The Metroid Thread: BOMB ALL THE WALLS!

[Issun]

I've decided to get through all the 2D Metroids this year. Even with rewind, a walkthrough and an invincibility code, the OG game is an absolute chore to play in ways even Zelda 2 never approached. And yet I still believe that Other M is the worst in the series, given what I've heard.

 

[RT-55J]

I need to try replaying Prime 3 sometime, because I remember having a much more viscerally negative reaction to the first hour or two of that game (before I quit) than I did with Other M (which I finished).

 

[Aleryn]

Good luck with Metroid 2 Issun. That overly zoomed-in camera made the original feel like a breeze last time I played it.

 

[Bongo]

Prime 3's opening would fit on the front of the hypothetical game that some were worried that Metroid Prime would turn out to be, i.e. a dumb spectacle shooter about army guys. But it also fits on the front of the game that Metroid Prime 3 actually is, i.e. a Metroid Prime game developed after the release of Half-Life 2.

The seventh console generation was a time when developers were acutely, excessively concerned about the risk of players not understanding their game. I remember it being a time when the discourse was fixated on a dichotomy between "casual gamers" and "core gamers," and it was common to see charges that games had been "dumbed down." On Wii in particular, the console's massive success among the "blue ocean" of first-time video game users contributed to that phenomenon. Many devs did adopt a defensive posture against this position, including design elements intended to provide a lifeline to confused or frustrated players of low skill. This was when the "Super Guide" system was invented, after all.

How does Metroid Prime 3 relate to that? I think it's all a matter of presentation, not fundamentals. The separate planets Samus explores are comparable in complexity to the discrete environments of its predecessors, but because it has landing sites instead of elevators, their self-containedness is more apparent. Your combat tools combine more fluidly (beams are stacked, not selected) in order to create more headroom for the free aiming, which from a marketing standpoint was the game's marquee feature: the world was waiting on a motion-controlled shooter, and quickening the tempo of battle and setting the tutorial in an action set-piece rather than a horror set-piece ensured those expectations felt fulfilled from the get-go.

 

[Olli]

I wonder if 40-something-old Olli's wrists could handle the motion controls of Prime 3 as well as 20-something-old Olli's? I'm guessing no, and I'm not super interested in finding that out the hard way.

 

[Becksworth]

I've decided to get through all the 2D Metroids this year. Even with rewind, a walkthrough and an invincibility code, the OG game is an absolute chore to play in ways even Zelda 2 never approached. And yet I still believe that Other M is the worst in the series, given what I've heard.

Points to Metroid Planets and it's various quality of life improvements
Might I suggest Metroid Planets again?

 

[Kazin]

I've decided to get through all the 2D Metroids this year. Even with rewind, a walkthrough and an invincibility code, the OG game is an absolute chore to play in ways even Zelda 2 never approached. And yet I still believe that Other M is the worst in the series, given what I've heard.

Outside dying causing you to respawn with only 30 health, I couldn't disagree more - I had a great time playing through the NES/FDS versions three times in a row back in September. Meanwhile I've never beaten Zelda 2 and couldn't be bothered to try that mess of a game again lol

 

[Peklo]

I think whatever Prime 3 is has to be viewed in context of that series's companion piece, comparison point and genre rival in the Halo games of the era. Prime arrived a year after the first Halo, but from then on their respective trilogies might as well have run in parallel; there is a month separating the second entries, and maybe a week for the trilogy conclusions. Stuff like that is catnip for marketing spin, forum debates and press writing angles in pitting them against each other as competition for occupying vaguely similar genre trappings, but it was also a time when console and PC platforms were much more segregated from each other and these two series were the ones that ended up epitomizing the console shooters of their respective systems, regardless of their individual differences and approaches. Halo was always commercially the much bigger deal, and with the second games of the respective series, likely also critically eclipsed whatever Prime 2 attempted in continuing the formula. I may not particularly like Prime, the first game, but it's extremely evident that it's looking within for inspiration in its almost literal borrowings from Super to guide its voice, lending it the identity that people are so fond of now. Going forward with the series, and taking into account attempts to expand it through hackneyed multiplayer experiments like Prime 2's deathmatch, Hunters as a whole, and just an overwhelming number of things about Prime 3 make it resoundingly clear that the series was swallowed up by its own Halo-envy, whether it was internally motivated or imposed via expectations because the narrative connecting the two was so inescapable at the time.

 

[Kazin]

I barely played Prime 3 because making the series a "proper" FPS via manual aiming made me hate it, and I doubt I'll be able to ever get through that game as a result (nor would I have bought the Prime 1 remaster if they wouldn't let me play it Gamecube-style). It's been like a decade and I still can't believe people were excited the first two games got manual aiming on that Trilogy Wii release, much less that people play the first game remaster that way now. Seems antithetical to the design of the game imo.

 

[FelixSH]

I played Prime 3 one time, and probably won't do so again, because of manual aiming. I'm really, really bad at this, made the game very frustrating to play.

I also didn't like, that we actually interacted with other bounty hunters. Which is probably a personal hangup, but it felt really weird, not to be completely isolated from the rest, being that excellent super-soldier who can do what others simply can't.

 

[gogglebob]

On my first playthrough...

I felt like I was beating Metroid Prime because I had to. I particularly did not like FPS "jumping", but there was so much Super Metroid DNA in there, I felt like I was doing myself a disservice if I ignored the game. In the end, I beat it, but I had no great drive to ever play it again.

I never completed Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I bounced off the "ammo system" hard, and eventually drifted over to some other game and never went back. The gameplay just wasn't compelling for me.

I played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption to 100% completion. I was expecting another stall-out like Prime 2, and I not only enjoyed, but dedicatedly wanted more. The "aiming" controls worked for me 100%, and the emphasis on action engaged me in ways that Prime 1 & 2 did not. My biggest complaint about Dread was that I thought they put too much of an emphasis on combat over exploration, but the opposite worked better for me in the 3-D realm. My only complaint was the general plot making Samus more of a soldier in an army than an independent bounty hunter, but that was more of an aesthetic thing than anything.

I've since gotten better at FPS-style games in general, and like Prime 1 more now. But Prime 3 is somehow my favorite of the trilogy.

 

[Becksworth]

It's been like a decade and I still can't believe people were excited the first two games got manual aiming on that Trilogy Wii release, much less that people play the first game remaster that way now. Seems antithetical to the design of the game imo.

I always just viewed it as quality of life thing with respects to Prime 1 & 2. I'm still largely engaging the games as originally intended, locking onto/circle strafing enemies and what have you, but IR/twin stick/gyro aiming just provide additional tools like easily strafing out of combat and shooting at things at a distance or otherwise not lock-on-able.

 

[Peklo]

I 100%'d Prime 3 too but to me the ease and matter-of-factness of that process, almost as if a foregone conclusion in interacting with the game at all, was indicative of the roteness that permeated every facet of it; I did not even have to try to make it happen. Other M is the same, and I don't think it's a coincidence that Prime 3 at the latest is where the series started emphasizing combat over or at least on par with exploration in importance and design emphasis, even if the teams and studios that have handled the series in that span number at least four separate entities altogether. All of them have leaned on it as a focus and transformed how the games look, feel and present themselves.

 

[RT-55J]

But it also fits on the front of the game that Metroid Prime 3 actually is, i.e. a Metroid Prime game developed after the release of Half-Life 2.

That probably explains some of my anathema towards the game.

While I like HL2 overall, my least favorite part of it is the attitude many of the characters have towards you, the first-person protagonist. The preening, worshipful posture of characters like Barney or Alyx feels cloying and pandering in a way that ruins my immersion in the game.

In the context of Prime 3, I would have preferred it if Samus's relationship with the GF were undercut by a degree of distrust or envy or something to provide a bit of dramatic tension, rather than the uncritical veneration of space jingoism that even Halo (at one point) handled more smartly.

Though maybe my criticism here is moot, since the game allegedly becomes good after 5 or 10 hours or whatever. (My fault for not letting go of a sour first impression a decade+ after the fact.)

(This is the part of the post where I plug SM Subversion again, and offer a provocative pull quote like "it's the secret best Prime game.")

 

[Bongo]

The bias that I bring to this conversation is that I think that motion aiming fuckin owns and has improved even the remakes it was haphazardly backported into (like Ocarina of Time 3D),let alone new games designed for it from the ground up.

At the time of Prime 3's release, the history of the Metroid series was marked by a staggering difference in popularity between America and Japan. I'm sure there was a sense within Retro Studios that they had carte blanche to pander to domestic sensibilities - especially given the prevailing attitude in the industry that players from different countries vastly different tastes. (ironically, Other M somehow contributed to closing the sales gap, and it has stayed closed subsequently, suggesting that it was only ever a matter of marketing, not of design.)

Anecdotes from the development of Prime 1 give some clues as to the difference in perception about the series. The language barrier contributed: one mechanic was pitched in which the player would be given bounties to hunt; the pitch was met with confusion by Nintendo, bringing to light that the use of the term "bounty hunter" in prior paratext had been a translation error all along.

In the genre context where they appear as protagonists (revisionist westerns and space jidaigeki), bounty hunters are, traditionally, antiheroes, and not made any less shady when the narrative affords them an opportunity to bring in a monster instead of a sympathetic fugitive. That colors the mentality brought to the characterization of Samus (who at any rate was enough of a cipher for conflicting interpretations to coexist). The traits emphasized were those compatible with antiheroism: she's feared, she's relentless, she's destructive, she's cunning, she's above all cool. So they put her in a power fantasy, where you pretty much just constantly clown on Space Pirates, who are effectively just in your way as you track down the cosmic horror that's your true objective.

The mainline series, by contrast, casts her in a more traditionally heroic light. She's cut off from her support, she's in the ruins of her childhood home, she's vulnerable, she's out there fighting for the cause of strategic arms nonproliferation (and if you want to talk about ideas that play differently in America and Japan, hoo boy). Most importantly, in Metroid games, she fights the final boss' minions, whereas in Metroid Prime games, she fights rivals who are pursuing the same target.

From a game design standpoint, I think a major element of Prime 3 that arises from Half-Life 2 influences or Halo envy is that in this one, Samus has allies. That's a new element for the series (the AI in Fusion is depicted as an obstacle rather than a helper). Ironically enough, taken objectively the Federation just in Prime 3 is a perfect mirror of the Space Pirates (competing for minerals with military applications, experimenting with Phazon-powered super-soldiers, employing formidable unique aliens with their own agendas such as Gandrayda and Samus, using a Mother Brain ), but I think that their overall positive framing is in service of that narrative design goal. The implicit amorality of the echoes* of the "bounty hunter" interpretation of the character well suits a story set in the backdrop of a war not between good guys and bad guys, but between our side and their side.

* pun intended

 

[Kazin]

I'll see myself out of this conversation with my opinion that aiming - via motion controls, control sticks, or computer mouse or whatever else - is not an interesting mechanic to me at all, in anything I've ever played, so I couldn't get into Prime 3 on a basic mechanical level, setting aside whatever was going on in the narrative. Enjoying a FPS for me pretty much requires a way to circumvent aiming (locking on in Metroid Prime, V.A.T.S. in Fallout, etc.).

 

[Bongo]

On the topic of "combat focus," when Samus Returns came out, it made me conscious of a trend in the series' design that Dread only reinforced. Even Other M fits into this pattern. All the games that Yoshio Sakamoto directed have a throughline which I believe is the subject of the greatest authorial focus: the controls of Samus herself.

In Metroid, there's an amount of nuance and detail in Samus' movements that exceeds virtually all of its contemporaries. It's got a very high skill ceiling. Consider it in contrast to Kid Icarus, developed on the same engine at the same time; consider it as a response to the success of the smooth-playing Super Mario Bros. "How you move" is central to the prevailing thought around action game design in that period (Castlevania! Sonic the Hedgehog!), and it's on everyone's mind at Nintendo.

Return of Samus and especially Super Metroid add more into the kit. Diagonal aiming, moonwalking, shinesparks, crystal flashes, grappling - what else comes close in the 90s? Then Fusion, while trimming a little bit of the fat, manages to fit even more actions into fewer buttons, and makes it all faster and more fluid. Other M rewarded you for dodging with a dodge-counter, and it added a dimension to the proceedings. Samus Returns refined the dodge counter with the new melee parry, and gave you free aiming, and Dread accelerated it further, keeping you mobile with things like parkour and the flash shift.

Every time the speed or expressiveness of Samus' movements increased, it made the player better able to dodge the enemy. Naturally, that means the player was increasingly expected to dodge. Damage increased and recovery increased. In other words, combat became more of a threat.

But I think that should not be mistaken for a shifting of a balance away from exploration and onto combat. I think, rather, that the most informative lens through which to interpret Metroid games has always been movement. Combat and exploration are simply two ways to present the player with obstacles that they must move around.

 

[Kazin]

Combat becoming more of a threat does shift the balance to making the game more about combat than exploration though... How could it not? From what I recall of Samus Returns, you have fewer movement options to avoid fighting enemies than prior games in the series - the player is funneled into more and more battles than they otherwise may want (like me!), so whether or not the intent was to focus on combat more or not, in practice, that's what it is. I guess I'll have to replay it to make sure my feeling of it is correct, but Dread did not feel especially designed to have a world meant to be explored - it felt more like a series of instances Samus was shoved into and told to fight her way out of (E.M.M.I. sections aside, which were just - imo - shitty puzzles to figure out how to avoid, for the most part).

 

[Peklo]

When I say "combat is emphasized more" in the games past a certain point I mean as much the presentation and visual language as the mechanics of it. Samus has always been defined by her movement capabilities, as you say, and it has cast her as the space acrobat weirdo that she is, but the way she inflicts violence on others has by contrast lacked much of that flair and performative quality on the player and character end that's communicated in how she kills things and which leaves things open to interpretation in a number of ways. That's the "balance" that I gesture at that I see exist in a meaningful way in the earlier strain of the games, which cannot anymore when by Other M Sick-Nasty Melee Finishers are par for the course, and the increasing up-close emphasis in how battles are fought in MercurySteam's games informs every other facet of their design from the persistent exploratory rhythms to the setpiece encounters against roughly person-sized "rivals" like it's a Devil May Cry game where violence and its infliction is foundationally the draw and foremost expression of the related play mechanics. This stuff bleeds into how Samus is framed and presented, how we get these reverential Cinematic Kill codas to boss fights, and it's an expression of the character, her universe, and ultimately the series that has alienated me almost entirely from what they've landed on as appealing. All these nuances matter and why for example the story of Samus Returns is not the same story as conveyed by Return of Samus, for the most literal comparison there is on the subject.

 

[Bongo]

It's not that it doesn't shift the "balance," it's that this balance is not the most interesting way to think about it.

 

[Peklo]

Thanks for the insult, I guess.

 

[Bongo]

Allow me to clarify what I was referring to:

Combat becoming more of a threat does shift the balance to making the game more about combat than exploration though... How could it not?

I'm not saying that combat becoming more of a threat doesn't shift the "balance," but that the notion of a shifting balance between combat and exploration is not the most useful analytical tool for understanding its design.

 

[Kazin]

Well, thanks for the insult, I guess lol

(for the record, I do think that balance is interesting, and I don't even disagree with most of your post, Bongo, but if you would like to not talk about it that way I'll leave it alone, I guess)

 

[Peklo]

Condescension isn't the most useful tool in communication, either.

 

[Bongo]

I was attempting to clarify my assertion. I regret that I somehow managed to utter an insult while attempting to describe what I find interesting.

 

[Regulus]

For me, at least, the main benefit of manual aiming in the later Prime games/ports wasn't so much that it made them "proper" first person shooters... it was that it made for a significantly more natural way to interact with their worlds. I like glancing around at things, moving in for a closer look, tracking things as they fly by... I already find standard twin stick controls kind of clumsy for actually experiencing any of these kinds of things, and the classic Prime control scheme is even more awkward than that. For a series of games based on exploring an alien environment, this was somewhat disappointing.

Motion aiming is itself still pretty clunky and leaves a lot to be desired compared to a mouse (or a VR headset), but it was a lot more immersive than the original stick & lock based controls.

 

[Tato]

I had so much more fun with Fusion this time, I think because my method of playing these games has been changed by Samus Returns and Dread and their combat focus. I liberally used my missiles and power bombs this time through as the enemies in Fusion hit hard. I also learned that sometimes, charge beams are even more effective on bosses than any missile, diffusion or no. The cramped arenas most of the boss fights take place in really require you to understand and manipulate the movement of the bosses in neat ways.

 

[Phantoon]

The thing I like about Fusion is that while the bosses are hard they're scrupulously fair. You can beat them without taking damage and I'm not convinced that's true for Super Metroid.

 

[RT-55J]

Damageless Super Metroid is possible, but ironically enough the hardest boss to do that way is Ridley in Ceres.

 

[Aleryn]

Feel similar Tato. I didn't like Fusion when I first played it because of my expectations. And upon replaying it much later I enjoyed the experience by the game's own merits. The strong horror themes alone do much for it.