came here just to complain about this game. i’m glad i emulated it, not that i would’ve bought it otherwise anyway. but it definitely feels like a game that is “functional” more than anything else. samus moves fluidly. the art is polished. but the game is just… boring. nearly every area feels the same, the whole game just feels like a fetch quest to get the next ability to unlock the next door, and immediately after the door you’ve just unlocked with your new ability they introduce new doors that require new abilities. it’s cynical and perverted. there’s no sense of wonder, of excitement. it’s like a robot analyzed how does a metroid game “work” and made a soulless clone.
just as an example, they give you Super Missiles (which in this game are a straight damage upgrade to your regular missiles) and then 30 minutes later they give you Ice Missiles, which, again, are just an upgrade. Why even have Super Missiles? It’s just for the god damn Super Missile doors. Is there a single ability in this game that doesn’t have a door associated with it?!
I was initially glad that the game makes it very obvious and close by where you need to go next, always, since the maps are so bloated and samey, but, then I realized this goes exactly against why I love Super Metroid. Super Metroid is all about the familiarization of previously alien and more hostile areas. Well, Super Metroid isn’t just that, it is many things that this game isn’t, but one of those things is revisiting early parts of the game and feeling how much more able you are in traversing them not only because you know exactly where everything leads to and how it is all connected, but because all of your abilities change the way you interact with them so you can blaze past them much quicker and easier.
The vertical hub sections that define Metroid maps (now completely gone here, which should be incredibly damning) were such a good display of that principle, allowing you to go through them faster when you get the Hi-Jump, allowing you to create makeshift platforms with the Ice Beam by freezing enemies, then when you get the Space Jump + Screw Attack combo you realize that all the platforms were secretly Screw Attack blocks in disguise, just allowing you to mow through the entire section like butter.
This whole realization of the map being “friendly” not being a good thing here is why I keep coming back to the word “functional” with the game. it doesn’t excite, inspire, create wonder and feeling. it just functions. I can’t help but feel that this is why big media game critics praise it, it is a game that lays bare the function of video game media as product review than criticism.
also, I feel that this game is such an extreme case of “gameplay over story” being taken too literally to such a terrible effect. the story is presented so extremely shoddily it does nothing to pull you in. I had to rewatch the beginning cutscene on Youtube just to be sure whether it really looked like that or if my emulator was having graphical issues or loading things wrongly. nope, it really is that wonky! Super Metroid is, I feel, a really cinematic experience at heart. Without that focus on creating a narrative – not only through the big moments in the beginning of the game and at the end, but also through the game’s natural progression of when does it make you feel powerful or isolated or determined, without that, you get this tasteless slop. Bosses almost feel like they’re made to deal double the damage they should and have double the amount of health they ought to have just so the game has anything memorable or more exciting to the experience. EMMIs are a nice idea but, again, they don’t really inspire fear, not even when you get caught. Why are they so powerful and can only be killed with the Omega Beam? who knows, superpowered fed plating or something. they feel like an arbitrary obstacle rather than a supernatural force that’s beyond you like something like the SA-X at least tries to convey, even if EMMIs are more interesting mechanically to deal with. EMMIs are supposed to be the big thing in this game, but they aren’t really a part of the narrative at all.