Predict Metroid Prime 4’s Metacritic Score

[Vodacixi]

TheRealSamusAran said:

Vodacixi said:

Debatable. Those games have a very linear and clear sequence of events from beginning to end. Of course, you can BREAK that if you know what you are doing (ZM more than Dread)... But you won't likely do that on a first playthrough. You'll follow the very much linear path that the game constantly points you too.

As another user said this once: the fact that you can sequence break a game means that there IS a sequence to break in the first place. To me a Metroidvania needs to have a truly interconnected and open map to explore where you are almost never expected to follow a certain sequence of events. You will have multiple paths accessible to you at almost anytime and you don't have to commit to a certain sequence in order to make progress.

Zero Mission and Metroid Dread are linear games that can be broken, either with glitches or by exploiting the game's mechanics after a lot of practice and multiple playthroughs. That doesn't make them open (to me at least). 

That kind of thing it's required for me to be a Metroidvania. Metroid games (to me) are... That. Metroid games. They are not Hollow Knight. They are not Blasphemous. They are not Metroidvanias.

Dread is not linear and at no point tells you where to go, having a certain order of what upgrade you get next ≠ being linear, because even Super and Prime have an upgrade order.

In Dread, once you get a new upgrade, you have to open the map and look what previously locked paths you can access now, sounds like a Metroid-like to me. It's not like Fusion where Adam is all the time telling you where to go and what to do, there is no point where Dread did that, Adam only tells you to return to your ship and good luck.

But Zero Mission does tell you where to go all the time.

Yeah, that's pretty much what linear means: you follow one predetermined path.

Dread tricks you into thinking you are making choices on where to go or discovering a certain path. In reality, most of the time once you get a new upgrade the game does one of these things: putting you in a point of no return, guiding you through a teleporter that will take you near your next objective or pretend to give you multiple paths to follow, but only one of them providing actual progress. All of these scenarios leave you with one actual real path to go: the intended path. You can try to go elsewhere, but you'll end up being blocked in one way or another.

The fact that the game doesn't explicitly tell you where to go via text or with a big rounded mark on the map doesn't mean it's not guiding you through the path and making you do what it wants.

Now, that's not a bad thing per se. I loved Dread. I loved Fusion. I loved Zero Mission. But I'm not gonna pretend they are open world games. They aren't. And funniliy enough, they are great because they are mostly linear.