Metroid

[Maf]

I couldn’t find an appropriate thread for this so here goes

 

I tried giving the original Metroid another shot and man that game is brutal. I would say this is the first real try I’ve ever given the game where as before I loaded it up for a couple of minutes just to try it but not really play it. This time I gave it a proper go and did Ok. I got the morph ball, missiles, morph ball bombs, and an energy tank that was on the critical path so not really a secret. 
 

Then I ended up accidentally taking an elevator in to a blue area with enemies that take like a thousand shots to die. I did accidentally blow up a “secret” wall and found a missile expansion tank but it was in a room where things just kept flying out of the ground and knocking me in too...lava? I guess it’s lava. My health went from 99x2 to 72. Then I walked through a couple more doors and there was this blue upside down spider enemy that basically spawned on me and wouldn’t die despite shooting it a ton and Samus exploded and it gave me a password.

 

It’s kind of cool, really. But it’s also a lot of grinding enemies for drops in never ending vertical corridors. I’ll give it another go later. I should be able to do everything I did first time but maybe in under an hour next time...

 

I don’t know. It’s cool, I like it, but fuck, man, this game don’t give 2 shits about enemy spam. 

[HandsomeDead]

It was ages ago I gave the original Metroid a proper shot.  Not the 80s but the early 00s when it was an unlockable on Metroid Prime. 

 

I remember finding and beating Kraid and maybe picking up half a dozen energy tanks and a few important upgrades.  I think I drifted away from it looking for Ridley and not knowing how to progress further.  It gets really hard to know where to go. 

[Maf]

I can’t even get that far. I managed to find a second energy tank but don’t really know where I should go. In a sense health isn’t the problem it’s just the amount of bad guys. Specifically the ones that raise out of the ground/pipes and just don’t stop. They have super weird AI where if you blast them too quick they don’t stop coming out. But if you pace the kills they will stop. But then as soon as you jump over the pipe they just start again. 
 

How did anyone ever play this? This game is too hard for me. 

[HandsomeDead]

Yeah, the combat has a weird pace to it that takes some getting used to.  My favourite thing is the flying enemies that don't despawn during a room transition and can still hit you. 

 

For me it was just a case of getting lost and being unsure what parts of the environment can be interacted with.  Later games have fake walls that you can pass through or destroy but it's not communicated at all and a lot of the areas look the same so it's hard to remember if you've tried something in an area. 

 

Maybe I would have had an easier time with it if I played it around the time.  That kind of level design was fairly common in that era.  Zelda II had a bit of that, too.