I don't know if it's just my love of all things Metroid (though that can't be true because of the little I played of Hunters, I wasn't fond of it), but Fusion really surprised me considering how many people have warned against it or how unfaithful it is to the rest of the franchise.
I really, really fell in love with this game.
It's definitely more linear, but it's not so linear that you feel like there's nothing to explore. The game - like its predecessors - constantly teases you with stuff you'll either have to find later, or stuff that you can get by much later. And the amount of nooks and crannies and such you can find is pretty awesome - I love how interconnected the whole map is. For this to be one gigantic research station, they made the thing a beautiful, interconnected map.
I kept stumbling on connections to different places and being like "wtf...? that leads there?!"
Then there's the other part that people harped on: the cinematics. I came into the game fully prepared to be inundated with bad dialouge or really trite writing, or long-lasting paragraphs of unnecessary info. And yet, aside from the long intro... none of it ever came. IT was handled well I thought, and Samus - who's never been a deaf/mute in any other form of media she's presented in including the beloved Super Metroid - seemed to come out well in all her monologues/thoughts, the few pieces of dialogue she has, and... I dunno', it really fit.
The game has a certain mood to it that I like as well; where Super Metroid was more about this foreboding, building fear that crept up as you got deeper into the game, Fusion really gave this constant tension where you found yourself often wondering just what the **** the SA-X would do next to muck up your day.
And the SA-X was quite an intimidating thing. I know it's another "dark version of the main character" theme, but for some reason the SA-X really jived with me.
The music, I felt, was great, really fit the mood of the game for the most part, and a lot of it was catchy and is STILL on my mind right now. TRO and AQA's main themes, Vs. Nightmare, the redone version of Ridley's theme... all awesome I thought. Again, it wasn't Super Metroid but it felt great to listen to.
So, I dunno'. Maybe it was just me - after all, I'm one of the few that really, really loved (and still loves!) Metroid II: Return of Samus. But I'm already going through my second playthrough of Metroid Fusion, and still doing a 100% item search on my main file (saved right after you get the "Final Command).
So I'm interested i hearing form other Metroid fans... what did you think of it?
PS: I played on an emulator for now, though I plan to buy the cart from Amazon once I have a job again. Just so that people know I'm not wasting my limited funds right now. (^__^ )
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