Two hours in or so. Little more? Little less? Something like that. I got past that miniboss with heads on its front and its rear with the green orb on its belly. Picked up my first Charge Accelerator.
Immediate impressions:
1. Boss fights are impressive, but not to the degree I'm used to with this series. I found myself having to say "Hey, that's kinda cool" with the first boss, whereas with the first boss in any of the rest of the games I was like "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH". This isn't nostalgia clouding my vision, and the bosses are still fun (so far), but they are not living up to par.
2. Combat is decent, slightly unwieldy. They manage the useage of eight directions well, but digital movement when they demand the judgment of depth is difficult. Jumping on top of enemies (particularly the hoppers, easily the most comon enemies you can do that to) is finicky and sometimes hhard to make stick.
3. Certain segments - like when sliding down a hill - feel like Ninja Gaiden, only somewhat less forgiving. Samus became less acrobatic when I wasn't looking.
4. I don't mind the "authorization needed" thing, but the only justification for that is in Adam only allowing Samus to help with that as the primary prerequisite. Fine. Whatever. But why couldn't I use my powers before that?
5. Pacing is somewhat broken, with moments of tension and long exploratory sequences (which are composed primarily of silence) broken up be expository dialogue that doens't begin to be necessary.
6. The script is horrendous. I don't mean run-of-the-mill video game bad, here, not the sort of thing you'd sit down with some popcorn to watch, I mean it's a touchy-feely version of Kojima, all the worst excesses of narrative lit up like a Christmas tree, polished and set in front of me as if it were something to be proud of. Minute-long sequences that could have been summed up with very few and very simplistic visuals, interior monologuing when it's neither necessary nor appropriate, insight into a character I had always imagined differently.
This isn't Metroid as I know it. Well, no, that's not true. The exploration is there. I'm sure the backtracking will be there later. The boss fights are there. But all of it so far feels more linear, like I'm being set on rails to experience someone's vision of Samus. It's not about the ship I'm on, it's about Samus's reactions to the ship. To the people.
This is pure excess. Sakamoto has taken his vision of this character and turned it into a hammer used to slam down narrative points that no one should reasonably care about.
I'll give it time. If Ari_Gold says it gets better, I'm willing to believe that.
But what I've experienced so far makes me so angry.
