it'd be way too harsh for me to complain that this still outdoes every other third person shooter bc it had such an insane unsustainable dev cycle but god I still want to! even disregarding the ridiculous amount of ideas that went into every level of this thing, it's still proof of how far a good combat loop will get you

in fact there's so much good game design wisdom here, the games it inspired almost universally took steps to make the core gameplay more frictionless and less restrictive and ended up way less engaging and satisfying for it, I wouldn't change these controls for the world and if the remake does I'll be thoroughly disappointed

final point - thanks to said controls this game is fucking SCARY with headphones on and the volume up and I will stand by that forever, the sound design is neither subtle nor complex but it works so well to instill panic in players like me who don't like having shit behind them

wonderful little compelling mood piece & learning experience of a game <3 so addictive to slowly explore this world and use your own wits (HINT HINT PIKMIN 2!!!) to master your own arsenal. just enough stress to make things exciting and tense - i need to go back and do a full 30 part run because i just missed it by a day or two and i don't want to make myself suffer through the full final level & boss on day 30 lol. glad you can get the standard ending and give yourself a little wiggle room but i'm looking forward to getting the real one

HATE when the little freak jumps at me

(wanted to come back to this lil joke review after playing SCIV bc that game really makes me appreciate this one more. I think it's really easy to see why CV1 is such a thoroughly canonised part of the NES library, it's just effortlessly iconic and weirdly tasteful for what it is! I seriously think that HUD is one of the best and most underappreciated pieces of video game graphic design, and the little cinematic touches w/ stuff like the opening and level transition map are all just really solid and effective. game is legit gorgeous all the way through, and before it descends into "please just holy water cheese this" territory it's damn near perfectly designed)

it's such a revalation that samus' moveset actually provides a lot of room for creative and fun combat - the bosses are obviously the best part of this game imo and maybe the best they've ever been in this series? at least divorced from context, because that's where dread starts to falter a lot

there's like, zero atmosphere here imo, the soundtrack is completely unmemorable and it would probably take me a while to remember which zone is which. this is also, pardon the obvious joke, one of the least dread-inducing metroid games yet. everything is so compartmentalised and checkpoints are aplenty, I was pretty happy that the EMMI encounters felt pretty distant to me as I finished the game bc imo they're 100% garbage! not scary in the slightest, you can bash your head against each section where you encounter them until you trial and error your way through with little threat to your actual game progress, if I were a fucking hack I'd make a joke about "metroid mild annoyance" but I'm not gonna play that straight, I promise :]

game is a lot of fun though, especially on a 100% run! if mercurysteam keep at it then metroid should be in good hands, which is definitely not something I would've said after playing and subsequently dropping samus returns, I just hope their future efforts have a little more slow-burn tension, even if it means they need to tone the difficulty down

(also let me control the next one with the d-pad pleaseeeeeee I hate the analog stick and I don't think 360 degree aiming is worth using it exclusively for)