Metroid general

[Grub]

I have weird autistic qualifiers for these things that no one agrees with, but one big one is 'everything has to have both a combat and traversal purpose' to qualify as Metroid-like. And to maybe show my hand a bit, in my mind Metroid is the 'default' bucket and everything else gets put in the 'sotn' bucket. Hollow Knight got put in the sotn bucket simply cuz I didn't see  enough of Metroid in it (idk, HK has gear upgrading and a currency and NPCs to talk to and some other stuff that moves it too far away from Metroid for me).

I guess I can see how S&S and Death's Gambit can come across as sotn-likes, but honestly I never actually made that connection because I was just thinking of them as 2D soulsbornes, like GRIME.

I hesitate to dive into this autistic argument because really I feel like it doesn't matter too much in the end but it found the melee vs ranged combat qualifier made less of a difference on gameplay than the stat/equipment system does. SotN always reminded me more of something like Zelda 2 or Faxanadu with a metroid style progression system tacked on. All the metroid style Castlevania games have that same rpg style progression system. For me at least, that's always been the biggest divider between the two styles of metroidvania because it changes the overall game progression and turns it into something you can just grind your way out of if things get too difficult.

Hollow Knight didn't have any of that. You couldn't just go grind for XP or find a different weapon or armor or something to go and get yourself out of a tough spot. There were no rpg elements at all. It seems odd to me that people focus on something like sword vs gun when that has less of an impact on the overall game progression than something like an entire rpg/equipment/inventory system does. The funny thing is Hollow Knight's movement and control scheme was actually based on Megaman X if you read interviews with the devs which is a very much a ranged weapon game.

 

[Gossip Avoider]

Nigga I thought you were gonna hit me with 'they made the DS Vania games' or something, not the God Of War ones

They made a "classical" one for the 3DS four years prior to Samus Returns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Lords_of_Shadow_–_Mirror_of_Fate

 

[Soggy Floppa]

I hesitate to dive into this autistic argument because really I feel like it doesn't matter too much in the end but it found the melee vs ranged combat qualifier made less of a difference on gameplay than the stat/equipment system does.

RPG stuff for sure, its why I put the Dark Souls games in the SOTN category since fundamentally they are kind of the same thing if you boil it all down. But melee vs ranged does make a difference since it informs the level design and in Metroidvanias the level design is maybe the biggest thing next to lock and key progression. Melee based combat means levels are flatter due to limits on vertical attacks.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

I have weird autistic qualifiers for these things that no one agrees with, but one big one is 'everything has to have both a combat and traversal purpose' to qualify as Metroid-like.

This fucked me up once. When discussing Zelda with a buddy, I pointed out that Metroid was different precisely because practically everything the player gets in Zelda is intended for combat against a boss, say, whereas Metroid has cool items like the speed booster that are useless for that.

Imagine my surprise when the blinders were removed and I learned Metroid Dread specifically had bosses intended to get fucked up by the speed booster.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I always just viewed it as Metroid games feel more like taking an action-platformer like Mega Man and making it exploratory instead of linear, while SotN-style Castlevania games feel more like making an Action RPG but putting it in a 2D side-view format like classic Castlevania. Despite the similarities in how their maps are laid out (as a big, interconnected 2D side-view dungeon), I would say they're not really even in the same genre.

Speaking as someone who hasn't really played other Metroidvanias, liked SotN a little more than Metroid, and basically played every Metroid game back-to-back around the time Dread came out, and found Dread to be a pretty good game. Maybe even the best one by a slim margin. No big complaints except that the stealth sections are iffy.

 

[Grub]

But melee vs ranged does make a difference since it informs the level design and in Metroidvanias the level design is maybe the biggest thing next to lock and key progression. Melee based combat means levels are flatter due to limits on vertical attacks.

The problem with that is, the Castlevania games and the soulslikes do also tend to have ranged weapons or attacks you can get. You can play Salt and Sanctuary entirely as an archer if you want to. You can use ranged attacks or whatever magic gimmicks a particular Castlevania game has.

There's also a mod for Hollow Knight you can get that changes the game to use ranged combat and it doesn't really change the game as much as you'd expect.

I always just viewed it as Metroid games feel more like taking an action-platformer like Mega Man and making it exploratory instead of linear, while SotN-style Castlevania games feel more like making an Action RPG but putting it in a 2D side-view format like classic Castlevania. Despite the similarities in how their maps are laid out (as a big, interconnected 2D side-view dungeon), I would say they're not really even in the same genre.

2d Side scrolling action rpgs existed well before real metroidvania style games existed. There were a few side scrolling action adventure games around but most of them didn't have any kind of proper item ability gated progression. But side scrolling action rpgs were actually pretty popular in the late 80's-early 90's. There's quite a few of them from that time period. From what I've read of the development of SotN, the developers were mostly inspired by those kinds of games and the Legend of Zelda.

Speaking as someone who hasn't really played other Metroidvanias, liked SotN a little more than Metroid, and basically played every Metroid game back-to-back around the time Dread came out, and found Dread to be a pretty good game. Maybe even the best one by a slim margin. No big complaints except that the stealth sections are iffy.

I'm kind of the opposite to you. I got into Super Metroid first and I never liked Symphony of the Night as much. I enjoyed it and I don't think it's a bad game or anything but I also could never understand why it got lumped together with Super Metroid.

This fucked me up once. When discussing Zelda with a buddy, I pointed out that Metroid was different precisely because practically everything the player gets in Zelda is intended for combat against a boss, say, whereas Metroid has cool items like the speed booster that are useless for that.

That's really only true of the later Zelda games. The earlier Zeldas weren't really like that as much. I think the biggest difference between Zelda and Metroid is that Zelda's items, for the most part, don't tend to open up new areas you need to go back to or act as a means of progression on their own. There's only a few times across the whole series where finding some item, without the story pushing you ahead will grant you access to the next area. Zelda's progression tends to be almost entirely story based starting as far back as the second game. Items are sometimes part of progression in Zelda, but it's the story pushing you forward mostly. In Metroid it's finding new items that pushes you forward. The items themselves are the progression. Even in Fusion, despite it being super linear and story driven, it was the items you were getting or being told to get that was driving everything forward.

 

[Susie Legion Simp]

The flower pattern was on the ground already that appears when the bosses die, but the artifact doohickey was gone.

Yeah if I'm remembering correctly I saw that which seemed like it was there, but disappeared for the Omega Griever before appearing again after it died.

Anyways I had just wanted to mention that because it really bugged me. I beat the Game, but couldn't be bothered to get all the items and whatever scans I missed. The ending seemed like it was the "Bad" ending with the characters stuck with Syluc, so I was going to go back in and collect everything else. Then I found that the Game forces you to start over from the beginning if you try to play again after beating it (I guess unless you made another save game) so I gave up on that. Doing a little research, I guess that is the only ending, and the difference is that Samus doesn't have her helmet while planting the Tree if you got everything.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Imagine my surprise when the blinders were removed and I learned Metroid Dread specifically had bosses intended to get fucked up by the speed booster.

Same thing happened to me with SM:Subversion, except I felt even more like a dumbass in that case because the boss room explicitly has a pair of SpeedBooster tiles on the floor as indicators of where the recommended 'shinespark runway' is


Speedbooster definitely gets forgotten about as an offensive weapon throughout the whole franchise, which is sad because there's some really fucking cool things you could do with a Samus-sized bullet (a power-armored cannonball).

 

[DickMain]

This fucked me up once. When discussing Zelda with a buddy, I pointed out that Metroid was different precisely because practically everything the player gets in Zelda is intended for combat against a boss, say, whereas Metroid has cool items like the speed booster that are useless for that.

Imagine my surprise when the blinders were removed and I learned Metroid Dread specifically had bosses intended to get fucked up by the speed booster.

I dunno. Speed can be used to fuck up some bosses in SM, and then you've got items like Irons in oot that are just used for accessing certain areas, and not even for the boss of the dungeon you mainly use it for. I don't think it's really as clear cut as 'Metroid items are for combat and exploration and zelda's are just for boss fights" (speaking as somebody who runs too much oot and watches too much SM).

 

[winderson_silva]

The Rock as Samus, Ryan Reynolds as The Baby, Danny DeVito as Kraid, Tom Holland as Ridley, Jack Black as Mother Brain, and Timothy Chamalet as Adam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W54DvzF9S8

 

[derapples]

This may be old news but I just learned about it. Apparently AM2R is getting a visual overhaul. I must say, the screenshots look great.
Link

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

View attachment 8790153
This may be old news but I just learned about it. Apparently AM2R is getting a visual overhaul. I must say, the screenshots look great.
Link

Damn, that does look nice. Nintendo takedown 2.0 incoming out of sheer jealousy

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

My son said he wanted to challenge himself to a 1% run in Metroid Fusion. I said "maybe don't, my brother said that was the hardest Metroid run he's ever done" and so I suggested he try Super Metroid Redesign instead as it is harder, but not too bad. He was brain broke by the fact that the physics changes made even jumping on platforms harder and more precise. I'm not sure he's going to continue that run lol

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I'm dumb, so I decided to quickly play through Federation Force before playing Metroid Prime 4. Now that I've played it, all can say about it is that it's aggressively mediocre. It's not doing anything really wrong, but it's also not doing anything particularly interesting or fun. Some of the boss fights and challenges are tedious chores made worse trying to play it single-player, and the aiming with the right stick kind of sucks. It reminds me of Zelda: TriForce Heroes, where Nintendo really wanted to make a multiplayer game and it's not really fun or balanced for playing it solo. But if you actually had 3 friends to play games with, then there's better stuff you could be playing than Metroid Prime: Federation Force of all things. As far as Metroid games go, I would rather play Other M.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

I'm dumb, so I decided to quickly play through Federation Force before playing Metroid Prime 4. Now that I've played it, all can say about it is that it's aggressively mediocre. It's not doing anything really wrong, but it's also not doing anything particularly interesting or fun. Some of the boss fights and challenges are tedious chores made worse trying to play it single-player, and the aiming with the right stick kind of sucks. It reminds me of Zelda: TriForce Heroes, where Nintendo really wanted to make a multiplayer game and it's not really fun or balanced for playing it solo. But if you actually had 3 friends to play games with, then there's better stuff you could be playing than Metroid Prime: Federation Force of all things. As far as Metroid games go, I would rather play Other M.

The sad thing is nearly this entire review could also describe Prime 4. I guess that makes some sense, Federation Force to Prime 4 feels like what they did with Samus Returns to Dread (new game on handheld, then expanding it to console), only Samus Returns and Dread stayed mostly true to the design ethos of Metroid games while Federation Force and Prime 4 drifted away from that into more generic scifi power fantasy stuff.

Metroid is a game based on a horror franchise so when the horror portion is taken away and it's just reskinned Destiny, it just doesn't stand out in any way.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Something I forgot to mention before, but when I was playing Federation Force, I quickly felt like it was really similar to Prime Hunters in how it takes place in some unexplored solar system and similarly has an ice planet and volcano planet. And Prime Hunters had slightly more exploration elements as I recall because you still played as Samus with similar moves, but it wasn't really a Metroidvania, it had you visiting chunks of the planets to complete a goal in a mission-based structure, just like FF.

And then I thought that the robot planet the Pirates have taken over in FF felt rather similar to the robot and Space Pirate planets in Prime 3 (so yeah, game isn't really winning points for creative new areas), which made me think about how that game felt kind of off for Metroid with how the planets were completely disconnected from one another to the point where it can feel like you're just visiting them each time to go through a new linear section to complete a goal, and how Retro wanted to add some bounty hunter mission system to the game before Nintendo told them that was stupid. So it does give me the feeling like these American-made Metroid games keep wanting to remove the actual Metroidvania exploration to turn them into mission-based shooters where you just drop into an area to shoot things.