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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Metroid: Samus Returns is FANTASTIC so What's Next for 2D Metroid?

 

What should Metroid 5 be?

2D 38 26.95%
 
2.5D 40 28.37%
 
3D 25 17.73%
 
4D 38 26.95%
 
Total:141
Alkibiádēs on 25 September 2017
Mar1217 said

 

Alkibiádēs said:
I'm a big Metroid fan, but I'm playing Steamworld Dig 2 instead. Samus Returns has terrible graphics and art. I just can't get over that lol.

Now I'm waiting for Hollow Knight to release on Switch as well... In other words, no shortage of Metroidvania games for a big Metroid fan like me.

Oh no, not the ''I'm a big fan of *insert name of your interest here*" so that you can shield yourself from everyone else opinion. That's a lame excuse. + Stating yourself as a BIG Metroid fan but then your not even playing the new released game makes it coming off contradictory with what you stated.

P.S : On a subjective standpoint, SR graphics and art direction are a sight to behold that surpass easily any 2D Metroid with Super Metroid/Fusion coming close since I even am a fan of 2D sprites style myself. Then, the 3D function enhance a lot of the experience with everything in the background poping up beautifully.

I don't feel the need to buy less than stellar games just so more Metroid games get made. I don't let myself be black-mailed like that. If Nintendo doesn't want to put AAA effort in my favorite franchise then I'll just skip it and play substitutes like Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2. Their loss, not mine. 

A game on weaker hardware isn't supposed to look a lot better, but here we are... 

Here are some screens from Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2: 



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

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Frogger on 25 September 2017
Alkibiádēs said:
Mar1217 said

 

Oh no, not the ''I'm a big fan of *insert name of your interest here*" so that you can shield yourself from everyone else opinion. That's a lame excuse. + Stating yourself as a BIG Metroid fan but then your not even playing the new released game makes it coming off contradictory with what you stated.

P.S : On a subjective standpoint, SR graphics and art direction are a sight to behold that surpass easily any 2D Metroid with Super Metroid/Fusion coming close since I even am a fan of 2D sprites style myself. Then, the 3D function enhance a lot of the experience with everything in the background poping up beautifully.

I don't feel the need to buy less than stellar games just so more Metroid games get made. I don't let myself be black-mailed like that. If Nintendo doesn't want to put AAA effort in my favorite franchise then I'll just skip it and play substitutes like Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2. Their loss, not mine. 

A game on weaker hardware isn't supposed to look a lot better, but here we are... 

If I knew what I knew before playing, I wouldn't have bought this game either. I don't think that Metroid's future looks bright after this, though compared to Other M, it's future looks like a gift from god. Then again, now I'm comparing SR to OM, so...

What Metroid would ideally do is take a page from Sonic and give their 2D games to fans like DoctorM64 who clearly have a better finger on what makes a good metroid game.

Since Nintendo's egos are too big to make that happen though, I genuinely see myself being done with 2D metroid. Metroid 5 is the last chance, but I have 0 faith in that. Verdict is still out on Prime 4, but at least I have hope there.

Ghost Song looks good though. Started as a Metroid fan game and is now an original project that looks legit amazing and potentially better than even Super.



Goodnightmoon on 25 September 2017
Alkibiádēs said:
Mar1217 said

 

Oh no, not the ''I'm a big fan of *insert name of your interest here*" so that you can shield yourself from everyone else opinion. That's a lame excuse. + Stating yourself as a BIG Metroid fan but then your not even playing the new released game makes it coming off contradictory with what you stated.

P.S : On a subjective standpoint, SR graphics and art direction are a sight to behold that surpass easily any 2D Metroid with Super Metroid/Fusion coming close since I even am a fan of 2D sprites style myself. Then, the 3D function enhance a lot of the experience with everything in the background poping up beautifully.

I don't feel the need to buy less than stellar games just so more Metroid games get made. I don't let myself be black-mailed like that. If Nintendo doesn't want to put AAA effort in my favorite franchise then I'll just skip it and play substitutes like Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2. Their loss, not mine. 

A game on weaker hardware isn't supposed to look a lot better, but here we are... 

Here are some screens from Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2: 

So great artstyle = Great game
Meh artstyle = Meh game

Strange logic



MTZehvor on 25 September 2017

Welp, I was looking forward to jumping back into this discussion after work, but it appears to have largely descended into insults and hyperbole, so I think I'll try and start up a new discussion.

One thing I actually found myself liking a lot in Samus Returns was the complexity of some of the later Metroid evolutions and boss fights; reminded me a lot of Prime Trilogy bosses. I'd love to see that return if this game sells well enough to guarantee 2D Metroid a future. The Queen Metroid fight in this game was really spectacular in my opinion; implementing a number of different features from the game that required a lot of thinking on your feet. I'd like to see more complex boss fights appear in future entries; I've always felt that bosses are one area that the Prime trilogy (and in particular Corruption) have handled better than the 2D games.



Frogger on 25 September 2017
Mar1217 said:
spemanig said:

The boss fights are some of the best parts of SR, but they are absolutely possible with the older aiming. (some of the platforms would need to change for some of them that are over lava though) But look at fusion. Awesome fights in that game. Best in the series outside of Kraid in Super which is the actual best in the series. Didn't need free-aim at all.

Still trying to play AM2R, but still can't get my controller working.

I don't want to spill everything about my critique lol. Hate most of the music. Previous metroid games, including M2, had simple melodic music that was extremely deliberate. In SR's search for bombast and fanfare, it loses that simplicity and deliberateness in favor of a very busy soundtrack. Busy as in that most tracks have too many different sounds going on at once, making it sound messy. This is an issue that plagues reorchestrations, but what's funny here is that because of how sparse M2's soundtrack is, half of it isn't used and is replaced by a shit ton of original, really crappy (for the most part) music. It also reuses a lot of tracks from Super, which I really hate. AM2R does this too, as well as Prime. It takes what used to feel like area specific themes and turns them into generic "volcano/jungle/water" themes. Not even Zero Mission did this, and literally takes place on the same planet as Super.

Don't mind the graphics, but prefer the 2D art style. Much better than Other M though, so I'll pick my battles there. It's definitely not something I'd criticize the game for. What I don't think i like are how the environments relate to each other because it doesn't feel like a world to me at all. just a bunch or pretty rooms with themes that connect them together. That's actually something I know for a fact AM2R excels at, and something the previous games did well. I'll need to play again to be sure though because something tells me the fact that you zoom past each area in such a curated way has made this cohesiveness less obvious than it actually is.

I don't know what arts are. Aeion you mean? Hate half of them. Don't mind the other half. The map one completely eliminates all sense of discovery. Giving the player the X-Ray scope at the beginning instead would have solved the (bomb every crevice) issue without revealing the whole map. Everything else could have been map stations, which reward exploration with map chunks.

The UI is fine. Is it fine?

...

Yeah, I think it's fine. I don't like how tapping the screen to ball up feels, but I like that the option exists because it's much better than simply pressing down twice. In the future though, I'd want it to be its own button.

Pretty sure this thread has spoiled the majority of your critique right now xD

- M2's soundtrack was facing hardware limitation. It has a lot of ear ripping tracks which shows that they were going for more than just simple melodic music + a lot of these tracks were short which means they looped often and it would probably irritated lots of people.

- SR's soundtrack definitely go for a Prime style and more intense of music on some occasion and it shows with stuff like Diggernaut(probably the best boss track btw), Surface of SR388 or Lava caves. But stuff like Chozo Laboratory,Main caves or Lower Brinstar is actually more in line with what I heard from the other games, very atmospheric. To be honest, the soundtrack does have a lot of nostalgia pandering with all these remixes. And personally, even I like all these different sounds they've added into these remixes, means that they are less repetitive which plagued the original. It comes off a bit chaotic but certainly not in a bad way. (But that's just like you, an opinion :) )

- About the world itself, although some of it might looks a bit disconnected from a what a world should look like, it weirdly still holds up. That's just me, but I can clearly see the way these zones are interconnected to each other, specially more apparent once I reached Area 4, which looked like the heart of SR388 with these kind of "blood vessels" in the background. (Though I've not yet seen Area 5, so maybe it will evolve the other way)

- Sorry I meant art style not Aieon abilities :P The point about the scanner is understandable though, but since I am aiming for completion, I use it to make sure I don't miss on anything, would be glad if they changed it to the X-ray scope. Time stop and electric shield are nice implementation for some of the puzzle. (In fact I had a sequence break without using one of them when I was supposed to)

- They should have put the ball up control to the shoulder button ZR or ZL on the N3DS/N2DS,I don't utilize the bottom screen for that, way easier with rapidly pressing down 2 times with the circle pad.

Trust me when i say that I haven't even scratched the surface lol.

I mean, I'm a musician. What SR goes for is almost nothing like prime in most instances. ZM's soundtrack and even AM2R's is. SR's is like, idk, generic orchestration. I don't think limited hardware is an excuse for the Gameboy. I just think M2 was going for a more abstract sound, but what SR does is not that. 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. But the reason why is definitely the sound fonts. This is a common issue with soundtracks like this. They focus so much on the new soundfonts that they forget to focus on fundementals. This is why 8/16-bit music is so often good. Composers don't have enough sound fonts to bullshit.

Not everything is bad though. Just much of it. I have to play again to be sure of the world design. Nothing wrong with the art style though. I really hope this Samus replaces the one currently in Smash for the next one. Only good thing to come out of this game in regards to future games. Give me those big sholders again!

I really don't like the electric sheild. It makes you almost 100% invulnerable since you gain so much aeion after killing any enemy. I don't like the idea of adding puzzles to metroid at all, though. Metroid has until now been a very naturalistic world, meaning that some care has been made to make most of the world feel like it has formed naturally, but SR has a very systematic world, meaning that much of the world isn't trying to hide the mechanics it's trying to trigger. Puzzles are the most obvious example of this. There are very few examples of puzzles in games where they don't stick out. When people complain that a game is too "game-y," this is usually what they mean. It's too systematic. SR has this issue in a series which previously excelled in the opposite.



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Arminillo on 25 September 2017

Maybe a game with 2.5D sidescroller, but sometimes goes into 3D for certain Prime-Esque things (such as scanning something, aiming to shoot at something in the Z-Axis), also an emphasis on story telling, maybe explaining the events leading up to a previous game. I also would like to see Samus talk and have a cool signature pose like a "thumbs-down" or something.



Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda!!!!


Arminillo on 25 September 2017

For realzies tho I hope we get an M-Rated Metroid, not for language, but for just unabashedly showing the brutality implied in Super Metroid, with the dead scientists and death of The Baby. 3D, of course, I like 2d Metroid but I feel like the series is best expressed in 3D, to give that feeling isolation and ability to lose your whereabouts in an unfamiliar territory.



Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda!!!!


Frogger on 25 September 2017
mZuzek said:
spemanig said:

I can complain that M2 is linear, which it is and i think it could have been tackled better in a remake that unfortunately isn't SR

Lol it definitely isn't AM2R either, don't get your hopes up. Metroid 2 is linear by design, and that isn't changing, you're the one who needs to broaden your mind to accept that games can be linear.

Most of your complaints are pretty nonsense. You're basically complaining about every moment where the game doesn't "allow" you to do something, such as bombing a specific place or getting across a certain obstacle, yet... that's what Metroid games are? If anything, I'd much rather have that than an "open" game like Metroid 1 where 99% of the exploration comes from trying to find the one stupid copy-paste room that has the one stupid random invisible path that you need to bomb to get to the other stupid copy-paste room that leads somewhere. And even the original Metroid 2 still does that occasionally.

...either way, it's quite impressive this thread has degraded in the way it has, because for the most part Samus Returns is quite a widely acclaimed game by critics, Metroid fans, non-Metroid fans and just about pretty much anyone that isn't you or the greek guy.

@MTZehvor yeah, the last 3 bosses were all particularly great, it's just a shame we couldn't get more of them more sparingly throughout the game, but that was a limitation of the source material - hopefully we'll get another, original game, and with loads of awesome bosses like those.

 

mZuzek said:
spemanig said:

I mean, I'm a musician. What SR goes for is almost nothing like prime in most instances. ZM's soundtrack and even AM2R's is. SR's is like, idk, generic orchestration. I don't think limited hardware is an excuse for the Gameboy. I just think M2 was going for a more abstract sound, but what SR does is not that. 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. But the reason why is definitely the sound fonts. This is a common issue with soundtracks like this. They focus so much on the new soundfonts that they forget to focus on fundementals. This is why 8/16-bit music is so often good. Composers don't have enough sound fonts to bullshit.

I'm a musician too and I think you're full of bullshit. See how that status doesn't change anything?

At this point you just sound upset that I'm countering your arguments. You started out strong, but now you're literally just being dissenting with to be dissenting. No substance what so ever.



AngryLittleAlchemist on 25 September 2017
mZuzek said:
spemanig said:

At this point you just sound upset that I'm countering your arguments. You started out strong, but now you're literally just being dissenting with to be dissenting. No substance what so ever.

There's no point in squeezing more substance out of my brain for a pointless discussion. I've never been good at arguing anyway.

Then don't do it? Seriously your replies are terrible. Some of them on the other pages were equally rude but I didn't feel like pointing them out since this is you and spem discussing. But if you're going to be like that just don't enter a discussion.



Frogger on 25 September 2017
Arminillo said:
For realzies tho I hope we get an M-Rated Metroid, not for language, but for just unabashedly showing the brutality implied in Super Metroid, with the dead scientists and death of The Baby. 3D, of course, I like 2d Metroid but I feel like the series is best expressed in 3D, to give that feeling isolation and ability to lose your whereabouts in an unfamiliar territory.

I've gone back and forth with this, but I'm not sure how much Metroid would benefit from more explicit violence. Worse is that I'd be afraid that having an M-Rating would compell them to add uneeded violence, rather than only add it where it would be effective.

In theory though, I'm not against it. Look up Ghost Song. I think it does a great job of being an M-Rated Metroid-like game.