Let's talk about Metroid Samus Returns [SPOILERS]

Oh man, I didn't expect to be so incredibly busy these last two months.  Right after finishing the Super Mario Medley Remix, I started working on the Ghosts 'n Goblins Medley Remix and it took a lot of work.  Here it is:


It originally had 3 more songs than this, but I wasn't sure if I was able to meld it in well while making in interesting and short.  It was the first time I worked with sidechaining and I'm glad I finally have that skill in part of my repertoire.  It was a nightmare balancing and mixing the tracks this time around as it reach up to 32 tracks.  But now that it's done, I'm taking the rest of December off from working to catch up on other things and relaxing.  One of the things I need to catch up on is writing about games because there are a LOT of games I want to talk about.  I think the only way I can reasonably do this without taking all of December to write about them is by keeping them short and writing many at a time.  In fact, it'd be great if I can finish them all today so I can focus on playing and finishing up some games for the rest of December.  It will be difficult to write about most of the games in detail anyways as the experience and memories of them aren't as fresh as when I had finished them.

So first up is Metroid: Samus Returns for the Nintendo 3DS.


I was obviously excited for the game as it has been over a decade since the last 2D Metroid game and I absolutely love Metroid.  But when I saw that MercurySteam was co-developing the game, I got worried because of their work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate on the 3DS.  I also really didn't want to compare the experience to the fan-made game Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R) released last year, but it's impossible not to since both game's objective was the same: to recreate Metroid 2.  Having played AM2R kind of set the bar of expectation and what I wanted out of a Metroid game.

Pros of Metroid: Samus Returns:
+ Beautiful 3D graphics, environments and creatures
+ Sound effects were of high quality
+ Combat has a nice flow to it
+ Interesting new abilities and uses for them
+ Not particularly short or long gameplay time
+ Had speed running in mind for level design
+ Last boss almost ruined the experience for me, but the true last boss made up for it

Cons of Metroid: Samus Returns:
- Few and unmemorable boss fights
- Music were high quality and had some familiar tunes, but was mostly unmemorable
- Melee counter gets old and tedious half-way though and free-aiming can be annoying
- Area Themes were weak; it made everything kind of meld and feel the same
- Backtracking had little purpose and felt more tedious than rewarding
- Boss fights are tedious and drawn out unnecessarily
- Hard mode offers nothing new except for enemies doing more damage

Things AM2R did better:
+ Quite a few memorable boss fights that were challenging and exciting
+ Strong sense of area themes and atmosphere
+ Smarter level designs that made exploration interesting
+ Metroid fights were fast-paced, exciting, but still challenging
+ Controls were nicer with better air movement
+ Lots of "moments"
+ A true challenge in Hard mode with new AI movements, less resources, and higher damage


I played through Samus Returns three times: Casual run on Normal Difficulty, 2nd run on Hard, 3rd run as speedrun on Normal.  I felt iffy about everything the first run, more sure the 2nd run, and certain on how I felt about the game the 3rd run.  To boil it down in general terms, I found the game to be mildly entertaining and enjoyed it, but it was sadly an unmemorable experience that seems to be outclassed by the experience I had with AM2R of which I played 5 times.  Invincible enemies that need to be flipped with melee counter or invincible indefinitely, Metroid fights with invincibility states, the digger bot with a few repeating patterns with a small window of vulnerability and the Metroid Queen having long attack patterns with invincibility state made everything feel tedious like it's wasting my time.  If it weren't for the True Boss fight with Proteus Ridley at the very end of the game, I would've been pretty angry about how the game ended because the fight against the Metroid Queen was long and boring.  I liked the fight against Proteus Ridley in terms of presentation, from its familiar and exciting music to the fast-paced combat that didn't involve invincibility states.  In all honesty, the actual fight itself wasn't spectacular as it's pretty easy to learn his pattern after a few tries and he becomes really easy.  So while I'm glad they finally made another 2D Metroid and having enjoyed it, it was honestly the least memorable 2D Metroid game in the series.

Let's talk about Another Metroid 2 Remake

There was a job opportunity and I finished up applying for it.  I had to stop all projects to work on the application.  It's a composer position and it's an extremely small chance, but I still took it anyways.  After I finished up, I went back to my own projects.  Shortly afterwards, I saw that Metroid had reached its 30th anniversary since its initial release on the Nintendo Famicom.

"Whoop-dee-doo, we've reached the 30th Anniversary and they're giving us Metroid Prime: Federation Force. I don't think it looks bad, but it feels like they slapped the Metroid brand on a project that would otherwise get no attention. We haven't had a proper Metroid game in 12 years and haven't had a spinoff in 6 years. I don't think this is the spinoff fans expected or wanted, but perhaps it has a chance to surprise us."

That was my initial reaction to the news (as posted on Facebook).  It has bothered me for the longest time that there were so many Mario and Zelda games still being made with even some Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox games released while the Metroid series has been mostly ignored by Nintendo.  Even on the anniversary, no mention or celebration was made by Nintendo.  It wasn't even used as a marketing ploy to bring interest to their upcoming game Metroid Prime: Federation Force.

Moments after seeing the news for the anniversary, I came across Another Metroid 2 Remake when I typed in "Metroid" in google.  I've played quite a few fan-made Metroid games and they mostly capture the controls of the game, but not the full gameplay.  The game looked interesting and I decided to download and try it out.  I have never finished the original Metroid 2 as I got stuck on the last boss and couldn't beat it.  I was thinking the game was going to be a graphics overhaul of the original game and didn't think there would be too much deviation from it.  Boy, was I wrong!

This trailer is about 3 years old and was possibly the only time I've heard about this project.  Back then, it was just a demo and I didn't feel like playing an unfinished game.  So I didn't think much of it.  But on the 30th anniversary, the game was fully released.  I was expecting the game to be short since it was a fan-made game.  What I got was a fully fleshed out Metroid experience that is nearly on par with the quality it would have been if Nintendo had created the game.  Much of the gameplay, visuals and design is influenced by Metroid Zero Mission, which was a remake of the very first Metroid game.  The basic world layout and concept of Metroid 2 is still there: Kill all the Metroids, move onto the next area.  Obviously, the first and most notable difference in the remake is how rich and nicer looking the graphics are.  The original Metroid 2 was released on the original Black and White gameboy which had a limited amount of technology and memory space to work with.  In terms of control and gameplay, it closely resembles Zero Mission as Metroid 2's controls were slower and floaty to compensate for the limited amount of screen space it had.  The only critique I personally have for the game is the audio.  Some of the sound effects feel like misplaced foley recordings and some of the arranged music from the original are a bit monotonous and boring.  It also doesn't capture the eerie and atmospheric experience that the original had, despite its limited capabilities.  Still, it wasn't enough to call it "bad", just not up to expectation.  Everything else is great though!  Enemies have a lot more movement and AI patterns, bosses are challenging and memorable, level designs and item placements are well thought out and teaches the player along the way without actually having them go through any tutorial.  It was so fun, in fact, that I played the game 5 times in a row!  I played Normal the first time with the attempt to do everything and collect all the items (couldn't, got 94%).  Then I played 2 more times to improve my time.  I was going to stop.  But then I played through the original Metroid 2 and was reminded on how difficult it was due to enemies dealing a lot of damage and save points being scarce and far apart from each other and it made me wonder if enemies would hurt as much as they did in the original if I played on Hard difficulty for the remake.  And so I played the game a 4th time on Hard difficulty (with all other runs on Normal, I didn't play Easy).  It was challenging and it definitely made boss battles that much more intense, but I think I enjoyed the game more on Normal.  I wanted to try the game on Normal one last time and try to finish it in 1.5 hours.  I ended my run at 1:42:50 with my previous fastest time at 1:57:36.  I was hoping to get a much faster time than that after skipping a boss fight and many miscellaneous items.  I'm satisfied now in terms of Another Metroid 2 Remake.  The fans didn't exactly get the 30th Anniversary celebration they wanted for Metroid, but the fan-made game will have to do.

By the way, a DMCA was issued to the site a day after it was released and they had to take down the downloads for it.  Sad but true.

I'm planning on revisiting all the other Metroid games other than the original since I already did that earlier this year.  Maybe I'll finally get around to actually playing Metroid Prime 3 and Other M.