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Post by Ayen on Nov 18, 2020 8:26:34 GMT -6
Metroid is an action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo and released to the Nintendo Entertainment System console in North America on August 15, 1987. It stars Samus Aran, a famous bounty hunter tasked with destroying Mother Brain and retrieving the Metroid parasite stolen by Space Pirates on Planet Zebes. This marked the first entry of the Metroid franchise which paved the way for many sequels to follow. Without further ado, let’s dive into the very first Metroid video game.
Gameplay: Metroid starts right off like most NES games did back in the day sucking you right into the action. You have a gun arm with a weak beam attack and a jumping ability to start straight off. From there you can find other power ups like the morph ball, the missile weapon, the screw attack, more energy which stands for health, and even a stronger suit of armor. You can also find a freeze beam which can freeze enemies allowing you to jump on them to get to higher platforms.
It’s not a problem now in a world where we have gameplay videos and walkthroughs to help us get through a game, but back then you had nothing telling you where to go first or how to get there. So you had to explore the open-ended world around you and hope for the best. There also aren't too many bosses in the game. There are only three main bosses in the whole game. Kraid, Ridley, and of course Mother Brain. The rest of the game is mostly spent exploring the world and finding power ups to help you get to places you couldn’t get to before.
When it comes to your main weapon you can only shoot straight ahead and up. There’s no way to shoot down at enemies that are on the floor and you can’t crouch down to shoot lower enemies. You need the morph ball with the bombs to get those enemies and the beam can only go so far so you have to get closer to certain enemies to take them out. There is also no mini map at all in this game so you have no idea where you’ve been and where you are most of the time you’re playing. I hope you have a good memory.
One of the most annoying things to do is when you have to shoot the ceiling and then jump up just in time for the below block to reappear giving you something to land on. Half the time you jump at the wrong time and the block comes back blocking your jump.
It’s also very hard to avoid lava in this game. You’re doing your best to jump across the different platforms and kill enemies and you end up bumping into something or falling in lava anyway, and that drains your health of course.
On a brighter note there are areas where enemies come out constantly for you to kill and gain health and item pick ups. This is called farming. You can stay there as long as you need to until your health is back to full or you have enough missiles to get through a door that can only be open by missiles. And for some reason you need at least five missiles to open up red doors, and ten to open up purple doors. How many times do you have to shoot something to get it to stay open around here?
After you defeat the Mother Brain a timer goes off and you have to escape the base before the time limit runs out or else the base explodes. This is mostly jumping up incredibly small platforms that you can easily miss and fall further down the area sucking away more of your time. I get wanting to provide a challenge, but the game is hard enough at the beginning, do we need to make the platforms so freaking small? I’m amazed Samus can even balance on those things.
Oh, and it isn’t until the very end of the game that you find out Samus is a woman. That’s right, Metroid was one of the first games to include a female protagonist making it one of the more memorable games in that category of strong female characters. I get why they did it this way as back then (and it kinda still true to this day) people didn’t like the idea of females being on the game box or promoted in a game as the star, so they had to be sneaky and make you think you’re playing as a guy or a robot until you beat the game and see, “Hey, that’s a woman!” What a twist.
Story: Okay, so the game takes place on the planet Zebes and it’s up to Samus to take back the Metroid parasites that were stolen from a Galactic Federation space research vessel by Space Pirates. The Metroid is a dangerous parasite that can latch onto anything and drains its energy. The Space Pirates plan to replicate the Metroid and use it as a weapon. The Galactic Federation tried to get it back themselves, but they were defeated by the Space Pirates. So they had no choice but to send in Samus Aran to retrieve the Metroids and defeat the Space Pirates and the Mother Brain which controls the Space Pirates’ base.
The story isn’t really told through the game. There’s a little briefing you can read if you wait on the title screen, but otherwise you’d have no idea what the story was about unless you looked at outside sources, which was fine for back then. It wasn’t about the story, it was about the gameplay. That aside the story was a pretty good one I must say.
Graphics: The graphics are okay. They’re not really great, but they’re not terrible either. You can tell who Samus is and the different backgrounds and colors are cool. Considering this game was made in the eighties on the NES during the 8-bit era it’s fine for what it is.
Flaws: I hate to say it, but the game has really showed its age. I know I can’t be too hard on something that came out in the eighties for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but if you play any of the latter Metroid titles this one is really dated. As I said before there is no mini map so you have no way of knowing where you came from or where you’re going.
The beam only shoots so far and can only be aimed straight ahead or up. You can’t shoot down and you can’t kneel and shoot for shorter enemies like you can in some of the sequels. I waited for a power up that would make the beam shoot at a farther distance and it never came. If you can look past those faults then it’s worth a rental at the very least.
Summary: Overall, despite being dated, the original Metroid is the game that started it all. It’s a challenging piece that requires you to explore the world around you and pick up power ups to get past points you couldn’t before. While it pales in comparison to future titles, it’s still worth checking out to see how the series started and watch it evolve from the oldest to the newest.
Try It!
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