Kyle Reviews Metroid: Samus Returns
No, I will not be comparing Metroid: Samus Returns to the well received fan-game "Another Metroid 2 Remake" [AM2R] here. I feel that enough is already going to be said, and I simply want to look at this game on its own for its own values and understanding of what makes Metroid 2 good to attempt to remake.
With that out of the way, let's talk about my first impressions when I saw this air first. I was surprised, excited, and frustrated all at the same time. It had been way too long since we had seen any kind of 2D Metroid game, and the promise of this new one being a brand new 2D styled adventure had me excited. The fact that it was a Metroid 2 remake...had me both excited and frustrated. I love AM2R to pieces so to see this made me feel conflicted. However, I did push all of that aside, because in the end, I really just wanted another Metroid game from Nintendo, and so here we are with a brand new game that promised to be really, really fun with brand new, helpful abilities that hadn't been seen before in a Metroid game. I do recall somewhere that someone mentioned that they were "optional", though, which they really aren't. I'm going to get into that later, however.
The first question I guess I should answer is: Is Metroid: Samus Returns worth buying? I firmly believe that this is a good Metroid game and is well worth your time. However, there are problems with it that may dissuade more picky buyers. It is a remake of Metroid 2, so if you're looking for all new original content from a Metroid game, you might want to wait for Metroid Prime 4. This game is considerably difficult even for a Metroid title, so be prepared for a long haul with learning the mechanics, especially if you've never played a Metroid game before.Other than that and a few small but definitely glaring issues, this game still is worth playing and buying for full price.
To keep things compartmentalized, I'm going to go in a usual order of presentation, audio/visual stimulation, gameplay, overall enjoyability and my overall thoughts on the game. Starting right up with the presentation, this game opens up with a relatively short but intriguing introduction to the basic premise of Metroid. It talks about the space pirates who discovered Metroids and used them in a diabolical scheme to attempt galactic domination. Samus Aran beat them back and destroyed the central control for the Metroids, the Mother Brain, ending their operations for a time. However, the concern over Metroids was still at large within the Galactic Federation. Soon, the home planet for Metroids, SR388, was discovered and a recon team was sent to investigate and see how dangerous the Metroid threat was. In short...they died very quickly to the Metroids and other hostile fauna and their last transmissions signaled that an urgent response was needed. Without delay, a council was held to determine the fate of the Metroids, and the decision was unanimous. Genocide was called for, and Samus Aran was the bounty hunter paid for the job.
With an excellent introduction out of the way, Samus lands on SR388 and immediately the story takes a backdrop to small cutscenes that play with no dialogue or anything like that. Samus never speaks, returning instead to the role of silent protagonist whose motions and actions once again portray a battle-hardened and respectable heroine and badass. Samus' mission is to uncover the Metroids and their various evolutionary states and destroy them they end up threatening the entire galaxy should they ever find a way off-world with another band of brigands.
This backseat presentation with no dialogue whatsoever is something that I appreciate. However, there are still cutscenes that play and, while most can be skipped, they still tend to interrupt the flow of the gameplay. There are plenty of games that I feel could stand to learn from simpler games that tend to not have cutscenes, instead letting their scenes play out in front of the player and letting the player interact with the changing scene how they will, be it actively or passively. I do not mind the cutscenes in this like I do the ones in Hey! Pikmin because these are relatively unobtrusive and serve primarily to draw attention to important details. I would still prefer a "hands off" approach to presentation, letting the scenes that occur in game happen while the player is still fully mobile. That being said, the cutscenes still add depth to an already visually impressive game and that matters more than my personal opinions about the approach.
The story overall gets more intriguing as more hints are given. There is now an explanation as to why Samus cannot use her gravity suit that she eventually gets to skip a good portion of the game by simply swimming in lava. The fluid that blocks Samus' progress is purple and highly corrosive, and intentionally engineered by the Chozo to combat the Metroids. At the top of each level in this tunnel that allows for access to where the Metroids have been contained, there is a "lock" that only accepts the DNA of Metroids. Kill the Metroids present in each area, plug in the DNA, and the next level unlocks. It was meant to be so that someone could come and eradicate the Metroids, should they feel the need, because the Chozo realized that they had made a terrible mistake in engineering the Metroids to be such deadly killers and were hoping that a warrior strong enough to kill them would find them and do the job where they could not.
Along the way through the game, Samus finds multiple artifacts left behind by the Chozo and more implications that they were even there, with later areas even revealing their laboratories where Metroids were grown and experimented on. The final area is, of course, the Metroid Breeding Grounds where the Metroid Queen resides. After Samus kills the Metroid Queen, we get to the baby Metroid and Samus takes the baby metroid and leaves the planet...after a fun but poorly chosen surprise enemy boss fight, of course. Damn you, padding!
All of this and more is told in background elements as well as pictures that unlock after enough items are obtained. Getting 100% item completion opens up the full gallery of pictures, called "Chozo Memories", that show the Chozo scientists finding the X parasite and studying them to find a way to destroy them before then engineering Metroids to destroy the X parasite...and then realizing that they had done too much damage and had created a monster so terrible that they had to lock them away for good. There's even an additional picture for getting 100% that reveals even more and perhaps leaves the series open for a side game or a side story of any kind. These are the kinds of treats in presentation that leave me hungering for more of a game, and it is so well done throughout the game and at the end that I just want to see more details, more exploration, and more lore for this already amazing game series.
Moving on to the visual aspect, this game looks amazing for a 3DS polygonal game. In fact, as far as 3DS games go, there aren't as many that I can recall that quite look as superb as this one does. The backgrounds to each part of the game are simply amazing, there are plenty of little details to the game, and each model that is presented is top-quality for the 3DS' standard of graphics. And to top it all off, Samus still manages to stand out enough that players cannot easily lose her amidst the busy backgrounds and foreground. This distinction is important for things to come, as shadows and darker colors are used very well to keep things in the background until they are ready to enter the playing field. It allows for smooth transitions, movement in the background, or even a whole boss fight to take place mostly in the background with elements coming to the foreground. It is a clever design that works extremely well to resent more depth than before within the game and I highly appreciate the effort that went into making this game look as stunning as it does.
As for audio, this game's sound direction is high quality. There are familiar and new sounds coming back to players, with the metal "konk" as Samus takes damage, the new explosion sound of the bombs and the firing beam sounds, to a neat throwback to Super Metroid upon death. The music...my goodness, the music is back! There are remixes to songs from Metroid II: Return of Samus that are top notch, there are tracks mixed in from Metroid Prime, and there are even a couple of original tracks added in to spice things up. Not a beat was missed for how the music is presented in this game and it works so well for the atmosphere of the game.
One of the large issues I take with Metroid II: Return of Samus is the straight up lack of music or, when there is music, it's painfully simple or even ear grinding. That problem has been resolved here and then some, with each area's music impacting it well. However, I do take some issue with the fact that the lava areas are split between everything, meaning that there isn't just one place where the Magmoor Caverns/Lower Norfair track plays for those areas. Every time Samus enters one of those areas, for the brief amount of time they last, that track plays and it becomes rather inconsistent in its overall impact. I would have preferred one of the areas to be the dedicated "heat" area, much like it was in every single Metroid game that had one. I am not complaining too heavily about there being heat areas and the cool music therein, but it would have been so much more meaningful to have the Lower Norfair track for an entire area again instead of dispersed throughout the game.
Concerning the gameplay, this is everything a Metroid veteran could ask for and for a newcomer to learn to play with. Well, perhaps almost. There are a few crucial things that could be changed for the better and some gameplay aspects that are not well conveyed that lead to frustration if the player is simply unaware of them going in. Let's dive in and see what there is.
Samus controls remarkably smoothly, given the control scheme. The main point of contention here is that Samus moves using the circle pad on the 3DS. While I was not thrown off too badly by this, having been playing Hey! Pikmin before this, I have seen and read other reviews where this throws people off very badly, and I completely understand why. While moving left and right is not a problem, it is aiming down, crouching, going into morph ball, or aiming up/diagonally on the move that becomes tricky for Samus to perform when the deadzones of the circle pad don't lend themselves well to precise 2D control. I've never appreciated the circle pad much, but I found myself able to perform well with the controls no problem.
Samus abilities are mapped well enough: B is to jump, Y is to shoot, X to do melee counter (more on that later) "R" switches to missiles, and "L" turns on the all new "360 degree aiming" or "omni-directional aiming" or however the game or others might like to call it, stopping Samus in place but allowing for Samus to aim anywhere on the screen. This is the best part of Samus' new moveset and lets Samus take on challenges in a way that simply wasn't possible in previous games. With this, the frustrations of not being able to aim precisely enough to hit enemies without a lot of jumping or repositioning are greatly diminished. Boss fight patterns are done well to reflect this new utility and to be based around the player being required to master using it, a system that I find a welcome addition and should be present in every single remake/2D Metroid game from here on out. The best part about this is that it doesn't even feel like it is horribly limiting. The lockdown might throw some people off, but the camera pans out away from Samus when the aiming is done to allow for a better field of view, and accidental pressing the button in midair doesn't turn it on. Samus has to be firmly on the ground for it to turn on, or firmly on a ledge not going anywhere else to turn it on, meaning that it is unobtrusive to the experience.
The other new function is a bit mixed for me. The melee counter is taught very early...and is used throughout the entire game. The premise is very simple: Samus counters an enemy with good timing, the enemy is stunned and left vulnerable. There's only one small problem to this: the game demands that this ability be used and mastered very quickly. Enemies are vicious and will attack frequently, and the counter features somewhat as a "stop and go" mechanic, forcing Samus to stop, counter, shoot, and then move on. And I only say "shoot" once because the counter mechanic is also overpowered. A countered enemy, when shot with the first shot after a counter is performed, will die instantly from that shot. The only exceptions are Metroids and boss fights, where countering them allows for high amounts of damage, but not instant kills...but everything else has this mechanic of "instant death" applied to them.
The game does attempt to make the counter something of a puzzle for later enemies. Later Metroid evolutions have specific patterns to watch for when they are countering, boss fights later on tend to have a specific pattern in the same way that can be punshing to be attempting to learn, but all the more satisfying to get down in order to deal massive damage to the boss. That being said, I still wish that the melee counter wasn't so useful or, if it was, that it was either harder to perform, or reserved for boss fights in specific instances. Because this game is so centered around the melee counter as a gimmick to Samus' arsenal, I feel that it falls short in other areas. Previous Metroid titles would allow for enemies to have their specific patterns, but there was always a good chance that Samus would easily be able to eradicate them, given that her beams were generally very powerful later on, or just that they weren't so overly aggressive or hard to kill in the first place that a gimmick like this would be necessary. The overall game design suffers because it tries too hard to incorporate the melee counter as a gimmick, something I find disappointing and wish wasn't present, then. The best parts of a boss fight are when the melee counter isn't in use, as it detracts from the core principle of the game for a cool cinematic that feels unnecessary in most cases.
Let me digress now to better things. Thanks to the game being on the 3DS, the development team saw fit to use both screens for different purposes and to good effect. The top screen is all of the action and none of the information except for the visual aspect of the game. The bottom screen contains literally everything else: The map, remaining missile ammunition, the health bar, Metroids remaining and the beams. This information is, thankfully, well organized and so doesn't feel clustered and problematic. The touch screen for the map is also used to bring up the ability to add notes. These are an immensely useful feature, allowing a player to clearly mark for himself where he wants to go back to to explore with later gear to claim a pickup that was previously inaccessible. This is such a huge step up from previous games that had no "note taking" functionality, which I felt was something that was missing. The notes aren't detailed, they're simple markers to be placed down of varying colors, but they make a huge difference when backtracking for items.
Switching beams and missiles, however, brings up another major point of contention for people and for myself. The touch screen is the way that beam swapping and missile swapping is handled. Without some practice using the thumbs, this feature can be rather intrusive, as it takes away the ease of using buttons to quickly swap between missiles, or even giving another button the option to switch between the three beam types that are available. It also is hard to change missiles on the fly because a player is required to hold down the "R" trigger to open up the missiles, and change them from there. Couldn't we have used the select button or one of the new "ZL" and "ZR" triggers for that? There were better ways to handle the switching weapons, and while it doesn't subtract from the experience for me as much, I can see it posing problems for many others due to the finicky nature of the touch screen.
The other mechanic that I feel both in love with and conflicted with are the new "Aeion" abilities that Samus gets access to. There are four in total: Scan Pulse, Lightning Armor, Beam Burst and Phase Drift. These abilities are not optional, no matter what the game devs said at one point. They are all optional in boss fights, but as far as progression and exploration go, they might as well all be needed to clear the game at one point or another, with the exception of the Scan Pulse.
I love the Scan Pulse. This is the long sought after solution to the previous problem of having to bomb every single wall to find the right way to go or find that extra way through for a pickup. The scan pulse reveals a portion of the map around Samus that remains visible and darkened until fully explored, and it also highlights blocks that are hidden or not obvious on the main screen. This is the single best addition to a Metroid game. Say what you will about the X-Ray Visor from Super Metroid, this thing is just that much better, able to be used on the fly and actually fully revealing the map for players to find ease of access. A veteran of this game won't find as much use for it, but for first time players, this is the best way to let people find the secrets and comfortably handle the exploration. And to those of you who think it detracts from the Metroid experience to use it...just don't use it. Problem solved. This Aeion power is completely optional to use.
Lightning Armor protects Samus from incoming damage and increases the already mighty range of her melee counter by an enormous amount. However, it is mostly useful for environmental hazards, as it simply drains the Aeion gauge far too fast to be useful against repeated enemy attacks or boss fights. This powerup is highly beneficial and is sometimes required in order to snag pickups early on without dying. The Beam Burst does insane damage by rapid firing whatever primary beam Samus has equipped, at the cost of rapidly draining the Aeion gauge. This ability is great fun to use, but is both too useful and not useful enough at the same time, being able to shred enemies but being next to worthless at times in certain boss fights. This ability is needed to make progression through certain areas until more movement upgrades are obtained, making this one not as optional as the game devs would have liked us to believe. The final ability, the phase drift, slows down time for everything around Samus. This is a very useful exploration ability and can potentially get Samus out of a tight spot, but little else. It drains the Aeion gauge fairly quickly, to the point where extended use is not a good idea. This is the one ability that I never bother using unless it's to get a specific pickup or complete a specific puzzle or in areas to make progress actually possible.
Other than that, the powerups and gameplay are similar to old school games. Most of Samus' arsenal shows up here: The morph ball and bombs, the Varia and Gravity suits, the space jump and screw attack, missiles and super missiles, power bombs, and even the grappling beam comes back to say hello! We've been missing the grapple beam ever since its inception in Super Metroid, with the Metroid Prime games paying it its due service but other games tending to forget about it. Oddly, the Speed Booster is now missing from the roster of upgrades, which is sad because I personally liked the Speed Booster and Shinesparking puzzles for certain pickups and getting through areas faster.
In place of the speed booster for elements like that, the devs gave Samus a brand new ability that is amazing...provided you know how it works. Once Samus gets the power bombs, Samus can use them in morph ball mode to fling herself in a direction at high velocity until she connects with a wall. There's just one problem: There is no indication that this is possible. In order to get this to activate, Samus must lay a power bomb while in Spiderball to have it take effect. Sitting on top of a power bomb regularly doesn't move Samus at all, yet for some reason being in Spiderball does the trick just fine. There's no sense for this to be a mechanic and no indication that it could be possible, yet there are several puzzles for very important pickups that require this feature. I only figured it out by wording in the guide I picked up and from there, I was able to experience it, but this is "core mechanic" to the game that some players may take years to find out that it exists and might come down to calling this game a "badly designed game" because it feels impossible to 100% without this trick. I am all for the game teaching me new things without telling me in the form of a real tutorial, like how Super Metroid shows off wall jumping and shinesparking, but gives little instructions on how to perform them, instead encouraging the player to try and mimic the behaviors of the animals employing them. This trick has no such tutorial...and as such, is badly implemented just on the lack of context alone, unfortunately.
Moving forward, exploration is primarily tied to one given area, with very little reason given to backtrack except to gain extra goodies with new power-ups. The game is incredibly linear and can be played straight through without any backtracking whatsoever, save for a few small instances within the same area. A well planned and executed run of this game could, without major glitches and cheats, be roughly done in about two hours or less. I say well planned because it is important to know an optimal route, because this game is surprisingly large, being the largest 2D Metroid game to date and perhaps rivaling the Prime games with its depth. And well executed...because this game is also very difficult.
While this game may not lose a player too much in backtracking, it more than emphasizes the difficult nature of the enemies. I suspect it was to give the melee counter some purpose, but every enemy hits hard in Metroid: Samus Returns. In fact, a few good hits from basic enemies near the start of the game will see players finding their first "game over" screen very quickly! I know that this is to balance out the counter and to add some flavor, but the reason that enemies could get away with hitting super hard in something like Metroid: Fusion was because the game was designed to feel like a struggle, and it still gave more than enough energy tanks for resourceful and explorative players to feel like a true badass later on. Metroid: Samus Returns is incredibly stingy with energy tanks, perhaps the stingiest in the series if it weren't for the original NES and GB titles taking that glory to themselves. Out of all of the new and well-made Metroid games, this has the fewest energy tanks and and it feels like there are even less when major bosses can destroy entire energy tanks in one blow.
This lack of energy against bosses can make some of the boss fights feel downright cruel, especially for newer gamers. There were multiple times when fighting the later bosses of this game that I found myself wishing that they didn't hit as hard and there was more room for error. Then there is the fact that a couple of the solutions to fighting bosses can be...rather cryptic. This puzzle aspect to the fights can make the fights more interesting, but unless it is balanced with high damage output on finding the solution and there isn't a way to damage the boss without, this can also be intensely frustrating, especially with a boss named the "Diggernaught." This fight is a three phase boss battle with each phase doing a different pattern, and only two of the phases have the same way to damage the machine present. The third and final phase requires dropping morph ball bombs into his vacuum tube as he sweeps it across the room, and then spider balling across his face to lay bombs on the points as the lights cross on the inner and outer circle in order to finalize the damage. This last part wouldn't be so bad, had I known that you could sit on the point you wanted and be free from the electric defense field it generates...I spent at least a good hour on this boss because of this phase giving me trouble for being so cryptic, leading this to be one of the lowest points in the game. There are times when hard is fun, and other times where fun is stupid thanks to the cryptic nature of a boss or cheap difficulty...the former of which is what makes the difficulty in this game feel stupid from time to time.
Problems with the difficulty and lack of useful information conveyance, the gameplay still remains quite remarkable. I could have sworn that the touch of classic 2D styled gameplay had been lost to the wake of 3D and was going to be all but lost to time given a few more years, and yet here I am finding more and more games that call back to the simple yet finely crafted art that can be displayed with a more simple style of gaming. Samus feels mobile, powerful, and doesn't feel like she is helpless in this extremely hostile environment. Exploration is a treat, there is not necessarily a "wrong" way to approach several situations in the areas, and the game leaves itself open for multiple routing styles to choose from. This, in turn, is probably going to open itself up to speedrunning quite easily. Super Metroid still has this game beat for all of the various routes that are possible to be taken, but not by much now. This game is certainly more open than Metroid: Fusion...
The entertainment value from the entire experience is quite strong in this game. Even if Metroid games aren't usually the preferred game for many, this game keeps to its roots enough to please veterans of the franchise but also offers enough fixes to old and archaic designs to appeal to fans just hopping into the gaming series. The difficulty may be a turn off for some, but I find that the difficulty is a welcome addition, presenting a game that requires work and gives a strong, satisfied feeling upon completion, something inherently missing from many newer games. The difficulty usually never feels cheap, either, it usually results from player mistakes, with nothing quite feeling cheap...except in a few small instances.
The minimal dialogue in the storytelling offers players a chance to jump straight into the game without any pauses, save for the few (skippable) cutscenes that introduce new Metroids, new enemies, or otherwise give important details to the story. For the visual people, there is plenty to see in this new title, as the game is very well crafted and overall a treat to look and enjoy. This game offers so much without changing up the original formula drastically, and that's exactly what many were hoping for with the return of another 2D Metroid game. The overall gameplay is marred with certain design decisions and hiccups, but they are not so bad that this game can't be enjoyed.
My overall thoughts on this game as a person who experienced it myself is that it is a great return to what I've been yearning to see in a Metroid game. I love the Metroid Prime trilogy, and I liked playing most of Metroid: Other M. What marred that game is not present in Metroid: Samus Returns, and that's exactly how I had hoped this game would come off. I found this game to be frustrating from time to time, particularly when going for 100%, seeing as the power bomb + spiderball trick was never even subtly hinted at for being possible...and our surprise fight at the end with a certain something makes no sense going forward, in my honest opinion. It is a very fun fight, but it is completely unnecessary and feels like a strange bit of padding to make the gameplay more "climactic" feeling at the end.
The pacing also suffers somewhat from other factors. Some might find the "hunt the Metroids down" aspect appealing, and if they weren't such a pest to hunt down sometimes, it wouldn't be a problem. I'm talking about the Gamma Metroids, the ones that fly and crawl...and go through these stupid holes in the walls and enter different rooms altogether, prompting a "hunt" scenario that just feels useless and adds more time to the game than needs to be there. Part of the fun for Metroid II: Return of Samus was that finding the Metroids and killing them was relatively simple and straightforward...and while I welcome the idea that each Metroid is a miniature boss fight to some degree, I think that the "boss fight" nature of the Metroids should have been saved for Zeta and Omega Metroids instead of having even the Beta and Gamma Metroids feeling annoying to fight.
Does this game rate next to the other 2D Metroids well? I would say that it does. I feel that this fits firmly into my list of favorite games in general, and sits alongside Metroid: Zero Mission and Fusion as great 2D titles. Super Metroid still has one thing going for it that none of the others do, and that's that true sense of non-linearity that can be experienced when one hits a certain skillcap, but given enough time, I think Nintendo has poised itself to outdo even Super Metroid.
I would rate this game 4/5. It's a great game, held back by a few larger issues that keep it from standing among other 5/5 games. It is a welcome return of a long sought after style of gameplay and I am very eager to see Nintendo give us more. And, for being a remake of a black sheep, this game still manages to achieve great things even if it is held back by feeling that it has to recreate the namesake of an old GB title.
With that out of the way, let's talk about my first impressions when I saw this air first. I was surprised, excited, and frustrated all at the same time. It had been way too long since we had seen any kind of 2D Metroid game, and the promise of this new one being a brand new 2D styled adventure had me excited. The fact that it was a Metroid 2 remake...had me both excited and frustrated. I love AM2R to pieces so to see this made me feel conflicted. However, I did push all of that aside, because in the end, I really just wanted another Metroid game from Nintendo, and so here we are with a brand new game that promised to be really, really fun with brand new, helpful abilities that hadn't been seen before in a Metroid game. I do recall somewhere that someone mentioned that they were "optional", though, which they really aren't. I'm going to get into that later, however.
The first question I guess I should answer is: Is Metroid: Samus Returns worth buying? I firmly believe that this is a good Metroid game and is well worth your time. However, there are problems with it that may dissuade more picky buyers. It is a remake of Metroid 2, so if you're looking for all new original content from a Metroid game, you might want to wait for Metroid Prime 4. This game is considerably difficult even for a Metroid title, so be prepared for a long haul with learning the mechanics, especially if you've never played a Metroid game before.Other than that and a few small but definitely glaring issues, this game still is worth playing and buying for full price.
To keep things compartmentalized, I'm going to go in a usual order of presentation, audio/visual stimulation, gameplay, overall enjoyability and my overall thoughts on the game. Starting right up with the presentation, this game opens up with a relatively short but intriguing introduction to the basic premise of Metroid. It talks about the space pirates who discovered Metroids and used them in a diabolical scheme to attempt galactic domination. Samus Aran beat them back and destroyed the central control for the Metroids, the Mother Brain, ending their operations for a time. However, the concern over Metroids was still at large within the Galactic Federation. Soon, the home planet for Metroids, SR388, was discovered and a recon team was sent to investigate and see how dangerous the Metroid threat was. In short...they died very quickly to the Metroids and other hostile fauna and their last transmissions signaled that an urgent response was needed. Without delay, a council was held to determine the fate of the Metroids, and the decision was unanimous. Genocide was called for, and Samus Aran was the bounty hunter paid for the job.
With an excellent introduction out of the way, Samus lands on SR388 and immediately the story takes a backdrop to small cutscenes that play with no dialogue or anything like that. Samus never speaks, returning instead to the role of silent protagonist whose motions and actions once again portray a battle-hardened and respectable heroine and badass. Samus' mission is to uncover the Metroids and their various evolutionary states and destroy them they end up threatening the entire galaxy should they ever find a way off-world with another band of brigands.
This backseat presentation with no dialogue whatsoever is something that I appreciate. However, there are still cutscenes that play and, while most can be skipped, they still tend to interrupt the flow of the gameplay. There are plenty of games that I feel could stand to learn from simpler games that tend to not have cutscenes, instead letting their scenes play out in front of the player and letting the player interact with the changing scene how they will, be it actively or passively. I do not mind the cutscenes in this like I do the ones in Hey! Pikmin because these are relatively unobtrusive and serve primarily to draw attention to important details. I would still prefer a "hands off" approach to presentation, letting the scenes that occur in game happen while the player is still fully mobile. That being said, the cutscenes still add depth to an already visually impressive game and that matters more than my personal opinions about the approach.
The story overall gets more intriguing as more hints are given. There is now an explanation as to why Samus cannot use her gravity suit that she eventually gets to skip a good portion of the game by simply swimming in lava. The fluid that blocks Samus' progress is purple and highly corrosive, and intentionally engineered by the Chozo to combat the Metroids. At the top of each level in this tunnel that allows for access to where the Metroids have been contained, there is a "lock" that only accepts the DNA of Metroids. Kill the Metroids present in each area, plug in the DNA, and the next level unlocks. It was meant to be so that someone could come and eradicate the Metroids, should they feel the need, because the Chozo realized that they had made a terrible mistake in engineering the Metroids to be such deadly killers and were hoping that a warrior strong enough to kill them would find them and do the job where they could not.
Along the way through the game, Samus finds multiple artifacts left behind by the Chozo and more implications that they were even there, with later areas even revealing their laboratories where Metroids were grown and experimented on. The final area is, of course, the Metroid Breeding Grounds where the Metroid Queen resides. After Samus kills the Metroid Queen, we get to the baby Metroid and Samus takes the baby metroid and leaves the planet...after a fun but poorly chosen surprise enemy boss fight, of course. Damn you, padding!
All of this and more is told in background elements as well as pictures that unlock after enough items are obtained. Getting 100% item completion opens up the full gallery of pictures, called "Chozo Memories", that show the Chozo scientists finding the X parasite and studying them to find a way to destroy them before then engineering Metroids to destroy the X parasite...and then realizing that they had done too much damage and had created a monster so terrible that they had to lock them away for good. There's even an additional picture for getting 100% that reveals even more and perhaps leaves the series open for a side game or a side story of any kind. These are the kinds of treats in presentation that leave me hungering for more of a game, and it is so well done throughout the game and at the end that I just want to see more details, more exploration, and more lore for this already amazing game series.
Moving on to the visual aspect, this game looks amazing for a 3DS polygonal game. In fact, as far as 3DS games go, there aren't as many that I can recall that quite look as superb as this one does. The backgrounds to each part of the game are simply amazing, there are plenty of little details to the game, and each model that is presented is top-quality for the 3DS' standard of graphics. And to top it all off, Samus still manages to stand out enough that players cannot easily lose her amidst the busy backgrounds and foreground. This distinction is important for things to come, as shadows and darker colors are used very well to keep things in the background until they are ready to enter the playing field. It allows for smooth transitions, movement in the background, or even a whole boss fight to take place mostly in the background with elements coming to the foreground. It is a clever design that works extremely well to resent more depth than before within the game and I highly appreciate the effort that went into making this game look as stunning as it does.
As for audio, this game's sound direction is high quality. There are familiar and new sounds coming back to players, with the metal "konk" as Samus takes damage, the new explosion sound of the bombs and the firing beam sounds, to a neat throwback to Super Metroid upon death. The music...my goodness, the music is back! There are remixes to songs from Metroid II: Return of Samus that are top notch, there are tracks mixed in from Metroid Prime, and there are even a couple of original tracks added in to spice things up. Not a beat was missed for how the music is presented in this game and it works so well for the atmosphere of the game.
One of the large issues I take with Metroid II: Return of Samus is the straight up lack of music or, when there is music, it's painfully simple or even ear grinding. That problem has been resolved here and then some, with each area's music impacting it well. However, I do take some issue with the fact that the lava areas are split between everything, meaning that there isn't just one place where the Magmoor Caverns/Lower Norfair track plays for those areas. Every time Samus enters one of those areas, for the brief amount of time they last, that track plays and it becomes rather inconsistent in its overall impact. I would have preferred one of the areas to be the dedicated "heat" area, much like it was in every single Metroid game that had one. I am not complaining too heavily about there being heat areas and the cool music therein, but it would have been so much more meaningful to have the Lower Norfair track for an entire area again instead of dispersed throughout the game.
Concerning the gameplay, this is everything a Metroid veteran could ask for and for a newcomer to learn to play with. Well, perhaps almost. There are a few crucial things that could be changed for the better and some gameplay aspects that are not well conveyed that lead to frustration if the player is simply unaware of them going in. Let's dive in and see what there is.
Samus controls remarkably smoothly, given the control scheme. The main point of contention here is that Samus moves using the circle pad on the 3DS. While I was not thrown off too badly by this, having been playing Hey! Pikmin before this, I have seen and read other reviews where this throws people off very badly, and I completely understand why. While moving left and right is not a problem, it is aiming down, crouching, going into morph ball, or aiming up/diagonally on the move that becomes tricky for Samus to perform when the deadzones of the circle pad don't lend themselves well to precise 2D control. I've never appreciated the circle pad much, but I found myself able to perform well with the controls no problem.
Samus abilities are mapped well enough: B is to jump, Y is to shoot, X to do melee counter (more on that later) "R" switches to missiles, and "L" turns on the all new "360 degree aiming" or "omni-directional aiming" or however the game or others might like to call it, stopping Samus in place but allowing for Samus to aim anywhere on the screen. This is the best part of Samus' new moveset and lets Samus take on challenges in a way that simply wasn't possible in previous games. With this, the frustrations of not being able to aim precisely enough to hit enemies without a lot of jumping or repositioning are greatly diminished. Boss fight patterns are done well to reflect this new utility and to be based around the player being required to master using it, a system that I find a welcome addition and should be present in every single remake/2D Metroid game from here on out. The best part about this is that it doesn't even feel like it is horribly limiting. The lockdown might throw some people off, but the camera pans out away from Samus when the aiming is done to allow for a better field of view, and accidental pressing the button in midair doesn't turn it on. Samus has to be firmly on the ground for it to turn on, or firmly on a ledge not going anywhere else to turn it on, meaning that it is unobtrusive to the experience.
The other new function is a bit mixed for me. The melee counter is taught very early...and is used throughout the entire game. The premise is very simple: Samus counters an enemy with good timing, the enemy is stunned and left vulnerable. There's only one small problem to this: the game demands that this ability be used and mastered very quickly. Enemies are vicious and will attack frequently, and the counter features somewhat as a "stop and go" mechanic, forcing Samus to stop, counter, shoot, and then move on. And I only say "shoot" once because the counter mechanic is also overpowered. A countered enemy, when shot with the first shot after a counter is performed, will die instantly from that shot. The only exceptions are Metroids and boss fights, where countering them allows for high amounts of damage, but not instant kills...but everything else has this mechanic of "instant death" applied to them.
The game does attempt to make the counter something of a puzzle for later enemies. Later Metroid evolutions have specific patterns to watch for when they are countering, boss fights later on tend to have a specific pattern in the same way that can be punshing to be attempting to learn, but all the more satisfying to get down in order to deal massive damage to the boss. That being said, I still wish that the melee counter wasn't so useful or, if it was, that it was either harder to perform, or reserved for boss fights in specific instances. Because this game is so centered around the melee counter as a gimmick to Samus' arsenal, I feel that it falls short in other areas. Previous Metroid titles would allow for enemies to have their specific patterns, but there was always a good chance that Samus would easily be able to eradicate them, given that her beams were generally very powerful later on, or just that they weren't so overly aggressive or hard to kill in the first place that a gimmick like this would be necessary. The overall game design suffers because it tries too hard to incorporate the melee counter as a gimmick, something I find disappointing and wish wasn't present, then. The best parts of a boss fight are when the melee counter isn't in use, as it detracts from the core principle of the game for a cool cinematic that feels unnecessary in most cases.
Let me digress now to better things. Thanks to the game being on the 3DS, the development team saw fit to use both screens for different purposes and to good effect. The top screen is all of the action and none of the information except for the visual aspect of the game. The bottom screen contains literally everything else: The map, remaining missile ammunition, the health bar, Metroids remaining and the beams. This information is, thankfully, well organized and so doesn't feel clustered and problematic. The touch screen for the map is also used to bring up the ability to add notes. These are an immensely useful feature, allowing a player to clearly mark for himself where he wants to go back to to explore with later gear to claim a pickup that was previously inaccessible. This is such a huge step up from previous games that had no "note taking" functionality, which I felt was something that was missing. The notes aren't detailed, they're simple markers to be placed down of varying colors, but they make a huge difference when backtracking for items.
Switching beams and missiles, however, brings up another major point of contention for people and for myself. The touch screen is the way that beam swapping and missile swapping is handled. Without some practice using the thumbs, this feature can be rather intrusive, as it takes away the ease of using buttons to quickly swap between missiles, or even giving another button the option to switch between the three beam types that are available. It also is hard to change missiles on the fly because a player is required to hold down the "R" trigger to open up the missiles, and change them from there. Couldn't we have used the select button or one of the new "ZL" and "ZR" triggers for that? There were better ways to handle the switching weapons, and while it doesn't subtract from the experience for me as much, I can see it posing problems for many others due to the finicky nature of the touch screen.
The other mechanic that I feel both in love with and conflicted with are the new "Aeion" abilities that Samus gets access to. There are four in total: Scan Pulse, Lightning Armor, Beam Burst and Phase Drift. These abilities are not optional, no matter what the game devs said at one point. They are all optional in boss fights, but as far as progression and exploration go, they might as well all be needed to clear the game at one point or another, with the exception of the Scan Pulse.
I love the Scan Pulse. This is the long sought after solution to the previous problem of having to bomb every single wall to find the right way to go or find that extra way through for a pickup. The scan pulse reveals a portion of the map around Samus that remains visible and darkened until fully explored, and it also highlights blocks that are hidden or not obvious on the main screen. This is the single best addition to a Metroid game. Say what you will about the X-Ray Visor from Super Metroid, this thing is just that much better, able to be used on the fly and actually fully revealing the map for players to find ease of access. A veteran of this game won't find as much use for it, but for first time players, this is the best way to let people find the secrets and comfortably handle the exploration. And to those of you who think it detracts from the Metroid experience to use it...just don't use it. Problem solved. This Aeion power is completely optional to use.
Lightning Armor protects Samus from incoming damage and increases the already mighty range of her melee counter by an enormous amount. However, it is mostly useful for environmental hazards, as it simply drains the Aeion gauge far too fast to be useful against repeated enemy attacks or boss fights. This powerup is highly beneficial and is sometimes required in order to snag pickups early on without dying. The Beam Burst does insane damage by rapid firing whatever primary beam Samus has equipped, at the cost of rapidly draining the Aeion gauge. This ability is great fun to use, but is both too useful and not useful enough at the same time, being able to shred enemies but being next to worthless at times in certain boss fights. This ability is needed to make progression through certain areas until more movement upgrades are obtained, making this one not as optional as the game devs would have liked us to believe. The final ability, the phase drift, slows down time for everything around Samus. This is a very useful exploration ability and can potentially get Samus out of a tight spot, but little else. It drains the Aeion gauge fairly quickly, to the point where extended use is not a good idea. This is the one ability that I never bother using unless it's to get a specific pickup or complete a specific puzzle or in areas to make progress actually possible.
Other than that, the powerups and gameplay are similar to old school games. Most of Samus' arsenal shows up here: The morph ball and bombs, the Varia and Gravity suits, the space jump and screw attack, missiles and super missiles, power bombs, and even the grappling beam comes back to say hello! We've been missing the grapple beam ever since its inception in Super Metroid, with the Metroid Prime games paying it its due service but other games tending to forget about it. Oddly, the Speed Booster is now missing from the roster of upgrades, which is sad because I personally liked the Speed Booster and Shinesparking puzzles for certain pickups and getting through areas faster.
In place of the speed booster for elements like that, the devs gave Samus a brand new ability that is amazing...provided you know how it works. Once Samus gets the power bombs, Samus can use them in morph ball mode to fling herself in a direction at high velocity until she connects with a wall. There's just one problem: There is no indication that this is possible. In order to get this to activate, Samus must lay a power bomb while in Spiderball to have it take effect. Sitting on top of a power bomb regularly doesn't move Samus at all, yet for some reason being in Spiderball does the trick just fine. There's no sense for this to be a mechanic and no indication that it could be possible, yet there are several puzzles for very important pickups that require this feature. I only figured it out by wording in the guide I picked up and from there, I was able to experience it, but this is "core mechanic" to the game that some players may take years to find out that it exists and might come down to calling this game a "badly designed game" because it feels impossible to 100% without this trick. I am all for the game teaching me new things without telling me in the form of a real tutorial, like how Super Metroid shows off wall jumping and shinesparking, but gives little instructions on how to perform them, instead encouraging the player to try and mimic the behaviors of the animals employing them. This trick has no such tutorial...and as such, is badly implemented just on the lack of context alone, unfortunately.
Moving forward, exploration is primarily tied to one given area, with very little reason given to backtrack except to gain extra goodies with new power-ups. The game is incredibly linear and can be played straight through without any backtracking whatsoever, save for a few small instances within the same area. A well planned and executed run of this game could, without major glitches and cheats, be roughly done in about two hours or less. I say well planned because it is important to know an optimal route, because this game is surprisingly large, being the largest 2D Metroid game to date and perhaps rivaling the Prime games with its depth. And well executed...because this game is also very difficult.
While this game may not lose a player too much in backtracking, it more than emphasizes the difficult nature of the enemies. I suspect it was to give the melee counter some purpose, but every enemy hits hard in Metroid: Samus Returns. In fact, a few good hits from basic enemies near the start of the game will see players finding their first "game over" screen very quickly! I know that this is to balance out the counter and to add some flavor, but the reason that enemies could get away with hitting super hard in something like Metroid: Fusion was because the game was designed to feel like a struggle, and it still gave more than enough energy tanks for resourceful and explorative players to feel like a true badass later on. Metroid: Samus Returns is incredibly stingy with energy tanks, perhaps the stingiest in the series if it weren't for the original NES and GB titles taking that glory to themselves. Out of all of the new and well-made Metroid games, this has the fewest energy tanks and and it feels like there are even less when major bosses can destroy entire energy tanks in one blow.
This lack of energy against bosses can make some of the boss fights feel downright cruel, especially for newer gamers. There were multiple times when fighting the later bosses of this game that I found myself wishing that they didn't hit as hard and there was more room for error. Then there is the fact that a couple of the solutions to fighting bosses can be...rather cryptic. This puzzle aspect to the fights can make the fights more interesting, but unless it is balanced with high damage output on finding the solution and there isn't a way to damage the boss without, this can also be intensely frustrating, especially with a boss named the "Diggernaught." This fight is a three phase boss battle with each phase doing a different pattern, and only two of the phases have the same way to damage the machine present. The third and final phase requires dropping morph ball bombs into his vacuum tube as he sweeps it across the room, and then spider balling across his face to lay bombs on the points as the lights cross on the inner and outer circle in order to finalize the damage. This last part wouldn't be so bad, had I known that you could sit on the point you wanted and be free from the electric defense field it generates...I spent at least a good hour on this boss because of this phase giving me trouble for being so cryptic, leading this to be one of the lowest points in the game. There are times when hard is fun, and other times where fun is stupid thanks to the cryptic nature of a boss or cheap difficulty...the former of which is what makes the difficulty in this game feel stupid from time to time.
Problems with the difficulty and lack of useful information conveyance, the gameplay still remains quite remarkable. I could have sworn that the touch of classic 2D styled gameplay had been lost to the wake of 3D and was going to be all but lost to time given a few more years, and yet here I am finding more and more games that call back to the simple yet finely crafted art that can be displayed with a more simple style of gaming. Samus feels mobile, powerful, and doesn't feel like she is helpless in this extremely hostile environment. Exploration is a treat, there is not necessarily a "wrong" way to approach several situations in the areas, and the game leaves itself open for multiple routing styles to choose from. This, in turn, is probably going to open itself up to speedrunning quite easily. Super Metroid still has this game beat for all of the various routes that are possible to be taken, but not by much now. This game is certainly more open than Metroid: Fusion...
The entertainment value from the entire experience is quite strong in this game. Even if Metroid games aren't usually the preferred game for many, this game keeps to its roots enough to please veterans of the franchise but also offers enough fixes to old and archaic designs to appeal to fans just hopping into the gaming series. The difficulty may be a turn off for some, but I find that the difficulty is a welcome addition, presenting a game that requires work and gives a strong, satisfied feeling upon completion, something inherently missing from many newer games. The difficulty usually never feels cheap, either, it usually results from player mistakes, with nothing quite feeling cheap...except in a few small instances.
The minimal dialogue in the storytelling offers players a chance to jump straight into the game without any pauses, save for the few (skippable) cutscenes that introduce new Metroids, new enemies, or otherwise give important details to the story. For the visual people, there is plenty to see in this new title, as the game is very well crafted and overall a treat to look and enjoy. This game offers so much without changing up the original formula drastically, and that's exactly what many were hoping for with the return of another 2D Metroid game. The overall gameplay is marred with certain design decisions and hiccups, but they are not so bad that this game can't be enjoyed.
My overall thoughts on this game as a person who experienced it myself is that it is a great return to what I've been yearning to see in a Metroid game. I love the Metroid Prime trilogy, and I liked playing most of Metroid: Other M. What marred that game is not present in Metroid: Samus Returns, and that's exactly how I had hoped this game would come off. I found this game to be frustrating from time to time, particularly when going for 100%, seeing as the power bomb + spiderball trick was never even subtly hinted at for being possible...and our surprise fight at the end with a certain something makes no sense going forward, in my honest opinion. It is a very fun fight, but it is completely unnecessary and feels like a strange bit of padding to make the gameplay more "climactic" feeling at the end.
The pacing also suffers somewhat from other factors. Some might find the "hunt the Metroids down" aspect appealing, and if they weren't such a pest to hunt down sometimes, it wouldn't be a problem. I'm talking about the Gamma Metroids, the ones that fly and crawl...and go through these stupid holes in the walls and enter different rooms altogether, prompting a "hunt" scenario that just feels useless and adds more time to the game than needs to be there. Part of the fun for Metroid II: Return of Samus was that finding the Metroids and killing them was relatively simple and straightforward...and while I welcome the idea that each Metroid is a miniature boss fight to some degree, I think that the "boss fight" nature of the Metroids should have been saved for Zeta and Omega Metroids instead of having even the Beta and Gamma Metroids feeling annoying to fight.
Does this game rate next to the other 2D Metroids well? I would say that it does. I feel that this fits firmly into my list of favorite games in general, and sits alongside Metroid: Zero Mission and Fusion as great 2D titles. Super Metroid still has one thing going for it that none of the others do, and that's that true sense of non-linearity that can be experienced when one hits a certain skillcap, but given enough time, I think Nintendo has poised itself to outdo even Super Metroid.
I would rate this game 4/5. It's a great game, held back by a few larger issues that keep it from standing among other 5/5 games. It is a welcome return of a long sought after style of gameplay and I am very eager to see Nintendo give us more. And, for being a remake of a black sheep, this game still manages to achieve great things even if it is held back by feeling that it has to recreate the namesake of an old GB title.
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