Systems: Game Boy Advance, Wii U
Original Release Date: November 17, 2002
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D 1
Play Time: 6h 37m / 14h 47m
I played Metroid Fusion on the Wii U using the Virtual Console version of the game, which is essentially the same game with all of the same mechanics, but the VC allows the player to create a single save-state that can be reloaded. I mention this because I did reload save-states somewhat frequently although I did have some self-imposed rules that I frequently adhered to. I also remapped the shoulder L/R buttons to the ZL/ZR triggers as my index fingers fell there more naturally on the Wii U's gamepad than the shoulder buttons; as well as making Y for attack and B for jump. So for purists, I did not beat Metroid Fusion and for those who do not care, I did beat Metroid Fusion in 6 hours and 37ish minutes in-game time. The 14 hours and 47 minutes is the amount of time the Wii U timed me as having played the game, so I spent nearly half of the game playing previously loaded save-states (more on that below). Interesting to say the least.
Let us just jump to the conclusion. I really liked this game. Loved? I might need to replay it or feel that I could replay it to feel that I love the game. I am a little sad that I listened to whatever the negative reaction was that was so prevalent in my mind that convinced me not to buy the game when it came out in 2002. I also recall seeing promotional images of Ridley and apparently thought that because this iteration looked more cartoonist than previously depicted, that the game was designed for a younger audience. And honestly, the only negative aspect that stuck with me before I started playing was that the story railroaded you into a linear game, devoid of exploration. This critique throws me a bit. The game takes place on a space station as opposed to a planet, so you are locked into one location, but you are also locked into a single planet in the previous games. And the space station has six different biome-areas, so you are not exploring a space station environment the entire game. The railroading in the story comes in because you are directed by the station's computer system to explore, repair, and investigate different areas of the space station. But, you do not always have to listen to the computer either and there is a fair amount of backtracking to access previously closed-off areas as you unlock new abilities and access to previously locked doors. I honestly did not mind how you were directed to different areas to a certain extent as it took a lot of the pressure of having to remember where to go once you unlocked a new ability and I still felt that there was plenty to be explored; although there still was a bit of that.
Story-wise, I enjoyed what was presented here. The prologue I thought felt a little forced in that it could have been exciting to be playing a Metroid game that took a hard left turn, from playing a beefed up Samus to playing her with none of her equipment, similar to Metroid Prime, giving you a taste of your souped-up abilities as well as added fear for what you will be going up against. The prologue starts out with Samus giving some general backstory from the Metroid series, then coming into the present with her being part of a scientific expedition on the Metroid home planet of SR388 when she was attacked by an unknown parasite. Samus ends up crashing her ship during the mission due to the parasite taking over her central nervous system, is rescued and after some time, is administered a vaccine created from a Metroid culture (it was discovered that Metroids had been natural predators of the X-Parasite). Post recovery, she goes to the scientific research station in orbit over SR388 where their samples from the initial expedition were taken where an explosion had just occurred. As you progress through the game, more and more information comes to light regarding the X-Parasite, Metroids, and pulls even more influence from the Alien series that inspired the games in the first place. There were a fair amount of callbacks and homages to previous Metroid games that felt pretty organic and not forced in the way that the entire Pirates of the Caribbean sequels felt.
Jumping ahead a bit in the story, but because we are talking about the story here, this is where I am going to bring this up. During the game, there were cutscenes with Samus talking/thinking to herself, and some of these monologues were about a member of the Federation that she had worked with in the past, a guy named Adam. The way that Adam was first brought up seemed a little out of the blue, mainly because this was the first time I had heard of this character. I thought maybe a flashback to this character was going to happen in the game, but that never occurred. Then I thought that maybe it was a character in Metroid: Other M, but that game was released in 2010 so this was likely Adam's first occurrence in the game, but apparently was a significant person in Samus' life. As you progress through the story, you do find out more about Adam, but for most of the game, I felt like I was missing out on information from a previous game, although this was not the case.
As for the gameplay, it did feel very much like the sequel to Super Metroid, all the way down to the wall-jump which was never featured like it was in Super Metroid and I still sucked at it; although I did manage to pull off a sequence of three or four consecutive wall-jumps to get an early Missile Upgrade. One of the biggest Metroid-type mechanics that changed in this game was how you open doors. You still shoot doors to open them, but in previous games that required either the standard arm cannon or a series of missiles (usually five I think) or a single Super Missile, the doors in this game were locked behind security access. As you progressed through the game, you were granted access to increasing levels of security clearance, allowing you to open more and more doors. Thankfully the game would mark on your map when there was a security door that you could not open so that once you gained that level of security clearance, you could return to an area and do some more exploring. I do wish that you could have accessed the maps for different areas of the station regardless of where you were. So for instance, once you gained Lock 3 access, you could look at the different maps for the station to find out where Lock 3 doors were and head there, without having to travel to each area independently. Really it is just a complaint about time.
Speaking of time, as mentioned above, I did use the save-state and respawn feature as part of the Virtual Console, but I did not spam this mechanism. Most of the time. I had a few rules that I more-or-less abided by.
- I can create a save-state if I have to turn the system off and I am not near an in-game save spot.
- I can create/load a save-state right outside a boss's lair, as long as getting to the boss is not a significant trudge and part of the boss battle experience.
- For the battle against the fight against the spider boss Yakuza, but only after I died the first time. More on that below.
- I can create a save-state if there is a countdown timer immediately following a boss fight.
That was pretty much it. But I did break the last rule during the battle against Yakuza. That battle, in particular, was a pain in the ass; actually, from Yakuza onwards, the boss battles seemed out-of-sync with the difficulty of the rest of the game. For the Yakuza battle, after dying the first time and making my way back to the boss's lair (because I did not realize I was going into a boss battle), I did spam the respawn feature. This boss battle was brutal in that Yakuza would pick Samus up and continually deal damage to her and then body slam her doing more damage; I just discovered that you could wiggle your way out of its grip by just moving left/right on the control pad. . .oops. I think I could survive, at most, four direct attacks before dying. So what I ended up doing was I created a save-state upon being picked up the first time and reloaded from that point every time I died. Once Yakuza took on its second form, I created a new save-state and would reload that one upon dying. I finally created a third and final save-state when it reached the Core-X form.
For the penultimate boss battle in the game, I majorly broke this rule as I created multiple save-states as the fight progressed. There was the first stage which required you to hit the boss around 10 times with a fully charged plasma/wave beam before it takes on its second form. During this battle, I found that the boss would seemingly learn what you were trying to do, for example, I would hang out in a nook and shoot it when it jumped to get at you, and instead, it would hang out on the ground and take shots at you since its own ranged attack could pass through walls. So I would load the game up outside the boss chamber, and once I had managed to damage the boss a few times without taking damage, I created a new save-state. Then I would inevitably die a few times, reloading again and again, before finding a new tactic that worked for a couple of shots, then I would create a new save-state. I would say that I would die no fewer than five times before finding out a new way to attack the boss. The second stage of the boss's form I figured out purely by accident as I was on an elevated platform trying to stay away from it as I only had 32 hp left and found out that I could take pop shots at it as it was jumping at me. The third form took on the familiar Core-X form but the attacks/counter attacks did take some time to figure out.
Lastly, I want to briefly touch on the music. It was definitely not as interesting as either Metroid or Super Metroid. There were no tracks as catchy as the Brinstar theme or the Norfair theme, but this game never felt as heroic in its exploration as those games. To me, Metroid Fusion was not about exploration and possibly for the first time in the series, had some very real horror elements to it. There are a number of sections in the game where Samus is actively hunted and all you can do is run away knowing that if you were to face your attacker you would be killed. There were (at least) two sections when your hunter would appear on the same screen, but there was a wall separating you and them, an I did not move, out of fear that if I made a sound, that would attract attention and I could be killed. I do not know if that was actually a possibility, but the fact that that was how I felt is a major kudos to Nintendo R&D1 for getting me to react that way. The atmosphere in Metroid Fusion is one of frequent dread (eh!?) and worrying about what could be around the next corner and the music does a great job of representing that terror too. One of the downsides of a lot of games that focus somewhat on fear and terror is that apart from a title theme, the in-game music tends to be subdued, more focused on adding to that feeling of fear than one of creating memorable melodies.
I very much enjoyed Metroid Fusion and it still makes me sad that there was a 19-year gap between the mainline Metroid games of Fusion and Metroid Dread, but I will be happy to be able to play Dread so close to having played and finished Fusion. The last thing that somewhat surprised me, was that I had only a 56% item collection rate. This could explain my trouble with some of the bosses, that I just did not collect enough Energy Tanks (I finished the game with, I think, 11?). I know that there were breakable blocks that could only be broken by the Screw Attack that I did not go back for as there was a story-event that sounded urgent, but only urgent in the way that you are told that it was urgent, ie "You need to do this Samus." So I could have diverged from what the computer system was telling me, and oftentimes I did to explore on my own, but towards the end of the game, and after picking up the Screw Attack, I mainly followed the story. So maybe I will go back and see if I can pick up more items, or maybe I will go back through and see if I can actually be the game just to please the purists.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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