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I think so. The obvious assumption would be that turning on all the beams would be all you'd ever want to use, but apparently there's interesting utility in turning certain ones on and certain ones off. I'm not too familiar with the details though.
* mediocre story exposition/framing, but has some nice moments. Weak-point of the game. I like the revelation of
Samus becoming even more Metroid-esque, to the point of being a sought-after substitute for it, but I could have done without the phrasing "You ARE a Metroid". I appreciate that the Metroids stay extinct. The Quiet Cloak stuff was better than the Ravenbeak stuff.
* ideal characterization of Samus-- one really iconic moment and several other strong personality choices.
* solid, fitting, but uninspired music-- only existing classic tracks were outstanding.
* excellent sound design, aesthetic, and mood
* load-times longer than usual and frame-y during cutscenes
* great map traversal, environmental puzzles, movement mechanics, care for details, sequence breaking potential, and power-up placement/design
* boss fights were excellent and better than they've ever been in the series. The trend for me was that they seemed really hard on the first try or two, but usually became intuitive/learnable by the third.
* One fantastic quality of life feature for backtracking that every Metroidvania should adopt (You can highlight every door on the map that an upgrade unlocks)
* EMMI's are initially novel and effective but have diminishing returns as they get more and more tricks. Adds to the "Ridley Scott's Alien" vibe but not my favorite part of the game.
* recurring mini-bosses are fun but become repetitive and barely feel different on subsequent encounters.
* lead-up to end-game and final boss are great, but actual ending was a let-down for me. Sorely missing the classic ending music, too.
* Controls were great. Only issue I had was remembering the grapple hook combination, especially when panicked.
* I prefer the open elegance and simplicity of Super Metroid's map, but I think Dread did a good job of managing its size by cleverly keeping you in relevant sections early on and only opening up once you gain experience reading the map in a way that allows you to navigate more purposefully. It's a different type of experience that pushes you forward (nudging you more in a certain direction) at a more break-neck speed than Super Metroid does.
Overall, easy game of the year for me (albeit not much competition unless you count Disco Elysium: Final Cut, which is better and more perfect)-- might be my second favorite Metroid after Super (with tons of individual strengths that are superior and make me think twice about that)-- combine their strengths in a remake and that might be my favorite game ever. Probably the clearest entry point into the franchise for someone new.
9.5/10. Easily game of the year and the best game in this series since Super Metroid.
Only thing i can think of that was a bit below par was the OST. Metroid has a higher standard for OSTs since the music usually set a strong balance of being enjoyable to listen to and being atmospheric.
Difficulty was great too. I can't remember the last time a game actually pushed and challenged me to play it on its level rather than being handholdy/easy as sin.
There's also the one where you use your charge beam, morph into ball and lay a bomb; the resulting combo causes Samus to lay like a dozen bombs. Not particularly useful but it's a cool little trick nonetheless.
And then there's the unofficial beam combo; the murder beam. A weird quirk in the game that lets you trick it into equipping all five (spazer, wave, ice, plasma, charge) at the same time. To use it, you charge up a shot, go into the inventory menu equip Spazer, and move the marker to any of the boots items. Then, press Left, and press A immediately afterward. Plasma Beam should then become equipped alongside Spazer with "VAR" next to it. Let go of the shot and it will produce an invisible "pillar" of damage that sits on the screen so long as Samus is in the room.
For some reason, this will only work if you're facing to the left. If not, the game will either break Samus' cannon completely until you reset/die or will crash the game outright. It's not particularly useful since it only works well on bigger, more stationary targets.
I just put in maybe two and a half hours. During that session I think I faced 3 bosses [just checked, nope, just 2]. The first one (Experiment 5XL or whatever) took me about 10 tries and the other(s) only took me 3ish. They did real well with the checkpoint system in this game.
After that I just went around clearing out areas of maps while looking for items. And yet I'm still only just over 50% on item collection. Some of these puzzles seem impossible, mostly the speed boost block ones.
I just put in maybe two and a half hours. During that session I think I faced 3 bosses [just checked, nope, just 2]. The first one (Experiment 5XL or whatever) took me about 10 tries and the other(s) only took me 3ish. They did real well with the checkpoint system in this game.
After that I just went around clearing out areas of maps while looking for items. And yet I'm still only just over 50% on item collection. Some of these puzzles seem impossible, mostly the speed boost block ones.
Maybe the biggest accomplishment of the game is making Samus a bigger badass then ever before. The swagger they give her is great stuff.
that final battle roar at the end boss was just so awesome.
I am also a big fan of Raven Beak aka Chadzo. I wish there was more Smash DLC and he was one of them. Dude would be a perfect new Metroid rep. Dude was raw as f***.
The one shinespark puzzle in Artaria for an energy tank took me roughly half an hour to get.
Speed boost in, hope the bugs that have a spawn right at the end of the path don't screw you, crawl into the alcove, cross bomb, roll out, jump, phase shift twice and then assuming you didn't lose it, shine spark the blocks above you to open the path to the tank
That was miserable lol and even though that's apparently one of the tougher shinespark puzzles in the game, seeing some of the others along the way made me go "uhhh no thanks"
I think as someone mentioned it's going to be real interesting to see how speedrunning plays out for this. The metroid community has already dug its teeth into it and are routing as i type. There's a few variables here (namely, EMMIs) that could make life hell for people trying to blast through it since they could start in really bad spots.
Game is apparently selling really well so hopefully means Metroid is back for good and we get more 2D Metroid and Prime 4 finally stops being vaporware.
There's also the one where you use your charge beam, morph into ball and lay a bomb; the resulting combo causes Samus to lay like a dozen bombs. Not particularly useful but it's a cool little trick nonetheless.
And then there's the unofficial beam combo; the murder beam. A weird quirk in the game that lets you trick it into equipping all five (spazer, wave, ice, plasma, charge) at the same time. To use it, you charge up a shot, go into the inventory menu equip Spazer, and move the marker to any of the boots items. Then, press Left, and press A immediately afterward. Plasma Beam should then become equipped alongside Spazer with "VAR" next to it. Let go of the shot and it will produce an invisible "pillar" of damage that sits on the screen so long as Samus is in the room.
For some reason, this will only work if you're facing to the left. If not, the game will either break Samus' cannon completely until you reset/die or will crash the game outright. It's not particularly useful since it only works well on bigger, more stationary targets.
Mockball is such a cool trick but it's also stupidly precise. I remember last time I played Super I tried to get it to work just for shits and giggles. I think after about half an hour I got it to go once?
Meanwhile these speedrunners hit it every single time they need to in a run (which could amount to dozens a day depending on how much they grind) without even breaking a sweat.
9.5/10. Easily game of the year and the best game in this series since Super Metroid.
Only thing i can think of that was a bit below par was the OST. Metroid has a higher standard for OSTs since the music usually set a strong balance of being enjoyable to listen to and being atmospheric.
Difficulty was great too. I can't remember the last time a game actually pushed and challenged me to play it on its level rather than being handholdy/easy as sin.
I'm hoping to finish this tomorrow. That way I can finally look at all of the spoiler posts on reddit that likely show cool easter eggs. And then I can read the spoiler thoughts in this thread. And watch the spoiler videos on YouTube.
Started the game up first thing this morning. Apparently I left off right before a bomb upgrade/mini boss. However, this mini boss is really frustrating me. But it also seems like the framerate is dipping/my controler isn't responding. And when I looked up a video tutorial on how to beat it... yeah, seems like it actually isn't me sucking at the game haha.
Edit: Closed out of the game and started charging my controller before coming here to post the above. Went back to the game after about 15 minutes and one shotted that mini boss. I guess it wasn't me?
On to the final boss now. Got through Phase 1, but haven't made much progress on Phase 2.
Edit 2: Just finished it. That last boss phase was frustrating me a bit.
I liked it so much that I ended up trying to speed through the game a second time as quickly as I could. It's a blast playing it fast. Finished it in about 4 hours. The bosses are actually pretty shockingly easy (but still fun) once you adjust to the pattern, despite some of them seeming impossibly challenging the first few times you encounter them (even the final boss did not require multiple tries). Knowing to counter and use Flash Shift frequently in boss fights make all the difference. The game is also really generous with giving you back plenty of health and missiles during these boss fights when you hit the counters.
The last EMMI remained a frustrating pain to deal with, however. Giving them a
long-distance stun move, limited space to hide, and all of this in water physics is just cruel.
It makes perfect sense why a hard mode gets unlocked when you beat it.
Ridiculous it's already approaching 1:30 and the game hasn't even been out two weeks. Barely any optimization which I guess speaks to how good of a job the dev team did building this game
I'm desperately crossing my fingers that their next project is to remake/re-imagine Super Metroid for this very reason. They're so close to making an entirely perfect game, and that would just about do it, without asking for too much, and they've completely earned the right to be trusted with that material, after this game, in my view. It's too good of a time not to capitalize on it.
In addition to those two relative weaknesses, I think the story seemed clearly bogged down by the fact that it had to respect the drivel of existing Metroid Lore, taking place where it does in the franchise. That opening crawl seemed a lot longer than it ideally should be, for example, and I could have done without the handful of big exposition-y cutscenes.
I know some people just want original new stuff and scoff at remakes/reboots, but when competency is this high, seeing something fly as close to the sun as possible, however it accomplishes it, is something I value a lot more, personally.
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