Andy’s Rating: one notch below Really Liked It (9/13)
I grew up playing the Atari 2600, and in the early ’80s, computer games were really starting to take off. So by the time the NES came out in 1985, I had pretty much gotten out of console gaming. I never owned a Super Nintendo or a Nintendo 64 either, but I started getting back into console gaming late in the life of the PlayStation. I eventually picked up a Game Boy Advance SP, and decided to catch up on all the classic games that I had missed. Thanks to that wonderful little system, I played through all the Super Mario Bros. games. (I am now playing Super Mario 64 on the Virtual Console.) More recently, I turned my attention to other big-name Nintendo franchises: The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. My goal for each of these games was to complete it without reading any hints or walkthroughs.
I imagine that people know the general story of Metroid by now: Samus Aran lands on a planet, has to fight a bunch of beasties and power up, and eventually destroy the Metroids that were stolen by the Space Pirates, and Mother Brain. (Is she the leader of the Metroids, or of the Space Pirates? I was never sure.) Oh, and Samus is a woman. (I think that 20 years is past the statute of limitations on spoilers.) From what I understand, Metroid was unique at the time because of its open-ended exploration. Instead of progressing through levels, Samus travels through an entire open-ended world. She might be stopped by a door she can’t open, a wall she can’t scale, or a beast she can’t kill. Each of the boundaries can eventually be surpassed as Samus powers up her weapons and armor. But at the beginning, it can seem overwhelming when you turn a corner, only to be killed in one shot by something much more powerful than you.
In general, I think the open-ended gameplay system works well. You really feel like there is a larger world around you, and you have to tread lightly because you don’t know what you might come up against. The joy of discovery is very strong. In some cases, like a locked door, it is obvious that you will have to come back later when you can open it. In other cases, you may get a new ability like the Morph Ball, and then realize that you can now pass through passages that were previously too small to get through. And sometimes you will run into a dead end with something visible beyond it, and you realize that there must be a way through. Through these various devices, the game slowly reveals itself, and you always feel like something more dangerous is lurking at the outer edges of your vision.
That said, there are a lot of elements in Metroid that are frustrating. The main problem I found was not knowing where to go next. I got to a point where I had mapped out everything I could find (yes, I drew maps on paper), found everything I could find, and didn’t know where to go next. I knew there had to be a secret passageway hidden somewhere, but it could be literally anywhere on the map. I would load my saved game, but Samus starts after saving with only a set amount of life energy. So before I could start exploring (most likely in the more dangerous areas, with the creatures who do the most damage), I would have to spend time killing smaller creatures, where each one might drop 5 energy at a time. When you have to fill up with 200 or 300 energy before you can start exploring, that can take a while. In the end, I would start a game, spend ten or fifteen minutes killing creatures to gain energy, then spend one minute exploring before I died and had to start all over again. It was very frustrating.
In the twenty years between Metroid and today, there have been a lot of gameplay improvements that would alleviate the frustration somewhat. The Legend of Zelda had a similar life system, but you could find a fairy to fill your life meter. Even Metroid II has a station to recharge your energy completely. But in Metroid, you have to charge up bit by bit. And once I was charged up, I would again be faced with a huge map and no idea where to start searching next. When gameplay progression is based on randomly bombing every wall and floor and ceiling, that seems to me like bad design. Maybe it worked okay back when kids were expected to play all day every day, but as a modern gamer, I found it horribly tedious.
After playing Metroid off and on for several months and not making any progress, I finally caved and looked at a walkthrough to find the one or two items I needed to progress. I don’t feel too bad about it, because the secret passageways I found were nowhere near where I was looking. One was “bomb the floor in this nondescript hallway, then drop through the fake lava to a secret room below.” The other one was, “Shoot the one block on the ceiling to reveal the opening, then dodge the flying creature until it flies up and through. Follow it up, then freeze it with the ice beam so you can climb up and enter the secret door.” Even when I knew what to do, it still took me 15 minutes just to do it the right way. I can’t imagine how I would have found it myself. Perhaps if I had played in back in 1987, I would have had a network of friends to ask for help; I doubt any of my friends are playing Metroid today.
So once I got past that gameplay block (the ice beam was really what I needed), things progressed pretty quickly. The boss battles were just difficult enough to be enjoyable, and I finally got to the last zone where the actual Metroids live. The gameplay got much less forgiving at that point, because if you miss a Metroid, it will quickly latch onto you and drain your energy. So, while it was difficult, at least I knew where I needed to go and what I needed to do. The final battle with Mother Brain was, again, excruciatingly hard, but still fun. I’m glad that the game ended on a satisfying note, and I really felt like I accomplished something. I hope that future games in the series fix some of the gameplay that made the mid-game so difficult.
