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.

Demon's Souls Sever Shut Down (this time for real)

I've been busy this month, yet I don't really remember what I did other than work on my latest remix.  Here's a small rant I wrote on Facebook on the servers of Demon's Souls getting shut down.

https://atlus.com/fond-farewell-demons-souls-servers/

Demon's Souls is one of my favorite games on the PS3. It was one of the first games I bought after graduating college and I heard lots of great things about it.

My initial reactions to the game were less than favorable: "The opening music sounds cheesy!" "It's not a fast-paced Hack 'n Slash?" "Enemy placement never changes!" "The graphics are only okay..." "It seems so boring without music playing." "That death just wasted all my efforts and time..." I walked around the first area quite a few times and just couldn't get into it. I took a break for a month and still kept seeing posts and articles about how exciting boss fights were and how engaging combat felt. I went back to it, beat the first boss, and then it clicked.

I went to the next area, and then the next, and then I continually played the game until I beat it. It was a strange and different formula that's partially familiar, but done in a meaningful way. Combat forced the player into creating strategies for each engagement by limiting the amount of actions they can take before tiring out. Exploration punished the reckless, but rewarded the meticulous and daring. All builds worked and allowed a variety of ways to play the game. The game wasn't about the triumphs and victories, but the mistakes and failures that led up to them.

Demon's Souls isn't the most polished or highest quality of games, but its design is solid and delivers a kind of satisfaction few games has done before it. I haven't revisit it in a while because of my ever-growing backlog, but it still remains one of my favorites on the PS3 and perhaps all time.