Samus retells the story of the first two games... she leaves the baby metroid behind with the scientists, then suddenly that space station gets attacked, and Ridley kidnaps the baby metroid... the space colony activates its self-destruct as a safety against this, but I guess it failed... then she flies away to Planet Zebes... starting off at Crateria.
Crateria part 1
right now there's only one path and it's... holy shit... it's literally Metroid 1 going backwards... I go down through a blue door on the ground below me... and that leads to the elevator that you ended the game at in Metroid 1, you go in through the busted Mother Brain tube and empty tourian (just a bunch of tiny lifeforms that dont do anything to Samus so far)
but then... at the end of the mother brain hall is just an elevator leading directly into brinstar...
- so like... it seemed like the world was opened up when you walk out onto the open surface of this planet... but really that was just an illusion, the real non-linearity starts when you get the morph ball and power bombs, or does it? no...
The atmosphere in this is noticeably creepier than the previous games...it's like these pirates are mocking you, by building the beginning of this lair to be exactly like the one that Samus destroyed... and there's this high-tech super obvious security cameras that shine a light on you after you take the first few abilities... really creepy stuff...
and finally, the first sign of enemies in this world... when you come back to Crateria from Brinstar because there's nowhere else to go... and now there are pirates all around the place... but it's STILL not where the game truly opens up...
You find the first super obvious sidepath in Crateria that required missiles that you now have... and you go through a hallway of the same kind of enemies you encountered when you first started Metroid 1... and then just up above that is a save point you can now access with the morph ball... the new feature of this game, the map, is right next to the new feature of M2, the save point...
and then you go back to the surface of Crateria and fight a chozo statue to RIGHT AFTER you get the bombs from it... and you look at your new map to see from the map that the game has now opened up for REAL this time... all that stuff up to now... including going through that weird creepy Metroid 1 backwards segment was just the introductory linear plot section...
it's like the pirates have set it up so that Samus would feel like she's stepped into a time warp and gone to timeline where her victory at Zebes hasn't actually happened... I can kind of see why they made Samus seem so traumatized by Ridley and the baby metroid because of this game...
I think by now this game's intro has distinguished itself pretty well from 1 while still calling back to it... The easy space pirates being the first real enemies in the game (that can kill you)... then you go through some easy sections that are reminiscent of the beginning and ending of Metroid 1 before the linearity ends... and then the game finally opens up for real after you already have the long beam, morph ball, some missiles, and the bomb... on this surface area called Crateria with 2 separate entrances to Brinstar, another entrance to Brinstar that seems to be on an isolated part of the map... and an unmapped area called "Wrecked Ship" before the path to Maridia... I'm guessing I can't go through there at this point, but I may as well try and see how far it lets me go...
still KINDA linear even now though... the right of Crateria is just a green door I can't go through and a pointless platforming loop section.
to the left path... the first energy tank is in a diagonal tunnel which is another new feature to this game. previous games only had straight horizontal or vertical rooms.
whoa... wait a sec... before the Brinstar entrance on the left path, there's an unmapped right path going through this creepy lab sort of area that looks nothing like what previous metroid game settings were like... way more futuristic... and it leads to a statue of the four M1 bosses each holding a glowing colored crystal... and an unbreakable ground blocking the path beneath it...
I like how the main new feature of this game, the map system, isn't totally game breaking... there's still plenty of off-map material hidden for you to find.
Brinstar/Norfair part 1
got the Brinstar map now... looks like just a loop back around to Crateria, with some side paths here and there... the path to the boss is in an isolated part of Brinstar with a path up from Norfair, and what looks like a glass tunnel going through Maridia...
there's this one sidepath with enemies that darken the room if you kill them... leads to a missile recharge room...
oh and some blocks that look bombable, only reveal that you need another ability to break them...
a plant boss that blocks the way up to an unmapped part of Brinstar...
already this game's map has SO much more variety in it than the 1st game...
it seemed like I was heading back up to the surface again already, but then I fell down a long shaft leading to a Super Missile, and a path to the left that takes you back to the main Brinstar path on the map that I left off at.
at this point in the game it's now presenting you with a bunch of stuff that you need to come back for after you gain more abilities, as well as getting you used to the idea of looking for ways to break out of the blue map... a charge beam can be found by not relying on the blue map.
huh... so that went nothing like I expected... instead of doing the loop back up to a new part of Crateria, I fell further down to another unmapped area that lead through a Maridia tunnel to the Norfair elevator... and it looks like I can get through a green missile wall to head towards where the path that leads to the Brinstar boss as well... but actually know, you can't get to Kraid's lair with your current jumping ability...
oh wait... okay it didn't take long at all to find the high-jump boots in Norfair... as well as the 2nd energy tank... seems like most of the other paths are too dangerous though.
oh shit... I actually spent some time grinding enemies for health/ammo cuz I was used to M1... but it turns out there's a health/ammo refill room right before the boss, forgot about that.
wow kraid was easy... so much easier than in M1... took him out with a handful of missile hits and one last green missile to finish him off...
Now I COULD go up through the rest of the Brinstar loop and get to that new Crateria area... but I feel like going deeper into Norfair at this point might be a better idea... I'll at least check out what my Norfair options are and confirm that I can go anywhere there...
welp, I found another save point and kept going... reached the other end of that tunnel where you need the boost power to dash through to create a shortcut... and... after a bunch of pretty tough platforming, about as hard as in M1's norfair, but only more forgiving because there's a lot more opportunities to refill stuff... got to a dead end with the Speed Booster ability...
guess I'll stop here for now. the next time I resume this, I'll have to go back through Norfair to that one speed boost area at the beginning of it and see what's there.
No comments:
Post a Comment