Metroid

Metroid

This was my first request! Anyways, I was told to check out the famous Metroid, so I fired it up and off I went. Now the only games I've ever played that Samus was in were the Super Smash Bros Series, so I was expecting to be able to charge up my giant energy ball and drop mines when I crouch. This wasn't entirely the case, but it was still interesting to play the game for a character I've been using for the past 10 years. But anyways, back to my impressions.

I was surprised again that there was absolutely no backstory, no explanation to what you're trying to accomplish (besides survive and shoot spikey things I guessed), no reason why you are there or anything. Just New Game... Woah! Look out for those spikey things! So I went scouring the internet to find what the manual said and was I surprised. There is a very lengthy story about how, in the future, space pirates are a huge problem and end up stealing some newly discovered life form called "Metroid" that just wiped out an entire planet. You are Samus Aran, a mysterious cyborg pirate-killing that is the best of the best (notice it says *he* not *she*). Anyways, your job is to infiltrate the Space Pirate's base and destroy the Mother Brain before they multiply the Metroids and take over the galaxy... Wow. That's seems like one of the most intricate explanations for an NES game that I will ever come across.

Press Start and you're already dodging this spikey things

Also worth mentioning, the health system confused me for awhile. I thought at first the number in the top left meant how many shots you had (those two orange dots reminded me of bullets ok?). When I found out that I had unlimited energy bullets, I realized that it had to be my health. But 30 health is a lot to start with right? No. I soon figured out that when you get hit, you don't just lose 1 health, you lose upwards of 8 or 9. All in all, you die. A lot.

What I Liked: The combat was pretty fun and entertaining. Different enemies required different strategies to kill (those bee-like things were the end of me several times before I figured it out). Many times the game requires you to jump around to evade all these flying enemies while trying to shoot those coming straight for you, which ends up making a very intense fight that got me pretty into it. There also was a saving system that, though it was confusing to me, probably worked pretty well.

What I Hated: I know this was probably one of the first "free roam" games ever, but it really frustrated me. I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do. I frequently would fight my way 3 screens over to find out the door was locked and I'd have to turn around and fight the same enemies again. There was no map that I could tell of, so I was continually wandering around until I died. It just made me lose any interest I had in the game. *Edit : I was not aware that there was a map of sorts in the manual*

Mother Brain (of course, I did not get this far)

My Impression: It was not a bad game, but not my favorite by far. I could tell that if I got really into it, it could be really fun, but the constant running into the red doors that wouldn't let me pass just made me too frustrated to keep playing. I later learned that missiles break the doors, but no longer had the patience at the time to go searching around randomly for the missiles while I constantly kept running into doors that require them. It did make me want to try out Super Metroid though, as I've been told it is a much better version of the original with some pretty epic boss fights.

It reminded me a lot of Zelda, but as a side-scroller instead. In both games, you run around fighting bad guys that you can't really tell what they are, and you eventually find some power ups that let you access places you couldn't previously go to. Also, they are both very, very open worlded

Overall, a very frustrating game to a current-gen gamer, but an original that created one of the most famous and well known gaming series of all time.

**GameFaqs was used for storyline purposes only**