Metroid is a deeply flawed series

[PacBunnyXV07]

too much talking and stoping in fusion. messes up speed flow

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Super Metroid is too slow so there

it is because I say so. so dont talk back

 

[mrgone]

too much talking and stoping in fusion. messes up speed flow

since i haven't played SM when i played MF, i did not see the text as a negative

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

since i haven't played SM when i played MF, i did not see the text as a negative

Metroid Fusion is more story heavy than Super Metroid

 

[SG854]

since i haven't played SM when i played MF, i did not see the text as a negative

zero mission better faster

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too much talking and stoping in fusion. messes up speed flow

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it is because I say so. so dont talk back

 

[Reploid]

I only think Prime is boring AF, while rest is decent at least.
It tries to be FPS (or look like one), but gunplay is dull and plot is barely there, which only adds to zzz factor. Maybe leveldesing is alright, I dunno.

 

[Deleted User]

I only think Prime is boring AF, while rest is decent at least.
It tries to be FPS (or look like one), but gunplay is dull and plot is barely there, which only adds to zzz factor. Maybe leveldesing is alright, I dunno.

I'm going to assume you never got really far into the game since you weren't into it which is fine, but like other Metroids there's a ton of upgrades and it's just amazing to me they could accomplish what they did in a first person game it's never been done before and only attempted to be duplicated since, while 99% of other first person games are still pretty much just pew pew pew shoot then shoot some more. You're entitled to your opinion but I can't disagree more as someone who's beaten around 600 games in my life to me Metroid Prime 1 especially is a masterpiece. It's also one of the highest reviewed games on average of all time so game critics agree with me.

 

[grubgrub]

Other M is the best
Best story
Best gameplay
Best everything

 

[ChiefReginod]

why exactly is Super Metroid the best?

Because it's the best of the three classic Metroidvania-style Metroids. It has its own set of flaws, for sure, but the map and progression are the best in the series. Despite the flaws, it flows really, really well.

I don't have a problem with the story in Fusion being so central. The bigger problem for me is the disjointed map, the boss fights that could have been great but just come down to mashing shoot really fast, and the fact that new players could easily screw themselves at the end of the game if they don't grab enough power-ups before 90% of the map is locked. I think the story is actually pretty well done for what it is.

Zero Mission does a lot of things right, especially fixing up the iffy controls from the other two. But despite the map being way more wide open than Fusion, it still feels kind of disjointed. I keep wanting to think that it's the best of the three since it feels so polished, but every time I replay it I'm reminded that it doesn't flow anywhere near as well as Super Metroid. Plus it's a lot shorter than the other two and the difficulty spikes in ways that it shouldn't (ie, the shinesparking is harder than the boss fights).

Samus Returns doesn't deserve to be included here. Broken, headache of a game.

 

[ChiefReginod]

I'm going to assume you never got really far into the game since you weren't into it which is fine, but like other Metroids there's a ton of upgrades and it's just amazing to me they could accomplish what they did in a first person game it's never been done before and only attempted to be duplicated since, while 99% of other first person games are still pretty much just pew pew pew shoot then shoot some more. You're entitled to your opinion but I can't disagree more as someone who's beaten around 600 games in my life to me Metroid Prime 1 especially is a masterpiece. It's also one of the highest reviewed games on average of all time so game critics agree with me.

You have to factor in that most of those critic reviews were written at the time of its release. Present-day, almost no one recommends the GameCube version, even specifically citing the broken controls as a stopping point. If you ask on any Metroid board whether it's still worth playing, most people will say, "They fixed the controls in the Wii version, so play that one instead." The only ones who still stick to the GC version seem to be the speedrunners and people who played it on that system when it was new.

So, all of that considered, it's hard to take all of those glowing reviews as anything but a snapshot of the wow factor people felt in 2002. I don't see how the score still applies today. Maybe the Wii version is actually that much better, I don't know.

There is no updated version of Super Metroid. It is today what it was in 1994. People still say it's great despite its "outdated" aspects and most new players who manage to get through it still sing its praises, albeit with caveats for the wall-jump mechanic or whatever else. It's not perfect but it survives its imperfections, which Prime doesn't do half as well.

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Other M is the best
Best story
Best gameplay
Best everything

I enjoyed it much more than Prime at least. The story could have been fine as it was if they didn't screw up Samus. I think a lot of the story hate is more about that.

Going for 100% at the end feels much more like a Metroid game than anything released post-Zero Mission. So it has that going for it. A lot of other people have said the same thing. There's a great Metroid game buried in there somewhere. It jut could have been better than what it was, but still isn't as bad as people say.

 

[ChiefReginod]

I was playing old games (90s and early 2000s) in rencent few years till now. So I can understand how you feel and here's the reason: you are looking backward with a NEW or PRESENT method, or viewpoint.

When palying old games, I keep telling myself: you should consider the circumstance the game was created at before you judge it. If you take the present point to old things, most of them are outdated.

I'vs played 10 main titles of metroid, except MPH on DS and FF on 3DS. So I think I have some sort of right to discuss this one of my favorite series.

Prime 1 was definitely a great game at 2002. Before this, I doubt you could ever play a 3D game which has FPS, puzzles and exploration these elements FUSED together and still be with such a high completion. This game is definitely pioneering at 2002.

You mentioned controls are broken. Maybe you just COMPARED Prime with Halo, or some present FPS game (with modern FPS control). With nowaday opinion, left stick TURNS character left or right rather than MOVES left or right and right stick does not control cursor seems a little dumb. Yes I agree with this. But with existence of LOCK ON, I feel this dumb control acceptable.
If you are really feeling this control so bad, you can try Prime trilogy on wii, that's way more comfortable.

I started my gaming career on one of those old tabletop LED Pac-Man units, then on to Atari 2600, NES, all the 16 and 32-bit consoles and onward. I still mostly play older games and I think I'm pretty good about taking date of release into account. Some games just hold up better than others. Most recently I just played through Shining Force CD for the first time. The menus and equipment setup in that game are atrocious by modern standards but I didn't stress over it as I played since the core game is still solid.

My problem with Prime isn't that the controls are outdated. It's that it was bad design to force the user to change weapons and visors so often that a whole analog stick had to be dedicated to it, while at the same time touting that the action wasn't central. To make it worse, you even have to change visors in the middle of battles, sometimes even multiple times. I fought with the controls far more than I fought the actual battles.

The difference between Prime and other early FPSs with similar control setups is that you didn't have to change your equipment every few seconds in other games. I mean you even have to change weapons just to open basic doors. It didn't need to be such a headache. There are probably a hundred ways they could have made it less stop and go.

 

[duwen]

My history with the Metroid games begins with Super Metroid when it first released for SNES. Not only had I never played the original Metroid (or it's Gameboy sequel) at that point, but I'd not played any of the Castlevania's either, so while not a wholly original formula it was still my first experience of what would become a genre (sub-genre?) beloved by many. I don't remember completing the game back in the early 90's, I think the backtracking wound up boring me, but I could still appreciate the gaming experience as being something special. I didn't revisit the game until over a decade later and found it to be a much more involving experience than I remembered it from my first time. Around the same time I played Metroid II on my GBA and enjoyed it almost as much, and followed it with Zero Mission (so, essentially played the original 'trilogy' in reverse chronology) which became my favourite of the series... until I played Fusion, which I still feel is the closest to perfect that the 2D games have achieved... but none of them are perfect, and I fully agree with many of the points raised by the OP. And I feel similarly about the Castlevania games, and if anything consider them to be more flawed than the Metroid games.
Onto the Prime games... with a quick footnote to say that my experiences with ALL of these games has been on the actual hardware they were released for - no rereleases (save for the remakes), no emulation, no savestates. The first two Prime games on Gamecube were fantastic experiences when they released two decades ago, but they're not easy games to return to these days due to how we've come to expect FPS games to behave on consoles. Regardless, they were among the best reasons to own a Gamecube back then. Prime 3 I've never played, although I do own it for Wii and probably will play it at some point. Other M... despite the negativity around it there are a lot of reasons to like it, but the story kind of sucks and the flip-flopping between play styles becomes extremely tedious very quickly. It would probably have been a much better game on Gamecube, with the limitations that made Prime what it was, than it turned out to be on Wii shoehorning in every gimmick in that systems arsenal. Honestly, I've never completed Other M and I don't feel I'm missing out.
I only ever played the 'First Hunt' demo version of Prime Hunters on DS - honestly felt like an unnecessary title for a system that couldn't handle it adequately.
At some point, on one of its VC releases, I tried the original NES Metroid. While it's still playable, and interesting to see the genesis of the franchise, it's totally irrelevant due to the superior GBA remake.
I thought the same might be true of the 3DS remake of Metroid 2, but I think they're such different experiences that the Gameboy original is probably still the best way to experience that entry in the series. That said, I never got around to completing Samus Returns on 3DS.
Federation Force and Blast Ball are spin-offs that I spent so little time with that I can't really share an opinion. However, Metroid Prime Pinball is bizarrely the title I've put the most time into. It's most definitely a spin-off, but it's a damn good video pinball title.

My overall opinion of the franchise is that on paper I love it and it totally appeals to me in every respect, but in practice, at best, I'm always at least just a little let down, and at worst disappointed that they fail to live up to the extremely lofty expectations and hype... I feel exactly the same about both the Mega Man and Castlevania franchises.

 

[Deleted User]

Games don't age poorly, new gamers come along and don't pay attention to things from the past. The games are exactly the same as they were when they were released. The game was fantastic then and it's fantastic now. There are too many gamers that don't want to play a game that's older than the generation we're in and that's a shame because they miss out on so much. I still play everything from NES to current.

How people can hate on Metroid Prime and turn around say Halo and Call of Duty are masterpieces when all you do pretty much is shoot in those games with different backgrounds is pretty stupid. I'm not saying you said those games are masterpieces but others think so.

Metroid Prime showed a first person game can be something more where it had platforming, rolling in a ball, doing the screw attack. There was nothing from Super Metroid you couldn't do in Prime. The graphics for it's time was fantastic, the gameplay was great. The only knock on it is lack of story but no Metroid games have much story. Why people hate on it I have no idea but I just consider that poor taste on their part, or I think some played it for 30 minutes and got bored and didn't continue due to short attention spans.

 

[tomberyx]

Super Metroid 3 is the mother of all metroids.
This game is more than a Master Piece.
Nobody can explain what is a "master piece" you have to play this amazing game and you will see what i mean.About Story ,the best part ist you dont know what the story is only at the beginning of the game you will see a little of the story but not too much, and this makes it so great.
This game can not be comapared with the new games today there is so much magic inside that the new games never reached. If you understand Metroid 3 you will love Metroid Prime 1-2

There are many other Metroid games that pack you full of history and destroy everything that is exciting.
Metroid doesn't need a story, it gets it from playing. Unfortunately, with many other games it is the case that the story is in the foreground and actually already knows what is coming next. I HATE THAT

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

Because it's the best of the three classic Metroidvania-style Metroids. It has its own set of flaws, for sure, but the map and progression are the best in the series. Despite the flaws, it flows really, really well.

I don't have a problem with the story in Fusion being so central. The bigger problem for me is the disjointed map, the boss fights that could have been great but just come down to mashing shoot really fast, and the fact that new players could easily screw themselves at the end of the game if they don't grab enough power-ups before 90% of the map is locked. I think the story is actually pretty well done for what it is.

Zero Mission does a lot of things right, especially fixing up the iffy controls from the other two. But despite the map being way more wide open than Fusion, it still feels kind of disjointed. I keep wanting to think that it's the best of the three since it feels so polished, but every time I replay it I'm reminded that it doesn't flow anywhere near as well as Super Metroid. Plus it's a lot shorter than the other two and the difficulty spikes in ways that it shouldn't (ie, the shinesparking is harder than the boss fights).

Samus Returns doesn't deserve to be included here. Broken, headache of a game.

Thats not saying much considering Metroid 1 & 2 aren't that great. I would rather play Zero Mission or Samus Returns 3DS over Super Metroid.

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Because it's the best of the three classic Metroidvania-style Metroids. It has its own set of flaws, for sure, but the map and progression are the best in the series. Despite the flaws, it flows really, really well.

I don't have a problem with the story in Fusion being so central. The bigger problem for me is the disjointed map, the boss fights that could have been great but just come down to mashing shoot really fast, and the fact that new players could easily screw themselves at the end of the game if they don't grab enough power-ups before 90% of the map is locked. I think the story is actually pretty well done for what it is.

Zero Mission does a lot of things right, especially fixing up the iffy controls from the other two. But despite the map being way more wide open than Fusion, it still feels kind of disjointed. I keep wanting to think that it's the best of the three since it feels so polished, but every time I replay it I'm reminded that it doesn't flow anywhere near as well as Super Metroid. Plus it's a lot shorter than the other two and the difficulty spikes in ways that it shouldn't (ie, the shinesparking is harder than the boss fights).

Samus Returns doesn't deserve to be included here. Broken, headache of a game.

You do know there are secret tunnels that connects to the different maps in Fusion? Also you can say that all the 2D Metroids are short of you speed run them and use exploits.

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Super Metroid 3 is the mother of all metroids.
This game is more than a Master Piece.
Nobody can explain what is a "master piece" you have to play this amazing game and you will see what i mean.About Story ,the best part ist you dont know what the story is only at the beginning of the game you will see a little of the story but not too much, and this makes it so great.
This game can not be comapared with the new games today there is so much magic inside that the new games never reached. If you understand Metroid 3 you will love Metroid Prime 1-2

There are many other Metroid games that pack you full of history and destroy everything that is exciting.
Metroid doesn't need a story, it gets it from playing. Unfortunately, with many other games it is the case that the story is in the foreground and actually already knows what is coming next. I HATE THAT

Metroid 3 is a masterpiece? I would disagree.

 

[tomberyx]

Thats not saying much considering Metroid 1 & 2 aren't that great. I would rather play Zero Mission or Samus Returns 3DS over Super Metroid.

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You do know there are secret tunnels that connects to the different maps in Fusion? Also you can say that all the 2D Metroids are short of you speed run them and use exploits.

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Metroid 3 is a masterpiece? I would disagree.

Yes you are right, i forget to say that Metroid 1 [Nes] and 2 (Game Boy) are also a special pieces. Both are awesome special parts but Metroid 2 is my Favorite . But the most on the top(in my Opinoin )is Metro 3. The think is that what the most people out there dont did they didnt play Play m1 and m2 to understand m3 and love M-Prime the rest of the series are just Remakes with too much story but have many things of Metroid mechanics. Also is important to know if you grow up with These games or not.

 

[duwen]

How people can hate on Metroid Prime and turn around say Halo and Call of Duty are masterpieces when all you do pretty much is shoot in those games with different backgrounds is pretty stupid.

Halo gets the praise it does for being the first console FPS to nail the controls - pretty much every console FPS since has used almost exactly the same controls; left stick moves, right stick controls view, shoulder buttons shoot. If the GC's controller had been designed slightly differently and Nintendo had nailed FPS controls the way Halo did, Prime would be pretty much an untouchable classic.
As for CoD... meh... it's trash, always has been, always will be. No one in their right mind is calling any CoD title a masterpiece.

 

[Deleted User]

Halo gets the praise it does for being the first console FPS to nail the controls - pretty much every console FPS since has used almost exactly the same controls; left stick moves, right stick controls view, shoulder buttons shoot. If the GC's controller had been designed slightly differently and Nintendo had nailed FPS controls the way Halo did, Prime would be pretty much an untouchable classic.
As for CoD... meh... it's trash, always has been, always will be. No one in their right mind is calling any CoD title a masterpiece.

Guess you never played a game called Goldeneye, nailed the controls long before Halo.

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

Halo gets the praise it does for being the first console FPS to nail the controls - pretty much every console FPS since has used almost exactly the same controls; left stick moves, right stick controls view, shoulder buttons shoot. If the GC's controller had been designed slightly differently and Nintendo had nailed FPS controls the way Halo did, Prime would be pretty much an untouchable classic.
As for CoD... meh... it's trash, always has been, always will be. No one in their right mind is calling any CoD title a masterpiece.

Modern Warfare 2

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Guess you never played a game called Goldeneye, nailed the controls long before Halo.

Feel like Halo did a better job and if Goldeneye did nailed it how come there wasn't a game that took Goldeneye controls?

 

[Ibcap]

Before you disagree with me I'm going to need to know which of the Metroid games you've completed without FAQs or save states

Super Metroid, Zero Mission, Fusion, am2r if that counts, prime 2 (pretty sure I used guides for the stupid hidden keys in prime 1)

and why you think the controls aren't completely broken from Prime onward.

Id say its on you to explain why the controls ARE broken? ZM and Fusion basically just have Super Metroids controls, except much tighter and more responsive. The only major changes i can think of are you dont have a dedicated run button (a bit of a downgrade but far from 'completely broken') and using L as a diagonal up and down aim button rather than having individual sholder buttons for both directions. Understandable when moving to a console with fewer buttons to work with.
I dont think either ZM or Fusion is perfect, but I also dont think youve put up a single argument for why theyre as bad as you seem to think they are. If it werent for ZM being so short and having such a small map compared to Super I think I would consider it the best game in the series. Fusion is bogged down by its linearity a bit, but overall its still a fantastic title imo.

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

Wait who said Metroid Prime has bad controls?