A lone developer's love letter to Metroid ends up being an awe inspiring, yet flawed experience. Here's what this game did right for me.
Art: I don't want to call this category graphics because let's be honest, there's only so much ground to break in the realm of 8-bit graphics. However, the art of this game is fantastic. Each area felt distinct and unique without seeming cheesy. I was very pleased with the artistic presentation of this title.
Music: I have to preface this with the fact that I am a fan of synthwave and retrowave music, so it's no surprise that this soundtrack hit the mark for me. The tracks vacillate between upbeat and energetic to ominous and tense. I was feeling this soundtrack.
Gameplay: Overall, the controls on the Switch port felt tight enough. This may vary from the other platforms, but my experience on the switch was that the d-pad and joystick were plenty responsive. The game is an homage to a classic, and as such largely plays like a more modern version of said classic. I had no complaints with the core gameplay.
Design: This is the part that kept me from scoring this game higher. I also need to put a disclaimer here and say that for this title to be a solo work is absolutely amazing. Tom made a fantastic game that did the source material proud. That doesn't overshadow the glaring issues that the game seems to accumulate as you tread into the deeper waters. The layout of the maps start off feeling quite good, but towards the later areas it starts to seem like we were seemingly putting things wherever. I couldn't understand why sometimes you would go for several frames at the middle area of the game, when it gets the most grindy, without seeing a save room but at the end they start to appear with a frequency that was near baffling. Some of the area design that fell flat with me left me thinking that if there was more than an army of one tackling this title some glaring issues could have been outright avoided. That's not to say it's all bad, just that what might seem like a nag at first quickly establishes itself as a multi-instance issue that just feels like a bad design oversight.
Overall: I loved the game. I want to score it higher, but I just can't despite the background that went in to making it. Sometimes bad design is just that. I heard he's working on a part 2 and I will definitely pick that one up and play it to completion. For a first title I think it's a fantastic accomplishment and a great game overall. The negatives are serious enough to hold it back from being an all-time classic within the genre, but the foundation is strong enough that this franchise could easily head that route. We'll just have to see.
Art: I don't want to call this category graphics because let's be honest, there's only so much ground to break in the realm of 8-bit graphics. However, the art of this game is fantastic. Each area felt distinct and unique without seeming cheesy. I was very pleased with the artistic presentation of this title.
Music: I have to preface this with the fact that I am a fan of synthwave and retrowave music, so it's no surprise that this soundtrack hit the mark for me. The tracks vacillate between upbeat and energetic to ominous and tense. I was feeling this soundtrack.
Gameplay: Overall, the controls on the Switch port felt tight enough. This may vary from the other platforms, but my experience on the switch was that the d-pad and joystick were plenty responsive. The game is an homage to a classic, and as such largely plays like a more modern version of said classic. I had no complaints with the core gameplay.
Design: This is the part that kept me from scoring this game higher. I also need to put a disclaimer here and say that for this title to be a solo work is absolutely amazing. Tom made a fantastic game that did the source material proud. That doesn't overshadow the glaring issues that the game seems to accumulate as you tread into the deeper waters. The layout of the maps start off feeling quite good, but towards the later areas it starts to seem like we were seemingly putting things wherever. I couldn't understand why sometimes you would go for several frames at the middle area of the game, when it gets the most grindy, without seeing a save room but at the end they start to appear with a frequency that was near baffling. Some of the area design that fell flat with me left me thinking that if there was more than an army of one tackling this title some glaring issues could have been outright avoided. That's not to say it's all bad, just that what might seem like a nag at first quickly establishes itself as a multi-instance issue that just feels like a bad design oversight.
Overall: I loved the game. I want to score it higher, but I just can't despite the background that went in to making it. Sometimes bad design is just that. I heard he's working on a part 2 and I will definitely pick that one up and play it to completion. For a first title I think it's a fantastic accomplishment and a great game overall. The negatives are serious enough to hold it back from being an all-time classic within the genre, but the foundation is strong enough that this franchise could easily head that route. We'll just have to see.