My Favorite Metroid-Vania Games Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Upon investigating, Samus gets infected along with the organic components of her power suit and it must be surgically removed. Even with that though it doesn’t look good for our heroine and she’s going to die. That is until one scientist gets the radical idea to create “a vaccine” using Metroid DNA to transform Samus into part Metroid in the hopes that it will fight off the X parasites infecting her system.

This works! Huzzah Samus is saved albeit with a new look and no powers (she lost her suit remember?) and thus she’s back to the beginning of her capabilities in time for a new adventure. And as she’s now part Metroid she has their weakness to the cold.

Stuff goes down on the Space Station where the X were being studied and she decides to work with the Federation (no, not THAT Federation), to help them understand what’s going on and maybe rescue the station. And so, begins the game.

As much as this game has a story line with characters and interaction, and that REALLY irked some people, it takes place within the environment that much better suits the goals of the original games, Melancholic loneliness. Samus is alone on a space station, empty of all non-hostile life, fighting to find out the truth, and save herself and potentially the galaxy.

Now her power ups come in the form of data unlocks and downloads that her superiors determine she can have access to when appropriate, and powerups absorbed from huge X parasites that were mimicking bosses. It doesn’t allow for much in the way of sequence breaking and is part of the huge complaints there were about the game being too linear. I still take the “Doesn’t Matter, Still Metroid” approach.

Gameplay wise Samus gets some new moves she didn’t have before, like ledge-hanging, and some new powerups she didn’t have before. She also loses the grappling beam. Which sucks because I loved that concept.

3. Metroid: Other M

I’m just going to get all the Metroid games I’ve played and loved out of the way since they are my favorites. Metroid: Other M was for the Wii and Wii U and my daughter and I got it for Christmas the year we got our Wii. I seem to be in the vast minority online that loved this game. Partly I love it because it was a game that let me make fun memories with my daughter, and partly because “Doesn’t Matter, Still Metroid”. That and not really being interested in the politics of the game that people were complaining about online. I’ll say this though, an independent military contractor, Samus Aran, asked to join a Federation mission to investigate a space station, so it always stood to reason to me that she should play by their rules and not use any of her powers until they had authorized her, lest she cause damage to the station or endanger the workers there or the other soldiers. That’s my piece.

I’ve never actually finished this game because we got to an elevator boss fairly late (I think) in the game and hadn’t gotten enough of the items for health that we needed to beat him at our skill levels. And then we packed up and moved houses and I got a new girlfriend and we never set up the Wii again. That said, it kinda bugs me that that could happen in a Metroid game, and I’ll say it’s as much a gameplay flaw as it is my own lack of skill levels.

Continued in Part 3