Super Metroid
A classic, but not my favorite just due to the floatiness of jumping and how much of a pain in the ass the wall jumps are.
Deep thoughts
It took me a while to understand why I loved Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night felt kind of grueling to play through. In fact, I liked Super Metroid so much that as soon as I was done, I basically instantly fired up Zero Mission and the thought of playing a (probably better) Castlevania sequel made me recoil. I started playing these because I wanted to play these two foundational games that directly led to two things I loved playing growing up: Metroid Fusion and Aria of Sorrow.
read →Along the way
Okay, so I started THIS to contrast with Symphony of the Night, since I think these two are the two ur-classics of the genre and well, I kind of immediately found it more fun. So much more fun that I might just immediately retire SOTN. I think a HUGE thing is that you can actually get more health while you're adventuring in Super Metroid so it doesn't feel like a really awful, attrition-y experience.
Another benefit is that exploration feels more rewarding and I feel like I grok the design language better. For whatever reason I just understand both where things are likely to be hidden, but what is likely. With SOTN, sometimes you find things and you expect it to be this huge upgrade and then it's a sword that I have better versions of. You don't get that really with Metroid, and when you do find tiny things they're always useful. I'll take a missile pack upgrade.
Neither game is so long so I might power through SOTN anyways, a little more, but I'm not about really forcing the fun here.
Of note, I am playing the Project Base version of the game.
I really like this game except the controls suck so bad. First, I hate the select to switch between weapons thing it's so annoying. Second, Samus is so floaty and her platforming is so weird in general. Thirdly, there are occasional platforming sections that make me want to die.
So after banging my head against a specific platforming section I just...went a different way. I think this game is so much better overall than SotN, I could do with slightly more signposting though because you know, I'm an adult. If I recall, this is something fusion did better, giving you a general heading. It also doesn't discuss the tools well enough. It took me this long to realize you could lengthen the grapple.
This game is also frustrating because it will make you feel like so many things are possible and maybe they are, maybe they aren't, and maybe you could but you shouldn't. There's no good indication of "no, you actually cannot make this jump I know it's really close but you're not like two pixels off you just can't."
Okay this game is really good (hot take), because as frustrating as it is sometimes (how the shit was I supposed to know to grapple beam the electricity on this boss to kill it) God damn does it feel so good and make you feel so smart sometimes.
I have beaten this now and I've said it before but man, it's really good! I got like just over 2/3rds completion which I'm saying is probably pretty decent. I have no metrics for this, that's just what I'm saying. There are a few frustrating parts where I think there could be more hand holding overall but you can really see why this thing is what set the standard and spawned a genre.
I'm definitely very interested in further exploring the genre, especially since these games are just so quick. I think Metroid Zero Mission is likely next, and then Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow on the other end.
I'm pretty interested to see how Zero Mission goes and I cannot for the life of me remember how Fusion worked, but like, I already felt like Super Metroid had too few buttons and the Advance has two fewer.