Reviews from

in the past


Did you know? It's well documented that first lady Hillary Clinton was an avid player of the Game Boy during her husband's presidency. However, what isn't as well documented is how she loved the handheld system so much that she bought two of them to give to George Bush and Dick Cheney before their inauguration as a symbol of goodwill among the two parties. Bush and Cheney reportedly loved Metroid II in particular so much that the game's plot about the Galactic Federation making up some bullshit about dangerous weapons and sending Samus to SR388 was what inspired the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

While I wouldn’t consider it as great as future installments, and while it is definitely outshined by its remake, the original Metroid is still a classic of the NES library, and it still holds up somewhat to this day. And of course, Nintendo being Nintendo, after seeing the success of the original Metroid, they went right ahead to developing a sequel. Unlike the sequels to Nintendo’s other games, however, this one would be released after a five-year gap of no games (which, let’s be real, Metroid fans are pretty used to at this point), and it would be developed for exclusively for the Game Boy. Makes sense, considering the producer of Metroid 1 and 2, Gunpei Yokoi, was the main creator of the system in the first place. So, after plenty of time, Nintendo then released Metroid II: Return of Samus.

As a follow-up to the original Metroid, as well as the first handheld title in the series, it manages to do a pretty damn good job at improving on the formula of the original, as well as being a great game all in its own right. Sure, I wouldn’t say it is too great, as certain problems still linger, along with new ones popping up in this installment, but it is still a pretty good continuation for the series.

The story is similar to the first, while also changing it up to where it feels unique, and makes the player want to dive right in and eliminate every Metroid in sight, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but the sprite work is some of the best that the system offers, and it holds up extremely well, the music (and by that, I mean like the two to three real music tracks in the game) is not only pretty good, but also provides a great sense of atmosphere that not too many other Game Boy games can provide, the control is pretty good, even if it still feels a bit stiff, and the gameplay improves upon the original while keeping the same style and flow as the original, which I appreciate for a game like this.

The game follows a pretty similar formula to that of the original Metroid, where you travel through numerous caverns in the planet SR388, defeating enemies and bosses, taking out every Metroid you can find, collecting new items and upgrades to make yourself stronger, with minor beats of storytelling also present to keep the player intrigued as they keep going, such as Metroid carcasses lying around the environment, as well as the many different mutations that the Metroids can take. The selection of items this time around is pretty good, bringing back a lot of the same powerups from the original, as well as adding more that will become staples in the series, such as the Space Jump, the Spider Ball, and the Varia Suit, and with these new items and upgrades comes new changes to Samus herself, which are a welcome change from the original. Not only is her suit upgraded to what would become her most iconic version, but also you can now crouch, aim up and aim down in this game, making taking on enemies MUCH easier, and more satisfying overall.

In addition, the bosses this time around are also pretty memorable. While there aren’t that many, with the Metroids taking center stage for most of the game, the few that we fight are fun to fight, while also providing a good amount of challenge, especially with the Queen Metroid at the end of the game, with her design being the best in the entire game. Alongside her, the many different Metroids that you fight in the game are definitely the highlights of the game in terms of designs, which are amplified with you being able to witness them “evolve” into these forms as you encounter them, making them a more menacing and memorable threat.

Finally, if there is one thing that I will give this game a lot of props for, it is how it guides the player through the game. While there are no waypoints or maps, the game is structured in a way to where you will never get truly lost whenever you maneuver through the caverns, and if you just dedicate enough time to exploration, you will find your way to finding the Metroids that you need to eliminate. Thankfully, this is also aided with how a lot of the upgrades and items aren’t too out in the open, so it still encourages you to search around and explore more, to benefit the most from what you could find in the caverns. Yes, it is still a bit of a guide game, but it isn’t quite as bad as the original, at least in my opinion.

Now, with all that said, some problems are fixed in this installments, and with those out the door, new problems arise, with my main new issue being the main method of progression through the game. As I have mentioned plenty of times, you need to eliminate all of the Metroids not only to beat the game, but to also explore more of the planet to find more items, upgrades, and Metroids. However, as you would expect, this gets extremely repetitive and tiring after a while. Sure, the new Metroids you encounter keep you on your toes and keep you guessing as you play, but that doesn’t stop the game from getting repetitive, even after encountering these new Metroids.

Not just that, but there is still the problem of where you cannot carry all items at once. Sure, there are plenty of improvements in terms of Samus’s arsenal, such as having the Long Beam, missiles, and the Morph Ball immediately from the start, but you still cannot hold the Wave Beam, Plasma Beam, Spazer Beam, and Ice Beam all at once. You can only have one, and considering how the entire game is about killing Metroids, there should only be one beam that you would need throughout the entire game, making most of the other beams worthless in the long run. There are other minor issues that I have with the game, such as me taking a lot of damage at once a lot of times in the game, but that is just a skill issue, not something wrong with the game.

Overall, while it does still have its issues, this is a great improvement over the original Metroid, and a great sequel and continuation of the series. With that being said though, you would still be better off playing the remakes of the game rather than the original, fan-made or official.

Game #151

Metroid II peaks in Area 3, wastes the player's time with the next two mini areas, and then gets mean when Zetas are introduced. Before finally being cruel and insisting on several Omega bouts back to back with 0 ammo stations nearby and the only way to acquire missiles without backtracking for a while being to farm one specific enemy. If Metroid II didn't engage in such bullshit I'd heartily recommend it, instead this one is only for series enthusiasts.
Great sense of tone though. Much moodier than either of its remakes.
- - -
I just realized that the Omegas are probably tuned as such in order to punish players that didn't pick up all 22 Missiles. It incentivizes collecting everything in order to more easily meet the 3hr par time.
The highpoints of Metroid II are engrossing and I believe that it's a triumph as an artistic piece, so it's a shame the second half trends toward being a slog. It's a rough gem for sure.

This review contains spoilers

If the original Metroid wanted you to feel endangered, its sequel wants you to feel uncomfortable. Samus has indeed returned, and she’s not on the defensive. While the first game was a retaliatory mission to stop a band of space pirates, Metroid II is an all-out assault. Seeing the damage that the Metroids caused on Zebes, the Galactic Federation has sent their top bounty hunter (that’s you) to the Metroid homeworld, SR388. You’re not here to save anyone, or to prevent any great catastrophe. This isn’t about justice, but extinction. You’re here to kill all Metroids, plain and simple.

What really impressed me about Metroid II is how big a piece of shit it makes you feel for playing it. The game is structured around locating and defeating 40 Metroids, each boss fight spread out across the map. You plunge deeper and deeper into their home, checking each corner in search of your prey. If the first game was a riff on Alien, so is this, but with you as the hostile alien threat. The tight Gameboy screen closes in around you, obscuring your field of vision. You could be standing right in front of a Metroid, and you wouldn’t know it until it’s too late to prepare. When you finally find one, you’re not rewarded with a skillful, choreographed boss fight but an ugly, erratic affair. You fire missiles wildly in the hope they connect and inevitably, you win your war of attrition. It’s surprising and tense, but with Samus being so much stronger in this game you’re hardly ever at any real risk. Their deaths were ensured the moment you landed, these encounters nothing more than acts of futile, animalistic retaliation. The genocide counter in the corner ticks down, and your descent into hell continues.

It’s remarkable how well the Gameboy’s limitations are used to enhance the experience. The large sprites minimize the already-small screen, creating a pervasive sense of claustrophobia. Those crunchy square waves create some truly alien sounds, much more overtly dissonant than the previous game’s music. Even playing with GBC colorization like I did, the whole experience feels dimly-lit, an atmosphere built around simple tilesets and a lack of backgrounds. To facilitate playing in on-the-go sessions, the map is structured like a series of segmented chunks moving downward, a choice that makes navigation more intuitive while at the same time codifying your misguided progression: you can’t turn back now, you’ve gone too deep. It’s a really miraculous showcase of what you could do with this technology. Fuck man, this Gameboy game has jumpscares!

The ending really blew me away. It’s everyone’s favorite part of this game, and for good reason. An entire planet lying in ashes behind you, the only thing left standing in your way is one final Metroid egg. It hatches, and starts following you, thinking you’re its mother. After all the death and destruction, Samus can’t bring herself to pull the trigger. It’s the most devastating thing a killer can do: growing a conscience when it’s already too late. You make your way to the surface, climbing your way out of hell, the baby assisting you along the way. It’s a strangely relaxing trip, more relaxing than you know you deserve. You crawl into your ship, exhausted, and end your mission in willful failure. As the credits roll you can’t help but wonder what it was all for, the blood on your hands soaking the controller.

If you couldn’t tell, I think this game is really special. To me these first two primordial Metroids are characterized by ambition above all else, reaching for a type of gameplay the tech of the time just couldn’t quite achieve yet. Metroid II is flawed to be sure: it’s repetitive and janky and I still wasn’t able to beat it without looking up a map online. But when the rest of the experience is this powerfully affecting, it’s easy to sweat the details in the final analysis. I’m extremely curious to see what this team could accomplish with 16-bit hardware, but I’m really glad I played these first. In spite of, and often because of their limitations, they produced some truly unforgettable games.

Don’t skip this one. Play it, and play it with the lights off.


Technically cheated by playing this on GBC emulation and with a map but fuck do I care. Metroid II: Return of Samus still successfully scared the shit outta me.

A lot of what I have to say has been said already by the top dogs of Backloggd.com so I'll keep it straightforward. By far the best thing about Metroid II is the well-crafted, incredibly creepy atmosphere of SR388 that is backed by not just its uncanny sound design and music, but also its monotone, dull environmental design. An entire planet where everything looks just about the same with long, acid pool corridors and towering pits that blend together so well, the player barely knows where they are half the time, creating the illusion of entrapment. Metroids that are disturbing in design (except the Zeta Metroids which look more cool than creepy) which also emit some of the most haunting and chilling sounds when hit, almost as if it were a wail of pain as you mercilessly tear it to shreds with your missiles.

All of which culminates in a final act where immediately after a grueling gauntlet of 3 Omega Metroids with minimal resources, the environment suddenly shifts to a bone-chilling rollercoaster ride where the tension rises tenfold as the Metroid counter suddenly spikes, allowing a looming sense of dread to drip slowly into the player's mind as they struggle against the unexpected onslaught of Metroids. But when all is said and done, Samus, whose journey has been hallmarked and can essentially be written off as federation-mandated genocide, has a rare moment of compassion as it spares a singular, child Metroid as the terrifying shrieks of the final phase die out to be replaced with a melancholic, bittersweet tune that compared to everything the player has experienced beforehand, is relieving and somewhat... calming, yet does not completely brush off Samus' insufficiently justified actions of murder. It's a beautiful game.

But as much as it is a well designed game thematically, just like God of War, in practicality there are a lot of flaws present within Return of Samus.

Despite all its positives Metroid II still suffers from being a game of its era, with all its hardware limitations making modern game standard affairs like an overworld map absent. This also means that the game suffers from clunky controls and questionable design choices. Most notably the space jump, which is not only absurdly precise in its timing, but is also inconsistent in its activation because Samus will either jump without curling into a ball, or awkwardly jump straight upwards. This issue is further worsened by the aforementioned amount of tall pits, especially those in the late-game that mandate the usage of space jump to traverse; it also hurts the Omega Metroid fights substantially, not getting a Screw Attack jump when you want to consistently absolutely stinks.

The spider ball, meanwhile, as a crucial element for Metroid II's exploration is slow, clunky and just as inconsistent with its movement as the Space Jump, with most of my issues stemming from unresponsiveness when I attempt to scale the various pillars needed to unlock extra item expansions.

Finally, there's the... interesting design choice regarding Samus' hit detection. While from a design standpoint, Samus' large sprite enhances the sensation of entrapment within SR388, it also has the unfortunate side effect of making her more prone to getting hit by attacks. And for whatever reason, instead of being granted i-frames for a brief moment after getting hit, Samus instead rebounds in an awkward angle that more often than not results her in getting hit... sometimes even by the same enemy. Yes, you have a recovery jump after getting hit, and sometimes the optimal choice is to intentionally take damage to reach higher ground, but in most cases, especially Metroid boss fights, it becomes a major inconvenience.

Oh, and the plasma beam is fucking useless with its tiny hitbox.

All of these issues combined are sufficient that despite my best efforts to appraise the overall package of Metroid II: Return of Samus as a thematically rich work of art like most have, I am constantly taken out of the atmosphere by one small problem or another that sours the experience. This leads to Metroid II feeling more like a flawed game that happened to accidentally struck upon a stroke of genius. Yes, video games can be works of art, but I suppose the main takeaway here is that despite that being the case, video games are meant to be... viewed as video games to most people, including myself.

And that saddens me somewhat.

Final score: 8/10
Focus: The flaws that claw at Metroid II: Return of Samus' achievement as an artform.

Decided to play this after playing Metroid NES on the NSO service and used a map, and I have to say, it's a major improvement over the original! You can aim downwards now, jump in morph ball without needing to bomb jump, crouch, and have a slew of new handy abilities in this game to traverse the world such as the Spider Ball and the introduction of the Space Jump.

The game is fairly repetitive with mostly easy bosses (other than the troublesome Zeta and Omega Metroids), but the final boss is far better designed than in Metroid NES. I actually had a lot of fun figuring out its pattern on how to stun it and drop bombs in its gut, and the lead up to it with the Metroids guarding it was also well done.

The game is fairly linear which is a good design choice after Metroid NES was insanely labyrinthian and given this was also a handheld game to begin with. Looking up a map will help you get most of the missiles and health upgrades you need and to avoid getting stuck though, even if it's not nearly as easy to get lost as the original game is, and I recommend playing the game with that rather than without.

While this game is even more visually bland/samey than Metroid NES's locales (even if that game also looked like a lot of the same), the atmosphere is a lot better in terms of setting a more dreary tone and the adventure theme is pretty nice for a GB title.

I played this on the NSO service and used the Gameboy Color option for this game which made it look a lot nicer, giving all of the walls and such a nice blue color and Samus a contrasting orange/red that fit her well. I would've gotten more annoyed at the tedium of the scenery if I was forced to look at the game in pure black and white or pure green/black so I'm very thankful that was an option.

While still not an outstanding game, it's a major improvement over the flawed original Metroid, and I can see how this game set up a lot of the foundation that Super Metroid went on to polish to a shine to make one of the best Metroidvanias ever that captured the minds and hearts of many players. Definitely play this with a map if you plan to at all though, it helps a lot in making the game more fun.

With this, I've officially beaten every official iteration of the 2D Metroid mainline games, remakes and all. Now I'll turn my attention more toward the appealing Metroid Zero Mission and Super Metroid hacks that this passionate creative fanbase has made to stave off my Metroid craving, at least until we hopefully get another 2D Metroid title in 2 years or so.

Total playtime (including game overs/rewinds according to my Switch Playtime): Roughly 4 hours

Total playtime from in-game file counter: 2 hours, 23 minutes.

See you next mission!

As weird as it is to say, I consider Metroid 2 a rare example of a Nintendo-made horror game. You're all alone on a dangerous planet, full of lifeforms that are continulously evolving into ever more dangerous forms. It feels like you're in a race against the clock, before the Metroid race evolves to a level where not even you will be able to stop them from consuming the rest of the galaxy. So, there you are, wandering deeper into the caverns, caverns that seem to be stretching on for infinity, your footsteps the only audible sound, until... wham! A metroid is flying straight at you, and a frantic battle of survival ensues.

Okay, so it's not actually scary at all, but I think that's what the developers wanted to evoke, I think that element of claustrophobia and "hunt or be hunted" is Metroid 2's core goal. The attempt at creating this kind of atmosphere for a Gameboy game is a respectable one, and is really the game's most redeeming aspect. I will always think of that "moment" when you enter the final area, it gives me goosebumps everytime. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself has aged even worse than the original Metroid 1, which is why I cannot ultimately recommend this one.

Taking away color and zooming the screen in did Metroid's exploratory focus absolutely no favors. Areas look even more dull than they used to be. There's caves upon caves, all repetitive, most difficult to memorize and distinguish from each other. And there's still no map, other than the one I heavily relied on from a guide.

There's something to be said about the pros of getting lost in video games, but I think that only applies when the areas you stumble into are distinct enough to a point where the feeling of discovering a new location heavily washes over you. Like when you decide to explore a different part of town in real life, after wandering throughout the same locales you've known for years, and this intense feeling of unfamiliarity hits you. I hope whoever reads this gets the analogy, because I have no better one to offer at 2AM in the night.

Anyway, Metroid 2 does not offer the feeling of getting lost in unfamiliar territory, all it has is the uncertainty of whether you're even lost or not. Constant doubt gets in the way of genuinely enjoying the game, and by a certain point, I get impatient and just want it to be over.

Other than the neat little thought about this being a horror game in disguise, I've gotten little out of the experience. The next Metroid game, Super Metroid, will be where I have more positive things to say. There's also the fanmade remake of Metroid 2, AM2R, which is so good that I treat it as an official Metroid game and wholeheartedly recommend you make that version of the game one of your top priorities.

So, when I beat NEStroid a few days ago I said that my biggest takeaway was how impressed I was by the technological leap to the SNES and Super Metroid. With that fresh in mind, I don't know if anything could have prepared me for how amazed the Game Boy entry would leave me.

To me the Game Boy has always been this antiquated piece of gaming history, like the evolutionary second step from calculator to video game, not entirely there yet. From the few games I'd given real time to, I don't think that was an unfair assessment, and in going through every Metroid game I initially skipped 2 because I thought there was no way it could hold up given the hardware it was chained to. I was wrong.

Metroid II is a game that, despite having many more, or at least many different, roadblocks than it's NES counterpart, manages to be a rousing success on nearly every front. It improves almost every element from the original and adds dozens of changes and new mechanics that would be series staples from here forward. The lack of a map still makes the game confusing, but the more linear and fair structure of the game makes it fully playable without a guide with very minimal friction.

The more legible structure of the game was a huge boost to my enjoyment already, but what frankly blew me away is the way that movement and combat function moment-to-moment in this game. Super Metroid, for what clunkiness it has, remains one of my favourite-feeling games to play, and so when I started playing Metroid II and found the gameplay to be nearly identical, with crouching, more manageable jumping and rolling, and other QOL features I missed, my jaw dropped to the floor. How was this running on what is functionally a souped up calculator?

It's not perfect. In some very obvious ways it's not perfect, like the lack of real bosses and the holdover of some identical rooms which make it very easy to get yourself turned around, but from start to finish there wasn't really a moment where I felt that the game was failing in any of the things it set out to do. Metroid II is a core link to what we know as Metroid today, and it's no wonder that it has been remade as many times as it has.

(This is the 48th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

I think if you're looking to get into the much-beloved Metroid series for the first time, Metroid II: Return of Samus (Dev: Nintendo R&D1 / Pub: Nintendo) won't be the best place to start. The game released in November 1991 for the Game Boy, unlike the original which came out for the NES, and if you really don't want to pass by this game, you would probably be best served going for its remake from 2017 for the Nintendo 3DS.

The game isn't 'objectively bad', not even close actually, but it suffers from pretty much all the lack of QoL features that you'd expect from games of this time. This makes it tough to play unless you don't mind looking for the way forward for, potentially, hours at a time, and even then, the future releases will serve you with much more enjoyable gameplay in pretty much every way. But all of that I talk about in detail below.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10

As in the original, you play Samus Aran, who is a Space Hunter working for the Galactic Federation. Her goal is once again to go to the planet SR388, where she is to exterminate the remaining Metroids after both a ship full of researchers and armed soldiers went missing. All of this can be found in the manual. In the game, you press START and are immediately loaded in and stand in front of your ship and are not given any further information.

The main things you will take away from this game in terms of story/characters are the following

Samus is a badass character just simply based on design and she gets shit done when others can't (not unlike many other one hero vs the world games, but effective)

The fact that there was no color for the Game Boy meant that the devs had to add the round metal shoulder pads to differentiate between her Power Suit and Varia Suit, a feature that has stayed with Samus ever since

POSSIBLE SPOILER: The ending cliffhanger, without dialogue and voice acting, is really well done. Samus finds an egg of a Metroid hatchling, which follows her to her ship. What will this cause in the sequel?

So Metroid II doesn't really do much different from many other platformers / Action Adventure types like this in terms of story, but it does manage to stand out a bit thanks to its ending and its main character.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20

You will most likely be familiar with the Metroid formula by now. Start with limited abilities, explore multi-pathed levels multiple times by leveraging new abilities that you gain constantly as you progress. It's a pretty popular genre, and Metroid games pretty much pioneered them. Unfortunately, early iterations come with some growing pains as the developers looked to find a balance of their vision and what they could realistically expect players to be willing to push through.

Before we get there, here is the gist of how this game plays. You control Samus in a 2D side-scrolling game where you can shoot projectiles, jump and even roll up into a ball to squeeze through holes. Your goal is to traverse this map and find all Metroids, which are parasitic creatures that, unsurprisingly, form the main enemy types in this series. Throughout your journey you get access to new skills and attacks, which not only allow you to stand a chance against later bosses, but to also unlock areas that were previously inaccessible.

I personally have a mixed relationship with Metroidvanias, though "utility-gated progression" usually isn't my main issue but rather the convoluted design of the maps and/or the gameplay itself, and both creep up their ugly heads here as well, though I can excuse it much more for a 30 year old game rather than some of the newer entries into the genre.

Firstly, this is a Game Boy game, and unlike the NES version, Samus covers 1/4 of the screen here, which from the get-go makes for an awkward affair when trying to dodge enemies reliably. Her jumps are not sensitive to button presses at all, so you need to press JUMP quite a while in order to make a long jump, and in areas where platforms are separated by some sort of health-evaporating substance in between, these jumps can become quite unreliable and hence frustrating.

Frustrating is actually a big thing with this game. The reason why you want to take hits as few times as possible is because there are few save points here and they are pretty far from each other, so you will constantly find yourself warp all the way back to the checkpoint whenever you die. And due to the level amount of health you're playing with, you'll find yourself die a lot. There are no immediate do-overs. Die and you go all the way back.

The worst part however is the fact that there is no map. So you either have to draw the map along as you play or have great memory. Plus, progress forward isn't as cut and dry as moving forward. Sometimes, progressing means finding some randomly placed hole in a wall that you can only reach by turning into the balled-up shape I was just talking about. It doesn't help that many areas look exactly the same in this game, adding to the confusion of it all.

Overall, the concept of this series I definitely like. This one just didn't age well and I don't know how children at the time could possibly beat this unless they'd spend dozens and dozens of hours of running through walls and having to rely on magazine guides, and whether it's fun to have to use those sources to beat a game is in the eye of the beholder I suppose.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

No voice acting. There is an interesting that happens from time to time where the music simply cuts off and you're left playing for a while whilst just listening to the sound effects. It's odd on the one hand, but satisfying on the other because I actually like the various sound effects that you hear, whether it's shooting your projectiles, the sound of each step you take, collecting items and some beep sounds that play that apparently are part of the "Caverns 1 Theme". Whenever the music does play, you've got to understand the limitations of the Game Boy sound engine. So what they managed to do with that is pretty impressive. Obviously, if you give a listen to the 3DS remake OST, you'll see what increased technical capabilities will allow you to do, but the soundtrack here plays into the atmosphere of the levels very well here, and gets downright eerie whenever you get into a boss fight. In contrast, the surface of SR388 theme sounded a bit too playful to me, but I get it considering that's the music that kids will spend most of their time listening to. Do you dare and get further into the game than you're expected to? That's where you are met with tracks that match the increased tension and where this gets a lot more atmospheric.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10

If you rate this based on the capabilities of the Game Boy, the game doesn't look all too bad. If you rate it compared to what you would have gotten had this been an SNES game, it doesn't rate quite well. If you go somewhere down the middle, you can appreciate that this game was the reason that the Samus sprite got changes to it that would last until today, that the Metroids look positively disgusting and .. well yeah, that's pretty much it. The blackground is simply black, levels look very similar in design, the sprite size of Samus looks kind of awkward and creating holes in walls that hide progress and not giving any graphical indicator that something might be behind there is just an odd choice. And overall, the game simply doesn't look so good due to being a Game Boy game, which you might like yourself but is what I'd call an "acquired/nostalgic taste".

ATMOSPHERE | 8/10

The game does a pretty good job actually of throwing you into hostile territory filled with vile and disgusting creatures. Whenever the non-music track plays or the tracks that hit the eerie tones of the graphical presentation play, this can become quite atmospheric and immersive, and downright scary I'd imagine for young gamers whenever a Metroid is chasing you down.

CONTENT | 5/10

Many different abilities that you can get your hands on as you play the game. The journey there can be rough however, as you will spend many hours trying to figure out where to go next, which some might call intentional and I'd call boring and not well executed here. Apart from that, there isn't much content here, but if you enjoy the bashing your head against walls aspect of it, this will be enough to keep you occupied for a dozen hours+.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 3/10

I appreciate the idea behind this game of having to traverse a hostile environment and find your way through it without any hand-holding. Unfortunately, my idea of a fun game is in contrast to what the game design philosophy of Metroid's creators is, at least for the early entries in the series. No map is tough on its own, but progress hidden in walls (forcing you to check every wall), same looking areas and abilities that don't control all that well (the spider ability) makes for too many (subjective) issues here.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

The concept remains intriguing, though I'd say the sequel has not yet gotten it to where it will eventually go in this series.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5

There isn't really any particular reason/motivation given for replaying this. Chances are, if you somehow beat this, you'll be satisfied and ready to move on.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 53/100

Unless you really enjoyed the original or really, really enjoyed the later entries in the Metroid series, I think this game is very skippable. Even if you did enjoy later Metroid games, you will likely miss the QoL features that will be introduced later. What this game does well is create a tense atmosphere, but I would agree that that's the gist of it, unless you are a big fan of the concept of hitting early wall to see if you can go through some of them, or if you enjoy drawing a map as you go. Otherwise, you will likely have to rely on guides to make progress, and have to do so many times. So right now I would call this a good proof on concept, just like the original, but the next step hasn't really been taken yet in my opinion.

I saw The Geek Critique’s recent video on Metroid II: Return of Samus, and I decided… eh, fuck it, might as well finally beat it myself.

Metroid II is a little rough around the edges and shares some of the same flaws of its predecessor, namely the lack of a map and some copy-pasted room layouts. However, the smaller overall map size, more streamlined progression, decent enemy variety in each area, and even the simple ability to aim down while shooting make this LEAGUES better than its archaic predecessor. Not to mention the ending is absolutely beautiful (which makes the endings of Super and Dread hit even harder).

What the hell guys? This game is a masterpiece. A giant leap from its predecessor, introducing almost all skills and items (in 1991!?!?) that the franchise has ever seen and utilizing them in ways that all sequels have not even come close. (The vertical gameplay with space jump and spider ball is just brillant)

They should have called this game „Metroid: Annihilation“. The main plot is as badass as anything I have ever played. Miss Aran travels to the home planet of the Metroids with only one goal: To eridicate every last one of them before the Space pirates can get them. The main objective to actually hunt down all metroids is extremely motivating and delivers great exploration opportunities and encounters with many suprising secrets and clever traps.

Since you have to scan every corner of SR388 to eliminate every last one of the evil brains or whatever the metroids actually are (their various and challenging evolutionary states are both fascinating and horrifying) , I automatically found every uprade which was very rewarding. The map and general presentation is beautiful and feels very authentic and mysterious.

The late game or let’s say Samus' final rampage completely changes the pace of the adventure and really lets you show off all the weapons and skills you have gained on your journey.

The plot twist at the end made me tear up and I will boldly claim that Moon Studios have been paying a huge homage to this narrative in "Ori and the Blind Forest".

It's the perfect Gameboy game. Anybody who does not believe me, please turn on your switch, print out the map and let the great space genocide begin!

Actually, Return of Samus is the best out of the 3 well-known ways to experience the darkest and most genocidal chapter in Samus' life. It's old, I get it, but it uses the Game Boy's limitations to create atmosphere and tension, and that's what this series is best known for. It deviated itself from the formula stablished by the first game, but somehow captures the same feelings of isolation, visceral horror and bittersweet adventure. The ending has to be one of the most impactful and groundbreaking moments in all of gaming, specially in how it tackled one of the hottest topics of debate this medium has sparked, violence in video games, as far back as 1991.

[abandoned]
I can't do this shit man, the piss yellow filter is annoying

(Played on NSO, sparingly used a map.)
Better than Metroid 1, by miles.

Combat is more fleshed out. you can crouch down to shoot short targets and can shoot under yourself when jumping now.

The new upgrades are pretty cool. the space jump is fun to fly around with and the new beams are pretty fun to mix up combat and the spider-ball fucking rules.

Metroid 1's bosses sucked pretty bad, but the bosses here are actually really good. The game revolves around hunting Metroids. the Metroids mutate over the course of the game so the farther progress get the deadlier they get. i like how they kinda get stronger at the same rate as you so they never get to easy. the later mutated metroids are pretty high-octane which is a rarity in games from this era.

It is less easy to get lost then Metroid 1. still possible but, I don't mind it near as much.

The game does have a save system, however it only has about 10 save points throughout the whole game, two of which are literally RIGHT next to each other, so there are really 9.

Overall; would recommend. great game especially considering it was made on the game-boy.

Once again keeping the ‘’trying to get everything in a Metroid game but then leaving two or three missile tanks behind because I can’t be bothered’’ tradition going, even in a game so different such as Metroid II, it’s heartwarming to see that some things never change, like extremely hidden collectables!

The original Metroid is, even to this day, a pretty big deal, not only because it spawned a series that in spite of admittedly quite noticeable lows —looking at the general direction of a certain Wii game whose name shall not accurse this review— has given some of the most beloved and impactful games of… well, of the entire history of the medium, but it also catapulted its entire world design style to genre-defining status, so much so that half of its name its derived from this series. Metroid may not have been the first one to pull it off, not by a long-shot, but it was the first game to pull off the ‘’Platform-Adventure’’ idea in such a well-designed, fun, and awe-inspiring way; Metroid crafted an entire world in a console that could barely run bigger than normal sprites, let alone to allow the luxury of having backgrounds, and year the planet of Zebes and its pirate infested caverns, even on its first iteration, feel alive, distinct and brimming with secrets and upgrades, by all accounts it’s a marvel, both technically and progression wise.

Metroid 2: Return of Samus not only had to follow up in what the original had done, but also do it in a console with even weaker overall hardware with a screen that couldn’t allow more than a few shades of green, and it what other conditions could this team produce anything but such a incredibly interesting and, in a ton of ways, unique game.

Metroid 2’s own nature revolves around the system is on, yes, but at the same time I think its fitting that such a different adventure is presented in such a different way; whereas Zebes felt mechanized, deeply corrupted by the pirate influence, each room calculated in such a binary way for the sake of stopping intruders and with the last bastions of nature being few and far between, the caves and passages of SR388 feel the complete opposite; no empire nor company has set afoot in these lands for a very long time, this is a land only taken by wildlife and nature, and even in a black and white world, it feels exactly like that. Not every single being in this game is out to kill you, in fact most enemies don’t have direct attacks, with the more aggressive fiends (aside of the Metroids) being the old abandoned machines, which I don’t know if there was any intent behind that, but it seems like a genius purposeful move. The landscapes of SR388 feel wild, untamed, each not existing not as an alien-made space, but as a true bastion of wildlife; rock passage-ways that reach the depths of the planter inhabited by fish that walk on land and strange mole creatures, acid lakes that get emptied by the quakes of a furious Metroid Queen after the killing of their spawns, strange bubble towers that fill the rooms and the most forgotten mast of the planet, and ancient abandoned structures overrun by what the Chozo left behind and animals seeking shelter; this is all on a fucking Game Boy ant it feels natural, it feels like a real world that was left behind, one that doesn’t follow the conventions of the pirate bases of old.

There are still some missile doors here and there, but most of the obstacles you face are not left on purpose, they are a byproduct of the decay in structure and bloom in life that the planet has seen, and so doors stop being that common of a way to stop your progress and turn into a signal of were a new upgrade is located, and now the powerups you’ll use the most to proceed will be things like the morph ball jump, the spiderball and the super jump. But even with these systems still at play, I’d be hard-pressed to call this a ‘’Metroidvania’’, Return of Samus reminds me much more of a divided by areas open world, since your advancement is only delimited by if you have killed the current set of Metroid or not, a change that serves a design and even narrative purpose; Samus’ objective isn’t to stop a big final menace, she’s here to exterminate every single one of the remaining bio-weapons that put the galaxy at jeopardy in the first game, and there’s a long list to go through.

Samus starts the game much more armed than in the first iteration, with the morph ball already on toe and with some missiles right out the gate, and the game overall seems to be far more centered on combat than it ever was; every single ability, even the previously mentioned ones, serve a ton in the fighting and evading process, even the beams are now just a change a change of weapon rather than actual tools, and with the game’s field of vision being much more closer to the character and the sprites being far more detailed than ever, there’s clearly a deliberate attempt to encourage fighting even when there’s no real moment in which you are trapped with a enemy; with every Metroid, even the final boss, there’s always the option to run, which not only helps if you ever get overwhelmed (which is pretty easy considering how aggressive your main enemies are), there’s always the opportunity to retreat and revaluate your options; you are fighting against terrible weapons after all… even tho now they feel more than that.

The Metroid go for just really scary bio-arms to actually terrifying animals, we get to see their evolution, their grow process, how they change and adapt, evolving from their known forms and reaching the enormous sizes of the Omega variant. They are threatening beings, not only because they can only be damaged by your most powerful tools, but also because the way they presented; the little animation that plays on some of them as you witness their evolution, the music changing to their theme as they charge against you, how memorable some of them, like your first encounter with an Alpha Metroid or battling a Gamma Metroid in a sand tunnel. This encounters don’t feel epic or grand, they are grounded and tense, this is not a space epic anymore, it’s a hunt that only ends after your list marks the number 0 and the Metroid Queen falls, and only then, after the adventure is over, no countdown for the explosion starts, it’s just a last stroll, accompanied by the baby, and you cannot get the thought out of you head that maybe what you were hunting were actual animals and no simple killing machines, you didn’t really save the galaxy, you just turned a massacre into routine.

Metroid 2 is unlike any other Metroid game, and not only because of the way it plays or its presented, but also because of how it incredibly handles its world, how it’s done in such a perfect way that traversing it stops being an act of adventuring and more of a slow voyage and contemplation, which is something I can’t say expected to feel about Metroid but on Game Boy. However, this attempt at bringing what can be done on this console to new heights and shattering its own conventions comes at pretty clear prices; even if I can’t stop gushing about how the planet is designed, the way SR388 is designed clearly suffers from WhereTheFuckDoIGo-itis, not only you don’t have a map, the new paths that open are all over the place and aren’t clear at all at first, meaning that unless you really know where to go, prepare to go around in circles for a while until you find something you believe wasn’t there in the first place, which it isn’t helped about the small little problem that is copy-pasted rooms: this was excusable in the original, but in a game with no color and filled with the same rocks and pebbles it turns into a huge problem for finding out where you exactly are.

The save points are also a huge hiccup; if you are going to do a game with few places to save, fine, but one thing is to that and other to make them feel like they are placed unevenly, with huge chucks without any place to save and others with two extremely close to each other, and on that note, while the health and missile refills are incredible additions, I wished they were more common, there are far less infinite enemy respawning tubes this time around so I wish a way to gain health back was given after every major encounter or at least most of them.

The Metroid battle themselves are extremely simple yet overbearing in the worst way and I think there’s an overabundance of Alpha and Gamma variants which get old real quick, the beams are handled in a way that even if it’s the best thing they could have done I just wish they where done differently and didn’t act as direct replacements of each other, the music for the most part isn’t that memorable (even if the Queen Metroid theme and Surface of SR388 are incredible), going back to some places only to return to you where before can be brutal… It has its moments and upgrading and certain battles was still enjoyable, but Metroid II is a case of a game I love everything about except for actually playing it, but when some of its problems come because of its own conditions and even the positives, I cannot be mad for too long.

Metroid II was the return of Samus in a brand new way, a return that allowed for experimentation, that brought back a spirit of wonder and ingenious I didn’t think possible considering the circumstances; I could say many more things about Metroid II that irk me the wrong way, but I don’t think it’s fair to focus on that when it managed to do something so impossibly difficult. This isn’t my favorite Game Boy game, not by a long shot, but it’s the most fascinating and daring, and if that itself doesn’t have value, I don’t know what does.

The original metroid on nes isn't the most flattering game out there, it has its rough edges but I can ultimately appreciate what it goes for and it's place in gaming history. So, it was a shock to my system that the metroid game on gameboy (essentially a portable nes) was actually a considerable step up from its console counterpart.

I know its odd to call a gameboy game atmospheric but Metroid II finds a way. The faint hints of music sounding like the organic life of this alien planet, the fantastic spritework and art direction, and the black and grey color pallet of the gameboy pocket really elevate the feeling of exploring deeper and deeper into the depths of an underground cave.

This is all just to say that Metroid II is a survival horror game. Encountering a metroid borders on being a jumpscare, with the mutated aliens making their presence known with their harsh and sudden theme contrasting brightly with the atmospheric tunes prior. The metoids' freakish mutations as you delve further into the caves of SR388 also don't let up and can kill you at a moments notice if you aren't on your toes. Just like a good ol' classic survival horror!

This may be one of the most linear metroid games, if not the most linear. However it's linearity encourages exploration as you explore left behind ancient ruins and hunt down every single last metroid hiding in the caves. It feels like every single nook and cranny rewards your exploration with some goodies. The constant stream of abilities you gain all feel meaningful towards further expanding your moveset, and are fun to experiment and play around with. The exploration ties beautifully with the gameplay, which is a significant step from Metroid I. Finally being able to crouch and shoot in more direction feels like a relative breath of fresh air combined with the tight movement.

Overall, Metroid II is a classic example on how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. "How good can it really be? It's just a gameboy game after all," I foolishly thought before playing. But Metroid II proves to be a great time throughout, despite some annoying Metroid moments™ here and there.

This game’s music and style is #awesome. I know it was supposed to be green but my emulator played it in black and white and the screen is super zoomed in, you can’t see 3 feet in front of you and the soundtrack is just these harsh noises and beeps and screeches, there’s rooms and dark hallways with no enemies and it gets more and more frequent the more you progress and the deeper into the planet you go. I feel so unwelcome, tense, out of my depth, and on edge. Super cool af.

I hear a lot about how metroid 1’s abrasive and alien design was lost in future games and while I do like the thought of duplicate rooms, death traps, and in general just map design that is meant to trip the player up and fuck with them, (See tricks and traps from doom 2; one of the greatest videogame levels of all time.) that wasn’t what stopped me from wanting to finish metroid 1. It was just unfun to control. Moving around sucked, shooting sucked, the health economy sucked unless you were willing to grind those bug ejecting tubes for like 10 minutes, and it was huge so if you got lost (no map) you were LOST for real. This game is genuinely fun to control, the movement as well as the combat is smooth and is up to modern standards. The game is much more linear so the lack of a map isn’t as big of a deal (though, not having any colour made it hard to mentally isolate where it was you needed to be. As well as remembering all these BS normal ass blocks that you can crawl thru.) ((double also, i’m probably a little advantaged on this front cause i played AM2R))

I do feel the metroid fights themselves got old really quick and despite the mutations my strategy of just tanking it all and spamming missiles never changed. It was like the same fight but reskinned and they gradually got more and more bullet spongey. And also there wasn’t enough health recharges in the later stages cause there were so little enemies to regain hp from. I had to backtrack just for hp. Later I looked it up (AFTER I FINISHED!!) and it turns out yea that was the closest one lol

I think this game is worth playing and I had fun. At least give this one a fair try.

Looking back it's easy to undersell how popular Metroid was in the late 1980s. For a series often reputed as one of Nintendo's less successful franchises, the original game didn't just make a splash, but a crater, selling nearly 3 million copies by the mid-2000s. While a sequel was inevitable, it's strange that it would be released not only half a decade later, but on a remarkably less "prestigious" system. While both titles were developed by Nintendo R&D1, Metroid II: Return of Samus seems to have been developed by a largely different team, which explains why it feels so different compared to its immediate predecessor.

Metroid II differs most obviously from its predecessor in one major way: linear level progression. Linear should be used lightly, because you are still likely to get very, very lost if you are not paying attention. Unlike the original game, where you can largely explore most areas to your heart's content, Metroid II gates its areas behind progression, meaning the game feels much less free-flowing. Do not confuse this for the game turning into a standard platformer, as the bug hunt the player must undertake still requires active exploration to find all of the hidden metroids. As innovative as Metroid 1 is, Metroid II one-ups it in terms of refined game design, removing much of what could often make the original game very annoying. The gamet/geega/zeb enemies which were such a pain in the original game, while present, are far less unforgiving and never encountered in areas where they can end an entire run even in a worst-case scenario. The game's power-ups still require some searching, but they're never in areas that I feel the player wouldn't be able to discover on their own, unlike the original game's varia suit for example. Newer abilities such as the spider ball allow for greater navigation and it turns the entire environment into your playing field. The progression of the metroids from smaller creatures to beings that could tear you limb from limb with the flick of a wrist is an appropriate scale of challenge, but the last evolution in particular is perhaps too wasteful to take down (and yet, still entirely mandatory). This leads to a far more refined experience which, while perhaps not as creative or innovative as the original game, fixes a lot of its flaws and isn't nearly as frustrating. Nintendo hasn't quite nailed down the formula yet, though, as there are still some rough spots that hamper the experience. Some of the levels are a bit overly large, and while you don't exactly get lost per se, it takes far longer to traverse them than it should. The final area also requires grinding if you weren't an expert with your missiles beforehand to defeat the strongest metroids, but the missile drop rate hasn't actually been increased so you just spend a lot of time moving in between screens repeatedly to spawn them back in. Despite these rough spots, it's still largely a positive direction for the series and easier to come back to in the modern day.

Visually, Metroid II is a step forward and a step back at the same time. In terms of graphics, the game features superbly detailed spritework far beyond what the original game could offer on better hardware. Remember how Samus was sort of an amorphous blob in the original? Now you can see the individual rivets on her sprite, and her animations look far more "realistic", too. Essentially everything has had this graphical facelift, and understanding the typical level of visual fidelity Game Boy games reach, it remains mighty impressive. My main issue is that Metroid II, somewhere along the line, lost the atmosphere that the original game had in spades. Metroid's world was very colorful, which is not exactly something the Game Boy can convey and therefore not exactly a valid criticism, but there's far less variety in SR388 compared to Zebes. While there's occasional vegetation and quite a bit of sand, SR388...just isn't a particularly interesting place to explore. Gone are the space pirate lairs, the burning pits of Norfair (although the game still has lava), the sci-fi labs of Tourian, et cetera. It's all just replaced by rock, rock, and more rock. While the general idea is that the metroids are sucking the planet dry of its fauna and flora, it means that late-game areas meant to convey this don't feel much different from the earlier areas "full of life". On the flip side, the designs for the new metroid forms are very cool and it's interesting to see the effort Nintendo put into designing an entire evolutionary tree for their fictional species.

Metroid II's score was composed by Ryoji Yoshitomi, taking over from Hirokazu Tanaka in the original game, and the soundtrack must be one of the most disappointing aspects of the game as a whole. Tanaka's score for Metroid was atmospheric and memorable, fitting each area perfectly while providing iconic melodies that worked just as well on their own. Metroid 1's score feels like a living organism, and this is something Metroid II tries to achieve in a different way, but fails. While it's not without its successes - the melancholy yet beautiful title theme is worthy of great praise and the triumphant surface theme is an ear worm - it's largely weak attempts at atmospheric sound design that fall flat due to both repetitive composition and the limitations of the Game Boy's sound chip. While there is only so much you can do with the hardware provided, the jittering beeps sound more like Samus dialing a phone number rather than the ominous murmurs of SR388's creatures. The theme for the Chozo ruins is grating on the ears, as the bumbling Abbott and Costello-esque track feels like you're slamming your head against your Game Boy. While I do appreciate the moments where Metroid II uses silence to enhance its atmosphere of a dying planet, the score itself does very little if anything to add to that, and at points often detracts from it.

Metroid II: Return of Samus is sort of a two-step forward, one-step back situation. Its further improvements and refinements to the Metroid formula are much appreciated, and the game manages to fit a more linear structure without sacrificing the Metroidvania gameplay we've come to expect from the series. It's far less frustrating than anything Metroid 1 throws at you, though it is less innovative, something the game can't really be faulted for either. Unfortunately, somewhere in that five-year transition, the immersive atmosphere that Metroid was famous for left in favor of stone corridors and cacophonous music. Despite this, Metroid II is still a significantly better game than the original, and one that is worth playing for fans of the genre.

I couldn't find out a place to put this in the review, but I will add as a postscript that I think it's impressive how Nintendo managed to give Samus some poignant character development without having her speak a single word. Her refusal to kill the infant metroid despite causing the genocide of the entire species speaks volumes about her and the fact that this was achieved on an 8-bit handheld system is insane. It's a sweet and rewarding moment for beating the game.


More solid and stream-lined than the first, but it's not quite there yet. It's more linear and the bosses can be a bit repetitive, but the new upgrades Samus gets are a nice addition to the series.

Wait wtf how is this actually pretty good

Why did this have to be on the GameBoy, again?

Why was this considered the black sheep of the series? Metroid 2 holds up a lot better than expected and is way more fun to play than NEStroid. Going for 100% is satisfying and feels rewarding since it makes the later metroids much more manageable.

I really liked the environmental storytelling. I already knew metroid 2's story going in, but the way the planet works and interacts with you throughout is engaging and still provides a nice level of mystery. The ending is really good too, but it felt a little underwhelming without the little additions made is Super's recap. It's still effective, but I'm not sure it would have the same effect on someone going into the game blind and without any prior knowledge of Super's opening.

The controls are a lot better and Samus is starting to feel a lot closer to how she did in super and fusion. Samus is still a little slow but she's just the right amount of floaty and weighty that was missing from the NES original. It's really cool seeing how many series staple upgrades came from this game (even if they can be a little janky). Being able to crouch and shoot downward make the game so much more fun than NEStroid and help fix a lot of those games' issues that should never have been present in the first place.

There are a few little controls quirks that annoyed me but nothing overly frustrating or game ruining. I never fully got used to not being able to activate the morph ball in midair and activating/deactivating the spider ball can be a little janky. The space jump timing feels pickier than later games and took some time to get used to. I also didn't like how if you messed up the space jump timing or were in the air for too long, Samus would uncrouch and you couldn't do anything to recover. This made using the screw attack to deflect bosses a little janky at times and is something that NEStroid does better. It was also a little awkward trying to short hop to shoot enemies at first since samus crouches mid air and you end up shooting a little lower than you'd initially expect. This only happens during the ascending part of the jump and isn't a big deal overall, but I'm happy future games fixed it.

The multiple missile and health recharge stations are very much appreciated and provide a nice way to reward exploration and eliminate the need for tedious grinding sessions.

The bosses are about on par with the NES original since they're all pretty much just missile sponges in those games. The bosses in metroid 2 have a few different attack patterns which makes them a little more engaging than NEStroid's bosses but none of them are as engaging as the bosses in the future entries.

The soundtrack is alright, but definitely a downgrade from the first games. The only track I really like is the SR388 surface theme which is one of the best themes in the entire series. The soundtrack tries to be more atmospheric and contribute to the storytelling and it's very effective towards the end of the game with the final area and the final walk to the surface, but tracks like the ruins were a little too short and repetitive for me.

Overall, Mettroid 2 is a decent time. It feels like a really big improvement on the first and there was never a point where I had to force myself to keep playing like with NEStroid. It's really interesting to see the series develop, but future entries do a lot of what it does better.

i, for one, am very impressed they managed to make a game that is both too confusing AND too linear

👍

be sure to play it on the game boy color palette, NOT the super game boy palette.

Metroid II is a pretty decent improvement over the first game, thanks to it’s more linear structure, the absence of a map isn’t anywhere near as bad here as it was in the original game.
Its got problems, like how there are no real bosses aside from the final boss, everything else is just metroids, which are decently fun to fight but man the repeats of them just get stale after a while.
Oh yeah, I had to play this on switch online since I have no access to Samus Returns or AM2R, and since I used switch online, I had to experience this game in good ol gameboy vomit green.
One last thing I do like about this game is the ending sequence after the final boss, it’s honestly nice to play a Metroid game that doesn’t end in the planet imminent explosion sequence.


Overall it’s a fun experience that I was pleasantly surprised by, idk if I’ll ever play it again but it’s pretty nice.


Now onto Super Metroid


You know, back in its day, this game didn’t get a lot of love. In fact, it was considered worse in every way to the first Metroid.
Which is utter BS. This game is fun. I enjoyed exploring this labyrinthine world.

This has issues on its own divorced from the 3DS version, but I appreciate the general freedom to do everything as you will and the way the game signposts progress is neat. Wish health and missile refills were a lot closer in that last stretch, but solid game overall tbh.

It's not the best Metroid game, but it's impressive what they did on the Game Boy

The extremely zoomed in screen and lack of color makes this one almost impossible to get your bearings without a map. I do, however, appreciate what they were going for and how this is very well-tailored for portable gaming.

I still can't fully enjoy the soundtrack, but it does create a very different, perhaps brutal and jarring, vibe to this game and that I can get behind.