What a title! What a trailer!

I wouldn't put Metroid Dread up there with Super Metroid or Prime 1, but dangit if it isn't a great action game. Ravenous looks like Dread But More Badass.

Dread gets compared to Sekiro for the superficial reason that it has a parry move, but the structure of its boss battles reminded me of Sekiro in a deeper way too. Learn the pattern like a rhythm game and you can win without even taking damage. I enjoyed dipping my toe into that Boss Rush mode they added.

I'm hoping Ravenous gets weird and experimental. Maybe by pushing the combat further, maybe by playing with the game's structure. If not, sign me up for some dumb fun either way.

I still haven't gotten around to playing Dread, nor The Return of Samus Returns for that matter, so I don't have anything to say about this one other than it took at least halfway into the trailer before I realised this was Metroid.

So why am I posting in here then?

I'm not.

The Return of Samus Returns.

Mop it up said:

So why am I posting in here then?

I'm not.

O.o

I was reflecting on this series a bit this week. While I'm overall glad to see a new one, I also feel like we're kind of "stuck" with MercurySteam, in a way. By that I mean I expect that Ravenous will be a strong action game worth buying, but like Samus Returns and Dread, probably won't reach the series' biggest heights for me.

I feel like Metroid is fundamentally different than it was during its first 15 years on this planet. Which is odd seeing as how so many indie games are cribbing those earliest titles' formula. But since Samus Returns, 2D Metroid has put a much smaller emphasis on atmosphere and memorable level design, and a much larger emphasis on slick, quick combat. It was a pretty neat change of pace for Samus Returns, but I didn't expect that would change the series going forward as it seems to have. The music in these recent games is also pretty detached from the moody and memorable songs of Hip Tanaka and Kenji Yamamoto.

Samus being all Doomguy is kind of cool in one way but it also implies this'll be the most MercurySteam Metroid ever. There still could be those contemplative "where am I?" moments but nothing in the trailer really gave me that impression. I guess I'll just need to come to peace with the fact that Metroid has entered its Resident Evil 5 era of focusing on high-octane action more than exploration. And honestly I don't even know if "exploration" is the right word exactly, I don't want Breath of the Zebes or anything. I mainly want a moderately-sized world that makes the most of its space.

@TriforceBun

I agree with this, with the caveat that I don't see much in the Metroid series that's ever reached the heights you're talking about outside of Super. Super Metroid is one of the best games of all time—maybe the best game of all time. It's got top-tier atmosphere and a unique flavor of mechanical depth unseen in any other game. I replayed it twice a couple months ago and loved the puzzle of getting down to a time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Metroid 1 has never been enjoyable to me. 2 is a fun little Gameboy game. Fusion and Zero Mission are fun little Gameboy Advance games. Prime is a phenomenal facimile of Super that I think earns its place as a demi-GOAT. Its sequels are lesser still, but also atmospheric and engaging enough.

Basically, I think that Super and Prime are both 10s, whereas every other Metroid game is about an 8.5... except for Dread, a solid 9! The little MercurySteam episodic saga seems off to a good start:



What would it mean for there to be a new Metroid game as good as Super? While I don't personally enjoy Rain World that much, and The Electric Underground can be a bit harsh and long-winded, the first ten minutes of this video paint an interesting picture of what truly makes Super Metroid great and what actual genre innovation here would look like:



Something else that's been on my mind with the Ocarina of Time remake coming up: I tried an OoT randomizer a few months ago and partially thought it was a really fun knowledge test, but mainly felt that it wasn't appropriate for a Zelda game's structure. You don't really want to get halfway through the Water Temple, find an item that lets you make more progress in the Shadow Temple, and have to backtrack across the whole map back-and-forth, do you? But really, this is a problem with pre-BOTW Zelda as a whole. It's lame landing on an uncharted island in Wind Waker and not being allowed to explore it because you don't have the hammer yet. ALttP's Hyrule, for me, isn't as effective at the item gating routing puzzle as Super Metroid's Zebes is.

To me, the fundamental difference between the platonic ideal of Zelda and the platonic ideal of Metroid is that Zelda is entirely open and allows you to use lateral thinking (your wits as an adventurer) to go anywhere that piques your curiosity, whereas Metroid is a graph navigation problem with heavy constraints which you can only overcome through high skill. The latter stays interesting when you randomize it. OoT is a rigid, wannabe Metroidvania. On the other hand, Temple of the Ocean King is my favorite Zelda dungeon, and it's Super Metroid af.

Emerald Rush is so fascinating to me because it plays with this dynamic. Base Bananza lets you treat the whole game as a sandbox, but Emerald Rush's randomization forces you to really understand the map and your powers on a deep level so that you know what your options are at any moment. It isn't perfect, but it's a glimpse of the type of deeper skill-focused design I really hope Nintendo starts doing more of, especially with Metroid.

@Secret_Tunnel

I'm rather fond of the randomiser, purely for the aspect of shaking things up. It lets me replay my favourite game without it feeling 'stale'.

Yes it's a bit of a knowledge test and yes, it wouldn't really work for a first playthrough, but for those who just want to get their Ocarina on one more time without resorting to a brain-damage inducing memory wipe, it's pretty fun.

I had dared to hope that the remake would have a built-in randomiser option, but that's probably a little too out there for Nintendo.

PS.

Secret_Tunnel said:

It isn't perfect, but it's a glimpse of the type of deeper skill-focused design I really hope Nintendo starts doing more of, especially with Metroid.

Did you ever look into completing the 15% run during your Zero Mission playthrough?

I feel like the design philosophy behind that would be right up your alley, at least from a sequence breaking perspective. (But it also requires you to be absolutely on point when dealing with the bosses, which makes things tricky.)

@Zero
I can never remember which of those is the title of the 3DS game!

TriforceBun said:

I feel like Metroid is fundamentally different than it was during its first 15 years on this planet. Which is odd seeing as how so many indie games are cribbing those earliest titles' formula. But since Samus Returns, 2D Metroid has put a much smaller emphasis on atmosphere and memorable level design, and a much larger emphasis on slick, quick combat. It was a pretty neat change of pace for Samus Returns, but I didn't expect that would change the series going forward as it seems to have. The music in these recent games is also pretty detached from the moody and memorable songs of Hip Tanaka and Kenji Yamamoto.

These are pretty much my thoughts as well, but I was afraid to say anything because I know how ravenous this fanbase can be. Part of the reason why I haven't gotten around to playing Dread and the 3DS game is that I can't shake this feeling I simply won't like them.

@Shadowlink

I never did try a 15% run, but I've still wondered about it. I've been looking for a game to tide me over, maybe I'll finally give it a shot. Or maybe a 100% run instead. I should spend more time with Zero Mission in general.

One thing I love about Super Metroid is how natural the progression is. Your first playthrough you can take or leave the exploration. If you do explore, eventually the game forces you to learn the wall-jump by soft-locking you.

Then on your second or third playthroughs, you build a little more familiarity with the game's structure and start experimenting with the wall jump in earlier spots. You remember all the items you need to grab from Norfair before heading back up to Crateria. You learn that the second Brinstar loop is unnecessary. You know about the two entrances to Maridia. Maybe you do a little sequence break here and there accidentally, and then have to cross-reference the path you took against what the default path would have been.

And then you're ready to put all the pieces together and go for the sub-3-hour run!

I will say that playing an OoT randomizer and getting the bomb bag in the Deku Tree instead of the slingshot gave me this same feeling. Finally I got to put my intricate knowledge of the game to good use, knowing that you'd be able to go from the Lost Woods to Goron City if you somehow had bombs that early on. I had also been half-hoping the remake would include a randomizer option, though (once again, shout-out to Emerald Rush) I wouldn't expect Nintendo to implement it so literally.

Okay, I've been revisiting Zero Mission, and it's pretty great. It's a smaller, more intricate Super Metroid. Whereas Super is naturalistic, relatively linear, and only sequence breakable by lack of hard gates, ZM is a puzzle box planned out by the devs. These post-game item collection puzzles are nuts, kaizo-tier game design, and they seem to be tutorializing mechanics which need to be mastered for sequence breaking.

This ties into what I was saying about Captain Toad. Zero Mission is sort of a non-sequitur if you just play it once. Go through the bases, get the morph ball, fight Kraid and Ridley, blah blah blah. The game begs to be engaged with on a deeper level than that.

I'm also reminded that this is the same team that did the Wario Land series, which I love for similar reasons. Shake It was Good Feel emulating the core team's design, and they did a fantastic job of it. But I haven't played WL4 since... the Ambassador Program, and I've never played WL2. (I enjoy WL3 well enough but never make it very far in. WL1 seems a little simple? And then there's the Virtual Boy game, which I dabbled in a few months ago; that one's more linear, like the first game, I think.)

Reading up on my Nintendo history, man, the bizarre parallel culture that went from Metroid to Wario Land to WarioWare to Rhythm Heaven is one of my favorite parts of the company. I might owe Famicom Detective Club another chance too.