Tag: metroid

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How’d It Age #3 – Metroid Prime

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: FPS
  • Platform: Switch
  • Originally Available On: Gamecube, Wii

Under normal circumstances, this would be a very short ramblings. Yes, this aged well. Yes it’s still an incredibly good and fun game. Yes you should buy it. The end.

But I have some thoughts here on the various versions, with a bit of a wild card. I’ve played all the versions of this that have come out, whether it’s the original release, the Wii update for Trilogy, or what is now the remastered version on Switch. If I look at the versions side by side, I don’t think there’s a real clear winner in terms of which one is the best. There’s things that the last two do that I think are interesting and better, so the real question is, which one should you play?

The Switch version is a pretty easy recommendation, especially if you’re a typical console FPS player. The dual-stick controls drastically modernize the game, making general traversal much better than other versions. It allows the game to just flow better, which is a bit of a surprise to me. It also drastically reduces the benefit of aim lock, which is something that surprisingly makes the game quite a lot easier. It’s also easy to recommend it because of the updated visuals, which really do a surprising amount to modernize the experience.

However, I don’t think that’s the best control scheme. I actually think it’s pointer controls, and unfortunately I don’t think that the Switch pointer controls feel as good as they do on the Wii. I noticed that they were occasionally getting out of sync which is something that I’ve seen on other pointer-style Wii ports, as well as with motion-assisted games like Splatoon. This is where the Wii version via Metroid Prime Trilogy really shines. The pointer input scheme on that version is as close to mouse-focused aiming as I’ve ever seen on a console game, and it shines in this experience. It makes boss fights in particular incredibly precise to fight, and again is something that reduces the need to really use aim lock. Combined with a heavier reliance on strafing compared to the original, this is as PC-styled as the series gets.

That said, I do have a wildcard and that comes in the form of PrimeHack. This is a fork of the fantastic Dolphin emulator that adds in support for traditional PC keyboard/mouse controls to Metroid Prime Trilogy, assuming you have a legal way to rip your discs down or feel like sailing the high seas. This can be combined with things like the Dolphin supported for HD texture packs to transform the PC experience into something closer to the remaster’s visual styles with an even better control scheme. The first time I played Prime in this way was a revelation. It transforms into a PC game so easily that I can’t believe more shooters aren’t trying to fill the adventure game niche that this series did. At high framerate and resolution combined with keyboard/mouse controls, this just feels like a modern PC game, despite being 20 years old.

I suppose I never really answered the question of which version you should play, and I think my answer really comes down to any of them. Play the Switch if it’s the easiest to get at. Play the Wii version if you want consistent shooting input. Rip your disc and play it on PC with a texture pack if you really want a surprising experience. However you play this game, you won’t be disappointed. It really does still hold up.

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Game Ramblings #149 – Metroid Dread

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Platformer, Metroidvania
  • Platform: Switch

This is very much an iteration on the work that was started with Metroid: Samus Returns, and that’s a great thing. Quite frankly, you could read my notes on that one and it would be a 1:1 retread of what worked for Metroid Dread. However, this feels like a clear iteration on the formula and even more importantly a clear end point to the series’ story – whether or not that’s ultimately what will happen. This is just a fantastically good game that took far too long for someone to convince Nintendo to spend money on, and I’m glad it finally happened.

The thing that really stood out to me in this one was its difficulty, and that seems to be a common theme across the feedback I’ve seen about the game. A lot of people are calling it simply hard, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. What it really feels like to me is that it’s precise, and that’s really the difference to me in why I had the patience to enter death loops. I’ve shelved a lot of games in the last decade or so within the sort of rise of the indie games. A lot of games feel like they do hard for the sake of hard. Something precise and mechanically tight will come out like Celeste and be incredibly difficult but fair, then a bunch of games will follow that are simply…..difficult. It’s not fun. Dread very much feels like it falls within the difficult but fair.

Bosses in this game are no joke. A missed mechanic will take a full health tank or more. If you aren’t being precise with your movement, you will die. However, once you learn the mechanics and once you get your movement down, you’re just as likely to take no damage in these fights. In that respect it’s incredibly fair. You take damage, you learn mechanics, you avoid damage, you win. Sure you may die a couple times, but you aren’t getting screwed by RNG and you aren’t getting screwed by the fight.

You’re given a lot of tools to avoid damage that aren’t typical of the Metroid series – things like a slide that can transition into the morph ball or an instant dodge that gives some amount of i-frames – that really lean into damage avoidance as a key mechanic. You’re also given some really good new offensive tools to make damage a little more passive and a little less precise in those big moments – things like the return of the melee counter from Samus Returns or a lock-on multi-hit charge missile – that allow you to build up damage without having to be right up in the enemy’s face or having to pause and engage in the slower free aim. The end result of all of this is that while the game is still distinctly Metroid in style and mechanical knowledge, it feels substantially like a modern game where you have full control of damage mitigation and aren’t just being slammed with unavoidable nonsense.

There’s also just a ton of little things that the game does very right that make it feel both Metroid and modern. You’ve still got pickups that drop when you kill things, but they get sucked in at any range. Combined with melee counters dropping more items, this both increases the general pace of the game AND allows the game to have higher difficulty, since you’re always pulling in resources. One of the early upgrades is the return of the pulse radar that reveals hidden breakable blocks. This is again probably controversial, but this feeds into increased exploration and increased pace since you aren’t just playing a game of shoot every block to find the hidden trinket. Free aim is back to give much more freedom of hitting things from any angle, making a lot of the trash encounters much quicker to deal with. The new slide move both replaces a lot of the slower morph ball stuff, but also acts as a fast transition into morph ball tunnels when unlocked AND a way to actively dodge attacks in a lot of the boss fights.

However, the real important change compared to Fusion or the Prime games is that the game really doesn’t give you any direction. You’re chucked into the world and told to get to the surface. You’re given some lore as things go, but more often than not it’s up to you to find your way. This is very much an old Metroid thing that started to go away over the years, so it’s interesting to see it return to very little direction. For me, this is precisely what I’m looking for in a Metroidvania. I love to scan the map to find doors that I haven’t entered or mysterious holes in the map that I haven’t explored, then going back to find new things. Where things really work for the better is that the map itself is far more readable than past 2D entries, although that is entirely down to just having more modern hardware and higher resolution to display the map. It’s just far easier to find things when you can pump more obvious information on the screen and it really benefits the loose structure of the classic Metroid formula. It’s even better with a bunch of fast travel teleportation spots that open up as you find more upgrades, allowing you to quickly scoot around the world at will.

This just ended up being such a good game. It’s been so long since a 2D entry came out in this series that there was probably some amount of valid concern about whether or not this could be done and still be fun. Samus Returns proved that the formula still worked and Dread proved that the series can move forward. This hits just the right mix of classic Metroid and modern gaming, and in a couple key ways goes backwards compared to Fusion and Prime, but it comes out as such a great mix. The difficulty of the game will probably turn some people away, but for me it again hits the perfect mix – it’s perhaps unforgiving, but it’s precise and fair and not based in RNG. You’ll learn where things go wrong, then make it right. It may take a few tries, but you’ll learn and get through it.

It’s also funny looking back at my notes about Samus Returns. That one ended with a new little cutscene showing the rise of the X parasites on SR388. I mentioned in passing that maybe they were hinting at something else. Boy was it ever. I don’t know if they were still hoping to do a Fusion remake or Dread at that point, but seeing the end of the post-Prime Metroid and X saga finally arrive is both great to see and something that I never really expected to happen.

Seriously, go play this.

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Game Ramblings #52 – Metroid: Samus Returns

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Adventure, Metroidvania
  • Platform: 3DS
  • Originally Released on: Game Boy

TL;DR

  • Fantastic re-imagining of Game Boy’s Metroid II: Return of Samus
  • Additions to game break some of the expectations of the genre, but allow for a much higher challenge level of the base game
  • Core loop of 40 effective mini boss fights keeps action high, but doesn’t get stale due to increasing power level of the Metroids
  • Random note since it gave it to me, but my clear time was 8:38:13, which seems a bit on the low side of average to my surprise.

Nintendo is having one hell of a year.  Breath of the Wild and the Switch in general have been a runaway success.  Mario + Rabbids showed they could give control of their games to someone else and still maintain the high quality Nintendo feel.  Now with Metroid: Samus Returns, they’ve shown there is both life remaining in the 3DS, as well as some new ground that can be explored in one of their storied IPs.  This re-imagining of Metroid II is another fine example of what can happen when this series is given to outside developers, much like Retro and the Prime series, and also shows that 2D Metroid games don’t have to stick to their conventions and still be fantastic on their own.

Since some fans of the Metroid series are going to find these controversial, let’s start with some of the little changes and additions that this remake brings.  Fights against Metroids start and end with checkpoints, allowing you to not have to trek all over the place to guarantee save locations.  Along with some more generally helpful abilities, you have a rechargeable map scanner that also acts as a way to show blocks that can be broken.  In addition to the usual save points and ammo/energy recharge stations, there are also now teleport stations as a means of fast travel.  All of these things in general break some of the mold of exploring every little bit of land in Metroid games, and also break some of the re-traversal expectations of the series.  However, the actual end result is that the developers have been able to drastically increase the difficulty across the board, much to the game’s advantage.

Traversal in most Metroid experiences has usually brought relatively little danger outside of boss fights.  Enemies would do damage if you got hit, but more often than not the health drops they left behind would more than suffice to heal you back up.  This one definitely doesn’t follow that pattern.  It’s not unusual for a melee hit from a normal enemy to do half an energy tank or more of damage, and that’s just on normal difficulty.  Once you get to the Metroids and eventually bosses, multiple energy tank loss from one hit is expected.  The short version here is that even by end game, I could expect to maybe take 4-5 hits in a boss fight before I was dead, so being able to respawn in a checkpoint next to the boss room was particularly appreciated while I was learning fights.

This is particularly important, because the combat system in place definitely had some things that have to be learned for Metroid veterans.  On the smaller side of things, Samus can now root herself in place and aim 360 degrees with the analog stick.  While this does offer up significantly better precision for attacks, it also leaves her extremely vulnerable to quick attacks.  This is balanced by the new melee counter attacks.  If an enemy flashes, Samus can activate a melee swing to counter an enemy, leaving them open for high impact damage.  For boss fights in particular, this activates a little mini-cutscene where you can unload missiles without repercussions, which ends up being the biggest damage dealer against Metroids.

In general, these changes were a much larger positive than I was expecting.  The 360 aim opened up a lot of possibilities for much more dynamic boss fights, where they would hover around the room in spots where I had to play a balance of moving to avoid projectiles vs. stopping in place to get off a few precision shots for damage.  Once the enemy then came in range, the timing skill behind watching for opportunities for melee counters gave the game a feel more typical of heavy melee action games, which Metroid typically has not been.  Given that the developer MercurySteam was also behind the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games, this perhaps isn’t that surprising, but it was very welcoming.

I think the best way to wrap this up is that I’m pleasantly surprised.  The studio behind this has released some great games, but it’s been a while since a 2D Metroid came out (seriously, Zero Mission was in 2004) and I was surprised they were being given so much of a chance to take liberties with the core gameplay.  By and large they’ve also worked really well.  The studio has been on record saying that they had originally pitched a remake demo of Metroid Fusion and been turned down, which led to this project.  It’s clear they had a lot of passion for the franchise anyway and it’s evident in the quality of the game they’ve released.  It’s also worth noting that a post-credits scene shows the rise of the X parasite from Fusion, which makes sense given it also takes place on the planet SR388 of this game.  Whether or not that’s just there as a tongue in cheek reference to their original hopes or the sign of something else, I can only hope that this and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 are the beginning of more for this franchise.  It’s been on the side lines for way too long.