NothingReally
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not old school or new school. fuck school
not old school or new school. fuck school
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Atmospheric masterpiece which contrary to popular belief, isn't rivaled by the Donkey Kong Country series. The exposition test with a close-up of Samus is one of the most iconic still frames to not be a title screen.
There's next to no exposition throughout the rest of the game, actually, yet there's storytelling all around. In a small room you meet the Mocktroids, the first failed attempts at cloning Metroids, there's the remaining non-hostile wildlife teaches you how to use abilities such as the Shinespark, and the wrecked ship which hints at ill-fated previous attempts by humanity to make contact with Zebes. Already hours into your adventure and the planet's hostility is still making itself clearer.
Super Metroid also becomes rewarding on subsequent playthroughs, since you're easily capable of sequence breaking once you know where you need to go to make essential progress. Developers deliberately added the wall jump feature, which shows they were accepting of players circumventing the game's structure to play their own way, and this trust adds another layer of maturity to the vibe of the game, one that goes beyond any lonely paranoia or horror aesthetics.
Still, there are aspects later games would improve on. Fusion improves the control scheme, and a greater portion of its bosses feel impossible to cheese your way through. Here, you can sort of get through some fights without quite figuring out what you're doing by the end. Metroid Prime, due to its first person POV (already hard to deny as an improvement), has fairer enemy placements, plus also more interesting boss encounters. But what the series has never reached again is a level of detail and cohesiveness that filled Super Metroid to the brim with memorable ideas and moments of rewarding pause. Everything comes together here, and the more I play this, the more every indie Metroidvania success story of the modern day feels utterly lacking in anything besides spritework and polish.
There's next to no exposition throughout the rest of the game, actually, yet there's storytelling all around. In a small room you meet the Mocktroids, the first failed attempts at cloning Metroids, there's the remaining non-hostile wildlife teaches you how to use abilities such as the Shinespark, and the wrecked ship which hints at ill-fated previous attempts by humanity to make contact with Zebes. Already hours into your adventure and the planet's hostility is still making itself clearer.
Super Metroid also becomes rewarding on subsequent playthroughs, since you're easily capable of sequence breaking once you know where you need to go to make essential progress. Developers deliberately added the wall jump feature, which shows they were accepting of players circumventing the game's structure to play their own way, and this trust adds another layer of maturity to the vibe of the game, one that goes beyond any lonely paranoia or horror aesthetics.
Still, there are aspects later games would improve on. Fusion improves the control scheme, and a greater portion of its bosses feel impossible to cheese your way through. Here, you can sort of get through some fights without quite figuring out what you're doing by the end. Metroid Prime, due to its first person POV (already hard to deny as an improvement), has fairer enemy placements, plus also more interesting boss encounters. But what the series has never reached again is a level of detail and cohesiveness that filled Super Metroid to the brim with memorable ideas and moments of rewarding pause. Everything comes together here, and the more I play this, the more every indie Metroidvania success story of the modern day feels utterly lacking in anything besides spritework and polish.
You're looking at the first draft of a very standard, modern comic book aesthetic, with occasionally decent staging to boot. That's a comment purely on the visual elements. The actual level layouts are banal at best, as you'd expect from such a simple gameplay conceit. Go right. If you can't, navigate up, down or back to find a way to go right.
PlayDead already gave us more creative and less redundant puzzles on their previous go at this minimalist concept on 2010's Limbo, which also has the advantage of having a real story. Inside instead hints at a story, with plenty of moments that feel exciting (even if primarily as breaks from the boring gameplay loop) and may also feel like progressions from what came before.
That being said, the game lacks a real payoff, opting instead for shock value that bears a humorous contrast with the rest of what the game seemed to be going for. It just feels like PlayDead wanted something that appears like a crazy twist, but without a holistic narrative outline that would assist such a twist in having actual ramifications on the rest of what's come before.
I've asked plenty of questions over the years, which I'm sure is what PlayDead would've wanted, but nothing ever comes together. Researching theories on the game hasn't proved rewarding and I've long since given up on the topic.
Unemotional, unengaging, drab aesthetic, unintelligent and unrewarding. These kinds of games make one shrug away the indie craze of the 2010s.
PlayDead already gave us more creative and less redundant puzzles on their previous go at this minimalist concept on 2010's Limbo, which also has the advantage of having a real story. Inside instead hints at a story, with plenty of moments that feel exciting (even if primarily as breaks from the boring gameplay loop) and may also feel like progressions from what came before.
That being said, the game lacks a real payoff, opting instead for shock value that bears a humorous contrast with the rest of what the game seemed to be going for. It just feels like PlayDead wanted something that appears like a crazy twist, but without a holistic narrative outline that would assist such a twist in having actual ramifications on the rest of what's come before.
I've asked plenty of questions over the years, which I'm sure is what PlayDead would've wanted, but nothing ever comes together. Researching theories on the game hasn't proved rewarding and I've long since given up on the topic.
Unemotional, unengaging, drab aesthetic, unintelligent and unrewarding. These kinds of games make one shrug away the indie craze of the 2010s.
Most reviews penalize this game because of value. Was the price inflated upon release? Sure, but prices go down over time, and Ground Zeroes got coupled with The Phantom Pain in a full MGSV combo pack, as predicted. The price is no longer a talking point. I wasn't pleased with what felt like a swindle, but it was a combination of multiple factors. One, I was excited to play MGSV, and I assumed this was the game in its entirety upon starting to play it (I didn't purchase the game with my own money) and obviously didn't get that, and two, I was not as immersed in the world of Metal Gear Solid to be able to maximize my experience.
Nowadays I really frown upon people referring to this as a demo, even if functionally it may appear to serve that purpose. If this is a demo, it is the most elaborate demo ever devised, and the density of character study and world planning that culminates just in this one mission really makes this feel like it'd be the highlight of any other AAA game. It's certainly more immersive from the getgo, with a huge arena of traversal too, and the climax is so impeccably paced that you had the sense that Kojima never feared any raising of expectations, high as they already may have been.
Perhaps if The Phantom Pain turned out to be mediocre, then people would have reappraised this, but that's not a worthy sacrifice to make. We're better off with it being their loss instead.
Nowadays I really frown upon people referring to this as a demo, even if functionally it may appear to serve that purpose. If this is a demo, it is the most elaborate demo ever devised, and the density of character study and world planning that culminates just in this one mission really makes this feel like it'd be the highlight of any other AAA game. It's certainly more immersive from the getgo, with a huge arena of traversal too, and the climax is so impeccably paced that you had the sense that Kojima never feared any raising of expectations, high as they already may have been.
Perhaps if The Phantom Pain turned out to be mediocre, then people would have reappraised this, but that's not a worthy sacrifice to make. We're better off with it being their loss instead.