Mar1217 said:
Cool, I myself am a video game music enthusiast and completly disagree on your statement. " It's overcompensating with a cacophony of clashing sound fonts to sound cinematic It really sounds like an incohesive mess in a way that no metroid, even M2, has ever sounded"
In fact, I would go saying that the actual remix does it better than it's older brother. The clashing sound fonts are way more apparent in the SNES ver. And for M2's case :
That is what I call "a mess". But I'll give you some points when it comes to stuff like Surface of SR388. It sure sounds good though and still keeps that otherwordly feeling it supposed to give like the original, so the job is done. I'm currently backtracking right now so I'll listen more carefuly to see if I hear something similar. But to me, everything seemed okay at first glance. Then, about the electrical shield, if you don't like it, just turn it off, simple as that :) I don't use it agaisnt bosses. Who doesn't like option ? (RIGHT?!) Ultimately, I think it the best explanation I could give about your point of view is that your grip and distaste overall with SR is mostly due to it following the trend that has been set since Super Metroid which transforms the franchise into some kind of cinematic "Alien" blockbuster with a gameplay and design that has been tweaked to be more approachable by everyday people while they "abandoned" some of the original aspect that made it into what was originally a Metroid game ? |
Can you use links? None of the videos work for me.
I just want to clarify that when I said that I'm a musician, that was only to emphasis that I know what I'm talking about when I say that SR's soundtrack is not like Prime's. Like it structurally has very little in common with Prime's. I wasn't trying to say "I'm a musician, there for my opinion on the quality of this music is superior to yours."
I don't think that much of M2's soundrack is good, specifically the "Deeper" parts, which is what I assume you're talking about. I can understand what you mean when you say it's a mess, if that is what you're talking about, but SR is a "mess" in a very different way. M2 can be atonal. That's what i meant by "in a way that not even M2 ever sounded." SR is just like too many sounds all at once. It's not simple or deliberate. It's overfilled with embellishments and accoutrements. It sounds busy. You know when someone says that a shirt is too "loud?" That's what a lot of SR's soundtrack sounds like. Not melody, counter-melody, percussion, bassline, and that's it like how most music in most metroid games have been done. There's just a lot going on. A lot of effects too, especially reverberation.
The easiest way for me to tell is that much of the original music isn't easily hummable in SR, because there isn't that strong sense of melody/counter/bass. And even when its there, again it's often times obfuscated by all the extra embelishments. You compare how Samus Returns handles it's soundtract to something like Galaxy, and the difference is night and day. Galaxy's soundtrack is far more clear and deliberate because the composer never let's the orchestra run away from him. Every track in that game could be easily translated to a very pleasing, nearly identical 8-bit tune in a way that many of the tracks in SR could not.
I don't like options like this. Not only did I hit the button on accident multiple times, but the bigger issue is that if the option is there and has great utility, it shouldn't be up to the player to decide between having a more meaningful experience or playing the game in the most efficient way possible. Especially because abilities like these offer short term while potentially having a detremental effect on the long term experience. Also, the game is designed around the expectation that players will likely use them. Some enemies only die with the machine gun attack. Some areas hurt Samus unless she uses a sheild. Some hidden areas are far more obtuse to get to than they ever have been before, likely because they know that if a player gets too frustrated, they can always just scan the area. Slow mo... I mean you can avoid some obstacles and run across others. "Optional" needs to be accompanied by big quotes in this case. The game was designed to be most enjoyable when using these abilities.
SR is completely different from Super. It is more different from Super in nearly every way outside of being a different franchise or Other M. If Super is Samus, than SR is the SA-X. Unless you meant that it's NOT following the trend set by Super. In which case... Kind of. It's more complicated than that, but essentially SR feels like it's ashamed to be a metroid game. Like everyday people can't appreciate what makes metroid good, so those things should be abandoned in favor of something shallow that can still make people say that they get it. The thing I hate most about SR is that it worked. I can respect anyone who likes the things in ZM or Fusion that I don't like. I can respect anyone who likes prime better than Super. But it's very difficult for me to respect someone who thinks that Super and SR are comparable even if they think Super is better, because it makes me feel like they literally do not have any understanding of what made that game special. If they did, SR would infuruate them, because it is the antithesis of what that game, and ZM, and Fusion do.
If someone said "I like SR better than Super/ZM/Fusion because of all of the things Spem doesn't like about it. I can see all those differences clearly and I prefer them. I like puzzles, so i don't see them as interuptions. I don't like the naturalistic worlds of prior metroids. I'd prefer a systemic one like in SR. I like exploring in theory, but I don't want to get lost so i don't mind the gating, the fast travel, etc. I like QTEs, so i don't mind the counter system. I like how cinematic the cutscenes are, and if they weren't there, I probably wouldn't pay attention to the environment. I see the Sectors as levels more than a real place, which i don't mind because it's more of a playground for fun obstacles than a living alien planet. Etc etc," I would actually respect that more, because at least they see what I've always seen and are just acknowledging a preference. They see everything in Super/ZM/Fusion and say "yeah, I prefer the very different SR." But seeing so many people like SM because its like those older games, and even seeing many of the responses here feels like people literally thought that this was always what Metroid was, and that I'm seeing something that was never there. Which is insane to me, and very very disheartening, because I genuinely think Super is the most well designed game I've ever played. Likely the most well designed game ever made. I thought that people who liked Super not just felt the same, but more importantly had an intimate understanding as to why, but many of those people are saying that SR is a return to form when it is clearly a bastardization. Or to be actually fair and not emotional, a gross oversimplification of very surface level, first sight, generalizations of Metroid.
I actually felt this way about Sonic Rush as a bringer of bad, and it took Sega 12 years to release another sonic game, 2D or otherwise, that was actually good after that, and only because people started hating the 2D games slowly after that until it eventually resulted in Mania, a sonic game made my fans. I'm actually looking more forward to Metroid Prime 4 than Metroid 5, which to anyone who has read my Super in Metroid series should know, is fucking crazy talk. I would rather play what my worse fear of what Prime 4 is than what my best realistic hope for what Metroid 5 now is. That's how much SR crushes me. Even with OM and FF, I can at least say that they're spin offs. My literal only hope for 2D metroid at this point is for Nintendo to do the same in 12 years, for people to slowly resent this change in direction until a decade of criticism results in Sakamoto giving his baby so someone who isn't ashamed of Metroid, because playing more games like this in the meantime, especially the inevitable horror that will be a post-SR Super Metroid remake, will be too painful to stick around for. I will likely have to stick to fan games and look alikes until that happens. And a lot of writing, because I will not let SR survive without a real dissenting argument of consequence to accompany it. I'm going to Dark Souls II the hell out of this game so I can at least make my peace with this franchise that I love so much and know that I did something.
What's next for 2D Metroid? Nothing good that I can forsee. Not if this is the omen.
I'll read your response, but I'm done with this thread. Thank you to everyone for listening and debating with me.
Essay Pro