Metroid general

[X Prime]

I have no problem with the sexualization, so long as it's a reward, and they ditch the fugly neon piss-yellow accessories from Smash and remove the completely unfunctional whore heels (from Other M/Smash). They literally did it perfect with the original zero suit, they nailed it the first time. It was functional, sexy, but not "try-hard" sexy making Samus look like a two-dollar whore.

My problem with the first Zero Suit is the stealth section sucked. There should be almost no situation where Samus can't brute force something.

Agreed on the rest, the whore heels are ridiculous.

 

[StacticShock]

I have no problem with the sexualization, so long as it's a reward

samus sexualization is kind of meh when you think about it, she is basically a succubus now thanks to metroid DNA.

the whore heels are ridiculous.

the NES suits make sense because she wears boots in them, the whore heels look like a part of the suit and that is why it looks retarded because her regular suit also has heels.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

My problem with the first Zero Suit is the stealth section sucked.

I remember chatting with a guy working at a game store about how the E.M.M.I. were maybe going to use some of the neural network nonsense in vogue back then, still somehow in vogue now, to have them adapt to Samus' behaviour over the course of the game.


Fuck, that would've been cool, though. I should probably just play Resident Evil 3 if I want to be pursued like that. The E.M.M.I. really just needed more breathing room, and not have the first and final act as story points. I'd really like to see more horror segments like this in future Metroid games.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Yet more of the fanbase not wanting anything remotely sexualized about Samus.

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I swear, the fanbase only considers the Alien influence, and not any of the others when it comes to saying she should never appear as anything remotely attractive.

Those people aren't actually fans. They're activists who see Samus as a Strong Wahmens Type and therefore hate the idea that teenage boys might find her sexy.

 

[X Prime]

To be fair, considering what people are into nowadays that they talk about on the Internet, I can kind of see why some people would be leery of what before would have been perfectly reasonable.

 

[sodaboard]

i was so excited for dread when it came out but i was just as disappointed with it as i was with samus returns. the counter mechanic is dumb, enemies scale with you so you don't actually feel like you're progressing, the world layout is a clusterfuck, EMMI fights are dumb, controls are all over the place, the music is forgettable, and the story is meh. and now prime 4 looks like it's just gonna be breath of the metroid where there's a big world to explore separated by vast expanses of nothing.
but we have it better than fzero fans i guess

 

[Aurora Unit 242]

My Prime 1-3 Retrospective book finally came today. Feels pretty high quality and has a section at the end for artwork from Prime Remastered too.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

some of the level design is a bit questionable

I'm relatively new to playing Metroid mods/romhacks specifically, but this is the thing that's stuck out to me after recently playing a handful:
I question a lot of their world design and how tedious they make exploration. Official Metroid games are great at guiding you through but making it seem like your own intuition.

I appreciate that Vitality seems to want to be "the fanciest looking Metroid romhack ever", and the world is very cool, and where I think the story is going intrigues me (although the chozo-samus Phantoon and some other things are making me side-eye it). But all the screen effects all the time are a bit overwhelming and it's hard to find consistent visual cues so I can tell where to go. The broken light in the wall of one of Pendula Moda's shafts is a cool detail, but I never would have thought that was actually a morph-ball tunnel if I hadn't found it completely by accident. I almost wish it wasn't Metroid because the "metroidy" assumptions and habits I have are making things more difficult.

X-Fusion definitely set a standard with one of the very early rooms requiring two wall-jumps into a midair morph to get through a tunnel. I do like acrobatics like that in Metroid, but it's making me very paranoid about sequence breaking in a way that softlocks me, especially because so much has been reworked. Granted, that's largely my problem because I always have an irrational fear of softlocking myself when I do fancy acrobatics, and being based on Fusion it's probably the least likely to have softlock issues because of the linearity.

I don't think it's in any way controversial to say Subversion's world is just too fucking big and too fucking time-consuming and convoluted to move around. I'm assuming it's a side effect of the map being designed for two different progression routes (the 2nd Quest basically plays "backwards" from what I read on the forum) which again is a cool idea but holy fuck does it make the world suck to navigate.
Watch the little spiel in my AM2R&Subversion video about trying to find the Forbidden Room for a hyper-specific example, and then extrapolate that out to how I felt every time I wanted to go and look at anything anywhere in the world.

Don't get me wrong, I like these romhacks and I'll probably play them all again. But I'm getting the impression that romhackers are really carried away with world detail or complexity or just size without much consideration for the actual 'fun to play' part, or first time players not already knowing the route. AM2R's world always felt very convenient and snappy to get around even without the Distribution hub for fast travel, and even with its map's shortcomings Axiom Verge 1 felt like it was more considerate of the player exploring.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

Wait...my friend wasn't joking a month ago when he said they Breath of the Wild'd Metroid Prime 4?

 

[Sugriva]

Overall X-Fusion is pretty great. There were only one or two moments where I got stuck or felt frustrated.

Until I got to the final area. Holy shit what a stinker. That place can eat a massive pile of dicks. That dev needs to be locked up in a mental hospital if he thought it was reasonable for people to get through it without save states.

 

[Grub]

Metroid mods/romhacks

I think my favourite romhack is Hyper Metroid. I haven't played the remake of it yet but I remember enjoying the original. The world was big but wasn't tedious the way a lot of romhacks are. I enjoyed Ascent as well but the damage is cranked up really high. I guess the dev was trying to go for a horror game feel or something but it's kind of shitty getting killed in like two shots before you get some energy tanks.

I used save states in X-Fusion and I don't really care. It just had way too many cheap 'you went through the wrong door, fuck you you're dead.' moments to fuck around wasting time reloading from a save spot.

I still haven't finished it. I got distracted by Silksong but haven't had a lot of time for videogames in general lately so i haven't finished either of them yet. Honestly Silksong has kind of been giving me a Super Metroid romhack feeling while I've been playing. It's like the devs took that same mentality romhackers get and just try to crank the difficulty up and fuck with players just for the hell of it.

 

[LightDragonman1]

I have no problem with the sexualization, so long as it's a reward, and they ditch the fugly neon piss-yellow accessories from Smash and remove the completely unfunctional whore heels (from Other M/Smash)

Personally, I didn’t really have a problem with the redesign, given that it is a sci-fi series, so realism is out the water.

But it should be more of a reward, I agree. I really hope though that Prime 4 doesn’t go the mediocre Dread route in terms of the endings.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Hyper Metroid

I have a Hyper Metroid rom just sitting there still. I did give it a jam for a while before going down the Subversion rabbithole and I remember it feeling a lot less tryhard (in a good way) than a lot of these other romhacks.

I used save states in X-Fusion and I don't really care

I've been using MesenS's Rewind feature a lot in it, because X-Fusion feels like trolling sometimes. The Varia suit being a temperature bar to nurse (and instant death if you get to -250 degrees) feels like a joke at the player's expense. Currently stuck doing a loop between ARC/AQA/NOC and haven't figured out where the game wants me to go next, but I'm assuming it's in the fridge somewhere. I have to give X-Fusion credit for having a way more horror-like story setup too, the lack of spooky shit and tension in GBA Fusion when Samus is at her weakest always bothered me.

got distracted by Silksong

I have like 8+ Metroid romhacks saved and was just getting comfy into another run of Castlevania SotN when Silksong dropped: it's fucking hard finding time for all this, even disregarding all the other genres I play. I really need to make it a priority though, because at some point I imagine DLCs for Silksong will start happening, and it's gonna become almost impossible to avoid spoilers if I haven't finished by then

 

[Grub]

I have a Hyper Metroid rom just sitting there still. I did give it a jam for a while before going down the Subversion rabbithole and I remember it feeling a lot less tryhard (in a good way) than a lot of these other romhacks.

I don't really remember much about it other than I enjoyed it and the world was big and I enjoyed exploring it.

I have to give X-Fusion credit for having a way more horror-like story setup too, the lack of spooky shit and tension in GBA Fusion when Samus is at her weakest always bothered me.

I think I actually prefer it to the original Fusion despite the trollish bullshit. I never really liked Fusion. I was really looking forward to it when it came out. More than prime. I thought prime was going to be some generic space shooter shit and Fusion was going to be the Super Metroid sequel I'd been waiting for. But it wasn't really the case. Prime ended up being closer to Super Metroid and Fusion was fairly disappointing for me. The cutscenes and all the forced linearity and Adam telling you where to go really bugged the fuck out of me. All the dialog felt like some dude's weird fan fiction. The dialog in X-fusion still kind of sucks but at least she doesn't have some kind of weird daddy daughter shit going on with the computer dude like in the GBA one and he brought back the getting lost and exploring.

I have like 8+ Metroid romhacks saved and was just getting comfy into another run of Castlevania SotN when Silksong dropped: it's fucking hard finding time for all this, even disregarding all the other genres I play. I really need to make it a priority though, because at some point I imagine DLCs for Silksong will start happening, and it's gonna become almost impossible to avoid spoilers if I haven't finished by then

There's some shorter romhacks that I remember being pretty fun too. The cube one was good and that Darkholme Hospital one. Sotn can be pretty quick to beat if you push it. Might actually be worth waiting for the DLC. If it's anything like the Hollow Knight DLC it'd be worth a fill playthrough just for that.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

I don't really remember much about [Hyper Metroid] other than I enjoyed it and the world was big and I enjoyed exploring it.

I booted it up again at work - I forgot Hyper Metroid is the one set in some kind of alternate timeline where Samus married Adam and had a miscarriage due to a Space Pirate attack. She's sporting a scar over her left eye too..... Now I remember why I dropped it in favor of Subversion. I'm still gonna play regardless but yeah, it gave me the impression it's being edgy for edge's sake.

I think I actually prefer it to the original Fusion despite the trollish bullshit. I never really liked Fusion.

I'm the opposite, but I agree. I quite enjoy Fusion because I like some deviations from formula and I always prefer Metroid leaning into horror - as opposed to edge - but I do definitely already like X-Fusion WAAAAY more despite only having seen (I'm guessing) about 25% of it.

I pretty much always wanted just Fusion with SNES controls and more spooks, and that's basically what X-Fusion has been so far. I was really excited to see the spider boss hanging out in the room that was originally where Samus's suit was contained, because that set a precedent for how off-the-rails things are. Really good way of setting these things up for later too, same with the Security Bot, which was something OG Fusion was terrible at.


Also, I have no doubt Silksong's DLCs will be as good as those for HK, but I need to finish it because I can't just spend like 2 years avoiding all spoilers for Silksong to wait for DLCs to play it all.

EDIT: Okay, I see what you mean about Hyper Metroid having fun exploration.

 

[Grub]

I booted it up again at work - I forgot Hyper Metroid is the one set in some kind of alternate timeline where Samus married Adam and had a miscarriage due to a Space Pirate attack. She's sporting a scar over her left eye too..... Now I remember why I dropped it in favor of Subversion. I'm still gonna play regardless but yeah, it gave me the impression it's being edgy for edge's sake

I forgot it had a story. I usually ignore the stories in most romhacks. They're usually about that level of quality.

I'm the opposite, but I agree. I quite enjoy Fusion because I like some deviations from formula and I always prefer Metroid leaning into horror - as opposed to edge - but I do definitely already like X-Fusion WAAAAY more despite only having seen (I'm guessing) about 25% of it.

Horror's fine, but I never found Fusion to be very scary. It takes a lot of the fear away when the computer tells you where to go and shows you a marker on your map. The first time I ever played through Super Metroid, I played through it with my cousin, we'd take turns whenever we died and ww'd both sit there and try to freak the other one out about what was going to be on the other side of the next door. I remember the first time coming up to Kraid and seeing the dead soldier dude and the creepy eye door. Or the first time going through the Wrecked Ship and coming out after Phantoon and suddenly the dead ship's alive and trying to kill you. Maridia always freaked me out too with the creepy music, the weird fucking enemies and the quicksand and shit. Kinda like Deepnest in Hollow Knight where you feel trapped and lost.

I barely remember the areas in Fusion and the only moments I remember being genuinely creeped out by were some of the SA-X ones. I guess I just prefer the vague creeping horror of being lost and alone but continuing deeper while weirder and weirder things try to kill you over the forced horror moments in Fusion. Super Metroid just felt naturally creepy and unsettling.

Okay, I see what you mean about Hyper Metroid having fun exploration.

Yeah it's fairly open ended and sequence break friendly if I remember right.

 

[PoppyFizz]

Okay, I see what you mean about Hyper Metroid having fun exploration.

First time I played Hyper Metroid I wound up in Maridia and managed to get the Gravity Suit as one of the first upgrades, felt pretty proud.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

I'd really like to see more horror segments like this in future Metroid games.

Or like the GFS Valhalla from Prime 3. Scared me just being there as a kid. Retro could totally nail the horror vibes when they tried, like the Orpheon.

My Prime 1-3 Retrospective book finally came today. Feels pretty high quality and has a section at the end for artwork from Prime Remastered too.

Primes 1-3 were blessed to have Retro's 2000s art team on board. Shame most of them left in 2007. The killer art design of something like Prime 2 will keep it from looking dated forever.

the music is forgettable, and the story is meh.

Some of Other M's sins. Not having good music is a bigger deal for Metroid than some realize.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Horror's fine, but I never found Fusion to be very scary.

Always take anything I say about horror/"scariness" with a ton of salt.

Videogames don't scare me, so when I say I 'like Metroid leaning into horror', I mean I like to see it try to have horror elements like SA-X and The Nightmare, or the EMMIs in Dread, because I never actually expect to be scared by games.
Darkwood and Northern Journey are the only games to spook me

First time I played Hyper Metroid I wound up in Maridia and managed to get the Gravity Suit as one of the first upgrades

I definitely didn't get that far, but on this new attempt I did walk into the Torizo fight with no missiles (cap of 5) and had to reset because I got him stuck and he refused to vomit pickups at me.
I've been wondering if the sequence breaking gets that retarded though because it means replays could be way more interesting, so that's good to know

 

[Lone MacReady II]

1 Month til Metroid Prime 4: the first Prime game (potentially of worth) since 2007, the first Metroid game since Dread in 2021, a game fans have been waiting rabidly for since 2017 - and we're still sitting on nothing but an anorexic looking new open world gimmick, the Samus Batcycle gimmick, the likely situational telekinesis gimmick, and an all but absent big bad named Sylux.

My earnest hype has turned to groveling cope, only buoyed by Retro's past quality. Ain't it about time the top page poll was changed to "Do you think Prime 4 will be good or not"?