Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a fucking masterpiece.


This game is a work of art, a masterpiece from beginning to end, as a sequel to Returns it improves and every category, the levels are even more explosive, daring, and far more unique, the game looks fucking incredible, even better than how beautiful returns was, the soundtrack is even more peak shit, all of it was absolutely beautiful, and the controls are basically perfect.

The levels in Returns were already really good, but god damn they’ve been improved here tenfold, every level is brimming with personality and creativity, I can say this, the previous games have all had at least like a few levels that were not really that good, but there is not a single bad level in this game, not even a single mediocre one in it either, they’re all great.
There is never a moment in this game where the fun dies down, not only are level themes and general worlds improved and much more varied, even the mine cart and rocket barrel levels are really fun, the game just never loses your attention.
The controls are vastly improved here from Returns, gone is any bullshit with Wii remote controls, now you can play like a normal person and it’s great, controls are tight and precise while still carrying that same DKC weight that all these games have had.
In the switch version, there’s also Funky Kong, and he controls wonderfully, they did not need to go that hard for what is essentially an easy mode character, like he controls so well that we could easily have a whole game designed around him.

It also helps that in terms of the visuals, this is by far one of the best looking 2D platformers ever made, and in my opinion, one of the best looking games ever made, it has style, it has grace, and a good amount of the enemies have a funny face.
Every level is brought to life with just how damn good the game looks, even when levels have the same theme, they are made distinct thanks to just how good they can look.

The soundtrack man, THE SOUNDTRACK, David wise returned here and it shows, every single level has the funkiest music you can imagine, the water levels especially GOD DAMN, it adds more atmosphere to everything, just like the og trilogy.

My complaints for this game are very minimal honestly, even though I do like the variety with your kong buddies, Dixie is just the objectively best one, her little float and upward movement is much better than Diddy’s hover, Cranky is unique enough to be his own thing and I’ve seen speed runners do crazy shit with him, but I always just stuck with Dixie.
Another complaint is that, while they are better and more dynamic than they were in returns, the bosses are still just decent at best, and both games final bosses are a far cry from K. Rool and his multiple alter egos.

Those gripes though just absolutely can’t take away from how great this game is, it’s incredibly fun all the way through and not only is it easily one of Nintendo’s best games, not only is it my favorite 2D platformer, it’s also one of my personal favorite games of all time.


And so ends the DK series, you know, considering that games like Metroid and Pikmin have made a comeback on the switch, I think it’s time for Donkey Kong to make his comeback, just make K. Rool and the kremlings the main villains again, it was nice to have some new villains but I also think it’s time for them to make their return.

And after basically 14 years without a DKC game, Nintendo suddenly blessed us with this game.


Donkey Kong Country Returns is a fantastic game, the levels are great, the game looks fucking beautiful, the soundtrack is another absolute masterpiece, the game is just so good.

The amount of shit that can happen in just one level is insane, you can start off at a nice normal pace, then you’ll be blasting yourself out of barrels and completely destroying ancient ruins in the blink of an eye, shit is wild, and this energy is kept all throughout the game.

Speaking of, the game looks beautiful, so many little details in the animation of things, the way levels are structured so there are no random floating platforms, it makes the world feel so much more natural, and it makes you feel like you’re a god damn ape.

And of course, the soundtrack, a complete fucking bop, every level every boss every thing has an absolute jam of a soundtrack behind it, keeping this game every bit as funky as the og trilogy.

This game does have one problem, now the controls, they are great, Donkey Kong’s weight is really felt in gameplay, the way they use Diddy more as a companion who makes your life easier is much better than the original games where the secondary character is just there, the roll has been improved in terms of motion, the blowing mechanic is neat, and the beating on the ground is pretty funny and fun to do………….now here’s where the problem is, those last three thing I mentioned are locked behind the forced Wii remote waggle system, and it’s like legitimately insane, WHO THE DECIDED THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA.
Now admittedly the beating on the ground and just punching the shit out of bosses after you beat them is pretty cathartic with the waggle, I don’t mind the motion controls being used there, but who in the fuck decided to lock the roll behind it, it’s almost a necessary move to get through some levels and bosses, and you need to waggle the controller every time, like why not just use the B button?

Now the thing with the motion controls is that they can easily be fixed, the 3Ds version allows you to play like a normal human being by actually making it so that you play with buttons, so I could definitely see a switch port of this game doing the same, with that said, if it’s technically a minor gripe, then why don’t I give this game a five star?
Well the answer is pretty simple, it’s actually a pretty similar reason with why I gave portal 1 only a 4.5, and it comes down to this: the game’s sequel did literally almost everything exponentially better, and speak of the devil.

The next (and final) game I’m gonna play for this DK marathon is Donkey Kong Country: Tropica Freeze.

A nice little bow tie to this SNES trilogy


DKC 3 is another wonderful journey through the world of Donkey Kong Country, it still has the same amazing atmosphere and look for the previous two, controls are still as good as ever, the soundtrack is a bop as usual, everything DKC is still here.
However, there are a few things holding this game back, I like a good majority of the levels but there are some that are just straight up bad, Kiddy Kong may move slow, and he can’t jump high, but unlike Chunky Kong he’s not even a hell of a guy, basically what I’m saying is Kiddy sucks to play as compared to Dixie, often I would just restart levels if Dixie got hit, Kiddy is just not satisfying to play as.
Also something I somehow forgot to mention in my DKC 2 review were the bosses, holy hell they were fantastic in that game, but in here they’re just ok, they’re all original so that makes it better than DKC 1’s repeating bosses but kind of a letdown compared to 2.


Hey despite its shortcomings I still really enjoyed my time with the game, it’s terrific, and a nice way to cap off this trilogy, and the SNES itself.
Now onto Donkey Kong Country Returns, played this one when I was younger so I can imagine there will be a bit of a nostalgia bias in my next review.
Sadly I can’t play DK64, I have no way to access it, but considering that I’m a collectithon completionist and I’ve heard that game is just a nightmare to fully complete, yeah maybe it’s a blessing in disguise (if it does come to switch online I’ll most likely play it)

Basically the original, but better


Donkey Kong Country 2 is a marvelous game, the first game I’d already said got pretty close to perfect, and this one also almost reached it, it’s a phenomenal game.
It’s a tiny bit longer than the last game which made it even better, the graphics obviously look about the same but there’s very subtle changes and, I mean, it still is gorgeous no matter what.
The gameplay is also better here, it’s much faster thanks to the obviously more light weightedness of Diddy and Dixie compared to Donkey Kong, aside from the speed it’s still the same good ass platforming, but this time with better level design.
Of course, the best thing here again is the soundtrack, HUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, shit man it’s so good, it flows with the last game beautifully, it’s incredible man.
Also I will say, the original was already pretty difficult, but, GOD DAMN, this game is fucking tough.


Overall it’s another incredible DK platformer, nothin much else to say beyond that.
Now onto DKC 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble.

The 4th game in my DK marathon and it’s the first one that actually feels like an actual video game

Donkey Kong Country is a short but ultimately super satisfying platformer, I love the gameplay itself, DK has so much weight to him and it adds a sense of realism to this game that other platformers lack, it also helps that this game just looks incredible, the use of silicon graphics here is superb, it gives the game this unique style and couple that with how expressive every enemy and character is, it just really makes it feel alive.
The bosses admittedly are very ok, most of them are just bigger versions of regular enemies, the big death barrel boss was kinda funny but nothing much beyond that, however despite that, the final boss against King K Rool is great, he does more than just one attack in the fight, it’s the one arena that isn’t just a giant banana pile, his animations are really well done, it’s all around just a great final fight, and a nice way to end the game.
The big thing that really elevates this game above a lot of platformers is the atmosphere and the soundtrack, holy fucking shit, the atmosphere is insane for an SNES game, I thought nothing could rival Super Metroid but I mean, here we are, and the soundtrack god damn, the soundtrack is the nice as hell icing on the cake, the one thing that fully rounds out the levels in the game, and makes this game a near masterpiece, it is legitimately one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I got multiple games with a similar soundtrack to get through, hell yeah.


Overall DKC is an absolute classic, and I loved it dearly.
Now onto DKC 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

The fuck?


So this is barely even a Donkey Kong game, there’s no platforming or Mario whatsoever, you just play as this kid just spraying DK a bunch, it’s like pathetically easy as well.


Well that was shit……….but at least now I get to play Donkey Kong Country, an actual game that’ll last longer than ten minutes.

Oh ho ho, getting slightly better there DK arcade games.


I mean it’s an improvement from the first one, there’s a bit more to the controls, general platforming has some more unique things to it and HOLY MOLY THERE’S 4 LEVELS INSTEAD OR 3.
Aside from that stuff though, yeah it’s still pretty barebones, but this doesn’t have as much of an excuse because it didn’t really revolutionize games kinda like the original did.


Onto Donkey Kong 3……….I’ll see y’all again in like 15-20 minutes.

Done with Pikmin, and now it’s time for the Donkey Kong series baby.

Starting off with the arcade classic……..it’s fine.
Kinda the same thing I’ve said with the first Mario, Zelda, and Metroid games, it was pretty revolutionary and ambitious for its time, and this even predates those three games, it’s an arcade game with a good foundation for platformers in general, but it is pretty barebones.


Now onto Donkey Kong Jr…………..expect the next review in like 15-20 minutes honestly

Holy shit


After the nightmare of the caves in Pikmin 2, Pikmin 3 is such a breath of fresh air, it took nine years for this game to come out and man it shows.
Pikmin 3 basically improves on almost everything from the previous 2 games, ok yeah some small things the first two games did better, like the story and the characters I liked better in first two……….that’s about it.
Can I just say, the new Pikmin they added are excellent, I didn’t much care for the white and purple Pikmin in Pikmin 2, but I adore the rock and flying Pikmin in this game, they feel much more well rounded and are used more throughout the game, in fact unlike Pikmin 2 where a lot of things could be made obsolete by the purple Pikmin, in this game everything is balanced, rock Pikmin are powerful but they can’t latch onto things, and flying Pikmin can more easily traverse areas but are weak in combat, the balance here is wonderful.
Speaking of combat, it’s been greatly improved here, the lock on is nice and in general you have more control over your Pikmin, there’s a few new enemies to face off against, but what I really want to talk about are the bosses, holy fuck.
These bosses are great, the sheer scale and size of all of them makes the battles feel far more impactful, the first fight with the armored worm thing is so nice, the bat thing in the cave is admittedly pretty easy but also fun, the sandworm thing is a great use of area effects with the constantly changing terrain and it’s satisfying to see this thing launch out of the ground after hitting it enough, the flying bug thing is neat, the fucking plant rock boss in the mud is just gargantuan, like holy shit, I was taken aback by it, and then there’s the plasm wraith, I’ll get to this boss in a bit though.
Oh my god, can I just please talk about the graphics man, they’re fucking beautiful, the first two games look good but oh my goodness, this is next level shit, the way everything looks just immerses you more into the world, which just makes it even better.
I also did both of Olimar’s side adventures, these were pretty neat, Olimar’s assignment was a nice short and simple way of showing us how Olimar explored the planet and ended up getting captured by the Plasm Wraith, and Olimar’s comeback is a nice epilogue to close out the game on.
Before I move on to the final part, let me address my two problems with this game, 1. It’s a little too easy, I mean I know I complained about 2 being hard as shit, but like that was just bullshit difficulty with all the bombs and rocks falling from the ceiling, here though, man it’s just way too easy, even the bosses go down quick (plasm wraith being an exception of course), and this leads to my other problem, 2. The game is very short, it took me like maybe 4-5 hours to beat the main stuff, maybe an extra hour or two for the missing fruit I collected and the Olimar stuff, but it’s just short man, though I guess I prefer the short and sweet route compared to the overstays its welcome route (looking at you Pikmin 2).

Now, the final level, the formidable oak, easily the best part of the game and maybe the whole series, it blends everything we love about Pikmin perfectly together, it takes some of the good elements of the caves in Pikmin 2 like the multiple layers, but adds a lot more atmosphere here, the plasm wraith feels like an excellent upgrade from the water wraith, the puzzles are more complex than some of the ones seen before, it utilizes the three captains really well, it’s long enough to be challenging but doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it all caps off with a fantastic final boss, much like the titan dweevil, it uses all elements to combat you, but adds a twist with the whole bringing down the wraith into pieces and destroying the individual pieces, also electricity doesn’t insta kill every non yellow Pikmin in the game, so that’s a plus, made the titan dweevil fight very annoying.
After all that, you get a nice ending cutscene with Olimar thanking you for rescuing him, you leave as the plasm wraith screams at your ship, and that ends Pikmin 3………(also earlier there’s an extremely funny cutscene where Louie jumps out of your ship, steals all your food supply, runs offscreen, and fucking explodes, it’s so funny man).


So yeah, that’s Pikmin 3, an excellent adventure that just improves on everything the series has done, and it’s easily one of Nintendo’s best games, if Pikmin 4 can top this game, then holy fuck we’re in for something truly special.
Now one last thing before I finish this review off, I played this game once back in 2020 when it first came out on switch, and it’s weird cause I did not remember a fucking thing about the game when I replayed it this time, it’s kinda weird honestly, and since this basically a first playthrough for my brain, I’m just gonna put it on the 2023 list.


Now, we wait for Pikmin 4, just one more week and maybe the Pikmin subreddit will finally be normal again…………oh who am I kidding that place r/BatmanArkham on steroids.

Oh boy



Yeah I did not like this one nearly as much as 1, I will say that it has improved in multiple areas, in fact I’ll list them right now.
The AI and general controls feel better and less clunky, like how the pikmin follow you more closely don’t get lost from the group as often as they did in the first game, the enemy variety has been expanded, I like exploring the worlds and seeing how these areas have changed since the first game, the story and characters are all actually pretty funny, with how the President is basically in debt to loan sharks because something ate some food, and also the dialogue you get with a bunch of different characters after the days are done, it’s all really charming and fun, I was really enjoying the game up until the debt was fully paid………..then the game got worse, now let me explain why I liked this game a lot less than the original.

You can probably guess why I like it less, one simple five letter word that brings this game down for me and many others…….caves.
Now at first, I actually liked the caves, at least when they started out they weren’t overly difficult and didn’t overstay their welcome, but then I started to worry cause the caves appeared a lot throughout the game, I was thinking this was just gonna be like 20-30% of what the game would be and the rest are just exploring the worlds………nope, it’s about what 60-70% of the game is, just going through these caves that are all randomly generated, and kinda detract from the game’s world, like it’s just little dark tunnels with no connection to the world’s theme, all randomly generated in ways.
Now I could forgive them not looking great if we didn’t have to spend too much time in them……..well, some of these fucking caves can go on for a while, the early ones are nice cause they only go on for like 4-5 levels and are generally over quick, but later in the game they go up to 7, 8, 9 levels, and particularly in the wistful wilds, they go over ten levels, which is just fucking crazy, not to mention that they get way harder as the game goes on, and not in a fair way, more in a “let’s put all these fucking enemies in here with bombs and rocks falling from the ceiling while we have electricity gates all around, which instantly kills any non yellow pikmin”, it’s fucking insane, and not in a good way………but I still got every treasure, still fought the final boss which was actually really cool, but was made unnecessarily difficult because of the gauntlet of a cave you gotta go through before, so I only had like 60 pikmin left, which could all easily be wiped out by the electrical attacks………..but I did it, saved Louie, and went for the final treasure, the weight………which needed 100 purple pikmin to carry it, so I went back and got that and got them to carry it, and I watched them carry it. Slowly. Watching. Them. Carry. It.
The speed of the carrying here felt like the developers just laughing at me, all this agony, all the pikmin lost, and this is what I get………..then you learn that Louie was actually the reason why the whole game happened, it’s like great, I should’ve just left you on the planet.


Look, this game is good, but it just feels like an overall downgrade from Pikmin 1, I think if they had tone down the caves and made them more easily digestible (or not randomly generated) and made them more like the theme of the world above, it would’ve improved the game tenfold.
It’s a game that’s great in short bursts but it sadly really overstays its welcome.


Now onto Pikmin 3

Pikmin!



I’ve always been interested in playing this series, and shit there’s no better time than now to get into this series, with the release of Pikmin 1 and 2 on switch, Pikmin 3 deluxe already existing, and with Pikmin 4 just a few weeks away, Pikmin mania is here and it’s time for others to join.
Pikmin 1 is a short and sweet adventure, it’s a game full of life, wonder, and Pikmin getting massacred in the wild, seriously this game may look relaxing, but it’s the exact opposite, it’s a game about time management, being stranded on a planet and your only means of defense being little carrot looking creatures that come out of an onion.
The gameplay loop of Pikmin is very satisfying, the simple act of building up your army and slowly but surely getting the pieces to Olimar’s ship is super fun all the way through.
The enemies all have great designs, they’re very cute looking until they fucking eat or crush or throw your Pikmin, then they’re terrifying, the bosses are also pretty fun, admittedly kinda easy but they look pretty cool and can actually kill a ton of Pikmin if you’re careless.
The game’s whole nature setting adds to the game very well, the areas being kinda connected through a whole forest theme makes the world feel very real and layered.


Not much else to say, it’s a fun little game that can be very stress inducing at times, especially if you’re running out of time and are not very close to the ship, but it’s a very solid introduction to this franchise


Now onto Pikmin 2

Man, at worst I was expecting just plain ol bad for this game, but it’s so much worse than that.



Metroid Other M is a game that fails in almost every single category of being a Metroid game and even a game in general, gameplay that some potential but is disastrously tarnished by having to us just a fucking Wii remote sideways, an overall terrible area to explore with the fucking bottle ship, combat that’s extremely repetitive, any sense of exploration in discovery ruined by the stupid “authorization of items” system and of course waypoints on the map, and to top this shit cake off, a nice bit of piss icing with one of the worst stories I’ve ever seen in a video game, buckle up people, this is gonna be a long one.



Let’s talk about the controls, this is a game built to be action, a team ninja game, and to make a good action game, it requires a lot of buttons, but some fucking genius on the development team decided to have the whole game be controlled with just the Wii remote, not with the nunchuck, just the remote.
This game could’ve easily worked with the nunchuck, like going into first person by pressing Z, and you don’t have to worry about being stationary since you can move with the nunchuck, a ton of things could’ve been fixed but for some reason Sakamoto really wanted it on a Wii remote.
These problems extend to the combat and general gameplay, so let’s get to that.


Combat in this game is absolutely tedious, mostly thanks to the controls, but also cause of the general monotony of killing enemies, not only is it tedious, it’s also just pathetically easy thanks to the “dodge” you can do, which as long as you hit the move button, you’ll dodge an enemy attack, thanks to this dodge mechanic I was able to beat the game with only like 4 energy tanks in total, even fighting Phantoon was easy with the dodge.
Speaking of that, the bosses in this game are not super great, they are better than most of this game’s other stuff, Ridley is probably the only boss I really enjoyed a lot, Phantoon and Queen Metroid are alright, but the rest are just a bunch of jokes, the original bosses in this game are just pathetic, like the lava boss or the weird purple bug thing, and of course everyone’s favorite: construction equipment, and a lot of the returning bosses aren’t that great either, the game’s normal final boss is beyond pathetic considering it’s literally just shooting basic enemies with no challenge whatsoever, I would’ve been pissed if it weren’t for Phantoon being the true final boss that you can face after MB.
Easily one of the worst parts of this game is everything involving the first person camera, it’s super janky, it’s the only way you can use missiles and it makes them a pain to use in any combat scenario, and I absolutely hate every single one of those stupid parts where you’re forced to stay in first person and look for a little itty bitty detail on the screen and scan it, it was horrible every time it happened.


Well, you know, the combat is awful, but maybe the exploration and atmosphere can save the game………….HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA no.
I can just say right now that the bottle ship is easily the worst place you explore in the entire series and it’s not even close, the ship is nothing but constant hallways upon hallways upon hallways, then you reach some beautiful looking nature rooms and think this game will finally get cool and atmospheric, but it turns out these are also just disguised hallways, it’s awful, and there’s no excuse like “oh it’s on a ship and not a planet of course it’s going to be a bunch of hallways”, my answer to that is the BSL station on Fusion, in that game the station felt alive, it has that same sense of mystery and the atmosphere that the planets had while still just being a ship, there was no fake jungle or lava areas, all of it was real, so this game has no excuse feeling this boring to just look at.
Top that all off with the horrible choices with the controller and you got yourself a very bad Metroid game, and it just gets worse.


You want to know a thing I love about these games, finding cool new upgrades and using them in earlier sections you couldn’t access earlier, or just using them in general, it adds variety so things don’t get stale and you always feel like you’re getting rewarded for exploration………..and Other M completely throws that out the window, Samus has most of her items from the start, but thanks to some story and character stuff, she has to follow orders and can only use the items once authorized to by Adam……….this leads to many frustrating moments of trying to unlock something but you can’t cause Adam said you can’t, or the stupidest example is how you aren’t allowed to use the varia suit for half of the fire area, so you’ll be running through an area as fast as possible just so you don’t die from the heat, this is astronomically stupid, it doesn’t help gameplay and makes even less sense in the story, which HOLY FUCKING SHIT LET ME TALK ABOUT THAT.


I’ll start with the characters, all but one of them suck, and that includes Samus, let’s begin with her.
Samus is a cool silent badass, she’s badass in the early games and especially more badass with her characterization in Dread, that game makes it clear she’s not a mute protagonist, but one who just chooses not to speak, and when she does, she chooses to speak the chozo language, showing she has great respect for the ones who raised her.
Other M decided to look more in depth into Samus as a person, delve into her backstory and show how she became a badass……….instead this game decides not only to make her just look weak and pathetic, but actively ruins her character that was established in previous games, in this game Samus is almost like a clumsy soldier who gets taken down a lot by enemies way beneath her, one of the big ones is when the “mysterious creature” attacks her and pins her down, and instead of doing some kind of kick to get out or grabbing its mouth and just blasting it, she kinda just squirms under there and is only saved by one of her allies.
However, that part is no where near as egregious as the infamous scene you all know about, cause much like Puss in Boots 2 and the fucking paw patrol movie, samus has a completely devastating panic attack when she sees the Ridley clone………..do I even need to explain what’s wrong here, Samus has a panic attack seeing an enemy she’s already seen come back multiple times, and has defeated multiple times, sure Ridley killed her parents, but not once in the previous games she reacts like this, in fact, the most likely scenario that would go down here would go something like this:
Samus sees Ridley, shocked to see him alive again, she thinks of all Ridley has taken from her personally and gets enraged, turns on the plasma beam without adam’s authorization, jumps on Ridley and goes fucking apeshit on him for a few quick seconds, then the actual battle would begin, but instead we got samus passing out and being nearly killed by Ridley and only narrowly being saved by her ally……….you know, my favorite part about Samus is how she’s easily able to overcome stuff stacked very much against her, and all without help………..if I didn’t enjoy the Ridley battle I’d probably consider this the absolute worst thing I’ve seen in a video game, character writing wise at least, and it’s all horribly topped off with very wooden acting for Samus, cause silent ol Samus is a talker in thsi game, and trust me, every monologue from her is terrible and it’s not helped by the voice acting.
Now we have our little happy galactic federation bunch, and there’s only like three that have any actual plot relevance.
First is Anthony, I like Anthony, he’s so cool, plus the acting for him is pretty much the only actual good one in the game so there’s that.
Then there’s the deleter, this mysterious assassin among the group, the game builds up to who he is, he’s a side threat built up………..and then the game completely forgets about him, no joke, the game doesn’t tell you who the deleter is and after the meeting with MB, he’s never heard from again, it’s super dumb, and get this, his identity is actually revealed……….in the game’s guidebook, and only there, apparently it was the James guy or whatever, the one whos corpse you find on the way to the final part of the game.
And finally Adam, I fucking despise Adam in this game.
In Fusion, Adam was a simple posthumous character who samus deeply respected enough to make an AI reconstruction of him, and I liked what Adam was there, just a figure Samus looked up to and respected and nothing more, but Adam is in this game a lot, and he’s nowhere near the guy that Samus described in Fusion, here he’s just a generic field commander who feels like he talks down to Samus more than anything, it feels like he doesn’t respect her, he fucking shoots her at one point for whatever reason, and actively harms and halts her progress with the whole authorization thing, he’s also just a bad leader, his whole squadron dies and he just decides to kill himself, and the game tries to make you feel sad at that part but it just fails spectacularly. One last thing I hate about the English version of this game is how they handle the whole Adam calling Samus “lady” thing, it was just a one off line in Fusion but here it’s just weird, it feels like how a discord mod calls an underage girl his “kitten”, it’s super weird and kinda gross honestly (side note: I know this is different in the Japanese version where Samus actively hates the name unlike the English version where she embraces it, but it’s just super weird nonetheless).
Then there’s the game main antagonist, MB, she has almost no presence in the game, does really nothing in the game, they try to give some sappy backstory for her about how she’s an AI who gained emotions or something, like fuck no game I’m not feeling sympathy for the AI recreation of the fucking leader of a terrorist organization who tried to terrorize the entire universe with Metroids twice.
None of these characters are helped in any way by the dialogue, my god it’s generic, characters have no charm of any kind when they say shit, a lot of it is exposition dump like it’s a Michael bay transformers film, but at least there you got to hear badass Peter Cullen as Optimus prime saying the lines, here it’s delivered in the most wooden way imaginable, and of course, we can’t forget, THE BABY.
The plot is a boring sci fi movie, the pacing is inconsistent, a lot of it is just dull, and it doesn’t pull you in enough to make you keep playing, like seriously, this game has a loop of “I don’t want to do anymore combat or any gameplay, give me a cutscene” then you get a cutscene and realize “I don’t want this shitty ass cutscene, bring me back to the gameplay” it’s an endless that repeats until the game ends.



I could talk about more, but you’ve heard it a million times already, this game is a disaster, dare I say it’s Metroid’s Sonic 06. It’s a complete betrayal of what Metroid fundamentally is and it was so bad, it made the franchise lay dormant for years to come, but thanks to the wonderful folks at mercurystream, we got a comeback in the form of Samus Returns, and then a few years later we got Dread, the long awaited 5th entry in the 2D series, and this year we got an excellent remaster of a beloved classic, Metroid Prime, and with Metroid Prime 4 off in the distance and (hopefully) potential remasters of Prime 2 and 3, this franchise is finally looking towards a hopeful future, one where we can finally abandon this fucking travesty of a game.


Welp, at least for now that’s it with my journey through Metroid, until I get Prime 3 (fingers crossed that I get it soon) and a way to access Prime 2 or Samus Returns on legal terms, and hopefully Nintendo puts Zero Mission on the game boy online thing, until then, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this franchise and can now consider myself a Metroid fan.

I’m gonna go wash the awful taste of this game out of my mouth with another playthrough of Super Metroid, or hopefully Prime 3 once it gets delivered to me.