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COMPLETE: Metroid: Samus Returns
The example I usually cite to explain my overall stance on game piracy is Mother/Earthbound Zero/Earthbound Beginnings. You see, as historically important to the franchise as it was, and as much credit as it deserves for what it started, the deep dark secret is that Mother itself is actually a pretty terrible game. The map layout is almost as confusing and directionless as Final Fantasy 2. The random encounter rate is something akin to what SNES Earthbound does when it catches you pirating it, except Earthbound's case is deliberate punishment while Mother is just like that. The last area of Mother famously/infamously wasn't even play-tested because the developers just wanted to be done with the damn thing, and it shows.
There's a ROM hack called Mother 25th Anniversary Edition that fixes all of Mother's bullshit, and redoes the graphics and translation and various other quality of life fixes. If you want to play Mother, you have several options, including the Virtual Console release of Earthbound Beginnings. If you want to play Mother and have it be an enjoyable experience, this this hack is your only option.
I very strongly believe in supporting the official release. If you can acquire a product legitimately, then you kind of have to; the developers deserve your money. That being said, once you've purchased it... well, it's your purchase. Enjoy it how you want at that point; you paid for it. So, in conclusion, what you do is you load up the Virtual Console and purchase Earthbound Beginnings, legitimately. Then, after you've paid for and supported the game, you bury it in your console storage somewhere and go play M25A instead.
So it was that I found myself purchasing Samus Returns, the official licensed 3DS remake of Metroid 2. The unauthorized fan game AM2R was one of the best games I'd played in ages, and you may recall me gushing about it once or twice. By my own logic, I would have had to buy Samus Returns even it had turned out to be the biggest insult to the series since Other M, because I already got my enjoyment of a Metroid 2 remake from AM2R and now it was time to pay up. And I went in more or less with that mindset.
I didn't exactly have low expectations, because the trailer did look awesome, and I was pretty excited based on what I'd seen. However, I went in with low expectations of others' expectations, if that makes sense. This is the latest release from MercurySteam, whose track record for enjoyable quality games is... not flawless. More damningly, it's largely seen as the game that killed AM2R. No one was going to cut it any slack for that alone. I had at least one personal friend I knew react to the announce trailer with, "Oh, it's MercurySteam. ... Well, at least we still have AM2R...." I went in fully expecting my eventual entry on this game to be a defense against that. This was going to be this whole big post about how you AM2R fans need to buy this game anyway even if we all hate it just because it's the closest we'll get to supporting the official release for AM2R, and come on please support the IP and don't be unfair.
But guys, Samus Returns is so good.
From the moment you power it on, this game is gorgeous. with a scene-setting introductory narration accompanied by spectacular visuals that especially pop in 3D. Then you start playing, and the game itself controls like a dream. Almost* everything feels intuitive and easy to use, like every button does exactly what it should. I realize "this game does not fuck up the controls" sounds like low praise for a Metroid game, but bear in mind this also includes some very welcome adjustments like holding L to Spider Ball and the Grappling Beam being auto-selected when you aim at a Grappling Beam anchor point in Free Aim Mode. Free Aim Mode itself is a feature that quickly made me wonder how we ever got along in any Metroid game without it, and then it gives you the Pulse Scan and there's no going back.
* There are one or two control criticisms I had, and it would be dishonest of me not to mention them, but they are minor and did not impact the overall experience. Switching beams/missile types on the touch screen is awkward, because stopping with the buttons to go touch a screen in the heat of battle never works, a point I've been sore about ever since Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Fortunately, you only ever need to switch in locations where you have plenty of time to think about it, such as when you're making preparations at the door right outside a boss chamber. Also, you don't seem to get quite as much height off a Grappling Beam Tarzan swing jump as I'm used to, so I never did get the hang of those "swing from block to block" sections. Fortunately, those are rare, and you can face-tank them by just wading through the lava and then jumping up and grabbing the last one.
For the most part, item usage and distribution is remarkably fair, to the point that it almost never feels like anything in your arsenal is useless, even when "better" alternatives come along. Bear in mind that this is a game whose "getting to high places" options give you the Spider Ball, Grappling Beam, and Space Jump, in that order, but they found ways to make all three of them relevant and highly useful even in the endgame. Contrast with even the much beloved Super Metroid, where you pretty much had no reason to fire a Grappling Beam shot ever again after getting the Space Jump, and that's without the Spider Ball even being a factor.
* Again, minor non-game-impacting exception: Wow there sure is a lot of "okay now go get the rest of the Missile Tank/Power Bomb expansions" in the postgame victory lap for the fact that the only obstacle left at that point is immune to everything but your good old shooty beam anyway.
The music is interesting and done very well. I mentioned in my AM2R posts that the original Game Boy Metroid 2 "music" was an unholy cacophonous mess, and that the AM2R team did something unexpected and amazing by somehow working it into anything listenable. I still believe that anyone who can turn this into this is a miracle worker. Samus Returns' team decided to keep the overall goal of "this should sound like you're alone and lost in a desolate planet" spooky cave ambience, but did a much, much better job getting there. They turned that song into this, which is also a fantastic and astonishing turnaround.
The overall difficulty is... something. I will say that almost everything in this game hits extremely hard, including some bosses whose big charged up "no really you really should dodge this" moves can do almost three full energy tanks' worth of damage in one hit after counting the enhanced defense from the Gravity Suit. However, it's all learnable. This game works a lot like Punch-Out, where every boss has moves you really don't want to eat in the face, tells and counter opportunities to work around them, and the requirement of several scouting runs to determine "Okay now what is it--OH. Ow okay yeah I need to avoid when it's doing that." To everyone considering this game but worried about potential frustration issues: you should be okay if you go into battle knowing that you're going to die, like a lot, and that's just part of the learning curve. Again, Punch-Out. It took me eight tries to bring down my first Alpha Metroid, and now I can do it in my sleep. The good news is that the game fully expects this, and soft-checkpoints you right outside boss lairs (and also makes all the twenty second "RAR BOSS JUMPS OUT AT YOU" battle intro mini-cutscenes skippable) so trying again is near-instantaneous. The bad news is that it doesn't checkpoint you mid-battle for bosses with multiple phases/forms. Dying at the very end of a longer struggle, especially because it's one of the (fortunately few) occasions where the game really could be clearer about what it wants you to do to dodge that one attack, is still irksome. (Looking at you, Diggernaut.)
What else... oh, between the original Metroid 2, AM2R, the flashback in Super, etc. I think it's fair to say I've now seen the "Samus encounters the hatchling, almost shoots, doesn't" scene almost as many times as I've seen Batman's parents die, but this game has easily and by far the best take on it. I didn't think something like that could reach "I almost cried" status at this point, and yet.
Finally, this game doesn't do the Zero Mission thing where there's an extra entire area after the original game's content, but I will say you're not quite done after taking down the Queen. Someone who's finished this game please come PM me about the last part, because EEEEE THAT WAS ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME THINGS IN ENTIRE SERIES HISTORY AND I NEED TO SQUEE ABOUT IT WITH SOMEONE but spoilers. Seriously, there is so much I want to say here.
Oh, one thing I will spoil, though: Spider Ball + Power Bomb = Straight-line unidirectional rocket jump. It's basically how you Shinespark in this game. There, I just saved you hours of "How the fuck do I get through this spike corridor, am I meant to come back later with some other power or..?" because that's one thing they did nothing to make you even slightly aware that this is is now a move that Samus can do. It only unlocks some of those optional Missile expansions and such for 100% completion, but still. That was like if they'd hidden the last Energy Tank in Super Metroid behind a wall that required the Crystal Flash.
Anyway, I guess the question everyone's going to have is: Samus Returns or AM2R? I don't think this is really fair, because the two are apples and oranges in a lot of ways. I feel like AM2R might be the superior remake of Metroid 2, in that it feels more nostalgic and familiar, whereas a lot of Samus Returns is a departure that almost feels like a new game entirely. A lot of this is due to Samus Returns busying up the map to such an absurd degree that there's more new content than old even in clearly and directly old areas. However, the new content works, and overall Samus Returns may be the better game. Maybe. Don't get me wrong, I still love AM2R and it still does a lot of things Samus Returns doesn't, so that's a "maybe" because gosh they're both so good and I really can't decide.
Um... I guess just do what I did: play both. If you like AM2R, you're kind of honor-bound to pick up Samus Returns anyway. But I promise you that the latter is a fully realized high-quality release that is more than worthy of standing on its own, away from all the controversy and comparison.
There's a ROM hack called Mother 25th Anniversary Edition that fixes all of Mother's bullshit, and redoes the graphics and translation and various other quality of life fixes. If you want to play Mother, you have several options, including the Virtual Console release of Earthbound Beginnings. If you want to play Mother and have it be an enjoyable experience, this this hack is your only option.
I very strongly believe in supporting the official release. If you can acquire a product legitimately, then you kind of have to; the developers deserve your money. That being said, once you've purchased it... well, it's your purchase. Enjoy it how you want at that point; you paid for it. So, in conclusion, what you do is you load up the Virtual Console and purchase Earthbound Beginnings, legitimately. Then, after you've paid for and supported the game, you bury it in your console storage somewhere and go play M25A instead.
So it was that I found myself purchasing Samus Returns, the official licensed 3DS remake of Metroid 2. The unauthorized fan game AM2R was one of the best games I'd played in ages, and you may recall me gushing about it once or twice. By my own logic, I would have had to buy Samus Returns even it had turned out to be the biggest insult to the series since Other M, because I already got my enjoyment of a Metroid 2 remake from AM2R and now it was time to pay up. And I went in more or less with that mindset.
I didn't exactly have low expectations, because the trailer did look awesome, and I was pretty excited based on what I'd seen. However, I went in with low expectations of others' expectations, if that makes sense. This is the latest release from MercurySteam, whose track record for enjoyable quality games is... not flawless. More damningly, it's largely seen as the game that killed AM2R. No one was going to cut it any slack for that alone. I had at least one personal friend I knew react to the announce trailer with, "Oh, it's MercurySteam. ... Well, at least we still have AM2R...." I went in fully expecting my eventual entry on this game to be a defense against that. This was going to be this whole big post about how you AM2R fans need to buy this game anyway even if we all hate it just because it's the closest we'll get to supporting the official release for AM2R, and come on please support the IP and don't be unfair.
But guys, Samus Returns is so good.
From the moment you power it on, this game is gorgeous. with a scene-setting introductory narration accompanied by spectacular visuals that especially pop in 3D. Then you start playing, and the game itself controls like a dream. Almost* everything feels intuitive and easy to use, like every button does exactly what it should. I realize "this game does not fuck up the controls" sounds like low praise for a Metroid game, but bear in mind this also includes some very welcome adjustments like holding L to Spider Ball and the Grappling Beam being auto-selected when you aim at a Grappling Beam anchor point in Free Aim Mode. Free Aim Mode itself is a feature that quickly made me wonder how we ever got along in any Metroid game without it, and then it gives you the Pulse Scan and there's no going back.
* There are one or two control criticisms I had, and it would be dishonest of me not to mention them, but they are minor and did not impact the overall experience. Switching beams/missile types on the touch screen is awkward, because stopping with the buttons to go touch a screen in the heat of battle never works, a point I've been sore about ever since Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Fortunately, you only ever need to switch in locations where you have plenty of time to think about it, such as when you're making preparations at the door right outside a boss chamber. Also, you don't seem to get quite as much height off a Grappling Beam Tarzan swing jump as I'm used to, so I never did get the hang of those "swing from block to block" sections. Fortunately, those are rare, and you can face-tank them by just wading through the lava and then jumping up and grabbing the last one.
For the most part, item usage and distribution is remarkably fair, to the point that it almost never feels like anything in your arsenal is useless, even when "better" alternatives come along. Bear in mind that this is a game whose "getting to high places" options give you the Spider Ball, Grappling Beam, and Space Jump, in that order, but they found ways to make all three of them relevant and highly useful even in the endgame. Contrast with even the much beloved Super Metroid, where you pretty much had no reason to fire a Grappling Beam shot ever again after getting the Space Jump, and that's without the Spider Ball even being a factor.
* Again, minor non-game-impacting exception: Wow there sure is a lot of "okay now go get the rest of the Missile Tank/Power Bomb expansions" in the postgame victory lap for the fact that the only obstacle left at that point is immune to everything but your good old shooty beam anyway.
The music is interesting and done very well. I mentioned in my AM2R posts that the original Game Boy Metroid 2 "music" was an unholy cacophonous mess, and that the AM2R team did something unexpected and amazing by somehow working it into anything listenable. I still believe that anyone who can turn this into this is a miracle worker. Samus Returns' team decided to keep the overall goal of "this should sound like you're alone and lost in a desolate planet" spooky cave ambience, but did a much, much better job getting there. They turned that song into this, which is also a fantastic and astonishing turnaround.
The overall difficulty is... something. I will say that almost everything in this game hits extremely hard, including some bosses whose big charged up "no really you really should dodge this" moves can do almost three full energy tanks' worth of damage in one hit after counting the enhanced defense from the Gravity Suit. However, it's all learnable. This game works a lot like Punch-Out, where every boss has moves you really don't want to eat in the face, tells and counter opportunities to work around them, and the requirement of several scouting runs to determine "Okay now what is it--OH. Ow okay yeah I need to avoid when it's doing that." To everyone considering this game but worried about potential frustration issues: you should be okay if you go into battle knowing that you're going to die, like a lot, and that's just part of the learning curve. Again, Punch-Out. It took me eight tries to bring down my first Alpha Metroid, and now I can do it in my sleep. The good news is that the game fully expects this, and soft-checkpoints you right outside boss lairs (and also makes all the twenty second "RAR BOSS JUMPS OUT AT YOU" battle intro mini-cutscenes skippable) so trying again is near-instantaneous. The bad news is that it doesn't checkpoint you mid-battle for bosses with multiple phases/forms. Dying at the very end of a longer struggle, especially because it's one of the (fortunately few) occasions where the game really could be clearer about what it wants you to do to dodge that one attack, is still irksome. (Looking at you, Diggernaut.)
What else... oh, between the original Metroid 2, AM2R, the flashback in Super, etc. I think it's fair to say I've now seen the "Samus encounters the hatchling, almost shoots, doesn't" scene almost as many times as I've seen Batman's parents die, but this game has easily and by far the best take on it. I didn't think something like that could reach "I almost cried" status at this point, and yet.
Finally, this game doesn't do the Zero Mission thing where there's an extra entire area after the original game's content, but I will say you're not quite done after taking down the Queen. Someone who's finished this game please come PM me about the last part, because EEEEE THAT WAS ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME THINGS IN ENTIRE SERIES HISTORY AND I NEED TO SQUEE ABOUT IT WITH SOMEONE but spoilers. Seriously, there is so much I want to say here.
Oh, one thing I will spoil, though: Spider Ball + Power Bomb = Straight-line unidirectional rocket jump. It's basically how you Shinespark in this game. There, I just saved you hours of "How the fuck do I get through this spike corridor, am I meant to come back later with some other power or..?" because that's one thing they did nothing to make you even slightly aware that this is is now a move that Samus can do. It only unlocks some of those optional Missile expansions and such for 100% completion, but still. That was like if they'd hidden the last Energy Tank in Super Metroid behind a wall that required the Crystal Flash.
Anyway, I guess the question everyone's going to have is: Samus Returns or AM2R? I don't think this is really fair, because the two are apples and oranges in a lot of ways. I feel like AM2R might be the superior remake of Metroid 2, in that it feels more nostalgic and familiar, whereas a lot of Samus Returns is a departure that almost feels like a new game entirely. A lot of this is due to Samus Returns busying up the map to such an absurd degree that there's more new content than old even in clearly and directly old areas. However, the new content works, and overall Samus Returns may be the better game. Maybe. Don't get me wrong, I still love AM2R and it still does a lot of things Samus Returns doesn't, so that's a "maybe" because gosh they're both so good and I really can't decide.
Um... I guess just do what I did: play both. If you like AM2R, you're kind of honor-bound to pick up Samus Returns anyway. But I promise you that the latter is a fully realized high-quality release that is more than worthy of standing on its own, away from all the controversy and comparison.