Castlevania 64, Legacy of Darkness, and How We Re-evaluate Action Games Released in the Pain Zone
June 22nd, 2024At what point is a game unjustly maligned? When is a Flawed Gem merely a stone? When we say a game was brave and experimental... was it? Or was it a predictable failure of the times it was made? Does a failed product need to be secretly kinda good, or important, or influential to deserve respect?
No. And while I am unsure exactly how I fall on Castlevania 64 and it's strange seque-xpansion, I walk away respecting these games. I find myself dwelling on how people try to rehabilitate flawed titles like these. Because does a game need to be good to be enjoyed? Does it have to be good to appreciate the high level of skill that made into making it? Does a game have to be good to be under appreciated?
No.
Castlevania 64
Castlevania 64 is a miserable game to play. Not in a "turned the limitations into a feature" way like Metroid II. Not even in a "the combat is crummy, but you can work around it and that's not the point of the game anyways" way like King's Field. Unfortunately, combat in this game is both bad and a central focus. As is platforming, complete with a poorly controllable, sometimes downright ungovernable camera.
Reinhardt moves like a bus. You can lock on, but rotating fast enough to actually use that lock is a challenge. Enemies in the abysmal first area, the Forest of Silence, spawn constantly. It feels like you're playing Spartan-X/Kung Fu, walking a few steps, whipping a few foes, trying to turn to get the ones behind you, walking a little farther, hear a skeleton spawn, turn and whip again.
Your reward for trying to explore and puzzle solve in this samey brown space is awful, high stakes platforming. With temperamental jumping physics. On blocks that look like they were taken from a developer test level.
Castlevania 64 does not put its best foot forward. This is not so much a factor of developer skill, but industry knowledge. Even in 1999 we were still trying to figure out these 3d games, especially these types of console action games. Most games of this era with camera control were slow and lower stakes. To make navigating these 3d worlds tolerable, a lot of these games needed to be about movement. Action games had a different issue. Virtually all successful action games of this period were some kind of shooter. An FPS like Goldeneye ties your camera to your movement, a game like Metal Gear Solid locks things into a virtual 2d playspace. A game like Omega Boost uses rail-shooter like controls and homing weapon lock-on systems to lesson the controller load on the game. Melee games? Early 3d fixed camera beat-em-ups, or slow, more adventurous games like Zelda, which also have less of an emphasis on platforming style movement. Even much later, genre defining games like Devil May Cry, which finally began cracking the code, did so with limited camera movement. There is a reason this era is dominated by Collectathons, Racing games, and FPSs(For real, look at the top 100 selling games from this era).
To make intense action work, often something has to be taken away. Even in 2d, the intense, high stakes action of a game like Contra is made manageable by removing the player's ability to control the height of their jumps. This is something most players don't even realize. Players can't manage everything, you design around what you want your players to focus. We can't expect you to feather the jump button while shooting at the same time!
Castlevania 64 has big ambitions, so it tries to offload a lot. Reinhardt's whip as a massive range to it, while Carrie's projectiles home-in belligerently. The Lock-on button, while fussy, is trying to move your focus onto movement and timing rather than aiming. Even the multi modal camera, while a failure, was an attempt to solve a difficult problem that we struggle with even decades later.
Games do not progress forward by bad designers making bad decisions, waiting until a good designer shows us how things are done. We need good designers to try and fail too. Like a scientific paper that fails to prove its premise, this failure is important. You can't know if you can make a fully 3d castlevania without compromise until you try and make one.
These were risks that made sense for the times and it is important to contextualize these failures in their era. While the game was seen as having problems in it's day, the game was still largely well received. Reviewers liked it. My friends at the time had a more... luke warm response, but nothing approaching hate. The abysmal reputation this game has came after a few years time, as games continued to evolve at the breakneck pace(Devil May Cry comes only 2 years after this). A curious, if flawed attempt at 3d action that became a miserable, backward experience only a few years later.
It's hard to imagine design moving that fast when in 2024, when we've been making the same genre of AAA games for over 10 years. I could write a whole essay how this pace damaged the brains of those who lived though it, numbing our abilities to reassess what is old, outside the lens of nostalgia. So what does Castlevania 64 do that is worth reassessing?
It's hard to understate how much damage the Forest of Silence did to me. Where many games try to start on their best foot, Castlevania 64 starts by highlighting all of it's flaws, a painful preview of what this game could not succeed at being. I almost quit the game right here when it turned out I didn't make a save file properly(The game defaulting to NOT making a save file is such an insane decision through a modern lens, but it makes sense in the era of memory cards) and had to replay most of the first level again. This game is even worse than people say it is!! Your failures rarely felt like your own. Even the cool giant skeleton boss struggles with the systems of the game. You can't tell if you're not hitting him because of a failure of the lock-on system or some invulnerability. The fundamental, reliable feed back that made the old Castlevanias work was missing.
Switching to Carrie helped a lot. While she didn't make combat good, she helped to minimize one of the worst parts of the game. Getting out of the Forest and to the Castle Walls was a relief. A slower paced stage, with platforming that, while still questionable, was kinda the right fit for the game and it's physics. Still the same respawning skeletons and dubious lock-ons, and bizarrely implemented Medusa heads, but a step up enough to get a little farther...
The Castle Villa
The Villa is what changed my perception of this game and what it could be. Combat and platforming were de-emphasized, a small nuisance to keep you on your toes as you explore. The Villa is about vibes. Peaceful yet eerie music plays, giving relaxing you while giving a slight hint that things are unwell. A gentle storm blows by, lighting gently flashing silently in the distance like a hot summer day.
... It's melancholy. You explore listlessly. You find a few NPCs to talk to. The little fighting you do is against frail Stained Glass Knights(Clearly a CV style movie reference to Young Sherlock and the first ever CGI character) and ineffective Ghosts. You encounter a well dressed man, a demon, who wishes not to fight, but do business, selling you goods as he sits, legs politely, legs casually crossed with comfortable sophistication. He's ready to aid you. He knows what the contract says(Spend 30,000 and he'll lay claim to your soul)...
This is one of the few places you use the day/night cycle. Its overall inclusion feels half baked, but in this moment, in this thin slice of video game, we see the vision. A living world, moody interiors, solving puzzles in a haunted house. NPCs with routines. Vincent, the Vampire Hunter, sleeps during the night and walks around during the day. Rosa shows up at dawn to water her white flowers. You can use the mirrors about the rooms to identify vampires. You can visit the hedge maze (and, you know, get chased by a guy with a chainsaw). In this small section of game there is so much atmosphere, so much intrigue, a deep wanting for something larger. It feels bigger than it actually it. It feels like the team had 3 different ideas of what Castlevania 64 should be. This is the vision of Castlevania 64 that lost, but this small shard of it still remains, a beautiful, fleeting moment. This is what won me over. It was walking in to the Villa when I thought, for a moment, that maybe, just maybe, this game was actually great.
... And then it was gone.
Teased Highs and Crushing Lows
The game never reaches this high point again, though I did not know it as I played through the game blind. I went into every stage with a little hope that we'd see more of the other Castlevania 64 that I just saw.
You get a bit of it in the Castle Center, a sprawling map that represents actually being in Castlevania. You explore rooms, finding Pre World War I technology in development. You find Lizard-Men cloning chambers. You find crude electric engines, radio equipment, and scale a scale model of a zeppelin. It feels like Dracula is preparing for war. You realize the era this game is in. It is, for its faults, immersive. You look at all these devices with deep curiosity, knowing some of them will be important at some point. Despite not being the Villa, the game is succeeding. Hell, you find an ASTROLAB!
... And then you pick up the Magic Nitro.
This is easily the lowest point of the game. You carry a volatile explosive, that will explode if you jump, fall, or get hit, through this whole sprawling level, taking roundabout paths to avoid obstacles. You spend minutes in slow moving gears to avoid climbing a waist high wall. You do all this and find the detonator and go to set it off, only to realize... you did it too soon. It can't blow up the magic shield on the wall. I thought this WAS to destroy the magic shield!
You have to go, blow up another wall, find another secret(It's the Astrolab, so at least that's cool), and then do this long, arduous path all over again. It is miserable. It is boring. It is frustrating. It sucks. Most flaws in this game are explainable. Making games is hard! But this... this is a place where they fucked up royally and the game suffers massively for it. Many players have quit on this exact spot, deciding that Castlevania 64 wasn't worth the effort. They didn't miss out on much after this point.
Your reward for this is fighting a behemoth, whose body crumbles and melts as you harm it(A clean Rondo of Blood reference), who would be a cool set piece if he wasn't designed to be almost impossible to dodge. A high point gets ruined by a boss you have to beat using stage collision exploits. What should have been the stage that made the game becomes one of its biggest flaws.
From here, things get more even. The "Towers" are mostly okay stages, but they are about platforming and combat. There is some atmosphere to be had. The Tower of Science had a pretty cool vibe! The tower of Sorcery... sucks. But it sucks in the way late 90s platformers suck. Reinhardt's stages focus more of combat with few, larger enemies. That's the type of combat that works the best with the systems of this game. These stages function, but they feel like filler.
Time
Then it's time for the Clock Tower. You enter the Clock Room, go and fight your character specific boss, and then brave the clock tower. The Clock Tower feels like it had to be included. Aesthetically it doesn't really fit(The Clock Room is bitchin' though), and the dicey platforming is mostly just asking players too much of the limited control they've been given. Like the other towers, it's not terrible, and a few rooms(I like the Dragon Skeleton Head Room) even begin to feel like they might have a sense for what future platforming challenges in the genre might look like.
You reach the Castle Keep, one of the saddest renditions of it in any game. Still, it has some majesty. It's just you vs Dracula... well, unless you bought too much from the shop. If you did, Renon will show up in one of the 'sub-keeps' to lay the terms of the contract that you didn't read. He now has claim to your soul and is ready to fight for it. If you didn't, he politely says farewell. World War I is coming after all(The Zeppelin imagery clearly indicates WW1, but Castlevania 64 takes place right before the Crimean War. that said the Crimean War was the first 'modern war' of that era, going from 1986 to the end of WW2), and the death of millions is a time of great business for a Demon.
You continue further, another sub-keep to pass through... unless you took too long to get here. Then Vincent shows up as a vampire. You took so long that the old hunter beat you here, only to be defeated and turned. You put the old man down.
Now, on to the proper Keep. You fight an... honestly pretty decent 3d rendition of the classic Castlevania Dracula fight, a boss fight more functional and varied than most you've fought throughout the game. Dracula is dead, The Keep is collapsing, and it's time to escape!
I don't want to get into all the plot details(though some of it in this, and Legacy of Darkness, seem fun for Castlevania lore nerds), but it turns out the mysterious child thats been floating around is the real Dracula. Only you wouldn't know it unless you beat the game fast enough to keep Vincent alive. The old man throws holy water at a child because he's a professional and he knows something is up!
This is the greatest use of the Time mechanic in the game. It makes sense, in a fun, immersive way. The time mechanics are generally underutilized, but this usage is beautiful.
The last boss is fine, a weird centipede desert Dracula. It does its job. The games ending cinematics fairly in depths. Slow by modern standards, but they have some of that mood and attention to detail the best parts of this game have. The people who made this game cared deeply about it.
Time has not been kind to this game. Both because of the era it was released in, the Pain Band, but also because of us. It is an easy game to hate, especially if you only played the first stage. If that isn't enough, Magic Nitro might be what breaks your spirit. It's easy to magnify these issues in our head as time goes on. It's harder to stop and look at this game and what it tried to accomplish.
This game was made by talented professionals with opinionated, forward thinking ideas. This was a KCEK's first 3d game and the fact they managed what they did is a miracle. They couldn't quite bring their vision to fruition, but they still managed a good critical response, and... possibly decent sales?(Source: Some guy on Reddit with numbers I can't find anywhere) This is a game that succeeded in its time. Like Vincent, it was time that killed it.
We don't, in 2024, need to say it is a good game... but it was a good effort. I respect Castlevania 64.
Legacy of Darkness
Legacy of Darkness is an updated and remixed version of Castlevania 64, adding in material and characters cut from the original development. It comes off feeling like an expansion pack, down to including slightly revamped versions of Carrie's and Reinhardt's quests. There are arguments on whether or not this is a straight upgrade to 64, or more of a side-grade. Conventional advice is "Just play Legacy of Darkness" but many of the people who've played both prefer Reinhardt's and Carrie's original stages in 64. Both need to still do the awful Magic Nitro segment that mostly seems unchanged, unfortunately...
I didn't have it in me to play everything, but I figured I'd owe it to the game to at least try Cornell's story. A benefit to this is the fact his versions of the "towers" are what replace Carrie and Reinhardt's so I could see all the redone content.
Cornell is pretty cool. He looks like Yoshiaki Kawajiri character. He does Hokuto Shinkin in his opening cutscene. He's a complete wolf-whore of a man, in his slutty plunge shirt, and his tiny little waist cincher. Waist training is how one controls the manbeast inside us, after all...
Cornell is, compared to the others, overpowered, but in a way that benefits the game. He's so strong that I never even realized you could transform into a werewolf and still breezed through the game. The combat in the game isn't great, so being able to air slash your way through everything just helps with the pace. No longer is the first stage the dreadful Forest of Silence, but instead a ship that you freely explore. It's low stakes platforming, the type that makes early 3d platformers fun. It lets you enjoy being somewhere, with sprinkles of action. A serpent pierces the ship's hull and it begins to sink, forcing you to escape. You jump off and fight it on a bridge(Another Rondo callback). The game feels like it should be made up of stages like this. Moody open action areas, mixed with in-between segments like the Villa. The Forest of Silence is overhauled. It's not a great stage, but a fine one now. The respawning skeletons have been removed, allowing you to clear out areas and breath a little. The stupid platforming is a bit more reasonable, and looks a bit more integrated into the stage.
The game starts throwing more time puzzles at you, but these are mostly a matter of opening special doors. As Cornell has no time limit on his route, using the magic cards that change the time of day becomes of no consequence. It fixes the mechanic in only the driest sense. One later stage sees you burning through dozens of these cards... while inside, separate from any actual day and night cycle. It's a completely abstracted lock and key "puzzle", without any actual puzzling. The area, the Tower of Art, is at least one of the somewhat immersive areas of Cornell's quest. He has no Castle Center equivalent(Which at least means 'no Magic Nitro'). His renditions of stages are much cleaner, much more focused on action and platforming. They improve the weakest parts of the game, while doing nothing for the game's strongest aspects. The majority of Cornell's story mode feels like disconnected stages. One of them is like a strange Egyptian tomb for some reason? The game is more technically competent, but less inspired, focusing less on experimental ideas and more on making sure the content was decent.
They had to give up on their other visions. This isn't a bad choice. It's the most realistic one they could have made at the time.
The game ends with a horrible final boss where each attempt you desperately try and figure out what the hell the game wants from you. The camera is fixed, your range of motion is small, and Not Dracula's attacks are so powerful that you'll die quickly.
The boss is, in actuality, quite easy once you know what it wants, but to figure it out you have to go through his first phase over and over again. Oh well, at least he looks cool as all hell. There are some fun story beats and details, but they're all back-loaded. Still, they work, and certain reveals and twists felt appropriate, clever, and well earned for a game of this era.
I didn't have it in me to try Henry's story mode. Most people seem to hate it, but the free exploration aspect to save children seems interesting! The fact it plays into Cornell's story mode(Henry is a child he saved in the VIlla) and actually uses the time system in a meaningful way(You have a real, hard, time limit that is clearly presented to you) is all pretty neat. Even the aesthetic of 'armored knight with handguns' is cool, creative, and fitting of the era the game is set in.
Legacy of Darkness shows that most of the gameplay ideas of Castlevania 64 could work. It's not excellent, but by focusing on a few solid goals, it ends up mostly(It still has Magic Nitro) a competent game. It feels weird, mourning a game being competent, but playing Castlevania 64, it was clear all the different ways that game could have turned out. A glimpse into dozens of alternative futures. But no, Legacy of Darkness is the timeline ended up with. It's fine, worthy of a playthrough by the curious.
It's weird, a few people told me to skip Castlevania 64, but by playing it first I feel like I appreciate both games more for what they are. Most of the important elements of Castlevania 64's identity are in Legacy of Darkness, but I don't know if I would have felt the same way about these things if I had to play through Cornell and Henry first. It was important to play through the original content first, to see the unsure, unfocused initial attempt. Playing 64 let me play through Cornell's story and feel what was improved, and what was let go of.
Castlevania 64 is a malformed attempt to try and imagine a new kind of future for Castlevania. Legacy of Darkness is a game about having reasonable expectations and a clear vision.
Game Journal: Replaying Mega Man X and Simon's Quest
June 17th, 2024I think I'm going to do it this time and actually keep it short, but I've been doing more replays of games I haven't played in like 10 years, so here we go.
Mega Man X
I'll be honest, I don't really like Mega Man? No fault of the games, but over time I've realized my taste for shooty games is more in the area of Contra or Metal Slug(much more high damage, low health, volatile games(Oh wait this is why I like Shmups even though I'm bad at them)), so I tend to go back to them less.
Some people might be like "IWBTG is basically megaman, you have like the same type of movement and shooting!" but let's be real, how much did that gun actually do?
Still, X1 is probably my favorite Mega Man. Like me saying "I don't really like Metroid Prime" it's one of those situations where I'm still playing the game like "Damn this is a well made game"(Insert Jeff Gerstmann asking 'But what does the Science say?'). It's fucking Mega Man X. It's great. Even if I don't love the style of game, it's still just so... rawly excellent. It's easier to enjoy a classic that's not exactly your thing when the commitment is basically that of a long movie.
One thing that stuck out to me is how hilarious sparse Zero is. His(Young me thought he was a girl and this gave me TONS of confusing thoughts) entire presence in the story is basically...
- "I saved you! Get strong, X!"
- "Lets Attack Sigma's Fortress Together!"
- "[Incomprehensible Explosion Noises]"
No Z-Saber, no walking animation, he just stands there looks cool, maybe dash shoots and... It works? It's funny because I think Protoman is an easier sell because he doesn't talk and you actually directly interact with him. Zero just bypasses all this weirdness by being so cool that none of us cared.
Anyways, the quick notes...
- I remembered so much of this game despite not playing it in years. Like as soon as I saw the start of a segment I kinda forgot about, I remembered the whole thing. Baked in my brain.
- I forgot about the cool map that shows you were all the stages are in relation to each other. It really doesn't make a ton of sense, but it's cute.
- You could KINDA say "Hey look these stages are next to each other, which is why Storm Eagle's ship crashed into Spark Mandrill's stage!" but how the hell did Chill Penguin affect anything??? 🤔
- I'm nitpicking, it's very cute. The fact the stages even affect each other to begin with is so cool.
- I was surprised how sketchy some of the jumps to get power-ups in this game were. Some of heart pieces felt so janky to get that it felt like I was doing it the wrong way.
- ... I kinda dig that kind of friction? Especially for the ones that had multiple, increasingly jankier solutions.
- Also like that a lot were found through dynamic stage changes, like the ship in Launch Octopus breaking through the floor.
- Hadouken is the fucking stupid, dumbassed extra, with the dumbest way to unlock it and I fucking kinda love it???
- It makes the boss re-fights much funnier, yet also tense.
IDK it's fucking Mega Man X you dash and wall jump and it feels cool and good. I'm kinda tempted to give X2 and 3 a second try. I didn't like either when I played them years ago, and they've solidified themselves as solid classics since. Kinda interested in MMX4 and Zero's gameplay, as Mega Man's style might vibe for me more as a melee game. I enjoyed a few of the Zero and ZX games, so maybe??
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Well, it was overdue. Part of it was coming off of Metroid II, one of the 8bit "Weird Sequel" triplets(The third being Zelda II). Part of it was a video essay defending the game(I'll be honest, while I think it's a good video, made in good faith and with a good methodology, I inherently disagree with Rag's premise that we're all just tainted by the opinions of video essayists. The discourse on these games goes much deeper than that, and many complaints are actually somewhat justifiable, if simply short sighted. Most peoples complaints, for example, with Metroid II are VALID, but they miss the forest for the trees. They fail to engage with the game's actual premise and goals. Not because the AVGN said a game was poopydoodoo, but because most people are just BAD at engaging with weird games. Also saying we didn't complain about these things when we were kids is a bad argument because oh god I would play LJN games and assume I was the one screwing up) and unfair preconceptions people have about it. The idea that the game is janky, confounding, and just poorly made. A shitty, frustrating game, filled with pointless grinding, stupid traps and impossible puzzles, needlessly throwing Holy Water everywhere...
Outside of issued emerging from the translation, I find most of these criticisms to be unfair, but instead of finding a maligned gem with great vibes and an engaging 8bit world, I found... a kinda dry, historically important, okay game.
Every problem with this game is largely overstated. You barely need to grind hearts. While the action and enemy layouts are much weaker than CV1, they're fine, still more competent than most NES games of the era. Competent and simple. With a translation patch, most of the puzzles are pretty clear cut! There are still red herrings, but that's fun! Breakable bricks and secret passages are pretty well telegraphed! About the only stupid thing in the game for me are the fake floor traps(I bet Sylvie likes these), which aren't really telegraphed and encourage really boring play. Even then, the punishment is usually mild. An annoyance, not something that ruins a game.
No, the real curse of Dracula is that the game is just... kinda boring. Even engaging the game under it's own terms, in its own era, it doesn't... really do anything exceptionally well. I can say it's a historically important game, and it is, especially for Castlevania as a franchise... but even just as a game, Faxanadu(They're not trying to do exactly the same thing but still come on) came out within a few months of Castlevania 2, and did similar things with a lot more ambition and with a lot more flaws. Faxanadu has vibes. Faxanadu has weirdness. Faxanadu has a map where you literally end up climbing the fucking world tree until the levels are visibly tunnels within its branches. Faxanadu is the flawed proto-metroidvania that is hard to love, but has a lot to give. Castlevania II on the other hand is a... competent expansion of Vampire Killer.
The biggest disservice to Castlevania II when going back to re-evaluate it is that the game is designed for its highpoints to be solving puzzles. If you already know to crouch by the cliff, or to crouch by the lake, or to drop garlic in the graveyard, then... the game is largely flat? You just keep repeating the same patterns. You have the same few types of zones, repeated over and over. Visit a town, find your items, continue on, enter a manor, get a stake, get a piece of Dracula, repeat. Mix this with a few overworld puzzles and the worst bosses in the series and... there isn't much to love. There aren't many points in the game where it is allowed to sing. It feels like one long, sustained note. If you find all your whips, it doesn't even get much harder. The enemy design, the opposite of jank, seems to be almost too fair, with only a few exceptions.
While you can't recreate that true, first time experience where a game like this would be it's strongest... that's kinda a negative in itself? That the games few high points are super expendable?
When you can't re-experience the mysteries of the game, the most interesting thing you're left with is the conceit. This proto-metroidvania with a melancholy plot and weird liars everywhere and a day night cycle. Collecting the pieces of your eternal enemy only to destroy him again, in the hopes of being free of his curse. It sounds wicked cool when you say it out loud, but ultimately you don't get much more from finishing the game then you do from doing two mansions and giving up(This might be the optimal way to enjoy the game).
It's not a problem that the overworld is simple and repetitive. There is a sense to how things are laid out. Of course there ares another set of woods, or another graveyard for another town. Bridges make great landmarks, and we even have some poison swamps to mix it up!(I know we wanna go 'Like Dark Souls! :)' but the laurels stuff sucks in practice, even if I don't totally hate the idea) It's okay the combat isn't the focus. It's okay that the bosses are nearly non-existent(I am so mad I, in story, died from my wounds finding Dracula when the dude couldn't even get a hit in). The repetitive nature of the manors could be a way to sorta focus in on one particular design pattern!
... But it does all of these things, at the same time. All parts of the game take a back to some puzzles that are either too hard or too easy, depending on which translation of the game you play. Puzzles that lose their impact past your first playthrough...
I hate to say it, but while this game has a reputation of being too weird and obtuse... I feel like it's not any of those things nearly enough?
To hit some extra points, positive and negative:
- I played the bisqwit translation to help with the hints. Turns out this was unnecessary, since it's hard to forget the few roadblocks this game has.
- More importantly though, the hack adds a pixelized map from the Japanese manual which contextualizes a lot of areas and paths.
- This doesn't necessarily help with navigation a ton but it's super cool and makes certain screens make more sense.
- You actually don't have to do much navigating in the game at all???
- I like how a very 2 linear map actually conveys a 3d space extremely well, especially with the map.
- I do like that the game has a lot of weird dead ends and pointless paths. The marsh at the end of the game is visibly interesting and completely useless.
- Considering the game looks extremely samey though, maybe somewhere else should have looked like that.
- I like the townfolks who are mad at you because you're bringing in demons and monsters due to your curse. You are the problem and it's almost selfish of you to not just curl up and die when you might be putting others at risk.
- One of the few highpoints is also a low point. Walking into the empty Casltevania, through the broken down, overgrown entryway, breaking down the foor to descend into the rubble of the collapsed, empty castle, all to refight Dracula is cool.
- Demon's Souls downer King Allant boss fight kind suffers if you do something like... Storm King last. You don't get high point to come down from. The same goes here. This setpiece rules, but it's kneecapped by the fact the game can't come down from anything. It's hard to have a purposefully deflating ending when there is nothing to deflate.
- Also Dracula being a lame last boss suffers because it doesn't seem to be trying to. He teleports around like crazy, you whip him a few times, and he dies. He's less engaging than Camilla, yet not so purposefully simple and boring as to seem intentionally weak.
- The moving water block platforming shit sucks ass. That's actually probably the hardest shit the game actually asks you to do.
- I missed the morningstar until way way late and while enemies took a lot more hits, the mansions I did without it were still easy.
While I'm largely disappointed with this game, I think it's important to go back still. Not every retread of a weird blacksheep game is going to reveal a beautiful secret gem. Nor does my disappointment mean we were right, and this was a bad game designed by bad game designers. No, it was a cool, experimental game for its time that influenced games after it positively. I'm thankful to Castlevania II... but playing Metroid II, I was confronted with so many design choices that ruled, and so many vibey motions that games now fail to reach.
I just can't say that about Simon's Quest. It's okay.
Game Journal: Mega Man Legends, Syvlie Lime, and Sylvie RPG
June 10th, 2024I think I'm gonna save the "Game Journal" moniker for more informal posts where I don't have a real thesis and I'm not proof reeding like crazy. Me just trying to jot down my thoughts. You know, like a journal.
Future me: I failed and wrote too seriously. Next time will be different, I swear.(It won't)
Mega Man Legends
Missed this during it's era. It was a bit too... modestly successful for me, a kid who could only afford a handful of games. Also it's past Mega Man X, and why would you wanna play the dumb, dorky blue Mega Man when you could play as the cool, super hip X? IDK, kids are stupid. It'd been on my radar for years due to the art style, but some conversations(Thanks, Big Iron!) during a Guilty Gear stream made me dive into it this weekend.
This game has everything going against it. All the little bits are off. Controls are flakey, Dialog is painfully, gameplay is sporadically paced... Stuff like turning with the shoulders, dodgy aiming, pre-Ocarina of Time dungeons that feel more like Wizardy maps... and don't know, it fucking rules? The definition of a 6.5/10 10/10 game.
Kattelox Island feels like a place. It's small, but strikes a balance... You wish there was more, but the amount you get is just right to make you get intimate with every area. The ruins of the game interconnect with the world above and each other. Oh it's a hole in the wall and now you're in a sewer and now you're... in the city? Does this has ANY use? Not really. The world isn't connected in some Metroidvania progression way, it connected like ruins. They connect because why wouldn't they? The only thing that betrays this is the small scale of the dungeons. They're over right when you think think they're getting started. There isn't quite enough to find to sell the premise of being a Digger. You can feel the lack of scale while playing. Looking at some maps of the ruin system really puts the size in perspective. I think that's reasonable given the scope of the game and it's era, but it was still a thought that was constantly on my mind.
If the Underworld under delivers, then the Overworld over delivers. It's downright gloriously wasteful at times, filled with locations that never get used but exist purely for the joy of existing. Shops you will never be able to buy things in, filled with lovingly made pixel-art textures, filled with NPCs who never have anything important to say. Yet despite the painfully slow dialog windows, you talk to them anyways because there is a joy to exploring the city and being a part of the community. The limited nature of the dungeons work due to how the overword segments, like a stew, extend the few scraps of meat you have into a hardy, rich meal. The game's slow start established very early that walking about and socializing in the town is as much of the real game as exploring ruins. Buying a medical machine to fix an injured girl's legs is honestly more engaging than most of the game's bosses. Where I felt like I was always running out of dungeon to explore, I still feel like I only scratched the surface of the quests and sideplots that happen in the city. Apparently there is a whole MORALITY SYSTEM where you become DARK MEGA MAN if you DO CRIMES? And the only consequence is that people start shit-talking you?
There is also a complicated and deep subweapon system you barely have to interact with and where it's easy to miss most of it. It's there, though and it gives you more things to sink time into if you choose to engage with it. For all this game's faults, it always seems willing to meet you at the exact amount of engagement you want to have.
I'm sad to hear the general consensus on Legends 2 is "It plays much better, but it loses the magic of Legends 1" because that is a trade I would never make. Please, make the game play even worse and give me more magic. Instead, you get the "more" Kattelox begged for, and somehow, for most, it ends up feeling like less. Maybe I'll have my own opinion of that at some point.
Sylvie Lime and Sylvie RPG
So Sylvie has been one of my favorite indie devs for awhile(Also Sylvie will probably end up reading this SO SYLVIE I HOPE MY DESCRIPTION OF YOUR WORK COMES OFF AS FAIR!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA). Her games almost feel like outsider art, only she's not an outsider to games, but the current zeitgeist and canon. In fact, she probably is more of an insider to games and the older zeitgeist than any of us. Who else would decide to learn Tower of Druaga in the 2020s?
She values the bits of games a lot of us are quick to discard as jank and makes whole games around them. It's easy to assume her work is unskilled and amateurish when you load one up and get hit with some weird, clunky platformer physics. That's not how we make games now!
... But you give it some time and realize oh god she knew exactly what she was doing. All those clunky bits are now critical mechanics that the games start using in such brutally clever ways.
There is a wit to Sylvie's designs that I cannot overstate, but you have to go into her games with an open mind. She knows how to fucking cook.
Sylvie Lime and Sylvie RPG stand out to me as her two "big" games and I realized I'd be doing a disservice to myself if I didn't put both games in my game journal.
Sylvie Lime
Sylvie Lime is the definition of a game for sickos. A game that uses your keyboard, in alphabetical order, as a way to use special items. Not like you get Q W and E items, you get fucking A B C. Half the buttons turn you into a Lime. A Sylvie Lime. A powerful and dreadful ability...
Items have bizarre behaviors, like houses you can throw infinite of, where the only way to remove one is to hit it with another house. This turns out to be a checkpoint system with hilarious amounts of versatility, allowing you to destroy houses to reverse through your list of possible checkpoints. Accessing the options requires finding a locket. You find the god damned hammer from fucking Milon's Secret Castle, who plays that game and goes "Yeah, I wanna do that!"?
Well, Sylvie does.
I don't want to get too far into spoilers, but the game becomes about game design, about characters who made the game, about the dialog on design decisions between them. You get to ask characters about items and hear the discourse that went into their design. This discourse wasn't real, but was perhaps arguments Sylvie had with herself(🔥🤘Fuck Coyote Time🤘🔥). This internal commentary gives a beautiful view into how Sylvie thinks about games. Also it's gay.
Sylvie RPG
Somehow the game inspired by Tower of Druaga and Ys is the most approachable of Sylvie's work. A tribute to Bump Combat and Obtuse Secrets, Sylvie RPG is 49x49 zero button((okay you can pause, shut up)) micro RPG with tremendous game feel and genuinely new ideas for the genres she's drawing inspiration from. It brilliantly fits within its limitations in ways that only serve to make the game incredibly charming.
The game is rich with secrets, with holes opening on every screen to the underworld... but only if you satisfy some arbitrary requirement. Kill enemies fast enough, circle a boulder, stand on a square. Hint spots on the floor disappear when a room is no longer available, and by telling you what not to do, sometimes you can infer what you should do. The level design tries to lead you along. You only need to find a few of these rooms, which makes the exploration feel even more fun.
A lot of this game is grinding, but in a fun and interactive way, combining your skills with numerous secrets to find ways to generate(or save) lots of money. You end up wondering if there are better ways, and you explore more to find them. The secrets don't tend to give you treasure, but they enable you. Swap your money and health. Feed swords to bunnies for profit. Have a pet cat. Play Fruit like a keyboard(The fruit will teach you how to edit your password, it is very wise). Weigh yourself. Find a secret transport between two areas! Exploring massively increases the possibility space of what you can do, which turns out to be so much more fun than just finding trinkets. Each secret room is like a new ability and you won't stop wondering what types of girls you might find hiding in the ground!
This is probably the gentlest, most polished intro into Sylvie games that you can get. I recommend Sylvie Lime to the real sickos, but Sylvie RPG is worth a try by anyone! It's just a cute, innocent little web game!
(this too is gay)
Dreaming of Metroid: Metroid II and Super Junkoid
May 27th, 2024Going to try and keep this one as a reasonable, to the point Game Journal(Spoilers, I failed), but I'm glad I could play both these games after finishing that tome of a Metroid Dread review. At the end of this I'll have my "Dread Review Debriefing", but before that, let me talk about some things I actually enjoyed.
Metroid II gets better with age, and better when you come to it as a willing participant
My palette cleanser after Dread was Metroid II. I ended up using so many Metroid II examples that it felt appropriate to give it a quick play through. This time I played with the EJRTQ Colorization, which I quite liked. I kinda wished I played with Azurelore Korrigan's color Patch(you should read this page and other things she wrote, even if you're not planning on using it) as she's maybe Metroid II's #1 defender, but the patch I had did the job fine. Metroid 2 doesn't need color, but I've played it monochrome enough to justify a little experimentation. I felt like it actually added to the game and it made it clear that the world wasn't actually just the same grey tiles, over and over again? I think a case could be made that being less confused is actually a downgrade, but I think I was confused enough!! 😭
...Aesthetically though there is something about the pure monochrome look. Probably the best way to do a first play through.
So to go over my notes...
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My bullshit tolerance is so much higher now, playing through this game was pleasant and relaxing.
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The majority of the world is ambivalent to you. The spiderball and how tedious it is to use makes sense. Of course you gotta climb the cliff wall awkwardly, why would a cave be where you'd want a cave to be? Do you think a human designed this cave?
- (a really really GOOD designer designed this cave, actually 😏)
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The Chozo ruins feel ANCIENT. Eroded to shit. Trashed. They feel empty yet hostile, like a temple full of traps. It rules.
- The deep black backgrounds tied with the cramped screen adds to this. I feel like a true modern take on Metroid 2 would have to be based a lot on light.
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You get lots of power-ups at once. A chozo ruin is loot central. Feels on brand for ancient ruins.
- Each ruin has 2 or 3 major power-ups and countless other missile/energy tank pickups. So density is very high.
- I love how there are appropriate rooms for things. The powerful stuff is locked behind red doors. Stuff like missiles and E-tanks are often in special ordinance rooms with simpler locks (breakable blocks). They're put away in like boxes made of game tiles, it's great.
- The fact the boxes are big and mostly empty or with one missile upgrade left makes it feel like these ruins were already looted.
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ALL power-ups are close to chozo ruins. There is never anything in the main tunnel system. Why would there be?
- Only one beam at a time is cool. Enough repeats exist to experiment and it feels right for their to be multiples of these weapons laying around.
- The excitement of finding chozo buildings and the risks of exploring them makes for a nice mix of emotions.
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Combat sucks. Metroids are tanky. This is a game on a crazy low refresh rate screen, it's more about managing energy and missiles than tactics. Not that tactics don't help.
- Accepting the limitations of the hardware and adapting to them is what this game does best.
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Less 'maps don't line up' stuff then I thought I remembered. I still hate the one bit in Area 3, but it's not really a problem.
- There are valid arguments for this, but I feel like it's not done enough to be truly a big part of the design.
- I think the... none-major area maps overlapping is fine and cool? Cave systems aren't 2d and it doesn't matter that much?
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The acid is a shitty progress conceit but it works and makes the game actually playable so whatever.
- You could do non-linear Metroid II but what's the point? Either you're lost forever or you already know the game and the progression is simple. No reason to do it out of order
- Forcing a linear descent aids the feeling of isolation. Going forward feels easy, but going backward feels impossible.
- At a certain point it just starts feeling like a one way trip.
Most importantly with this game, the vibes are amazing. People hate on the music in this game, but the main corridor tracks are bops. The "area" songs are ambient, and the chozo temple tracks are downright alien and hostile. As you go deeper, the world gets more alien. Weirder tiles, weirder enemies...
After you kill the last omega metroids, you are left with nothing. You walk, in silence, no combat, no enemies, toward the queen for like five minutes. It's incredible, as long as you are willing to engage with it. As long as you think of the horror of being down in this planet, alone, committing what turns out to be an ill considered atrocity. You enter a big huge room that feels like some giant room out of Blame!, leaving you groping around to find walls, let alone the ceiling. You find the ice beam, the shredded chozo statue. The metroid reveal is tense, but a moment of triumph. You are unstoppable. You walk into the room before the queen and...
Dread.
More dread than anything in Dread. It's like walking to an execution. The droning, deep music, the hostile, unlined spikes. The cracks in the floor saying this is going to be a one way trip. The room lets you run. You can roll away and flee. There is no pragmatic purpose for this. Better to just die and walk back... but just having the option makes it feel real. You should be afraid for your life. Running is an option.
It's another tanky boss. She's not great. But she doesn't have to be. The moment is great. The moment AFTER is great. The return to the ship is great. The end of this game masterfully raises and lowers the tension over and over, leaving you exhausted yet satisfied by the end. Seeing the stars in the sky feels like breathing fresh air on a cold winters night, escaping a loud, hot, claustrophobic party. You can exist again. The ending stretch of Metroid 2 has some of the best "inhales" and "exhales" in gaming history.
I'm still a Super Metroid fan to the bone, but Metroid 2, after all these years, is my clear #2 in the series. I don't think anything else that has come out has been even close.
Super Junkoid
Trapped in a twisted dream where she is revered as a goddess, Junko must face the horrifying serpent that worships her
This will contain spoilers. If you're like me sometimes you need a few spoilers to get you interested in something that's no big deal... but since I'm not talking about decades old games at this point, I feel like a warning is appropriate.
Super Junkoid feels like a special game. Mirai had been recommending me this romhack for awhile now. It exists in this strange in between of a full conversion, and very distinctly being Super Metroid.
The game is a dream, but does not use it's dream gimmick lightly. Everything feels surreal. You wake up in a bed in the middle of a snowy field. Doors are replaced by giant bird heads, a possible motif taken from the dreamworld of Mario 2. The first area drifts... snowy fields, crateria like caves, underground service tunnels, to blood.... fleshinesss. The bottom of the first area, The Outskirts, feels almost vaginal, like a creeping post puberty menstrual nightmare.
... And you have to go down in it. Junkoid, like many Metroidvanias we've talked about, use one way trips to funnel you where you need to go. Junkoid makes it naturalistic. Do you dive too deep in the blood, getting stuck? Do you fail one of your jumps in the service tunnels? Do you clear the surface before being forced underground, where you are faced with a sheer drop? Either way you're going down, deeper in deeper. You get bodged down by the blood. Super Metroid water physics feel oppressive and claustrophobic. Like a nightmare, you move slowly, your body betraying you. You flash with pain periodically, as if you're drowning, but you take no damage. Like in a dream, you can't drown, but you can be in distress. The sound is distressing, even when you realize it has no mechanical meaning.
There is no way back. You could never get back. So deeper, and deeper until... finally, air. Finally... high jump boots(I wish I wrote down all the actual item names)?
This feels very much like how I was talking about Metroid II, but in a very non-linear way. Super Junkoid is designed to force you to dive deeply into new area, get stuck, find the solution, and then spend your time combing your way back up out of where you are, exploring as you go. If I was to compare, most of the game feels like post Varia suit Norfair in Super Metroid. You have a lot of options and getting around is a little confusing, but things tend to circle back on themselves. Getting lost is fine, because there is a lot to discover. You learn to turn into a rat. An exploding rat. A fast rat.
The vibe is incredible(A theme, for today)... Dark and ominous, yet soft. This isn't a hard game and like many dreams, the real enemy is just the overwhelming sense of dread. Often, it used remix of Super Metroid tracks. Junkoid, the NES version of the same story, uses all original music, but Super Junkoid feels darker, key shifted down. The item pickup sound, a riff on the original metroid Item Pickup, feels like you are making a dark bargain. The surface is pleasant. Mountain scapes, city skylines in the back. Even an ice palace, a high fantasy, pleasant dream.
The deeper you go, the more nightmarish things get. Eventually you enter the mouth of a horrific worm like creature with a distressingly monstrous face. Not a Snake... more like a worm. The False Idol. It's insides are hostile to life. Fleshy, squeezing, digestive. The walls shoot at you to kill you and the acid burns. It is a multi headed hydra connecting and consuming parts of your deep self conscious. Perhaps it's part of you? Your Id? your conception of The Snake?
You kill it.
You kill the re-skinned spore-spawn deep in its guts it dies. The world dies. A part of it, anyways. There is no more acid, there is no more life. The walls do not shoot at you. The faces that emerge, linking parts of your mind begin to rot. Only the spikes, the dying bones and teeth lining parts of the False Idol's insides offer you any resistance.
You can go deeper.
You enter the Purple, the deep part of your mind that connects everything else. Elevators break the logic of the world, leading conveniently to other parts of the world. This is a junction point. The Purple is hot and sweltering. Mechanical. Here, embryonic Junkos are generated and dies, a factory for your identity and your sense of self. You go deeper, walking along the mechanical pipes... a big room, some blocks to shine spark through, some floating platforms... a strangely evocative floating pile of pipes... Crateria... the surface? ... This is Super Metroid?
The beginning of Super Metroid, represented in a completely different, inappropriate tile set. But you know what it is. You know because you're playing a Super Metroid rom hack.
You're dreaming about Super Metroid. Or, more specifically, Junko is using the dream like structure of Super Metroid as the frame work for confronting The Snake. It's a brilliant moment, relying on your familiarly with the source material. Eventually you'll figure it out, the gimmick goes on long enough to get the attention of anyone who'd be playing a Super Metroid romhack... but I realized it from the first room. I too have Super Metroid, lodged deeply in the back of my subconscious. The rough edges, and crudely re-skinned bosses become recontextualized. Junko's weird wand beams, her goofily remixed abilities, all that get recontextualized. Super Metroid is not just the base for this game, Super Metroid is a part of Super Junkoid.
I have to stop myself there because there would be just too much to babble on, but to bullet point some last notes.
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The structure of this game allows for a lot of genuine exploration while keeping the current problem space manageable.
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The game inspires trust. It establishes its design language. Yes, this is the type of hole that a rat can fit in if there is a secret here. Yes, that's the type of tube that breaks when you shoot it. No I will not randomly require you to do something obtuse to mix it up because I regret making solutions too obvious.(I want to be clear, this isn't better because it's less random, it's better because of conviction. If you want random wall bombing and secrets, do it with conviction)
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The game uses its music excellently. It knows when to change it, when to cut it, and when to bring it back to control the mood.
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Loved the background details. At first it was noticing the weird bird doors off in the distance. They exist, in whatever dream universe this is, even beyond Junko's reach.
- You also see far off save points.
- and a lot of other weird map structure stuff that's nice.
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The map station, a giant mining mole who clearly is giving you notes, appears near the end of areas. Finding the mole always felt like a section wrapup. The mole labels where all the items are, so there is no blind bombing and shooting.
- I found most items before the mole, so the mole just helped find the few things I missed, which seems like a good balance. No blind flailing.
- Even with a clear design language, finding items is still a puzzle. It's not about finding the room and doing the thing, it's about figuring out what room even leads to the item. Understanding the map is critical.
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It's confident. It knows this can be engaging. Super Junkoid doesn't second guess itself. It's basically the opposite of Dread. Vibes and confidence.
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It controls like Super Metroid, but in a more relaxed way. Wall Jumping is easier, space jumping is easier, you start with springball because of course a rat can jump.
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Having the rat as your speed booster is great, it stops it from becoming a thing that just randomly happens.
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Shinespark is its own power up. No running required, just a super dash with ammo. No dumb shinespark puzzles.
- I totally got bluesuit killing Not-Draygon with one of the dashes, but the game took it away from me. ☹️
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For downsides of this game, it doesn't end particularly well. The last area is the least interesting, and the last boss, the Snake reskinned from Mother Brain's final from is... fine? This is a Super Metroid romhack though, and these are the limitations. There are a few good payoffs though, but I feel like the final act struggled to conform to what requirements the end of Super Metroid forced upon it.
- The less scripted nature of Junkoid, the original NES version, seems to be able to handle this more gracefully. You don't need to explain a giant baby Metroid cutscene, because there aren't any cutscenes.
- It's not like it fumbles the end, there just isn't much else you could do?
This last bit is a small negative when dealing with one of the best romhacks I've ever played. Shadow Tower Abyss ends much much worse and is still one of my favorite games. This ending is more "If you go in with lowered expectations you'll probably actually come out pleasantly surprised.
I gotta say it. Super Junkoid is better than Metroid Dread. Speaking of which...
ADDENDUM: Junkoid
This section has been added a few days after the original post because decided to play through the NES Junkoid, as inspired now by Sylvie, who also wrote this great co-host post about it(By all means, follow me on cohost while you're at it).
I kinda wish I played this first. It's impossible to untangle by view of Junkoid from the lens I views Super Junkoid with. It's tricky because Junkoid is a much less ambitious game, but is just as much of a clever one. The narrative is just a repetition -- there is no Metroid to Super Metroid here, no returning to the story from a different lens. Junkoid is just a different telling of the same story. A different game, perhaps, that Junko fell asleep while playing.
Junkoid cannot match the rich, murky vibe of Super Junkoid. Instead, it is a crisp, clean experience. Simple and evocative, pulling a few tricks Super Junkoid couldn't while not overextending anywhere. The Purple -- here called The Labyrinth -- is even more memorable. You literally submerge yourself into a sea of purple. You lose your clothes. You lose your HUD(Well okay it's THERE but it's blank). You are naked, physically and mentally. Super Junkoid can sprawl, but Junkoid hits with precision. Free from the cumbersomely cinematic design of Super Metroid's bosses, mechanics can be repurposed, encounters changed. It is both more obviously Metroid, yet less.
There are so many little touches. You get a map for the first area. You can get around there fine, but you'll be blind everywhere else. The sub-areas are relatively small, but it's still so easy to miss that map. By giving you the map at the start, you feel more lost than you would if you never had one at all.
The game has many lovely structural shortcuts. I particularly love The Heart, and it's floors, the different ways the main tower makes it easier to go down as you find more items. The whole area feels like having to take the stairs down in a skyscraper because the elevator isn't working.
I love how wet this game feels. Visually and emotionally. The original Metroid is a visually dry game. A land without water, bushes looking parched and brown. A land of cold metal and brick. Norfair looks like it's made of volcanic glass. Junkoid is made of blood and tears. Super Junkoid wears these themes heavily. The atmosphere is thick. Junkoid, by contrast, is almost light about it. More distant, but in a way that better highlights the absurdity. In Super Junkoid you are deep in the dream with Junko. in Junkoid? You, like the snake, are watching her. When you enter The Purple, she even tries to hide from your eyes.
Like Super Junkoid, there is a consistent design language. You have a rapport with the developer and they are not inclined to betray your trust. Both games award attentiveness. Secrets aren't hard if you're using your eyes. It's so easy to coast through games that don't require you to be present. Junkoid is easy, but it won't let you sleep at the wheel. You have to be engaged.
It's fun, weird and breezy. While it doesn't hit the highs for me that Super Junkoid did, it stands on it's own merits and has it's own strengths. It even ends better. How Sheol feels. How the Snake feels. How the Zebetites are repurposed, used over an entire area. The whole final act just plays out nicer here, even if Super Junkoid's very final moments(Junko is going to the one place that hasn't been corrupted capitalism. SPAAAAAACE) win out. It's not a contest though. While both are takes on the same story, by the same creator, both have different goals and approaches. Both are filled with unique things to love. If you had to play one I'd say play Super Junkoid, but if you have time you'll probably enjoy playing both. Junkoid isn't that long. You might even end up loving it more.
Okay NOW to talk about the Metroid Dread stuff...
No one stoned me to death for criticizing Dread
Feel free to skip the rest of this.
The reception for the Dread review was super nice, but the thing that got me the most was is how many people who liked Dread who also liked the review. Not that I changed anyone's mind(I maybe solidified some percolating negative opinions, but I didn't make anyone pull a 180), but I think it helped some fans understand some papercuts they had with the game. Critical flaws for me were minor sore spots for them and while I they didn't feel what I felt as intensely, they still felt something. A lot of my interactions went like...
I was... really really happy with peoples willingness to engage me on this topic, or politely argue against me. I made a lot of effort to not sound judgemental in my review, but my opinion was definitely sometimes rather intense, and I'm glad people were able to tell that I mostly just... was really passionate?
The map and EMMIs were a common source of agreement(even fans felt constricted by the map at times). The point about counters was hit or miss. While many people argued for the counters and boss design, there is definitely a growing resentment for that style of content. There is also an increased amount of criticism toward the Dark Souls induced "Dodge/roll" type of call-response combat design. While I don't hate that style of design(I'm a massive Fromsoft fan, so obviously I don't mind it), I do feel it's overused as some sort of "Secret sauce" for "hardcore combat", even though massive i-frames is perhaps the most EZ Mode type of defensive option a game can have. Sometimes a big cool EZ Mode dodge move is cool but it's use seems to have more to do with the optics of difficulty than anything else.
There was talk about the fact Metroid is different now. Metroid is an Action Platform Semi Horror game and it's been that longer than Metroid has been anything else and you can't expect everything to be Super Metroid. I actually agree with this, but I don't think this is a reason to settle for less. The review pointed out many of the issues with the combat. My map analysis didn't go "This should be Super Metroid", it gave the example of many different types of maps and then analyzed Dread's on its own terms. Dread's map sucks not because it isn't Super Metroid, but because it isn't anything. Even if you go "It's INTENTIONALLY a confusing patched together mess of content"... to what end? How does that fit into what the game is trying to accomplish?
It doesn't. It's simply a winding queue for their content train. The only defense for the map comes down to "but the content is good so it's fine".
... And I think that's fair, but it doesn't make the map not suck. It just means the map doesn't need to be good. I think you can argue while there would be no downsides, in a vacuum, for a better map, perhaps they made the best cost/benefit analysis for their game and goals. A better map isn't free, right? Maybe... but if the world isn't important anymore in a Metroid game, well... at least for me, the series is cooked. But we can agree to disagree on that.
Oddly most of the pushback I got came from an odd place.
Samus Returns looks embarrassing and I will not play it, but Mirai did so I kinda got revenge for being made to play Dread
I was playing Metroid 2 while Mirai was playing through Samus Returns, causing me to start comparing rooms and vibes...
We come back to the big Blame! room(Okay it's not THAT big the Blame! room is like the size of jupiter or something. But it FEELS massive for a GB Game.). This hit way more nerves than any of the Dread tweets. While most people agreed that this was... frankly, indefensible, I saw a lot of people try.
I'm told Samus Returns fans are a bit prickly due to some people preferring AM2R, a fan game that also butchers the vibe of Metroid 2, but to a much lesser extent. I guess this is understandable. Dread has nothing to be compared to.
For AM2R, It at least tries to respect Metroid 2(They don't understand what's cool about Metroid 2 but the misguided souls at least thing it's worth trying to 'save'... in big air quotes)
, where Samus Returns seems to resent Metroid 2. Possibly true, because Mercury Steam wanted to remake Fusion(Because it's a studio of people with bad taste). Some of it seemed to be general Nintendo defensiveness. Maybe it was the fact this wasn't connected to a well reasoned article. This is just me taking a shot.Part of this is people expecting games to be universally beloved. I don't think I need to tell anyone reading my writing that every game has haters, often justified haters. I've heard Super Metroid criticisms I can't hand wave and aren't just people whining about a floaty jump(not every platformer has to feel the same). This stuff is misguided and kinda funny but not a big deal. The stuff that got me was people proudly saying shit like "They added gameplay and you're mad?" "Oh you want games to be worse and more boring?" "I don't like the game or the atmosphere so I fail to see the issue".
I tried to be patient in my threads. I want to sorta try and avoid the old school forum argument BS. I want to kinda help people through this stuff so they can think about games better and engage with them in more ways.
... But if that's your opinion then you fucking suck. You're slime. You're a fucking worm, rolling around blind in the dirt, eating shit.(Worms are actually pretty cool and this is deeply unfair to worms. When I see a worm I'm at least like 'Cool! A worm!', which is something I've never said when getting tweeted at by sentient toilet scum) Just thoughtlessly devouring and defecating as you go. You have nothing interesting to say, and nothing thoughtful to contribute, because you can't stop stuffing your mouth full of crap.
I don't care if you like the game. I don't care if you don't care about the change. I don't care if you don't even get what the big deal is. We're cool. I'll walk you through it. You can even disagree after I'm done.
No, It's the entitled people who are proudly incuriousness that gets me hot. Without even the self awareness to realize that they have nothing to add. They can't help but to speak. There can't be a problem here because I like it, and clearly this stranger I'm talking to will be forced to reckon with that! Nothing matters, as long as the content is for me.
Okay had to get that out I'm sorry 😭 Most of you are cool so imma talk to all you now.
"Okay but what is the big deal? Sure, the vibe is in shambles and that's a shame, but this is a different game, right? Different goals? This isn't what's going to make or break that. Having the big open room isn't going to unshamble the vibes, right?"
And yeah, this is true. Again, no issue liking the game. It's about liking what it offers, not about what it doesn't offer. But lets look at this differently. You're making a new Metroid 2. You don't really give a shit original. You want to make an action game with a beach biome and palm trees. why is the still room there?
Like if you don't think the room adds anything good, or isn't compatible with your game... why is it there? You could make a room that better matches your vision. The remake already lacks the famous Decapitated Chozo Statue room that comes next. You can change the design. No, including the room and "jazzing it up" implies a fundamental misunderstanding of the room. They didn't even realize that doing this would be embarrassing. They were just like "Eh there was a bunch of empty rooms, who cares?" They did not need to invite comparison.
I think it's appropriate to ask too, even if you enjoy Samus Returns... why are we remaking Metroid 2 with no respect given toward it? Do we just want everything to conform? Do we need every Metroid game to have a "Traditionally Good" rendition? If we are doing that, what advantage is there for the franchise to not at least try and engage with the strengths of the original. I don't love AM2R, but they try. This could be a new game. I don't like action star Samus Metroid games, but I'm me. People can do whatever.
This is a spicer, opinionated take, but I have no respect for a developer who can't let something breath. Mercury Steam never trusts themselves to have the player's attention. They have to GO GO GO GO none stop, no matter what the source material calls for. They can't even let the Baby Metroid sequence be a quiet moments. It needs puzzles. It can't be a gentle moment either, it needs a boss fight.
And they do this despite the fact that they can't make the build up to the Queen Metroid even a 1/10th as cool as ancient, primitive monochrome portable video game. It's fine if you don't care. Maybe the gameplay is great.(People continue to confuse Good with Smooth, be it framerate or gameplay) Personally? I don't care about the work of a developer who doesn't realize that there is music between the notes.
I come off of Metroid II and Super Junkoid, only to see people comment that Metroidvanias should focus more about being action games. That getting lost is frustrating. That backtracking is boring. I don't like these opinions, but they're fine. We all have our tastes, but still...
Why do you care, then? Why care about this genre? Are you sad about missing out on the lady with the cool arm cannon? Do we need to conform every genre to whatever AA and AAA design patterns are in vogue? Is there not content enough already to satiate you?
Metroid: Dread - How Metroid Lost its Way
May 23rd, 2024This will not be a Feel Good story about Metroid: Dread finally correcting course. I am here today to be a hater.
Not a hater out of spite, or to be a contrarian, or even to shame people for liking the popular thing. Metroid: Dread is many people's(Even John Cena's) favorite Metroid game. The game is a critical and commercial darling. I'm not here to try and make you feel stupid for liking a game I don't enjoy. My values are likely very different from yours and that's fine. A lot of folks I respect deeply enjoy this game. I've lived through enough forum arguments like "Is Metroid Fusion a good game?"(It isn't 😒) to care about winning the Video Game Opinion War.
I'm writing this because my feelings come from the heart. Because 2D Constructed Worlds get into my fucking soul. I can't help but to feel very strongly about them. If I just think a game is bad, I simply stop playing it(Bad is kinda a weasel word here. Bad for me usually means 'Boring' and I love some bad, awful TRASH games). I walk away. Hate happens when I care and I find Metroid is especially good at getting me to care a lot.
I don't want you to hate Metroid: Dread, I wan't you to understand why someone would.
An Over Designed Game with an Under Designed World
To claim the Map of Metroid: Dread is, in any sense "Under Designed" is a tall order. Game Maker's Toolkit has an excellent video on all the tricks and design techniques Dread utilizes to keep you progressing through the game. Regardless of my overall opinion of this game, It's a genuinely impressive technical feat to balance so many moving parts... To keep Dread's guiding hand invisible and frictionless.
But sadly, the invisible hand of Dread is not invisible to everyone and I found myself fighting its constricting bounds frequently.
The ever changing early hours of Dread are a hot stove, punishing you for caring. Every time you think there's a point where you should go back and check, a waist high hole turns things into a one way trip. Water flowed out of a hole, making jumping impossible, or a stupid flaming plant appeared to arbitrarily say "Nope, not today". This type of control over the available play space is a common and useful tool in Metroidvanias, but Dread keeps the leash obscenely short.
If you try to engage with the world presented to you, the world shrugs and tells you to keep moving forward. Even when you finish what feels like a heroic little loop around the starting area of the game, you are forced immediately on a new railroad track. Areas bleed into each other, winding mazes of tunnels with no grounding structure. Why even try and look for structure? The right way is forward and what you assume about the world now might not be the same 3 rooms for now. I'm not sure if you get to explore an optional area once in the first hour of the game.
... Then you get Morph Ball and the game massively opens up. Suddenly you are given freedom and that freedom is suffocating. Nothing in the world has been established. No familiarity has been built up. It's like you've been dropped off in a town you've seen your friends drive through, but haven't driven through yourself. You recognize some things, but you are fundamentally lost.
Dread's progression is tightly designed, but its world is not... Or at least the structure of the world. That Game Maker's Toolkit to me is interesting because it talks about all the tricks Dread uses, but doesn't talk about all the tricks it forgoes. What fundamentals it forgoes.
Metroid Dread's map lacks bones and connective tissue. Prime cut moving, platforming, and gunning. A clean cut of meat might be great when making a steak, but this is game design. We need functional muscle that does work.
Intimacy through Repetition
Super Metroid is a game anchored by vertical space. Long, towering screens(And I'll include the 'fat' hubs of Pink Brinstar and Bubble Norfair) act as important points of exploration and progression, presenting players with a series of doors. These areas operate as hubs and waymarkers the players can use to navigate around. Need a save point? It's probably off a hub tower. Need to progress? The next place you have to go is probably directly off a hub tower(if not, it's usually connected to another set piece). These towers give room to explore. Many doors will be a dead end that will provide the player with a power up. Usually, there is only one way forward, often at the top or bottom of a tower.
Depending on how you count, there are almost a dozen of these important guidance structures in the game. Much of the more tangly, interconnected, complicated rooms take place between these "fence posts". Exploring is a horizontal activity, and Navigating is often a vertical one. The repetition of this pattern is key in helping players intuit their way around. You know when you see certain types vertical spaces there will be a save point somewhere. We slowly understand the logic of world. We begin having discourse with the designers. You don't need magical Golden Pathway butterflies when the world itself is guiding you.
But then there is Maridia. Why is Maridia so confusing?
Because it's one of the few areas in the game that lack this structure. It has structure, big hub rooms that funnel down into an almost "drainage ditch" horizontal hallway. But since the design language is different, the area feels claustrophobic, oppressive, and confusing. Whether it's too confusing is debatable(Even a lot of Super Metroid fans don't exactly love Maridia), but it is both clearly intentional and a wonderful example of how powerful these tools are. It also shows that things don't have to be one way.
Hardware nerds will look at the design pattern and think of course, because the NES Metroid had to be this way. Vertical rooms were the only way to have more than two doors. Super Metroid is only echoing a convenient limitation. It's doing it because that's how Metroid is supposed to feel.
Metroid II was as much of an influence on Super Metroid as the original, but it takes a very different approach. Metroid II(Until Mercury Steam ruined it) forwent the use of elevators and most doors, focusing more on sprawling, winding tunnels. The focal point navigation elements besides besides the ever shrinking arterial acid chasms would be the "Big Room" Chozo ruins. Big open areas serve as Metroid II's hubs. Until an area is clear, the hub is where you start exploring from and where you return to when you are done. The large hubs on such a small screen benefit both exploration and navigation. You can always orient yourself off them. there are never two ruins in the same area. Like moss growing on the north facing side of a tree, when you emerge from a tunnel seeing Chozo wall tiles to your left, you know you're on the right side of the big room. The repetition inspires trust in the explorer.
This is practically the structure of the original Dark Souls, which still stands as the best interconnected 3d Map ever made. Large points of action and exploration connected through linear roadways, almost like a flowchart diagram.
Castlevania games employ all these elements. the Outer Wall of Symphony of the Night is the ultimate "Hub Tower", being a complete area in it's own right. Hub rooms like the one in Orlox's Lair look the part, almost appearing as a great foyer. The Marble Gallery, which serves as one of the main horizontal movement highways in the game, styles itself as a literal hallway. Aria of Sorrow's Castle Corridor invokes this design while connecting to 6 different areas and a teleporter.
One may fairly criticize the IGAvania's overused of flat hallways but many do get used to serve critical purposes. They do the work needed to keep the chaotic mess that is Dracula's castle organized. Tools like these are used in virtually all Metroidvanias. Even Fusion, a game I loathe, will use Hub Towers. Even Hollow Knight, a game designed to literally get you lost has visible structure when you stare at the map. How does Dread structure itself?
The Tangled Guts of Metroid Dread
Winding, piled up, and folded in on itself. Rooms laid out like intestines. Linear, yet looped up into convoluted knots. Things that seem close are miles away. The things that seem far and impossible to reach to are inevitable. They are inevitable because of the structure, which exists but is kept secret from the player. What does look like structure are more likely a Shinespark puzzle than a means of navigation. The carefully laid out and ever changing locks and keys of Dread keep you moving forward, even as you feel like you are passing by everything. You are never given time to build intimacy with the world, because you don't get to truly interact with it. Sure, you're bombing walls, and shooting "secrets", but is Metroid supposed to be about Breaking Blocks?.
You are interacting with the world not as a carpenter building a table, but like how one would assemble IKEA furniture. There are patterns and repetition, but they aren't spatial. Dread's repetition is a matter of timing. You can't look at a map midway through Dread and predict where save points will be. Because save points aren't a factor of location, they are a factor of time. If its been a long time between saves, one is coming up. They deliver the plot, so you can't miss them, they are littered reliably along the golden path. This isn't inherently a bad thing, maybe save points are things you don't want players to miss, but there is exceedingly little in the game to reward curiosity. You don't discover missiles and E-Tanks. You see them, along the path, and then decipher the puzzle you need to solve to get them. So many of Mercury Steam's design decisions seem to try and push things toward puzzle solving. Obviously puzzle solving has a solid place in Metroid, but is puzzle solving an appropriate replacement for exploration?
Eternally Lost, but always On Track
So when you get that morph ball, mentioned all those paragraphs back, you are left with no context. No structure. No goals. Sure there are Meta goals. "Samus, you have to get back to your ship!", but you are not given long term goals you can actively work toward. In Super Metroid, when you first reach Norfair, you are confronted by hot rooms that you cannot get past. You get the high jump boots and leave for Kraid's Hideout. But you put a mental pin in it. When you get the varia suit of COURSE you're going to go back to Norfair. It's a whole, complete area you get to explore. You have the mental problem to solve "Get something that resists heat so I can explore Norfair".
This works because Norfair is very singular. The player has only encountered hot rooms there. They likely haven't encountered lava or acid(You see, it's not lava on the top of Crateria, it's ACID, and it's ACID because the world has been ruined by acid rain, likely caused by the destruction of Tourian I. This, you see, is why it's raining on the surface and all the biological growth happens in the deeper parts of Brinstar and WHERE ARE YOU GOING--!). You'll be fairly close to it when you get the varia suit. What's more, when you get the ice beam in Norfair, you have a solution for another problem, getting out of the Red Tower in Brinstar. Super Metroid is using One Way Gates like Dread is, but by keeping it's gates simple, memorable, and obvious, it's no longer a confusing sleight on hand. It's not trying to trick you with a waist high hole. You fell in a pit. You remember things like that. Things don't suddenly change behind you for no reason.
Meanwhile, Dread is a blur. When you get a power-up, you cannot trust your memory and say "I remember all these places I could roll through back at the beginning of the game", because the way back is gone... Or is it? You can't be sure. Even if you figure that out, how can you even keep track when there are almost a dozen different types of door. You can only refer to the map... but without context, the map is like being reliant on GPS. You get around, but without actually learning about what's around you.
Got the Varia suit? Well hot and cold rooms are practically everywhere, dotted around almost randomly(I could defend some of this and how ZDR is very volcanically active. They use it for power. The places that have lava outside of Cataris are relatively close. I think there is actually a lot of good world building elements that are technically going on with this particular aspect of Dread's design. Sadly, I don't have a good place to say this without going into the weeds and... well, frankly the design of the rest of the game just turns this into a failed idea. Cold rooms on the other hand are 90% just arbitrary and make me think I'm giving them too much credit for their lava.). You see the hot and cold emanating off the door. They have, in many ways, simply become a new set of locks and keys. You don't get to explore the dark fiery depths of Norfair, you get pass through the red room, which itself probably isn't that important on it's own. Just a stepping stone to somewhere else.
This distinction seems to be splitting hairs, but it's very real. The Varia and Gravity suit in Super Metroid granted a real genuine sense of freedom. You had new possibilities. In Dread, even the Space Jump, the most powerful movement item in Metroid... is primarily used to progress in the water? The progression is so locked down that to make the Space Jump work, they have to force you to use it as if it was you were playing some strange romhack, building puzzles out of odd tertiary physics behaviors. Teleporters don't serve as convenient fast travel(How many times did you use one outside of the 'One time you're obviously supposed to use it'? Be honest.) through the world, they serve as fistulas, connecting areas of the progression that won't fit together neatly otherwise. At worst a crude patch to fix a progression problem they couldn't solve otherwise, and at best a way to add to your disorientation. Because if you're confused and feel lost, then you must be exploring, right?
But ultimately, your progression was Ordained. The way forward has been written. Even if you deviate, that too was part of the plan. Stop worrying, and keep moving forward.
The Impossible Task of E.M.M.I
Another feature that dominates each area are the E.M.M.I zones, which contain the indestructible research robots that are supposed to stalk you like a horror movie monster. The E.M.M.I are, I think, the one thing that even fans of the game will willingly critique. They are, to be fair, the exact type of flawed mechanic I would forgive in a game I enjoyed. They even have a few neat ideas... But unless you're willing to hold up your arms and scream as if it were a rollercoaster... They're not scary. They're not tense, and as for annoying as they are, they're not a challenge.
Yet a quarter of the map is dedicated to them. Dedicated zones, right in the middle of every area, bifurcating an already disconnected maps. Yet this isn't wasted space. E.M.M.I's allow the illusion that you are running frantically through so much space you could explore if you were brave enough. But you can't. Not because the E.M.M.I's are too hard to avoid, but because there only one way to go. There may be multiple doors, but those doors only serve as makeshift checkpoints. Because with the E.M.M.Is, there are no stakes. Past all the pantomimed horror, and "scary" grabbing animations, all you have is a goofy robot that sends you back to the last door you came in from. So, if you wise up to the illusion, you realize that all you have to do, 90% of the time, is to just take a brisk jog through. Sure, you'll be caught now and then, but it doesn't matter. Back to the door to try again. There is a randomized QTE, a true second chance, that is conceptually neat but given the stakes, doesn't add much. Sometimes it can allow you to brute force the few challenging(and honestly, stupid) segments. Neat, but clearly doesn't hit the vibe they were hoping for(Well... There is an exception to this, but we'll get there).
I think I ultimately like the E.M.M.Is more than SA-X... but I am a SA-X hater. Still, they both have strengths and weaknesses. Neither are scary(Okay I realize some of you played Fusion as children and it was scary then, but it ain't scary if you're an adult), and E.M.M.I's interactive nature is more interesting to me. Though in my opinion, it's insta-kill nature makes it paradoxically less scary when compared to the inevitable attrition of SA-X finding you. The SA-X is also more thematically horrifying, where the E.M.M.I's make absolutely no sense. Ah yes research robots that the most powerful bounty hunter in the universe can't stop, with a weird Mother Brain AI that got there... somehow??? and that control the E.M.M.Is even when destroyed, and why are they limited to certain areas and... it's just stupid and unexplained. It's there because Sakamoto(A man who hasn't had a good idea about Metroid in the past 30 years.) wanted a Horror element and they did their best. For a lot of people in games, you can't scare them unless they buy a game wanting to be scared. Most people aren't buying Metroid for "horror".
Surprisingly, one of the few bits of "sinew" that exists in Dread comes from defeating an E.M.M.I. All their little tunnels suddenly become usable morphball paths. Suddenly the whole area becomes more open and explorable, with disconnected sections of the map suddenly become connected. Now... This comes with all the same "jumble of door and confusing rooms" as the rest of the game, but it's still good.
Unfortunately, destroying an E.M.M.I makes for a clumsy set piece. The Central Unit boss fights are fine. Simple, but with a little bit of fun dodging. Also a fun way to measure your ever increasing power level (you eventually just one-shot one with a screw attack). Once the Central Unit is destroyed you unlock the OMEGA CANNON, the epic gun you need to use to kill these things. You run, find a place that's long and flat, stumble with the goofy omega cannon controls you barely use, die, reload, do it again.... Blow off the mask with the omega machine gun fire, okay charge and SHOOT THE CHARGE BEAM wait shit no I let go of the charge beam button because I thought it was like every other game where you charge and release to shoot a charged shot, but whatever. Okay third time is the charm!
It's an... okay set piece, whose tension is often lost because failure is usually an awkward fumble and not some tense horror movie showdown. If you die, you just try again.
It's not the end of the world. Heck, ultimately this is just a Skill Issue... Yet it's so common for Mercury Steam to get in the way of their own set pieces by over complicating them. On the last E.M.M.I, they add a bit with a slow elevator, only to then shove you into a super cramped space. It's like they regretted the lack of stakes and wanted to add some at the end, even if the stakes were small. Other times they're crutching on cutscenes, QTEs, and obtuse boss gimmicks. Always trying to be clever, in constant fear of being too straight forward.
Mercury Steam, their Terrible Combat, and their Flimsy Bosses and their Quest for Cinematic Action
I must start with a digression. I played Lords of Shadow around 14 years ago and it was one of the few games I've gotten deep into and still just dropped. I know this is distressingly normal for some people, but if I get 5 or 10 hours into a game, I tend to finish it.(Y'all gotta stop dropping games just to play a new release. 'But my friends are playing the new thing and I'll get FOMO' yeah great now you have two games you have shallow experiences with and now you can't have meaningful conversations about either of them. Was it really worth it just to be able to say 'Yeah I thought the first boss was hard too' on a discord call? Do you have to be talking about the same games to have meaningful conversations with your friends? Do you want to speed run all the media in your life just so you can say 'me too' rather than letting yourself enjoy something and form deep feelings about it? I feel like this game I hate is more meaningful to me than most of the stuff y'all consume because you don't let yourself slow down and take the time to -actually engage with it-. Finish your god damned plate or put it in the trash. You got food in the fridge so old it's going to give you botulism. 'Oh I'll get back to it', bitch you don't even remember where you were or what the buttons are! Don't act like it's 2 or 3 games you're working a rotation through, you use a whole website to track how bad you are at finishing shit! Play less games, but play them with your WHOLE HEART!) Just because I dislike a game doesn't mean I don't value the experience of playing it. I want to finish something so I can formulate complete opinions and understand why I felt how I felt.
Lords of Shadow was, at the time, artistically compelling, narratively bizarre(in good and bad ways), and also a Greatest Hits Collections of all the AAA trends at the time. Bad climbing, bad swinging, bad QTEs... The game constantly felt like they wanted to have Cool Set Pieces but worried about them being "too easy". You'd be left trying to figure out which way or how hard the game wanted you to spin the analog stick to hurl a boulder(It's amazing how they turned their epic SoTC ice golem titan boss into some frustrating and boring trial and error nonsense) in a one-off Boss battle. These awkward fumbles, like many of the elements involving E.M.M.I, would deflate the moment.
It's not that set pieces need to be easy, but challenging set pieces usually leverage your game's established mechanics. But when you're shallowly touring a bunch of AAA gimmicks, cool moments become more about guessing what the developer's intention was, much like trying to answer a 5 Year Old's sketchy riddle.
The worst offender of this was The Evil Butcher, a minor Boss about 10 hours into the game. At this point, the mechanics of the game are well established and a key one is... You grab things with a button. It's been 14 years, I forget which , But We're going to say L1. The titan is throwing big flashing stones at you? Press L1. Giant head boss is stunned? Press L1 to bang it's head into the ground. Or take an enemies weapon away, or whatever.
So when the Evil Butcher, a man sized chump, puts a pot on his head to make him invincible, well how do you take it off him? You hit L1 right? No...? Okay maybe I gotta wail on him to stun him and THEN hit L1? No??? He's just pointing at the pot on his head as a pity hint?? No, I KNOW about the pot!! How do I get the pot off?? Maybe I need to hit him with like, really vertical attacks and come DOWN on the pot? No. Do I need to drop things on him? No...
I probably spent an hour wailing on this jerk, only to look up the answer. You have to jump. Never mind the boss is relatively small and your whip hits everywhere Never mind the fact that... Well... attacking the thing that makes him invulnerable makes no sense. Never mind everything else. "You have to be airborne" is not something the game established in the last 10 hours. 10 hours is how long it took me to get through Dread, an entire other video game. And now, because they whored out their "Grab Stuff" button(Insert a picture Roman Reigns Kneeling next to Cody Rhodes at Wrestlemania, saying 'That move don't beat nobody') and regret it, I gotta just mash buttons like an idiot until something works.
Mercury Steam seems to constantly fear that if something is too easy or straight forward, people won't be engaged. They constantly try to have their cake and eat it too, trying to impress with shallow flash, while adding needless complexity to try and make that flash seem substantial.
While they have gotten better at this whole video game thing, the same design quirks keep coming up. If our combat doesn't have "mechanics" it'll be boring... okay add a parry system... but if we make the parries too easy that'll be boring too, so gotta add some attack variety or even randomness... but if we do that, they might not actually engage with the parry system, so we have to make the parry sequences do WAY more damage than everything else. But if we do that our bosses will be short so we need ot make the bosses extra tanky and make the counters do the majority of the damage! They're so fixated on trying to make sure they have "Deep combat"(Big finger quotes on this one.) that they loose sight of the fact that Samus has a giant cannon for an arm.
The Robot Chozo Soldier(Imagine making this enemy and being like 'yeah this is so good you should fight it 10 times')s make for a good example what I think they feel like they're fighting against. The soldiers have a pretty boring ranged attack and two dash attacks. One is an overhead elbow thing and the other is a big fiery red blade attack. They want you to counter -- they always want you to counter -- but they don't want to make it easy. Or worse, simple. So they overtuned the big red dash attack, making it too fast and giving it too much range. It's hard(though not impossible) to stand at a range and react fast enough to react to both(Homie, I gotta save those reaction speeds for reacting to Drive Impacts, I'm not wasting that shit on your wack mid-boss). This makes the most reasonable option, at least for me, to just... grind them out, as tedious as it is. The fear of you doing this -- just walking away and doing the safe thing -- is why bosses seem completely undefeatable without performing counters.
They want simple systems, all while being insecure about possibly having "shallow gameplay". It feels like a lack of confidence, that they don't trust their content to be engaging without that extra kick. Extra Kick can be good -- I love me some rough, hard games -- but unconfident design is defensive design. You're no longer trying to enrich the player, you're trying maintain them by dangling shiny keys.
There is a fear of simplicity that permeates Mercury Steam's work. Nothing is allowed to breathe. Everything must be a little puzzle, be interactive. We can't let you retread the same area a few times, to let you build familiarity, because you might start complaining about "backtracking"(I have played few games with too much backtracking, but have met plenty of gamers who are too weak). Who could tolerate a simple hallway? Sauce, there has to be sauce everywhere. If we don't slather your food with sauce, how will you know it tastes good?
Like a strong sauce, it can be used to mask the weakness of your core ingredients. Mercury Steam will rob you of the simple joy of picking up an item to play a cutscene of you picking it up instead. It will give the boss kill to the Action Star Samus Aran that animates on your screen and not to the one you control with your hands. I'd say they know they didn't build on a solid foundation, but I'm not sure if Mercury Steam knows what a solid foundation is. For a studio who came up trying to make flashy AAA 3d games, they continue to bring their lack of substance down to 2D, covering for their faults by simply being a lot. The sauce is good, but the meat is lacking.
You all Gaslit me about the Bosses in this Game
One thing that people kept telling me about Dread was "at least the bosses are good. A big improvement from the older games!"
I reject this notion. The simple bosses of Super Metroid are memorable, with clear gimmicks, and present reasonable platforming and shooting challenges. They're more than set pieces but they're not huge skill tests. They are designed to be engaging moments. There is a common trend, even among games I like, that bosses have to be these challenging multiple form slogs. More complicated, challenging, rewarding bosses are cool, but sometimes a boss can be a capstone. A single concept to explore. You shoot Crocomire in the mouth a bunch and he walks back into the lava. You have a cool moment, and you move on. The difficulty and pacing of the bosses are in sync with the exploration. These aren't huge, imposing content walls, they are added texture to your journey. You find Kraid. You fight his head. You get the surprise of him standing up and becoming huge. You then get a fun platforming and resource management segment, relying on the skills you have been using to get through the game.
We look at Kraid in Dread, and... the first phase is pretty good! It rewards positioning, and aiming and managing projectiles. I was pretty jazzed! But then you get to phase two and you're... standing there, staring at his belly button, watching beach balls bounce around, trying to figure out Mercury Steam's riddles. How to precisely jump up his weird stomach platforms, why sometimes he shoots out a fake 'attack' set, oh I fell because I didn't know I needed to grab something on top, oh I fell because I didn't know he was going to do a swipe... OH I need to counter the swipe...
Is this really better than Super Metroid? Is figuring out the boss fight's awkward bread crumbs more engaging than a more active platforming and shooting challenge, where Kraid is stomping around the level while you're juggling on screen projectiles with having chances to deal damage? A very analog experience has been reduced to call and response puzzle sequence. Even dealing with his weird tummy attacks are more about knowing the solution than engaging with a real enemy design. It's Call and Response gameplay in a game that isn't otherwise about that. It might be easy to go "Well isn't Crocomire a puzzle?", but figuring out "You shoot him to make him retreat" is a small puzzle, where then the majority of the boss fight is about surviving and scoring the necessary hits. The difficulty of the boss fight is proportional to the gimmick. It doesn't overstay its welcome.
Dread lacks the more sensible progression between "Exploration" and "Boss" that Super Metroid had. In Dread, bosses represent a huge shift in not only difficulty, but the kind of gameplay you're experiencing. The last part is the important one. Dark Souls is a game with huge challenging bosses... but the rest of the game is challenging too. The bosses interact with you like a big enemy. The skills you used to fight them are similar to the skills you use to explore and survive in the world. Shifts in gameplay can be fun, an action game suddenly becoming a shmup can be fun... but is the shift good when you're shifting to play Simon Says?(I bet a cool indie game could make a funny boss segment where you literally play Simon Says)
Kraid is, among Dread's bosses, one of the better ones(Raven Beak > Z-57 >> Kraid > Everything else is Eh or Trash Tier >>>> Drogyga. So two good bosses, an okay boss, some eh bosses, and one of the worst modern bosses.). Drogyga, the water boss, must be one of the worst bosses I have played in a modern game. A boss excessively about waiting, dropping slow, floating orbs down at you, over and over again, before doing a big, telegraphed tentacle swipe. Eventually you stun him (after he's done his two attacks half a dozen times), grab the overhead magnet thing and... have it slowly move down the track until you hit the boss, damaging you.
Maybe you notice the green orb light up on the wall the first time, maybe you're like me and it takes 2 or 3 reps of this but you realize if you shoot THAT after he's stunned, the water drains. You do it again and... okay wait one of these is on the other side and I gotta do BOTH in one go and... okay not this time, maybe next time and...
Okay you got that, you hit him a bunch and ooooh you didn't parry the tongue attack back to square one. Back to waiting. Oh wait now he's doing new tentacle attacks? Congrats, you died. Time to go back to square one. Time to wait.
Not a single thing this boss does is challenging or hard to deal with. The challenge is simply a matter of knowing. Not even in a Dark Souls "Know what telegraphed moves to dodge or counter attack on", but like, simple problem/solution answers for tentacle attacks that you have little hope of avoiding the first few times but are completely trivial afterward. It is all Call and Response and figuring out Mercury Steam's stupid little "puzzle" with no substance. Just a lot of down time, waiting, and trial and error.
Raven Beak is... a good boss fight. Sure, it's tiring how a red cape(Slave Knight Gael is at best a Mid Fromsoft boss and you're all just marks for epic music and flashy effects. Dude isn't even cool, he looks like a rejected MOBA character.) and a cool background is all you need to be called "epic", but he has more going on than most. He has attacks that compliment each other, attacks that overlap, causing problems that have creative solutions. He requires that you utilize your movement skills, You have to balance defensive play vs offense(such as attacking his black or gold orbs) and he's... generally pretty cool? Last Bosses (or other special key boss fights) often get more latitude in deviating from the main game, but Raven Beak doesn't need that. He is more in sync with the base game. I'm not nearly as in awe as other people about him, but whatever.
The problem comes from the parries. It's always the parries. The fact that phase 1 needs 3 parries under normal conditions(Though doing it in 2 with a setup is reasonable, and 1 if you're a sicko. This game DOES have cool speedrun tech.) makes learning phase 2 and 3 tedious. Eventually it isn't hard, but it's boring, and a little frustrating because it's like "Oh wait THIS is the parry where I gotta wait to do a SECOND parry and this one is the one where I mash shoot on shit I didn't mash shoot, guess I wasted that chance". Again, we are left trying to psychically infer what Mercury Steam wants.
The lack of required parries in phase 2 and most of 3 actually create a boss fight that actually rewards more traditional platforming action skills. It's like as if Raven Beak's reception is because the whole rest of the game has you shadowboxing much more vapid bosses. Now you have a boss that asks you to actually engage with the what he's doing in a meaningful way. Now, because he's contrasting with the shallow bosses who came before him, Good seems like Excellence.
Despite these problems, Raven Beak is the one truly good boss(Like a B+??) in Metroid Dread. For a hater to have any credibility, they have to be able to give credit where credit is due. Just ignore the part where Samus turns into an angry watermelon(She looks like Gut's Berserk Armor fucked a Watermelon).
Parry is the Albatross hanging around the Neck of Metroid Dread
Ultimately after all this, we have to ask... why the parry? Why is gun lady swinging her cannon around like it's a main gauche? What are the benefits of this?
The main benefit is obvious. Parrying is cool. Parrying is so cool it makes people blind to the dumb shit they're forced to put up with. Waiting for bosses to expose their weak spot is something that people have been complaining about for three decades now, but if you turn it into a parry people eat it up. Waiting is boring, but parrying is skill, man.
Even I love a good parry(Unless it's in 3rd Strike. That game is ass.). I love superfluous abilities. I love that Bunny in Bunny Must Die has a Street Fighter-esque parry. I love that she can parry spikes and FIRE. I love that you NEVER have to use it and that nothing tells you it exists. It feels almost like Super Metroid's Wall Jump, a weird game breaking extra for the weirdos who want to master it. You can do whole Souls builds based on parries, or never engage with the system at all.
Sekiro is a whole game based on parries(Okay but IS it? Are they parries? or is Sekiro a RHYTHM GAME, and the parry in the game is the Mikiri Counter??? Are you playing Sword DDR while parrying up arrows????). The problem is that Dread wants parries to be a core game mechanic in a game about shooting and exploring. We have to ask what that adds to the game? What does it take away? What supports it as a major mechanic? Would the game be worse if the parry was just some fun extra you could do to REALLY murder an enemy?
I don't think there is a good case to be made for Dread's parry, even as a "fun extra". Through most of the game it's mostly a way to quickly cheese large enemies without dealing them with the other options available in the game, flattening the designs of some of your more detailed enemies. For smaller enemies it's largely pointless. For Bosses, it's more Simon Says than Dark Souls. But that desire for parries, that Ex-AAA lust for "Rich Combat"(3rd Strike fans will say 'Parries are Deep' while they invalidate half the moves in the game) causes Mercury Steam to actually flatten the game, making it more tedious, and make much shallower.
I don't hate the Parry button. I hate the repercussions it's existence has on the rest of the game.
What did Dread do Right(by the standards of a weirdo who hates a wildly successful game)
There were a few good bits in this game I genuinely enjoyed. I love that every major boss is hinted at or often even seen in the background(or in Kraid's case, in audio). I liked the lava doors. That might sound funny, but genuinely, when I hit the lever for my first lava door I was like "Okay and WHERE would the door be?" before realizing I had to follow a winding lava pipe that had continuity over multiple screens. I enjoy when level design elements span across multiple screens. It makes the world feel more collected.
I think the general moving and shooting feel pretty good. I generally hate ledge grabbing(I feel like if people ask for ledge grabbing in your game the real answer is to just make the character jump higher. You use ledge grabs when you WANT to slow down transversal and add weight to movement). It's one of those features that sound nice but lead to games where you're pulling yourself up more than you are jumping on things. It breaks the flow. These... these were fast enough that it didn't bother me much? It helped that height was rarely an issue in the game. They didn't have to design the game around the limits of your Max Jump Height(Honestly this is also a sign that the map sucked, but I'm trying to be positive) as hard as other games. I liked that you got the morphball late. I don't necessary love the concessions made for that to happen, but it's cool and reminds me of the Metroid romhack Metroid X.
I liked the cutscene where your metroid-sucky-hand grabs the last E.M.M.I's attack. I like that by invoking the Last Chance QTE animation, 90% of players probably were SLAMMING the button to try and stop it. I like that this time it wasn't a QTE, even an easy one, because you got this. Simply letting it play out automatically had great tension and release. It felt triumphant to finally finally be finished with them.
Seeing an Actual fleshy chozo? Having it speak to Samus? Hearing Samus talk back? That's something I didn't know I needed. It felt nice.
I kinda generally like Samus's design? I don't like how much neck she has... or more accurately, how her shoulders and chest have been so slimmed down so that it now looks like her head is floating. But you don't see that in ugly angles a lot. She seems "feminine" but in a sporty, strong way. It's not the design choices I would make, but despite what you might think I think after reading this, things aren't always about what I'd want.
I also think, as messed up as I think Mercury Steam's design value system is... It ain't easy to design a game that railroads you like this. This might sound like a backhanded complement, and it halfway is, but I couldn't do that. I wouldn't want to, but I couldn't even if I had to. Juggling so many moving parts is insane. They did that, made a game that's fun to move in, and made combat that could at least trick people into thinking it was good. This is video games, the illusion is always more important than the reality.
People love this game and I gotta hold that.
Metroid didn't have to be Like this
The part about this that hurts me the most is that things didn't need to turn out like this. As much as I hate Dread, I don't hold the game responsible for the state of Metroid. Because as much as I hate to say it...
Metroid is about Breaking Blocks.
Metroid is about shooting color coded Doors. It's about Biomes. It's about game specific Special Suits. It is about Puzzle Solving, and weird Shine Spark Puzzles.
Metroid hasn't been about anything I've cared about for 30 years. Did it start with my most hated Metroid, Fusion?(I thought Dread would beat it out but I've softened a little while writing this.) Or was it Prime, a great game that's not for me(If I want a weird slow exploratory game that plays like a 3rd person game just in a first person perspective, I'll play King's Field)? Retro Studios deeply cared about Metroid and I respect their work, but they may have solidified the vision of Metroid in fans minds.
I don't love Dread's art style, but not due to incompetence(Mercury Steam, if anything, are artists first) but because the prevailing style of Metroid has gone from dark, weird, and textured, to shiny and pristine. By being slavish to the iconography of Metroid, they solidified these elements as permanent.
... Nah, I'd rather blame Fusion.
I think a lot about biomes. Metroid didn't really have biomes. It had areas, and one of them was hot, but it didn't have biomes. Metroid II had biomes, but they were gentle. Limitations or no, Metroid II was a cave system. It had local Biomes. You didn't go from Hot Land to Cold Land, you went from gravel to loamy sand, with Chozo ruins peppered in for a bit more contrast.
Super Metroid was the first game to really have biomes, and it still handled them gently, blending between them, setting them up, making them make sense as you transitioned between the world. Crateria is ruined by acid rain, covered with craters. Underground you find a Brinstar full of life. Head closer to Norfair and it starts trying out, only to moisten a bit when it intersects with Maridia.
Prime and Fusion are about biomes. Sakamoto thought they were so essential tht he made two games with the 'every biome on a research station' concept. Retro did good work, but didn't have the drive or maybe technology to have the biomes of the world effect each other. They were just like "Maybe we can have a snow place this time too". This is Metroid's fate forever now.
Samus Returns is filled with biomes, coded doors, and elevators. They butchered Metroid II, as if it had nothing to contribute to the series. A game that had atmosphere, a game that had different goals. A game that was rough. Maybe you could remake the game, but they chose not to engage with what the original had to say. Even the much more forgivable and good AM2R(Credit to AM2R for not adding too many doors though. This will make sense a few lines down.) still looks at Metroid II as a mistake to be rectified. Because Metroid is Fusion and Zero Mission now. We cannot engage the with Metroid II as intentional art.
I think a lot about doors. Dread has like a dozen types of doors? How many types doors did Metroid II have? How many doors did it have... at all? Not many. Only missile doors, protecting Chozo artifacts, in Chozo ruins. The door is a cultural artifact. You're in a long forgotten cave, occupied only by the occasional ruins of a forgotten civilization. Why would there be any other doors?
Metroid II even told stories through its omission of doors. An unguarded room. A destroyed statue.(Mercury Steam doesn't even invoke this room in Metroid II. They don't even invoke the big weird empty room that leads to it. They fill it with stuff because... they... they don't know what they're doing??) A metroid attacking what it thought was an ancestral enemy. The ice beam, it's weakness, scattered on the floor, as if even merely touching the item orb brought it pain. These doors protect chozo artifacts. They have a purpose.
In Ceres Station, how do you open doors? Well, you walk into them. This is a human ship. It's not designed around Samus. Normal people walk through doors. Of course we get to Fusion, and that attention to detail is already thrown away. Metroid is about opening doors. It's branding.
Do I think Dread would be better without doors? No, ZDR is a developed Chozo planet. Of course it would have shootable doors! But you can tell what they think by how they made Samus Returns and how many door types they had in Dread. To be metroid is to have colored doors. The Universe conforms to Samus Aran. Everything is gun and ball shaped. They have doors, but they don't think about doors. They don't think about the world.
Despite the myth building, despite all the cutscenes, the world of Metroid gets smaller and smaller with each release. It's like a star collapsing under it's own gravity. We can't escape Metroids, we can't escape biomes, we can't escape colored doors. Metroid has calcified. It's about playing the Greatest Hits. It's about Shinespark puzzles(Speedbooster was a mistake), and fighting the same bosses, and canned pre-designed sequence breaks. Because you see, ages ago we lost the plot.
Metroid isn't about "Exploration", it's about "Sequence Breaking".
We confused the pleasures of a game like Super Metroid with being able to mockball to get early super missiles and not the genuine act of exploration. Sequence Breaking is awesome, but it came as a side effect of the freedom we were given in those earlier games. Now Sequence Breaking is just another box on the Metroid Checklist. So now, when you complain about the linear of nature of a game, a Nintendo fanboy can materialize out of the firmament to whisper...
"There are Sequence Breaks, actually."
I'm not sad that Metroid has changed. I'm not pining nostalgically for crunchy pixels. In fact, "staying the same" is what killed it. Inbred, like a dog without a nose, each generation getting more and more exaggerated until it's features border on parody. I've, for the most part, moved on. Thinking about all of this makes me sad, but I have no need for a True Metroid. That isn't something real, and that ship has sailed. Other games have picked up the mantle. I loved Hollow Knight, but maybe I'll hate Silk Song. Does it matter? Someone else will be there after with a new take on the genre.
Sometimes when I read opinions on Fromsoft games, I find myself thinking... "Do we like the same game? Are you even engaging with the game at all? What do you actually like about this?" I've made fun of dodge roll combat for being basic, saying it's not the point of Fromsoft games. That their combat is merely a means to an end. Yet sometimes it feels like all people want is some epic fantasy and a good roll. Not engaging with the world, the lore, the sense of place, the environment. Playing with complete incuriosity, rolling around on the floor to dodge a giant boss because it's hardcore.
Reading peoples opinions on Metroid II or even Super Metroid make me feel the same way. Not that people need to like these games(not liking Metroid II is very easy), but it's more when you talk to people who claim that they do. I find myself asking... What do you actually like about Metroid?
In a sense, this isn't about Metroid. I want to understand why people like things. Why I like things. I don't want to convince you Dread is bad, or that Metroid as a franchise is hopeless, even if that's how I feel. I want to understand why I feel that, when everyone else seems so satisfied. All I can hope for is that, after all this, you at least understand where I'm coming from, even if you disagree.
Go enjoy Metroid: Dread.
(Also, thank you to Mirai for helping me proof read almost 8000 words and keeping me coherent)