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So everyone around me kept saying how great the new Zelda was
I don’t know. It struck me as another Zelda game, from what I saw of
it. And. I understand that some of Nintendo’s trends have been worsening. Even though Capcom’s making all of their games, these days.
Zelda used to be a thing of wonder. Now it is a template. Metroid is starting to go the same route, too. The series has been stagnating since the third game. Both series have been. It just gets more obvious, the more often it’s iterated. And the more out-of-touch and patronizing each iteration becomes.
Metroid Prime is a nice exception.
Wind Waker brings a lot of nice things to the series, just as Metroid Fusion does. The problems with them are the same, though. They don’t really succeed because in the end, the template rules. They have to answer to it, so they don’t get away with as much as they might. It’s mechanics, not experience, that Nintendo chooses to deliver these days.
I don’t give a damn about the rules. I want to feel something.
Here’s the part where I’m a wiseguy and ask which series has undergone more substantial changes over the years, Zelda or King of Fighters? I suspect most fans of either would pick the other, which is only natural. Fans of something pay attention to the small but sometimes crucial changes between iterations, while non-fans shrug their shoulders and say that they all sort of look the same.
I adore Zelda and Metroid — or at least, what they once stood for. The series have certainly changed; they’ve regressed. It’s pretty sad when the first two games are the most sophisticated, and everything else has just been about weeding away what made the games stand out from the crowd. A process of prolonged blanding. That’s what distresses me. I have come to be dismissive through one mediocre decision after another.
As far as fighting games go, KOF has evolved more in concept, and covered more ground, than any other series I can think of. If you can even compare it to other games; the series operates on its own terms. It’s more a serial novel than anything. Yet it’s a serial that only becomes richer and more rewarding as it unfurls.
Meanwhile, all of Nintendo’s series become more generalized and mathematical, drawing from the same proven design documents.
Metroid isn’t as far along the decay as Zelda, of course. Nintendo avoided the series for nearly a decade after Yokoi died. And Intelligent Systems isn’t EAD. Now Retro is doing some insightful stuff with the concept, fleshing it out in a way Nintendo never did. Zero Mission gets a lot right, especially where it borrows from Retro rather than from Miyamoto. I like the way it prepares the player for how to deal with Metroids, for instance. It is, however, still mired in the same hyper-safe, inbred theory that Nintendo’s been using since 1991. And with every generation, that theory generates more genetic defects…
If every chapter of KOF were 2002 or NeoWave, I would feel the same as
I do about Zelda. (Conversely, this would probably please a lot of people.) If a game like Wind Waker or Fusion were allowed to follow through on its own ideas, rather than bow to the Miyamoto machine, I would be inclined to care more.
I’ve not really played Majora’s Mask. It’s the only Zelda game aside from Wind Waker to look interesting to me since the NES. I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT. That wasn’t too encouraging, though I suppose it doesn’t mean anything on its own.
Majora’s Mask is superior to Ocarina of Time in every way that matters. I’m Intentionally Wrong, and I approve this message.
Comments
Your sentiments, in general, are shared by myself as well as many others. Just a few thoughts:
I’m hesitant to group Link’s Awakening with the other post-NES LoZ games. Perhaps because it was “just a GameBoy game” (like Super Mario Land 3: WarioLand), it’s quirky, it’s engaging, and — much moreso than any other LoZ title — it’s clever. Of course, it was dumbed down in it’s GBC re-release (DX), but even that wasn’t so bad.
Metroid “decayed” with Metroid II and even moreso with Super Metroid and Fusion. Prime was a Metroid at heart, but a huge leap forward. And while Echoes is not substantially different from Prime in mechanics, it’s a clear break in theme from the rest of the series. Metroid is in an upswing, I’d say.
No mention of Nintendo’s “other” series? The one that’s been going downhill since SMB2j? I’d also have to disagree in the case of KoF, but I don’t care enough to explain.
Here’s my question, though. Would Nintendo be releasing games like WW, Fusion, and SMW if Sega (et al) hadn’t forced them to compete? Or did the end of the NES era merely coincide with the end of experimentation?
I really wish I could get up the energy to finish Zero Mission, just so that I could write my own comparisons between it and the original Metroid. But then again, I guess that I haven’t had the energy to finish it somewhat says what I thought.
And despite the good work Retro has done, they have their own issues. “Fixing” the Japanese release of Prime to remove the sequence breaking only reminds people just how linear Prime was, and apparently how linear Retro wants Metroid to be. Echoes has potential to be more annoyingly worse in that aspect with the dark world damage.
As for Zelda, the template is killing it, in part because the developers seem blind to the flaws of the template. Else they’d stop showing item descriptions on every pickup, at the very least for when you pick up an item after the first time. And they’d remove the stock footage item get animation. And they’d actually integrate the combination of items, interface, and the world in a way that didn’t involve so many trips to the menu. (In Wind Waker, why not combine the sail and deku leaf into one item? The sail is only usable in the boat while the leave is only usable out of the boat, and a deku leaf would be a believable sail.) The designers are too stuck in tradition, not realizing that said framework itself isn’t Zelda. Zelda is some combination of Link, Zelda, Ganon, the Tri-Force, Hyrule, dungeons, and freedom. Though the last has long been dropped.
Maybe it is the fault of Adventure of Link. Adventure was the first and last game to really shake up the Zelda formula. Perhaps it scared Nintendo out of the idea of diverging too far from form? As likely a possibility as the Super Nintendo effect, where designers were overwhelmed by prettier graphics and storyline over design, and templates were solidified for the future (Link to the Past, Super Metroid, etc)…
TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
aderack wrote:
I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT.
They are more reenvisioned that simply recycled. The NPC’s are almost universally fleshed out and given unique personalities, and the visual aspects of them are often dramatically reinterpreted. Majora’s Mask at times feels like a lovingly made piece of fan fiction based on the basic ingredients found in Ocarina of Time, and then heavily embellished.
You should play it. It’s a frustrating game, but incredibly rewarding. You might need a FAQ, though. Just because… Well, if you ever play it you will know what I mean.
I like and dislike Zero Mission in equal regards. It’s more or less completely unfaithful to the feel of the original game, although hard mode kind of takes steps to remedy that, but not completely.
But here’s my main beef with it: it doesn’t really know what it wants to be. It obviously isn’t a straight remake — the map is shaped more or less the same, but they added and changed so much as to effectively make it a different game. The cold, spacious, alien feel of the first game is nowhere to be found, nor is the fear and desperate struggle for survival (note to self: is Metroid the first survival horror game?). It instead aims to be a reimagining of the first game, but then — Super Metroid has already done that very well. It contained enough references to the first game (including some physical geometry), and restated some of the basic conflicts, while expanding upon the characteristics of Samus and the world of Zebes.
Zero Mission, while reenvisioning the spatial nature of Metroid‘s Zebes, doesn’t give us a new look at Samus; instead, it simply superimposes the existing abilities from Super Metroid onto the structure of Metroid — most infuriatingly when you effectively receive the space jump, gravity suit, and plasma beam all at once. This is just lazy design. This is evident even in the way sequence-breaking is returned. Every opportunity for sequence breaking feels scripted and planned — you never feel as if you are discovering something on your own, only that you are following an alternate path that the developer’s have purposefully laid out for you. It’s neat, but makes sequence breaking more joyless than in previous installments.
Really, it needs to be more like Super Metroid — a loose, spatial reinterpretation and expansion of Zebes. It includes a few references (the alien mothership and Crateria), but raises some uncomfortable questions. In Super Metroid, we assumed that the dramatic geographical changes were a result of the explosion at the end of Metroid, and yet — in this game, we are given the opportunity to explore Zebes after the blast, and it seems that only Tourian took any damage (and the damage taken, at that, is mostly cosmetic). And what of Maridia? What would’ve been more interesting is if the explosion dramatically changed the makeup of Zebes, giving the player an effectively new world — ideally one more resembling the Zebes of Super Metroid — to explore, where the new abilities (space jump, gravity suit, powerbombs) would be essential and useful. Alternatively, she would find those in this new Zebes instead of encountering them the first time through, instead of having them unlocked all at once.
Instead, it’s a warmed over compromise between a remake and a revision, and is too short and unsatisfying.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
What the game is, is a retelling of Metroid. You’ve seen the version that posterity has recorded. Now Samus is ready to tell her version of the story.
From that perspective, it’s really fascinating. And the differences mean a lot. I like most of the changes which have been done with the map. And I like the way the game constantly foils what you expect, having played the first game. I like how observant the game is of the kinds of things that people do. I mean. Every time I’d run into a Chozo statue in the first game, I’d always roll into a ball and lie in its hands, just for kicks. And now that serves a purpose.
I like that it learned from the mistakes in Fusion, yet didn’t quite want to give up on the new ideas in that game. I don’t really like how it implemented them this time, though the concept is clever. I like the way that the game explains why Samus’s character design suddenly was different in the second game. All of these little bits and pieces.
Honestly, the game bothers me less than any Metroid since the second one. (No, Super Metroid has never been my boat, really — it’s too show-offy.) The only thing that bothers me is how scripted it is. Again, it’s not as bad as Fusion. Yet there always seems to be something conveniently in the way, whether a bug larva a what, keeping you from where you want to go if you don’t want to go where you’re supposed to go. It doesn’t trust level design and psychology.
Well, that’s one thing. Another thing is the way the power-ups work, which has bugged me since the third game. There’s too much lock-and-key gameplay, for one. It’s not as bad as the tile-hunting in Fusion. It still makes me feel strange, though. The other part of it is just how powerful Samus becomes. The screw attack didn’t make her so unstoppable, in the original games. It was just useful and kinda’ neat. Yet it had its downsides. It was hard to control her, for instance. Now every upgrade just makes Samus more of a monster, rather than adding dimension. There’s no trade-off. Originally, you had to decide BETWEEN the Ice and Wave beams. Now you just combine them! Also, the Ice beam used to be one of the first upgrades I got. And now I’m not allowed to get it until a certain scripted point in the game. That’s annoying.
On the other hand, it makes some sense that the game would be as scripted and wholly unmysterious as it is, if Samus is essentially supposed to be narrating it to us — as is the premise. The premise makes up for a lot. I think the premise is the most important thing the game does, and could have other, broader, ramifications.
I’m… not going to get into the other use of the Chozo statues.
So. It sounds like I’m trashing the game here. I’m not, really. I’m just trying to prove a point. Metroid is falling prey to some of the same bad decisions that Zelda long ago did, and that distresses me. It’s not as bad yet to put me in the same state of apathy, though. And there is some new energy coming in, to fight the stagnation.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
That’s a good idea, as far as the logic for the new upgrades goes.
I don’t know if logic matters here, though, for reasons I outline above.
It seems fascinating. From here.
Re: Comments
To the contrary. Metroid II is where the game really gets in touch with its emotional core. It’s a hard game to like, but it’s probably the biggest achievement in the series. Nintendo chose to take the series in the opposite direction with the third game, away from impressionism and toward how neat the game system was. Much as with Zelda 3. One of the things that I like about Prime is how it brings the experience back into the picture.
I don’t know. I don’t count Retro’s games as normal Metroids, in part because they’re clearly different, in part because they’re a Western re-interpreation of the whole concept of Metroid. It’s not really Nintendo. I’m more concerned with Nintendo’s internal ideas about design.
SMB3 actually does a lot with the Mario concept; it expands it to a level that was barely even hinted at before. I’ve always put the decay point on the SNES again, with SMW. The SNES in general was the platform for shovelling back “better” versions of the games we’d already played. It’s the beginning of Nintendo’s downfall.
Nintendo basically misconstrued what an upgrade in hardware meant. Or maybe they didn’t, considering what success they met with.
I want to think that the “fixes” were orders from above. Just sounds like a Nintendo mandate to me. Though I am prepared to be wrong.
Linearity isn’t bad in its own right; only when it’s not done well. I never had a problem with Prime, as it legitimately felt to me like I was expanding my range through my own accomplishment. Also because I didn’t play it in a linear way. Understand that when I’m told to go right, I invariably go up and left. Or down. If possible. And there was always something to go back to and investigate again, in Prime. So I was always running back and forth, doing my own things, and progressing to new areas only when I felt like it.
There’s a lot of room for experience here.
In Wind Waker, why not combine HALF of the items into the other half? It’s like the game has the entire inventory of OoT, even though half the items are just powered-up duplicates for when Link is older.
See, that’s the whole thing. A system by itself is meaningless. A system exists in order to facilitate something greater — not for its own sake. Nintendo has had this cart-before-the-horse thing going for years. Wind Waker had a bunch of really lovely ideas, that went nowhere because someplace in the middle it decided it had to be have like a Zelda game, for no real reason, rather than do what it needed to do. It could have been a revolution. It was just a disappointment, though, because you — or at least I — can see the creativity being strangled by sheer bureaucracy.
You’re right. Adventure of Link scared everyone. It’s not the game I wanted at the time. I wanted more of the same. It’s the same deal with Metroid II, though less abruptly.
Of course, now AoL is one of the NES games I enjoy the most.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
Right. As far as scripting goes, it’s not just about where the game wants you to go next. It’s also about the items. I don’t like how the game counts how many items are left to find, and how it tells you when there’s an item hidden SOMEWHERE IN THIS ROOM.
It… betrays too much. It’s like it’s doing everything it can to keep me from feeling like I’ve done something cool on my own.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
Or, rather, TO MAKE SURE THAT I DON’T MISS ANYTHING.
That’s current Nintendo policy.
I find it a little insulting.
Re: Comments
First off, I must say that I like that you’re cross-posting your stuff here. Now I can go here if I ever need to read some of the pure concentrated genius you write.
Random thought on Metroid II:
I recall you saying that Metroid games are about circular motion. There like this in the constant-revisiting sense, yes, but there’s also that no matter how far you go from the start, you always return to somewhere close to there by the end. The entrance to Tourain is never too far from the starting point, you’re facing the door to the Impact Crater the moment you land on Tallon IV, and Fusion’s final battle takes place at the starting point.
II implements the circular motion idea differently- instead of making the player revisit areas to get required items, the entire game is a loop. You hit the end, and think you’ve gone so far, and you’ve actually just been making your way back to the start.
On Zelda II: Recently I recalled someone describing it as Mario with a sword. Thinking about it later… it’s more like Metroid with a sword, really, isn’t it? Mostly in gameplay concept- Mario is all about getting from point A to point B (up until 64, at which point it became a giant fetch quest), Metroid is more about exploring and getting stuff and wasting motherfuckers. Combine all the palaces in Zelda II into one, and you’ve got Metroid with a sword.
Now, THAT would be interesting. A Zelda game that was all one big dungeon. But then again, wasn’t Zelda I essentially one big dungeon connected to a handful of smaller ones? The overworld in that game was only slightly less hostile than the dungeons.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
I’ll agree on the Chozo statues. At least Prime gave you the option of not being told where the fuck to go. It’s like, “yeah, you wanna figure this game out on your own? Well FUCK YOU, it’s our way or the goddamned highway.” This is probably the same ideology that made them break some of the sequence breaking tricks in Prime (which made 90% of that game’s replay value for me. I wouldn’t have liked it enough to plop down a preorder for the sequal if it wasn’t for the times I replayed it trying to get a better time through sequence breaking.) “You think you’re so goddamned clever, getting up here without the grapple beam? Well NO PLASMA BEAM FOR YOU! Come back when we say you can get up here!”
It’s… not just Metroid. Didn’t Wind Waker bitch at you for trying to go off the path in the beginning? And it also wouldn’t let you get any of the goddamned motherfucking triforce pieces until you got and decoded the corresponding chart, even if you searched where it was.
Re: Comments
Metroid II was actually my favorite game in the series before I played Prime, because the original was far too unpolished for my liking — the gameplay really came together in Return of Samus. I would argue that the original Metroid had the better soul even though the implementation was flawed. It cleaned up nicely enough in Zero Mission.
SMB3, again, used to be my favorite SMB when I was a young’un. But when I look back at it, I see how much it strayed from the DK/MB/SMB feel. The levels weren’t meant to be challenging or necessarily well-crafted — they were meant to be cool. DK, MB and SMB show you everything Mario can do in the very first level. SMB3 tries to be clever with a wide variety of suits, some of which are common and some of which are rare (to the extreme of Kuribo’s shoe), backtracking and switchblock-based puzzles, and downright kooky ideas (the level with giant and regular-sized alteverses connected via doors), but it trades the Mario ideal of simple gameplay mastered by skill for a bunch of disposable, one-use concepts. The best levels were those of the Koopa Armada (be they those of the Doom Ships, tanks, or whatnot) because they didn’t do anything fancy. SMW certainly didn’t add much to the series, but it did try to rein in some of the excess from SMB3. Running and jumping. That’s what Mario is all about.
Your last line brings me to my other question. Does it matter? Have we been reduced to playing the part of old academians, over-analyzing the the products of yore while everyone else (greatly outnumbering us) moves on to bigger and quite-possibly-better-though-we’re-too-biased-to-see things?
For the perfectionists:
Well, what if you missed an item and couldn’t get 100%? That would be the worst thing ever! So it’s absolutely critical that you can always return to previous locations, and that you have some method for figuring out where the missing thingies are located.
What was the Metroid Fusion system, again? Once you beat the game, you could see how many of each kind of item were left in each subsection of the station, right?
Re: Comments
The whole thing that kind of… depresses me about the SNES is how it forces me to question the intentions behind some of my favorite NES games. The great atmospheres they achieved in some of those early games could’ve simply been accidents that they were able to “fix” as the hardware improved.
In some ways, Prime is what Super, Zero, and others should have been. Not the 3D, but the feel and approach. Prime made it feel like you had more freedom than you actually did, hiding the linearity a bit on your first play. You could explore, and get a minor reward, then return back to the next real objective.
And with some bloody-minded determination, you could do things out of order, some intended and some not. You could skip the thermal visor if you really wanted to, by memorizing the order of Thardus’ weaknesses and using manual targeting, and memorizing all the spots where you had to fire the electrical beam to connect circuits. Retro didn’t plan that kind of thing, they just left a way out around the visor and didn’t actually force key things to require it. I say it isn’t intentional because they didn’t do the same with the other visor, as as I recall you cannot actually hurt the invisible Omega Pirate if you don’t have it, and I want to recall that Prime itself takes no damage if you don’t have the proper visor for its invisibility.
But rather than take pride in the way people were playing the game, Retro took an even more noticeable stance against sequence breaking when they “fixed” the Japanese release of things like the glitch that allowed (with effort) getting space jump early.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
Maybe I have no reason to write Zero Mission comments, as you say pretty much what I wanted.
Zero Mission isn’t Metroid I, it is Super Metroid Zero, with all the flaws of Super Metroid and some Fusion flaws as well. It has the basic map of Metroid, but it never feels like Metroid anymore than the Super Metroid overlap area did.
Your hand is held throughout the game. The game makes it blatently clear when you’ve reached the end of your current area without picking up a needed item. And those barriers can feel so fake as well. Then again, the sequence breaking itself feels fake and carefully planned. The exploration itself feels fake. You go through effort to get someone, either to find a barrier you cannot pass yet or to find that that was where you were supposed to go next anyway. And the statue stuff gets kind of silly.
It takes some of the worst of the later games and tack them onto the original. It is still better than Fusion, but what does that really say about quality? I haven’t played Super in so long that I wouldn’t make a judgement there. I might would think poorly of it, but I want to think that it is a little better than Zero Mission.
Re: Comments
You know what they say. Creativity is the ability to make interesting mistakes. Talent is the ability to identify them as interesting.
It’s all subjective. If it works, then it works — no matter if it was intended. And if it does work, then it’s worth identifying — especially if it’s been largely overlooked by everyone else.
Re: For the perfectionists:
That sounds familiar. I can’t remember, really. I think it did something similar, though, with telling you exactly where items are.
Re: For the perfectionists:
Therefore it wasn’t so much about being clever and finding the items, as it was about solving the puzzles that IS set out for you, using all of the block and key mechanics built up over the series.
Kind of inane.
The same thing goes on in Zelda these days. It’s not discovery; it’s problem-solving.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
Zelda’s a lot worse. Again, I don’t so much mind what’s been going on with Metroid, mostly because it’s not as advanced a problem (Fusion excepted).
Now. From another perspective, the Chozo statues do work. They provide more insight into the plot and logistics of what was going on during Metroid, that was never revealed before. Zero Mission works as long as you come at it as Samus’s alternate take on the story, where she tells you all of the details you hadn’t heard before. From that perspective, I actually really dig most of what the game does (contrived issues aside). Where it doesn’t work is if you look for the feelings you got in the earlier Metroids. They’re just not there. As with Fusion, the game exists to fill in the cracks — not to create new questions. Both games are almost like fanfics.
If you’re into the mythology, it’s great on that level. If you just want a videogame that works on its own merits — well. Talk to Retro.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
See what I say a few comments above, about the mythology and the purpose the game serves.
It does that well. And it’s intriguing for its part. It assumes that we’ve already played this game (for the most part), and so its task is more to give an alternate, more detailed version of the story than to do something that provides the same feelings over again. It’s a meta-Metroid.
I mean. It has its obvious problems, and I complain about them. Beyond those, it really depends on how you approach the game. Perhaps even more than Fusion ZM is a significant departure from the rest of the series, conceptually.
Yeah, that is annoying. Again, though, it feels more like a corporate decision (particularly with the way Nintendo works these days) than something the actual designers would worry about. I can see someone tapping them on the shoulder and saying “the game is broken; players might get confused. Fix it.”
Ah well.
That is something else in Prime that can be studied, although it’s not unique: how a linear structure can be made to feel natural. It’s just sleight-of-hand, mostly. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed, though.
Re: Comments
I don’t remember saying that. I guess I did. That’s an interesting way to put it.
On Zelda II being Mario with a sword: well. You also have hammer bros. and cheep-cheeps. And the downthrust, with its effect. There’s also a Dragonquest influence; therefore there are slimes.
How do you interpret the difference between the two kinds of circularity?
Re: Comments
The original Metroid just feels… weird. It’s certainly more rounded and fulfilling than Metroid II — yet the second game is so much more intense. It weeds out the uncertainty and oppression and focuses on it for almost the whole game. The exploration is also more interesting, thanks to the spider ball and to how less blocky the environments were.
The biggest objective problems are also the parts of the game which create the strongest experience (like how same the environments tended to be, threfore how easy it was to get lost).
It almost feels like a bad dream. “Have I been here before? Is there a way out? I’m almost dead. Should I move? Help me.”
Again. Expressionistic. Like a silent horror movie. I don’t think it would work as well in color, or were it more polished. It needs grit. Texture.
Since there was so much discussion before this will more than likely get ignored but having just finished M:ZM recently I thought that I would comment.
While I like your idea that it is a retelling of the original story, I do not really agree. Were it a re-telling ANYONE who went through the original would have remembered how damned hard it was. I have, as of now, only played through it in normal. The first time I died was at mother brain. Now I am not the most skilled of gamer, but I know that I am at least of average skill. So this means that most people probably played until at least mother brain with out dieing. This is way too easy.
Spoilers. Then the game really disappointed me. The escape after mother brain. The first time I ever defeated mother brain (original Metroid) I died trying to escape. That was tragic and heart breaking, but when I got over it and then beat it again it made it all the more sweet. The escape in ZM is not only easy it was too easy.
Anyways, then the game turns into Metroid Gear Solid and really disappointed me. I ended up beating it with only 60% so that I could open the original and perhaps get a hard mode. Mecha Ridley was easier than Mother Brain… hell easier than the black space pirates.
I have never played Super Metroid, the GB ones, or Fusion but I don’t think they could disappoint me as much as ZM. It is a pretty sound game at points, but like you said there is no trade off. When you get the Screw Attack in Metroid you are very aware that you can screw the game up as easily as you can improve it. The diagonal jump is now not only a deadly weapon, but a platform destroyer if you like the Ice Beam. But this topic was already touched on.
I have not finished a LoZ game since Link’s Awakening. I must be a sucker though as I have bought almost everyone since LoZ. I did not even manage to start sailing before I gave up on Wind Waker, but I am kind of glad. I know that after I saw my wife sailing around I would have gouged my eyes out with spoons.
Re: For the perfectionists:
Well, I wasn’t referring to the “puzzle rooms” (such as the “keep your dash going for several levels or you’ll have to start over” room), I was just referring to the item count that you got after you had already beaten the game. Ignore for a moment how those items were actually hidden — getting that hint (even with the item count, you still had a lot of rooms to search) after you had already completed the game simply let you narrow your search. I think it’s a pretty good way of playing to the perfectionists (given Metroid’s history of rewarding 100% games, there’s actually some merit to a perfectionist playstyle) without dropping every single item in their lap. In contrast, I had to look up where a few Missiles were in Metroid Prime, since I had traversed the entire world several times over and still hadn’t found them.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
Actually, I tend to think of Fusion as a meta-metroid (explaining that would be difficult, maybe I’ll dedicate a post to it later), and, despite its flaws (and it has many), I prefer it to Zero Mission.
This is not to say that I dislike Zero Mission. As you say, it works well as a retelling of the original Metroid, and is interesting in terms of the series mythology. I still feel that Super Metroid retold that story in a more imaginative way. This is not to say that Super Metroid is without its problems, but the problems it has are shared and made worse by Zero Mission. They both lose the desperate, survival/horror (as opposed, I guess, to survival-horror) feel of the first two games. Samus is never at a loss for energy or supplies, nor is it ever that ambiguous where you have to go next. They just feel too comfortable and cushy.
(An aside: I think a major reason for all this is the large sprites. Samus takes up a bigger proportion of the screen in both of those games, and the surrounding environments feel smaller. This is especially troubling in Zero Mission, when Samus stands around the same environments as in Metroid but is an entire tile taller. Add to that how much faster she runs, how much more maneuverable she is… At least Super Metroid partially made up for this by being so large; the feeling of vastness came in how much there was to explore. Both of these are sacrificed in Zero Mission. But it’s funny how these subtle, small things changed for the sake of “convenience” can so dramatically alter the feel of a game.)
Part of what appeals to me about Fusion is that it exchanges the spacious fear (agoraphobia, I guess) of the first game with claustrophobia. The original Metroid was a strongly dramatic experience, and Fusion recaptures that drama in a totally different way. The only time Zero Mission comes close is in the added chapter when Samus loses her suit. Ironic that they can only approach the feel of the first game using completely new material.
I also really like the story — it is aware of the Metroid games, how the narrative is always determined by Samus’ abilities, and makes Samus’ abilities the core of the plot — the nemesis of the game is a creature with Samus’ abilities, nearly all the bosses represent one of her abilities aesthetically and in how they move, and the plot is literally advanced by suit upgrades and what abilities you can get. The game is even aware of the way it is controlling you, and, all tile-hunting aside, it plays against this by making Samus take seemingly alternate and unorthodox routes through the station. By the end of the game you wind up taking routes (and finding upgrades) that the ship’s computer obviously doesn’t want you to take, yet you just sort of have to — in a way, that’s brilliant. The game has some flaws, but it is the most interesting game in the series, so far; it’s a stretch to call it a Metroid game, but in way, I am happy with that. In my mind, though, it seems to be the real departure from the series, and Zero Mission feels like a lukewarm retread of Super Metroid, and a definite step back from Fusion.
Explain to me then, why Zero Mission is such a great departure. I think we are coming at this from totally opposite angles. I am, as you suggest, looking at this in terms of how it makes me feel — but I am willing to accept it on its own merits. Except, well… it doesn’t really make me feel anything, except comfortable, I guess. I don’t think that’s a good fit for the series.
Merits of Zero Mission as a game
That is my problem with Zero Mission, I think it should be a videogame that works on its own merits. The mythology should be an extra. If I was most concerned with the mythology, I’d ask for an anime or Samus’ autobiography. Given the option between a average quality handholding contrived experience one step above a visual novel and a game that engages you on its gameplay, I’d rather have the gameplay.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Metroid I aspect of Zero Mission suffers the SNES transition of focus, the GB/GBA transition of bite-sized simplification, and the general drift in design priorities that Nintendo has undergone over the years. In that regard, Zero Mission is perhaps everything that I should have expected it to be.
Even for Nintendo, games like Pikmin are the exception. Games like Wind Waker are the norm. I liked Wind Waker despite the ton of design issues and flaws that it contained, even compared to Ocarina. I didn’t like Zero Mission. Thinking about it, the remake aspect may have even hurt it for me. I wanted better for Samus, and got average. The potential was easy to see, but Nintendo had a different design in mind than I.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
I like the new stuff in Fusion a lot. I think it’s great. Zero Mission tries to implement the new things a little differently, to combat criticism of Fusion. It goes about it the wrong way, I think, as those elements (the stealth thing is the most obvious) are much more integrated into the scenario and concept of Fusion. IS and R&D#1 just wanted to try again, it seems. They’d have better waited for a follow-up to Fusion, I think.
About the departure that it makes — it’s hard to explain. I think we’ve been getting too rational about things. I don’t want this to turn into ludology.org. Although I’m annoyed with a lot of the mechanical decisions in ZM, and their ramifications — there’s something else going on, which makes me like the game a lot anyway. I mean. It doesn’t make me feel the way I expect from a Metroid game — but so what? I’ve already felt that way.
There’s a certain awareness here; a meta-circularity, if you will. It.
…
Well, it’s founded in the concept. I know that much. It has something to do with the different focus — that on filling narrative holes. It has something to do with an alternate approach to something so familiar that it’s become almost biblical. Something to do with the inclusion of the original game. Something to do with an internal subjectivity that’s implied. Something to do with the nature of storytelling.
It feels awfully important, on a philosophical level.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
This strikes me as a very cult game, somehow.
…
There’s also a difference between my “so what” here and my frustration with Zelda. I hope no one asks me to outline it, as that will annoy me.
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
I’ve been playing the original metroid on my brother’s zero mission cart. I just dipped into Zero Mission for a second (don’t want to play it until I beat the original) what really irked me aside from the chozo’s telling you were to go (although I think you are right about their value in terms of backstory) is this random boss that now appears after you first get the missiles. Okay sure you weren’t there in the original but this is the full story so I can deal with you, but… Due to my inability to figure out how to use the missiles (even after the game told me how) I was unable to kill the damn thing and then after a short period of time it went away. That’s patronizing bullshit. Nintendo really needs to stop talking down to their audience and making everything a cake walk. It’s one thing if the bosses end after a certain period of time in Ikaruga because I know from the beginning of the encounter that I have a time limit. However a giant worm that shows up on Zebes in order for me to become acquainted with my missiles (in case I’m illiterate or hasty and thus miss the screen that tells me how to use them) shouldn’t be working on a stop watch. Playing through the original has really brought out how much has changed in the past 20 or so years.
What was so originally brilliant about Nintendo games was this whole aspect of exploration that didn’t really exist until they resurrected the home console business. It’s a shame that they gave up that once the business was back and they realized that they could profit by just constantly remaking the same game and making it impossible not to beat it. Granted it’s a Konami game but my fascination with Metal Gear started with the first one. I’m this dude who looks like Rambo, who can punch and smoke a cigarette but I can’t beat my way through to the first installation. It took me 17 years to figure that game out. I mean we shouldn’t expect (or want) games to necessarily take that long to be figured out but it’s in the best interest of the video game medium to go back to being challenging. Nintendo is in a special position where they have some incredible IP, like Zelda and Metroid that express these deep and interesting themes about what makes gaming interesting and its not so fun to watch them squander them by making the video game equivalent of romantic comedies. I’d appreciate it if they gave us at least one more game with some meat to chew on then yet another one that tells us what to do so that we can get a little chunk of some irrelevant story line. THE VALUE OF YOUR PAST PROJECTS IS NOT THE STORY OF SAMUS VS SPACE PIRATES BUT THE IDEA THAT A FEELING OF ISOLATION AND FEAR IN AN ALIEN ENVIRONMENT CAN BE EXPRESSED BY A “GAME.”
Re: TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS CROSS-POSTING GAME!
That boss? It’s meant to go away. That’s just a tease for later.
You should perhaps watch your wife play Wind Waker, as it has some really good moments. Unfortunately, they are few and separated by hours of sailing and average or dull moments.
The Battleship minigame conversations are hilarious. The final battle with Ganon and the aftermath are great, and in that nostalgic way that the intro invokes (when the game is using the classic music and then says that the Hero didn’t come).
As for the danger of the screw attack, that thing killed me in the escape attempt… I accidentally broke a block I wanted to land on, and the panic from that made me miss several more on the fall. But then again, I don’t know if I want another escape like that. I absolutely feared Metroid Prime would use it after going through the sheer hell of the Fission Metroid chamber and Prime itself.