@zimtiki's review of Metroid
★★½
Okay, first things first: I have to give credit where credit is due. Metroid, originally released in 1986 in Japan and 1987 in the U.S. was WAY ahead of its time. Rather than focusing on level progression and high scores, Metroid was a game where you played as a bounty hunter named Samus Aran and explored a highly detailed, atmospheric planet called Zebes. Here’s the catch though, Zebes is one huge map that you much full explore to find items that will allow you to progress through the map. This game created a new genre, now known as a “Metroidvania,” a combination of “Metroid” and “Castlevania” which has a very similar structure. This game is inspired, inventive, and has great music. Now onto the gameplay. By today’s standards, this game is FUCKED. There is absolutely NO WAY to know what you should be doing, where you should be going, and what enemies you can fight vs the ones you must avoid. You die VERY fast in this game, even after getting several energy tanks that give you an extra bar of health. Unlike the later games in the series, this game is unbeatable unless you’re able to find secret areas in the game that are impossible to notice unless you have a strategy guide. You simply have to know where they are, know HOW to get into them (you might need to shoot a wall with a missile then jump into the wall despite the fact that it didn’t appear to break in any way.) So you’ll spend hours shooting walls, jumping into random walls, bombing the floors, and sometimes you’ll even find a secret area that’s JUST A DEAD END. And the bosses!? Forget about it! I literally had to use the invincibility cheat to beat Mother Brain and I STILL THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. It literally took me 15 minutes to beat her. This game is indeed a classic, but it suffers so much from its aged mechanics that were put in simply to extend the life of the game. This doesn’t make it fun though, it makes it frustrating. While I still enjoy this game for the history, I have to judge it based on how fun it truly is, and while it DOES feel fun to play, a lot of your fun will be ruined by the games bullshit puzzles. If only this game could receive a remake! (Oh wait.. it did!)
Open this review on Memorycard
Download Memorycard on the App Store Get Memorycard on Google Play
Memorycard is a social video game tracker for iOS, Android, and web.