tbh all the best metroids are the overtly linear ones. as paradoxical as that is
though, really the only truly non-linear one is the first one?
3 Likes
metroid II is somehow both extremely linear and nonlinear but that is what makes it the best one imo
I don’t know what peoples’ problems with dread is! I think it looks great! it looks like it looks and plays like a real metroid game, and the visual style is better executed than I thought it would be at first glance… stylistically it looks way better than the metroid 2 remake. I haven’t played it, but is it really so bad as to remove hope that this game could be good? it’s working from a design concept that seemed to be fairly fleshed out by the original fusion team years in advance.
4 Likes
I can’t say for sure and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at least once by a spiritual sequel I thought from the initial trailer would be bad (Bloodstained: RotN). But right now the vibe of the Dread trailer and the sometimes cynical, sometimes hopeful discourse it has spawned reminds of the tone around Sonic Generations and Colors when their trailers first came out. It does not remind me of the vibe when Sonic Mania was announced.
If this is going to be a worthy spiritual sequel to Fusion then I feel like it would probably be highly apparent and explicit that it’s a spiritual sequel to Fusion. Whereas what I see here includes Portal and Alien Isolation and Metroid Prime elements, continuing to flail to innovate on Metroid in a similar way as the run of 2000s Sonic games attempted.
(By the way we got the Sonic Mania of Metroid already and it’s AM2R)
3 Likes
the main question i keep repeating is what does metroid actually mean as a vehicle for a game in 2021. it’s a strange idea now, umpteenth-removed from whatever original once existed in the 80s
maybe only because metroid feels like an ideacluster that has since evolved, become a natural language for so many other games
7 Likes
real hoot they opened the announcement saying there hasn’t been a 2d metroid in 19 years
would dig the magical thinking that other m and samus returns don’t actually exist if not for mercury stream making this too
2 Likes
as i sit here tonight the jukebox playing
i really want to see lesbian samus
idk is that too much. i would also go for explicitly asexual aromantic samus who eschews relationships
2 Likes
Metroid would be a great horror game if someone ever makes one. Parts at the beginning of Fusion set the game to be kind of horror/jump scare-ish but then just kind of abandons it.
Make the Metroid series about how Samus is gradually transforming into a Metroid herself and eventually a Mother Brain taking over space stations and research bases.
3 Likes
At the same time one thing that startled me a bit playing AM2R last month was the reminder of how weird and special so many the specific mechanics in Metroid remain, how only certain simplified birds-eye-view aspects of Metroid actually became part of the natural language.
Morphballing, bomb jumping, finicky walljumping, infinite spacejumping (but only as you’re spinning downwards), diagonal aiming with shoulder buttons. Even before mentioning the infamous shinespark there are so many little Metroidisms generally ignored by the genre that was named after the game. Superficially appearing as a mechanical mishmash, they all come together beautifully to make combat and puzzles interesting and the possibility of sequence breaking with technical trickery feel magical.
And you actually couldn’t get away with reintroducing this entire combination of weird mechanics in any game that’s not called Metroid, which I think must be why AM2R’s creators invested so much effort into a game bound to be cease-and-desisted instead of a new IP of their own.
12 Likes
Can’t wait to bomb every square looking for powerups.
1 Like
Samus Returns is a very odd game in a lot of ways. Despite its myriad flaws, I personally enjoyed enough of it and thought it showed a lot of promise. Assuming it’s just like MercurySteam’s Castlevania games is a bit unfair, if only because in this case they were serving rather than outright supplanting the dev team and talent on the Japanese side (thanks Konami!).
Just taking the game on its own terms, it’s biggest problem is with the moment to moment pacing being a weird hybrid of a middling romhack and a euroshmup. The scope of the areas are bloated to several times the size of the original, and the rooms are filled with a lot of clutter to compensate — it’s got a few too many morph ball mazes, grapple blocks breakable from only one side, and various other bits of tedious “Remember that Powerup You Got?” design. There’s an ever-present of fear of just letting things be empty and letting scenes linger.
I mean, just look at this:
That’s supposed to be that one really big open room from the final area of the original game. (It also happens to be full of enemies.)
Speaking of enemies, they tend to be pretty spongy, rote, and one-note. Their HP is buffed to encourage you use the melee counter, which basically means you stand waiting for them to make a noise and lunge, press the counter button to do a swipe, which if successful allows you to kill it in one shot (or unload a volley of missiles in the case of a boss). This really breaks the flow of just general movement, and makes avoiding enemies a pain as well since they’re just constantly trying to divebomb you. Eventually you get better combat options so it becomes less of an issue (though it’s still an issue).
Still, I (personally) found plenty to like in mechanical terms. It adds some new Aeion abilities magic spells that give you temporary buffs like invincibility or a turrican-esque powerwashergun. The ice beam is separated from the other beams (with how much it’s charged affecting it’s freezing power). All the new mechanics have non-obvious secondary (and sometimes tertiary!) effects that are both fun to mess around with and useful (for example, melee swipes can instantly kill frozen enemies). The metroid fights are really good (much better than the ones in AM2R imho), with most new abilities you get integrating with the fights in interesting ways.
The ways in which the game betrays to the tone and atmosphere of its source are very well-trodden ground, so I won’t belabor the point too much. However, I do feel that some of the game’s best (and worst) moments are when it diverges from it’s source material. Like, does a high-tech still-operational ancient laboratory with bangin’ music really belong in the world of Metroid 2? No, but it’s a high point of the game regardless (imho). There’s a sort of air about the game that makes me feel that they would have rather developed something else than a Metroid 2 remake (their original pitch was for a Fusion remake (lol)).
Ultimately, in spite of the game’s issues, SR left me feeling confident that with some better direction and some iteration on its mechanics, that MercurySteam might actually be able to make a genuinely solid Metroid game. From the looks of it so far, they have addressed some of the most common complaints people had (without being complete cowards!), so at the moment there’s not very much caution to my optimism.
I just hope they’re brave enough not to make the second major item an x-ray scope this time around (srsly why do people do this???).
9 Likes
Curious the extent to which people mean the graphics look cheap/bad when they say the game looks bad. I saw some footage of Other M and it’s an unflattering comparison for Dread, art direction notwithstanding.
I think the key problem with Dread’s technical presentation is lighting - too much nonsensical even lighting for the relatively “realistic” presentation. Some enemies don’t have shadows. I suspect they’re building on the 3DS game’s technology and only built it out so far. It’ll look rough blown up on a TV, 4x optimistically or 9x in a bad scenario.
I liked some effects, though, like the shimmer on the boss from the treehouse stream or fog in the backgrounds.
I wouldn’t have minded e.g. 15 FPS animeish art in the alternative. It’s almost there with the angles and impressionism in the models.
2 Likes
I think the graphics look great. with a 2 1/2D game, it’s much more important to me that the visuals are readable. I don’t care if they’re realistic, or if the lighting is convincing. bloodstained barely got this right, my biggest problem with it is that it relies too much on dynamic/realistic lighting and overly detailed environments, often at the expense of readability. from the footage I’ve seen, dread seems to avoid this problem. It seems to be aiming for a similar atmosphere to fusion, and I don’t hate how it looks, though I think the atmosphere could be sold better… but I mean, it isn’t ugly! it looks good!
I just wish they’d make it sprite based! I don’t know why bloodstained wasn’t sprite-based either. does anyone really want 2 1/2D? I thought metroidvania dorks were all about pixel art. are we at a point where 3D assets are just cheaper to produce/work with at scale?
4 Likes
Why aren’t they at the point where players can just swap between 3D or 2D-assets-on-top-the-3D-model. Isn’t that how most new biggish 2D games get made these days anyway. Just combine it all.
I believe any 2D game made in unity or unreal is still being rendered in some kind of 3D space, yeah. I’m just wondering if it’s just more economical to use 3D assets. I kind of have the impression there’s a lot more in the way of inexpensive prefab assets and they are easier to modify and fit into a project’s visual direction? idk, fuckin’ game development how does it work
1 Like
If you do real, honest to god, pixel art in high Rez each frame of animation is gonna take days. You need to do hundreds of these frames, and you need to do it for dozens of enemies. Each animation sequence needs to be drawn anew, even if you have a plan for it.
In 3d modeling, you make one model and you can hang all your animation on it. Animation doesn’t need to be redrawn every frame, you can just map the motions out. If the character gets a new suit with a different shape, you don’t have to redraw it you rig it the same and use all the existing animation frames.
On top of that, if your design changes in the process you don’t necessarily have to change the animation if the model changes, or change the model if the animation changes.
And this isn’t even getting into how there are way more 3d modelers and animators than 2d ones these days.
In the economics of scale, 3d is way easier.
11 Likes
i dunno, maybe it’s just me but i kind of think that 2D graphics have become almost overused in modern sidescrollers. I mean, I enjoyed Mega Man 9 and 10 (and plenty of other retraux platformers) well enough, but I was really glad to see Mega Man 11 with 3D graphics for some reason. In Dread’s case, I was hoping for a slightly flatter, more legible 2.5D style myself, but I’ll take what I can get.
Still, one thing about Dread’s and SR’s style of 2.5D that kind bugs me is how the backgrounds look quite nice and detailed, but the foreground/collision layer looks boxy in comparison. I can understand the motivation for this in terms of readability and workflow (probably simplifies the artist-designer feedback loop) at least. Part of me feels that MM11’s style of 2.5D, with it’s agressively narrow FoV, might have eliminated the readability issue. On the other hand, I have reason to believe that might make in-engine cutscenes with interesting camerawork a no go (MM11 looks weeeiiird with a camhack on).
1 Like
Yepp
It does seem that in order to be able to rotate the camera for cutscenes in a 2.5d game like the ones we already saw in Dread’s trailer, you need to go with a “correct perspective” that denies the pleasures of a scene tuned entirely for 2d
3 Likes
true, i got so lost in each of those pocket zones, even when the game literally gives you the ability to trace out their exact perimeter. and the overlapping/compressed map segments! it’s so cool and esoteric, like something the human mind wasn’t really built to approach
9 Likes
we’ll never get a metroid game as cool as that ever again : (
7 Likes
I would be sad about this truth if not for Rain World
5 Likes