrades through the game. this is some impressive commitment to turd polishing
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Aug 31, 2021 13:16
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Whilst Other M's Samus completely sucks rear end, I did feel Samus Returns and the Kraid bit portray her as a bit too "unflinching badass" - there's no stakes when your hero knows she will absolutely always win and will always make perfect judgements, it's just "I'm doing a cool pose now because I don't give a single poo poo about you" which erases any sense of threat from that scene. A little indication that the upcoming boss fight is to be considered more than a punching bag session would be nice. I'm really interested in the Chozo stuff in Dread because it seems like encountering them again is genuinely giving her pause and enough uncertainty to let her place herself in danger. Same with the realisation that EMMI is presently completely untouchable and she needs to get the gently caress out of dodge right now or she's going to die. That's actually foreboding. She's a badass but she's not completely untouchable. She doesn't always emotionlessly make the right call, or respond in completely cold, calculated fashion. It's good to see some of that implemented in a way that isn't "I'm crying because Daddy Malcovich has decided to kill himself for a really stupid reason"
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Sep 1, 2021 11:47
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Overbite posted:Prime 4 is going to be open world 1000000% I'm not sure open-world and a metroidvania structure are at all compatible unless you just stick a ton of impassible walls and arbitrary funnel points all over the map
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Sep 1, 2021 13:58
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The United States posted:It's a direct response to the Other M Ridley scene. Yeah, actually, that works. The United States posted:Metroid is already open world. Open world games can be gated, even GTA gated access to other islands/cities. It just means you're not going from level 1 to 2 to 3 etc. I'd always taken "open world" specifically to mean largely comprised of large, open areas and a focus on freedom of movement and freedom of exploration. All of it may not be accessible from the start but very large portions of it are and you're typically looking at a game world divided into a single digit (often < 5) number of zones, if at all. Metroidvanias on the other hand restrict your options heavily and gradually open up via the use of corridors, and dozens of locks & keys (not literal locks & keys, but things like a missile door "lock" needing missiles "key" to open). It's freedom of movement, vs tightly controlled restriction of movement (which is what I think makes the two fundamentally incompatible). As an external example, Dark Souls has a very Metroidvania structure (particularly the first one), vs Elden Ring's open-world take.
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Sep 1, 2021 14:25
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I always end up doing a 100% run on a separate file, because Metroid games are balanced in a way that getting more than about 40% items just increases the degree to which you can absolutely clown on the final boss, which I find can be a little anticlimatic. Once I've beaten the game once, collecting everything and fighting them again in Full Clown Mode is a lot of fun.
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Oct 4, 2021 16:11
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That's true, but I also like the pirates, or at least the mad experiments they've been working on, to still be a credible threat. I can understand individual pirate soldiers being like "wow we are hosed if Samus gets in here", but if they've spent years developing an ultra phazon-infused omega pirate 3 times samus's size, I want to still feel like that thing's actually a credible threat. Samus is great when she's a badass but she's boring when she's untouchable.
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Oct 4, 2021 18:51
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:I’m partial to the pirate log where they tried to recreate morph ball technology and horribly crushed and mangled the test subjects. Science Team wisely decided to move on afterward.
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Oct 4, 2021 21:39
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BabyRyoga posted:Wow. I'm no longer surprised when Nintendo slaps your hand away for daring to not play their game The Intended Way
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Oct 5, 2021 10:09
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I'm pretty sure about 8-10 hours is roughly the length of a first playthrough of literally every 2D Metroid game. If you didn't think those felt too short there's no reason to think this one will either. And also yeah, additional runs, 100%, hard mode... there's way more than 10 hours total playtime in it.
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Oct 7, 2021 00:13
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Ridley's getting his rear end beat
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Oct 7, 2021 10:37
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Clicking the thread with my eyes closed because I don't want to see any spoilers but I do want to say that Dread loving owns
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Oct 10, 2021 15:48
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Muscle Tracer posted:God drat the speed booster puzzles in this game are fun. wait the speed booster state survives walljumps? I hadn't realised that, nice
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Oct 11, 2021 19:00
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Playing Dread got me in the mood to do a full-on Metroid marathon from beginning to end, so I'll be posting thoughts of each one when I get through them. I'm aiming to see the best ending(s) in all of them too, whether they're time-based or completion-based (or both), and not using guides or emulator tools (save states etc) Starting with... Metroid! NES, 1986 This... was not nearly as much of a hassle to navigate nor as obtuse with its secrets & critical path progression as popular discourse had me believe. The one thing that I think kinda really sucks rear end in NES Metroid is starting with only 30 HP after death or password load, because farming health is a godawful chore. Do not make my mistake of picking up that ceiling e-tank in early Brinstar, because you are going to want it for the each refill before Tourian. Re-farming health for each death to MB sucks so bad. But everything else? Pretty much fine. Difficulty's a little steep - it's a NES game - and some of the movement is a bit awkward - it's a NES game - but otherwise I had way less trouble than I expected. The maps are fairly small so they're not actually all that bad for keeping your bearings. I got disoriented a couple times but found my way back to familiar ground fairly quickly. Plus there's always the nuclear option of intentionally dying to respawn back at the area elevator to start exploring from familiar ground. Maybe all that dark souls has vastly improved my mental mapping capacity but I didn't find it too arcane and the complaint that "everywhere looks the same" is vastly overrated. They generally don't. There's some reuse but its not terrible. The biggest complaint I see is that you often have to "bomb random walls & floors" to progress. This is kinda true, but honestly? The game actually does a fairly solid job of telegraphing almost all of it. Unreachable enemy? Probably a way down (paging David Jaffe). Dead end? Try morphballing, there's almost always a tunnel. I find that the fact that they so consistently put tunnels in the same places and patterns actually reduces the frustration - there's almost always a tunnel so of course I'm always going to check and I'm almost always going to be rewarded for it. Those 2 missile tanks turned out to be hiding a tunnel to another 3 missile tanks? Sick. In fact, the biggest complaint that progression in Norfair requires bombing a random floor tile in a couple rooms is itself actually pretty well telegraphed - if you're exploring without knowing this you'll eventually find yourself in an empty room that resembles a section of vertical corridor but with no exit other than where you just came from. So you'll bomb around and find the tunnel down out of the room. Pattern established, every single vertical tunnel room in Norfair has a bombable tunnel in the floor on the same tile, even if it terminates in a dead end. Now that you know this you'll be able to find the path forward and also some nice rewards. And if you flip the logic on its head and think to shoot up in one particular similar room, you'll be rewarded with the Screw Attack. gently caress yes. The one secret I think is quite poorly telegraphed is the corridor with the ceiling blocks that can be shot to reveal a hidden path up to the Varia Suit, but maybe you'd notice that this is the only corridor like it in the game, or maybe you'd accidentally shoot it while shooting at the enemy in the room (that's what found it for me). But it's otherwise very easy to miss. I ended up doing three playthroughs of NES Metroid, one regular run in which I found all but 1 ETank and 2 Missile Packs and finished been 5 and 8 hours (Samus helmet removed ending), one "NG+" run where I started working out a fast route and how many etanks/missiles I should pick up for the <1 hour end, which I finished in 3-5 hours. And then 1 last run in the zero suit (or "justin bailey" suit, whatever we're calling it, but I didn't use the password) which I finished in sub 1 hour for the best ending. I think it's really cool that NES Metroid essentially has NG+ runs in which you keep your upgrades but lose your etanks & missiles, it makes working out what you need and where to get them to rush to Kraid & Ridley quickly really fun and quite a different experience to the vanilla playthrough. I understand why its not tenable for other, more structured Metroid games, but I really like that NES Metroid has it. Plus getting to play the whole game in the zero suit is awesome, especially for a game from 1986. I used to not like NES Metroid at all, but I think my opinion's completely flipped on it with this playthrough. It's good. Definitely plenty to improve on in later games, but still very enjoyable as its own thing, if you can tolerate some 80s jank and the loving HP farming. Raylax fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Nov 8, 2021 |
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Nov 8, 2021 16:00
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Your Computer posted:honestly i wish there was just a simple romhack that made you respawn with health and/or made the health pickups a bit bigger because it would make metroid nes infinitely more fun. it's my only issue with the game but it is kind of a huge issue. farming back health takes ages because of how low your health starts and how little each pickup grants, and things deal so much damage you just kinda have to farm health. Yeah, that's the one thing I'd change in a heartbeat and really had me reaching towards just going "gently caress it" and making a save state outside tourian. I didn't, but if I'd died to MB another time or two I probably would have. I feel like that's gotta be an easy rom hack too, just set HP to max on repawn rather than 30 (but then I'm not a rom hacker, maybe it's actually a giant pain in the arse). There were other minor frustrations (getting smacked by enemies during door transitions is great fun) but nothing like as bad as the starting HP.
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Nov 8, 2021 16:13
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I actually didn't know the tourian metroids dropped more than regular enemies lol, once I noticed they took several missiles to kill I just froze them and ran past. Yeah, a map's definitely helpful but I did the run specifically to see how doable it is without one (to see how true the claim that you essentially needed a nintendo power sub or similar to get through it back in the day), and didn't actually have much trouble. Missed 3 pick-ups (etank & two missiles) and didn't get lost too much. Definitely doable without.
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Nov 8, 2021 16:57
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:15 |
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Raylax posted:Playing Dread got me in the mood to do a full-on Metroid marathon from beginning to end, so I'll be posting thoughts of each one when I get through them. Continuing with this, I've now finished Metroid 2: Return of Samus (GB) This is the only Metroid game I'd never played through before now, I'd started it a handful of times but never played further than area 1 or 2. Now that I've actually done so (two full playthroughs, first blind run 3:58, second 1:45 for the best ending), I actually really enjoyed it. I kinda understand people's complaints that it's very linear and not metroid-y enough, but I think the design is a pretty ideal compromise given the lack of map and the constraints of the hardware. Instead of 1 big metroid-y map, it's essentially a linear central tunnel with branched-off areas that each behaves as a small non-linear biome. It keeps that Metroid feel without the risk of getting hopelessly lost. The controls are still a little janky, but a big improvement on Metroid 1 in all areas... with the exception of the spider ball. That thing just loves getting stuck in corners and not responding to inputs, which is made extra annoying by the fact that all of the 'natural rock' walls and ceilings in Metroid 2 - of which there are many - are covered in little 90 degree angles to get jammed up in. Asides that though it controls pretty nice for a GB game. Other little annoyances - there being no missile / HP refills in the penultimate area is a huge hassle, because you need a lot of them to take down all the omega metroids in there and the closest ones in a prior zone are a hell of a trek back. At least they give you some for the very final area, I guess. A lot of the metroid's behaviours don't feel great, particularly the way they become completely inactive the moment they're outside the screen area, and weird janky movement that's hard to reliably react to. Some fights feel like the 'strategy' is to just jump and shoot missiles and hope you out-jank the metroid before the metroid out-janks you. On the whole though I liked hunting down and fighting them But on the whole I really liked this one, I think it's world layout is interesting and a really good solution for the hardware it's on, the atmosphere's great, the final boss is really fun to figure out, and a lot of the jank of Metroid 1 has already been excised. Next up, time to play Super Metroid again, hell yeah
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Nov 15, 2021 03:32
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