me.letsPlay(MetroidOtherM).getPart(3);
And time for the next installment of...
Let's Play: Metroid Other M, Part 3!
When we last left off, Samus was searching Sector 2 for survivors, and we had just picked up the Speed Booster and Shine Spark. The next major room we get to is the Sector Generator Room, where we have to hang off of rotating pillars, jump from them to the wall and back off the wall to catch the next higher layer of the rotating cylinder, shoot a glowing target while hanging from the moving ledge, evade another one of the giant unkillable serpents that's hanging from the ceiling, jump onto and back off of another rotating cylinder... yeesh. It's a good thing Samus is superhuman.
MissileTanks++;
Next area has a long lead up followed by a large gap - time for a Shine Spark. Of course we get jumped on the other side by an electric tentacle monster. I kill that one, only to have another one jump me out of nowhere. I really hate these things.
The next section is the Experiment Floor - which does not bode well. Here we find another of the tree quadruped monsters - rather out of place in the winter wasteland here. Killing it causes a small avalanche that knocks enough snow loose to allow Samus to climb up to the next level... where we find Maurice's frozen corpse. Farewell, sweet Space Cowboy. Samus, however, spots someone watching from the observation room - zooming in, it's a woman in a lab coat. Perhaps the good Dr. Bergman? She sees Samus watching and runs off, so we do the only logical thing: give chase.
She seems a bit paranoid as Samus is chasing her through the storage warehouse - at a slow walk, I might add, since they force the camera into an over-the-shoulder view for this part. She yells that the GF wants to silence everyone who knows about their work here - which makes sense, given the illegal bioweapon research going on. Then she reveals that there's a traitor among the red shirt brigade who killed Maurice. She and Samus are then promptly attacked by said traitor, who is piloting an industrial machine of some kind and launching storage crates at them. They evade the crates, and we get a boss fight.
DeathCount++;
This thing is actually pretty fast for its size - equipped with lasers (that somehow cause the ground to explode) and large claw arms, it's primary methods of attacking are grabbing Samus, running over Samus, or hitting her with lasers. Easiest way to get through this is to find the corner of the room that he can't drive into, and then start shooting. Freeze a shoulder at a time, then missile the shoulder to break off that arm. After both arms are gone, it reveals threshers on the bottom - who knows why it has those. Freeze one of the two back wheels to get the engine to pop out the top as it tries to break out of the ice. Shoot the engine with missiles, and it'll be down in no time.
The thing goes out of control and crashes into a corner, and the traitor escapes without us knowing exactly who it is - he doesn't have the plasma rifle rigging, so it's probably not Anthony, and we know Maurice and Lyle are already dead. That leaves KG, James, or Adam. My money is on James, personally, since he was suspiciously ahead of the rest of the team earlier. In any case, Adam tells us to go back to Sector 3, since the beast from earlier is driving the other creatures in the area to heightened aggression. He tells us to use the Plasma Beam to kill it when we see it - but he doesn't authorize us to use it, yet. That's helpful.
As we leave, the player - but not Samus - sees the traitor dump a frozen red shirt into the lava in Sector 3. Again, neither of them was Anthony, since neither of them had the Plasma Rifle, so I'm guessing James just killed KG.
The next section has a dead-end in one direction that's covered in lowered platforms, and the other direction leads to a section where we need to Shine Spark into the sky, use the morph ball to climb through some tunnels, and eventually... get to a dead end with a power up and a switch on the other side of some glass that we can't get to yet.
MissileTanks++;
EnergyTanks++;
So now we backtrack, and at the last part where the path split, clear walls crash down, trapping Samus in a box. Then Space Pirate Cyborgs drop down on the other side of the glass - could be worse, right? Well, perhaps, except that they have weapons that can shoot through the glass without damaging it. It's like that magic trick where the magician goes into the box and his lovely assistant shoves swords through the box and he comes out undamaged - except that they don't intend to let you out until you're dead. After dodging for about a minute, Adam authorizes the use of the Wave Beam - took you long enough, ass. So we kill the things through the glass and that makes the walls retract... somehow.
Item Attained: Wave Beam
Increases beam damage and allows shots to phase through transparent and translucent surfaces.
Now we go back down the path we just came from, all the way back to the switch on the other side of the glass - except we no longer give a damn about the glass because we have the Wave Beam. We hit the switch, and an elevator is lowered in the section beneath our current position. We leave to head back to our previous location - and we're followed down by an avalanche. Samus out runs it and Shine Sparks to the side and out the door, leaving most of the room buried - it's a good thing I already got all of the power ups in that room.
Now the platforms down the original dead end are raised, and we can climb up those, freezing and unfreezing certain platforms as necessary. At the top we fight another pair of electric tentacle monsters, and past them is the Materials Transfer Lift - i.e. the elevator we lowered earlier. Hm. Large square platform, long tunnel... either there's a cutscene or a fight on this lift.
... a fight it is. Space Pirate Cyborgs drop down from the ceiling, and after clearing them out, a boss appears to maul us.
DeathCount++;
This thing is damn fast - we have to wait for it to charge for a long time and reveal a red light, then fire a missile at it before it fires at us. Give it a lethal shot while it's down, and it... gets up and flies off. Bet we'll be seeing him again. The next room has a Power Bomb door that we can't get through yet, and tanks with some dark substance inside. Rolling into a broken pipe reveals a few switches which drain the tanks, leaving them clear. Then we can hit a switch on the other side of them to reveal a morph ball tunnel out of there, leading us back to the Main Elevator shaft.
Back up to the Main Sector, then down to Sector 3. The way forward is locked, so I guess we're backtracking through the former rising lava room - not very exciting now that the lava is stationary. Then there's the bridge we ran across while dodging volcanic fallout - no more fallout, but bits of the bridge are missing. Luckily we can Shine Spark across the largest gap.
We get to the control room where we have to fight the giant metal trilobite again, and then activate a panel that we couldn't previously. This unlocks the path forward, so we head back across the bridge - which is actually long enough that we can charge up and Shine Spark twice.
In the next room after the main elevator room we see Anthony on the upper level fighting the thing we fought at the top of the lift earlier - and he's not doing so great... and apparently taking too long causes the thing to throw Anthony down into the lava, causing a non-standard game over.
DeathCount++;
DeathCount++;
So we can't shoot it, and there's no obvious way to get up there. We can't just position ourselves in the lava beneath where he's going to fall and catch him. So what do we do? Apparently look up at the Grapple Beam point above our heads - at which point (but only then) Adam authorizes the use of the Grapple Beam. Once again, fuck you sir. Fuck. You.
Item Attained: Grapple Beam
Allows Samus to attach and swing from grapple points.
DeathCount++;
DeathCount++;
I die twice to the thing for real since it's damn fast and this area is even more cramped than the last place we fought it. Eventually I take it out, much in the same way I did last time, and it runs off, diving into the lava. We'll see it again.
Exposition time! The red shirt brigade was sent to meet at the navigation booth nearby - all two remaining members, anyways. Anthony showed up, but when no one else did, he did some looking around and got attacked. The red shirt brigade's task is to get the Geothermal Power Plant back online - which Anthony comments is an odd thing to send an entire unit to do. Then we get a nice little flashback - during some routine repair operation, something goes horribly awry. Adam has to give the order to disengage the repair ship - with his little brother Ian, the soldier in charge of doing the repairs, still inside. A younger Samus flips out and says that she can still make it, she can save him - but Adam stands firm. Anthony is also there, and looks surprised - but says nothing. Anthony of the present makes a passing remark about "if something like that happened now...?" Foreshadowing much? Samus monologues that she would hold on to the glimmer of hope of redemption, but admits that Adam was right, then.
Moving on to the Blast Furnace. We grapple up to a ventilation shaft that leads to some Grapple Beam points suspended by some rigging. Blowing up the rigging lets them float down and hover in the area below... except for the one that gets swallowed by the giant lava whale as it jumps up towards you. Combine that with the fact that the remaining Grapple Beam points span a chasm between to large rock platforms, and I'm guessing it's boss time.
Sure enough, once we get down there and down to the middle section, the lava whale attacks us. Shoot its underbelly a bunch, and eventually it'll open its mouth, revealing the Grapple Beam point lodged in its throat - that'll teach it to chew its food. Grapple it and you'll beach it, allowing you to get a bunch more shots in for free. Halfway through it swallows the Grapple Beam point, meaning we now have to do this the hard way. It also decides that suddenly it can charge across land and tries to do this a couple of times. Kill it, and half the lava drains from the room, revealing a new exit.
Right before the next save point, Adam says the thing we're tracking is heading to the geothermal electric power generator - i.e. the same place everyone else is supposed to be heading. This should be interesting.
Next hallway is full of sand... and has a grapple point over perfectly normal looking ground? Why would I need...? ... oh. Of course, giant sand snake attacks me otherwise. That makes sense.
The next full sized room is another holodeck area, this one looking like a desert, complete with sand and rocks and... a crane? In any case we have to shoot the crane to rotate it, so that we can grapple off of the Grapple Point attached to it to reach the platform with the holodeck generator, and then reach the exit, which leads us into the base of the Desert Refinery.
"We allow only the finest deserts on our space station, mmyes."
MissileTanks++;
It's a giant round building with security robots on the outside - much easier to kill at this point in the game. When we get to the very top, the recurring boss bursts out of the elevator and charges us. After beating it up a bit more, it takes to the skies. Eventually I knock it down and over the edge with a missile, but I didn't see it die, so it'll probably be back. For now we take the elevator down through the Desert Refinery and beneath it to find... chain Grapple Beam points, of course. This leads us to a section we've been to at least once before - but now that we have the Varia Suit and the Grapple Beam, we can take a different route in one of the large lava filled rooms.
Eventually we get to a room where we can see that the beast from previously has broken out of its second skin and therefore is in a new third form. But we haven't found the third form yet - instead we get to robots shooting constant laser beams of doom across our path. Freeze them, move on. Then we get to the Geothermal Power Plant, with a Super Missile door in plain view, and stairs leading past it.
EnergyTanks++;
AccelCharges++;
The next room after that is the core of the power plant, and reeks of boss fight. Sure enough, a cutscene triggers upon entering showing Anthony and Rid-
... you're fucking kidding me. I mean, I know he's not dead, he's harder to kill than a gorram cockroach, but how and why is he here? Is Ridley the third form of the fuzzy thing? Really? (Hint: yes, yes it is.)
|
v
|
v
Seriously? Since when the fuck is Ridley a Pokemon?
In any case, it's dark, so neither Samus or Anthony have actually gotten a good enough look at the thing to recognize it. Adam authorizes the use of Super Missiles to blast open the door blocking the lava flow into the core, and Samus shoots it while dodging Ridley's fire breath from above. Once the lava hits, the power goes on, lighting up the room and revealing Ridley in all his glory.
Item Attained: Super Missile
Increases missile damage and allows for a larger missile blast by charging the missile and consuming five at once.
Samus freaks right the hell out, and Adam shouts at her from his control panel, authorizing Plasma Beam. Then we see his comm piece fall to the ground - and I think there's a gunshot, too. Meanwhile Ridley picks up Samus and starts crushing her, and Anthony fires his Plasma Rifle at Ridley, causing enough of a distraction for Ridley to drop Samus. Samus morphs back into her suit before hitting the ground, and Ridley knocks Anthony over the side, where he is presumed dead. Now to go head to head with Ridley - also known as typically the hardest boss in any Metroid game.
Item Attained: Plasma Beam
Increases beam damage and allows shots to pierce through multiple enemies at once.
DeathCount++;
Shoot him a bunch, and eventually he collapses for a bit on the ground. Do a lethal blow and he... glows black? Yeah, now he's invincible and can shoot hard enough to release a shockwave over the entire platform. Super Missile him to get rid of the black glow, making him vulnerable to Plasma Beam again. I manage to kill him the second time - at 1 HP. Except that Ridley's not actually dead. He tries to attack Samus again, and Samus tries to fire off a couple of shots at him. Both parties miss, and Ridley melts and charges his way out. Samus mopes for a moment over the death of Anthony before moving on.
In the previous room all we can do is open up the Super Missile door, which leads us to an elevator shaft and a morph ball launcher, eventually taking us to the Sector 3 Main Elevator. Not too far away is a Super Missile Door that I couldn't previously open, so I double back over there before going up the elevator to progress the plot - since that's the only other option.
EnergyParts++;
On the elevator ride back, Samus notes that Adam would be the next target - but that he wouldn't go down easily. That said, he hasn't said anything since the beginning of the fight with Ridley, including not giving any further orders. Getting out of the elevator, we notice someone taking the elevator into Sector 1 dressed in Galactic Federation Army uniform - could be any of James, KG, or Adam. Samus follows, meaning we're now back in Plant Land. We get to the big spiraly tree to see the uniformed figure walking away. After a slight detour to pick up a power up, Samus pursues.
MissileTanks++;
We can take a path we couldn't before by using the Grapple Beam, but it leads to a section we have been to before. Mister E. Usfigure continues running through the navigation room, and another room or two down we catch him withdrawing the bridge. He's shot up the console on our side, so we can't re-extend the bridge from this side. Samus solves the problem by reactivating the Space Jump and Screw Attack in order to cross the gap and give chase into a new section - the Bioweapon Research Center.
Item Attained: Space Jump
Allows Samus to jump repeatedly through the air, crossing large distances without stopping.
Item Attained: Screw Attack
Allows Samus to deal damage with contact while jumping.
In the first major room in the new sector, Samus keeps looking around, and spots the woman doctor from earlier who turns out to be Dr. Madeline Bergman, as predicted. At this point we get a huge cutscene that serves as a major info-dump, including just what's going on at this facility. The plan was to set up an organization like the Space Pirates using the Cyborg Zebesians (the things you typically think of as Space Pirates) as the core. They got DNA from Samus' suit after her last mission, and cloned the Zebesians, and Ridley - though they thought the Ridley clone was a failed experiment, since the fuzzy thing looked harmless. It killed the researcher in that one test room back during part one by playing dead and then mauling the hell out of him when he got close.
So Ridley drove the other lifeforms to high levels of agression. But without the Metroids or an Aurora Unit, those wouldn't really be a problem, right? They'd be too feral and not organized. Well, guess what else they cloned and duplicated? That's right, they've got Metroids. Show of hands, who's surprised? Anyone? Anyone at all? No one? I mean, it's not like they're the title creatures or anythi- ...oh. And on top of all that, they duplicated Mother Brain, too, to communicate with the Metroids. And, unsurprisingly, the AI went berserk like the original. You'd think they'd have learned that Aurora Units and Metroids don't mix.
So this ship is basically the Space Pirate organization in a bottle. So why didn't the GF just nuke it from orbit? (It is the only way to be sure, after all.) Because they still want to use the Metroids. And the person who signed off on the Metroid Weaponization Plan? Commander Adam Malkovich. Oh, and right after Samus leaves, telling the doctor to stay put until after Samus blows up all the Metroids and Mother Brain - again - the guy we were chasing previously walks up to the doctor and a gunshot is heard. That said, she doesn't look very surprised or scared, and we don't actually see her die.
DeathCount++;
I bite it again on the way back out of Sector 1 - these new spined armadillo monsters are actually much tougher than expected. And right as I'm about to leave the room that housed the chameleon boss from part one, I get jumped again by the recurring boss that I've fought a couple of times in this part. Well, this time we kill him for good, and he drops the Seeker Missile.
Item Attained: Seeker Missile
Allows Samus to launch multiple missiles at once at up to five different targets.
And we're going to stop there for the moment. Not sure when the next part is going to go up - I have plans both tomorrow and Friday, so probably not until Saturday. Join me next time when we get to the bottom of this conspiracy!
Status:
Energy Tanks: 5
Energy Parts: 3
Energy Recovery Tanks: 1
Accel Charges: 3
Missile Tanks: 23 (33/33)
Power Ups:
Death Count: 8/15
Play Time: 08:13:29
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Let's Play: Metroid Other M, Part 3!
When we last left off, Samus was searching Sector 2 for survivors, and we had just picked up the Speed Booster and Shine Spark. The next major room we get to is the Sector Generator Room, where we have to hang off of rotating pillars, jump from them to the wall and back off the wall to catch the next higher layer of the rotating cylinder, shoot a glowing target while hanging from the moving ledge, evade another one of the giant unkillable serpents that's hanging from the ceiling, jump onto and back off of another rotating cylinder... yeesh. It's a good thing Samus is superhuman.
MissileTanks++;
Next area has a long lead up followed by a large gap - time for a Shine Spark. Of course we get jumped on the other side by an electric tentacle monster. I kill that one, only to have another one jump me out of nowhere. I really hate these things.
The next section is the Experiment Floor - which does not bode well. Here we find another of the tree quadruped monsters - rather out of place in the winter wasteland here. Killing it causes a small avalanche that knocks enough snow loose to allow Samus to climb up to the next level... where we find Maurice's frozen corpse. Farewell, sweet Space Cowboy. Samus, however, spots someone watching from the observation room - zooming in, it's a woman in a lab coat. Perhaps the good Dr. Bergman? She sees Samus watching and runs off, so we do the only logical thing: give chase.
She seems a bit paranoid as Samus is chasing her through the storage warehouse - at a slow walk, I might add, since they force the camera into an over-the-shoulder view for this part. She yells that the GF wants to silence everyone who knows about their work here - which makes sense, given the illegal bioweapon research going on. Then she reveals that there's a traitor among the red shirt brigade who killed Maurice. She and Samus are then promptly attacked by said traitor, who is piloting an industrial machine of some kind and launching storage crates at them. They evade the crates, and we get a boss fight.
DeathCount++;
This thing is actually pretty fast for its size - equipped with lasers (that somehow cause the ground to explode) and large claw arms, it's primary methods of attacking are grabbing Samus, running over Samus, or hitting her with lasers. Easiest way to get through this is to find the corner of the room that he can't drive into, and then start shooting. Freeze a shoulder at a time, then missile the shoulder to break off that arm. After both arms are gone, it reveals threshers on the bottom - who knows why it has those. Freeze one of the two back wheels to get the engine to pop out the top as it tries to break out of the ice. Shoot the engine with missiles, and it'll be down in no time.
The thing goes out of control and crashes into a corner, and the traitor escapes without us knowing exactly who it is - he doesn't have the plasma rifle rigging, so it's probably not Anthony, and we know Maurice and Lyle are already dead. That leaves KG, James, or Adam. My money is on James, personally, since he was suspiciously ahead of the rest of the team earlier. In any case, Adam tells us to go back to Sector 3, since the beast from earlier is driving the other creatures in the area to heightened aggression. He tells us to use the Plasma Beam to kill it when we see it - but he doesn't authorize us to use it, yet. That's helpful.
As we leave, the player - but not Samus - sees the traitor dump a frozen red shirt into the lava in Sector 3. Again, neither of them was Anthony, since neither of them had the Plasma Rifle, so I'm guessing James just killed KG.
The next section has a dead-end in one direction that's covered in lowered platforms, and the other direction leads to a section where we need to Shine Spark into the sky, use the morph ball to climb through some tunnels, and eventually... get to a dead end with a power up and a switch on the other side of some glass that we can't get to yet.
MissileTanks++;
EnergyTanks++;
So now we backtrack, and at the last part where the path split, clear walls crash down, trapping Samus in a box. Then Space Pirate Cyborgs drop down on the other side of the glass - could be worse, right? Well, perhaps, except that they have weapons that can shoot through the glass without damaging it. It's like that magic trick where the magician goes into the box and his lovely assistant shoves swords through the box and he comes out undamaged - except that they don't intend to let you out until you're dead. After dodging for about a minute, Adam authorizes the use of the Wave Beam - took you long enough, ass. So we kill the things through the glass and that makes the walls retract... somehow.
Item Attained: Wave Beam
Increases beam damage and allows shots to phase through transparent and translucent surfaces.
Now we go back down the path we just came from, all the way back to the switch on the other side of the glass - except we no longer give a damn about the glass because we have the Wave Beam. We hit the switch, and an elevator is lowered in the section beneath our current position. We leave to head back to our previous location - and we're followed down by an avalanche. Samus out runs it and Shine Sparks to the side and out the door, leaving most of the room buried - it's a good thing I already got all of the power ups in that room.
Now the platforms down the original dead end are raised, and we can climb up those, freezing and unfreezing certain platforms as necessary. At the top we fight another pair of electric tentacle monsters, and past them is the Materials Transfer Lift - i.e. the elevator we lowered earlier. Hm. Large square platform, long tunnel... either there's a cutscene or a fight on this lift.
... a fight it is. Space Pirate Cyborgs drop down from the ceiling, and after clearing them out, a boss appears to maul us.
DeathCount++;
This thing is damn fast - we have to wait for it to charge for a long time and reveal a red light, then fire a missile at it before it fires at us. Give it a lethal shot while it's down, and it... gets up and flies off. Bet we'll be seeing him again. The next room has a Power Bomb door that we can't get through yet, and tanks with some dark substance inside. Rolling into a broken pipe reveals a few switches which drain the tanks, leaving them clear. Then we can hit a switch on the other side of them to reveal a morph ball tunnel out of there, leading us back to the Main Elevator shaft.
Back up to the Main Sector, then down to Sector 3. The way forward is locked, so I guess we're backtracking through the former rising lava room - not very exciting now that the lava is stationary. Then there's the bridge we ran across while dodging volcanic fallout - no more fallout, but bits of the bridge are missing. Luckily we can Shine Spark across the largest gap.
We get to the control room where we have to fight the giant metal trilobite again, and then activate a panel that we couldn't previously. This unlocks the path forward, so we head back across the bridge - which is actually long enough that we can charge up and Shine Spark twice.
In the next room after the main elevator room we see Anthony on the upper level fighting the thing we fought at the top of the lift earlier - and he's not doing so great... and apparently taking too long causes the thing to throw Anthony down into the lava, causing a non-standard game over.
DeathCount++;
DeathCount++;
So we can't shoot it, and there's no obvious way to get up there. We can't just position ourselves in the lava beneath where he's going to fall and catch him. So what do we do? Apparently look up at the Grapple Beam point above our heads - at which point (but only then) Adam authorizes the use of the Grapple Beam. Once again, fuck you sir. Fuck. You.
Item Attained: Grapple Beam
Allows Samus to attach and swing from grapple points.
DeathCount++;
DeathCount++;
I die twice to the thing for real since it's damn fast and this area is even more cramped than the last place we fought it. Eventually I take it out, much in the same way I did last time, and it runs off, diving into the lava. We'll see it again.
Exposition time! The red shirt brigade was sent to meet at the navigation booth nearby - all two remaining members, anyways. Anthony showed up, but when no one else did, he did some looking around and got attacked. The red shirt brigade's task is to get the Geothermal Power Plant back online - which Anthony comments is an odd thing to send an entire unit to do. Then we get a nice little flashback - during some routine repair operation, something goes horribly awry. Adam has to give the order to disengage the repair ship - with his little brother Ian, the soldier in charge of doing the repairs, still inside. A younger Samus flips out and says that she can still make it, she can save him - but Adam stands firm. Anthony is also there, and looks surprised - but says nothing. Anthony of the present makes a passing remark about "if something like that happened now...?" Foreshadowing much? Samus monologues that she would hold on to the glimmer of hope of redemption, but admits that Adam was right, then.
Moving on to the Blast Furnace. We grapple up to a ventilation shaft that leads to some Grapple Beam points suspended by some rigging. Blowing up the rigging lets them float down and hover in the area below... except for the one that gets swallowed by the giant lava whale as it jumps up towards you. Combine that with the fact that the remaining Grapple Beam points span a chasm between to large rock platforms, and I'm guessing it's boss time.
Sure enough, once we get down there and down to the middle section, the lava whale attacks us. Shoot its underbelly a bunch, and eventually it'll open its mouth, revealing the Grapple Beam point lodged in its throat - that'll teach it to chew its food. Grapple it and you'll beach it, allowing you to get a bunch more shots in for free. Halfway through it swallows the Grapple Beam point, meaning we now have to do this the hard way. It also decides that suddenly it can charge across land and tries to do this a couple of times. Kill it, and half the lava drains from the room, revealing a new exit.
Right before the next save point, Adam says the thing we're tracking is heading to the geothermal electric power generator - i.e. the same place everyone else is supposed to be heading. This should be interesting.
Next hallway is full of sand... and has a grapple point over perfectly normal looking ground? Why would I need...? ... oh. Of course, giant sand snake attacks me otherwise. That makes sense.
The next full sized room is another holodeck area, this one looking like a desert, complete with sand and rocks and... a crane? In any case we have to shoot the crane to rotate it, so that we can grapple off of the Grapple Point attached to it to reach the platform with the holodeck generator, and then reach the exit, which leads us into the base of the Desert Refinery.
"We allow only the finest deserts on our space station, mmyes."
MissileTanks++;
It's a giant round building with security robots on the outside - much easier to kill at this point in the game. When we get to the very top, the recurring boss bursts out of the elevator and charges us. After beating it up a bit more, it takes to the skies. Eventually I knock it down and over the edge with a missile, but I didn't see it die, so it'll probably be back. For now we take the elevator down through the Desert Refinery and beneath it to find... chain Grapple Beam points, of course. This leads us to a section we've been to at least once before - but now that we have the Varia Suit and the Grapple Beam, we can take a different route in one of the large lava filled rooms.
Eventually we get to a room where we can see that the beast from previously has broken out of its second skin and therefore is in a new third form. But we haven't found the third form yet - instead we get to robots shooting constant laser beams of doom across our path. Freeze them, move on. Then we get to the Geothermal Power Plant, with a Super Missile door in plain view, and stairs leading past it.
EnergyTanks++;
AccelCharges++;
The next room after that is the core of the power plant, and reeks of boss fight. Sure enough, a cutscene triggers upon entering showing Anthony and Rid-
... you're fucking kidding me. I mean, I know he's not dead, he's harder to kill than a gorram cockroach, but how and why is he here? Is Ridley the third form of the fuzzy thing? Really? (Hint: yes, yes it is.)
|
v
|
v
Seriously? Since when the fuck is Ridley a Pokemon?
In any case, it's dark, so neither Samus or Anthony have actually gotten a good enough look at the thing to recognize it. Adam authorizes the use of Super Missiles to blast open the door blocking the lava flow into the core, and Samus shoots it while dodging Ridley's fire breath from above. Once the lava hits, the power goes on, lighting up the room and revealing Ridley in all his glory.
Item Attained: Super Missile
Increases missile damage and allows for a larger missile blast by charging the missile and consuming five at once.
Samus freaks right the hell out, and Adam shouts at her from his control panel, authorizing Plasma Beam. Then we see his comm piece fall to the ground - and I think there's a gunshot, too. Meanwhile Ridley picks up Samus and starts crushing her, and Anthony fires his Plasma Rifle at Ridley, causing enough of a distraction for Ridley to drop Samus. Samus morphs back into her suit before hitting the ground, and Ridley knocks Anthony over the side, where he is presumed dead. Now to go head to head with Ridley - also known as typically the hardest boss in any Metroid game.
Item Attained: Plasma Beam
Increases beam damage and allows shots to pierce through multiple enemies at once.
DeathCount++;
Shoot him a bunch, and eventually he collapses for a bit on the ground. Do a lethal blow and he... glows black? Yeah, now he's invincible and can shoot hard enough to release a shockwave over the entire platform. Super Missile him to get rid of the black glow, making him vulnerable to Plasma Beam again. I manage to kill him the second time - at 1 HP. Except that Ridley's not actually dead. He tries to attack Samus again, and Samus tries to fire off a couple of shots at him. Both parties miss, and Ridley melts and charges his way out. Samus mopes for a moment over the death of Anthony before moving on.
In the previous room all we can do is open up the Super Missile door, which leads us to an elevator shaft and a morph ball launcher, eventually taking us to the Sector 3 Main Elevator. Not too far away is a Super Missile Door that I couldn't previously open, so I double back over there before going up the elevator to progress the plot - since that's the only other option.
EnergyParts++;
On the elevator ride back, Samus notes that Adam would be the next target - but that he wouldn't go down easily. That said, he hasn't said anything since the beginning of the fight with Ridley, including not giving any further orders. Getting out of the elevator, we notice someone taking the elevator into Sector 1 dressed in Galactic Federation Army uniform - could be any of James, KG, or Adam. Samus follows, meaning we're now back in Plant Land. We get to the big spiraly tree to see the uniformed figure walking away. After a slight detour to pick up a power up, Samus pursues.
MissileTanks++;
We can take a path we couldn't before by using the Grapple Beam, but it leads to a section we have been to before. Mister E. Usfigure continues running through the navigation room, and another room or two down we catch him withdrawing the bridge. He's shot up the console on our side, so we can't re-extend the bridge from this side. Samus solves the problem by reactivating the Space Jump and Screw Attack in order to cross the gap and give chase into a new section - the Bioweapon Research Center.
Item Attained: Space Jump
Allows Samus to jump repeatedly through the air, crossing large distances without stopping.
Item Attained: Screw Attack
Allows Samus to deal damage with contact while jumping.
In the first major room in the new sector, Samus keeps looking around, and spots the woman doctor from earlier who turns out to be Dr. Madeline Bergman, as predicted. At this point we get a huge cutscene that serves as a major info-dump, including just what's going on at this facility. The plan was to set up an organization like the Space Pirates using the Cyborg Zebesians (the things you typically think of as Space Pirates) as the core. They got DNA from Samus' suit after her last mission, and cloned the Zebesians, and Ridley - though they thought the Ridley clone was a failed experiment, since the fuzzy thing looked harmless. It killed the researcher in that one test room back during part one by playing dead and then mauling the hell out of him when he got close.
So Ridley drove the other lifeforms to high levels of agression. But without the Metroids or an Aurora Unit, those wouldn't really be a problem, right? They'd be too feral and not organized. Well, guess what else they cloned and duplicated? That's right, they've got Metroids. Show of hands, who's surprised? Anyone? Anyone at all? No one? I mean, it's not like they're the title creatures or anythi- ...oh. And on top of all that, they duplicated Mother Brain, too, to communicate with the Metroids. And, unsurprisingly, the AI went berserk like the original. You'd think they'd have learned that Aurora Units and Metroids don't mix.
So this ship is basically the Space Pirate organization in a bottle. So why didn't the GF just nuke it from orbit? (It is the only way to be sure, after all.) Because they still want to use the Metroids. And the person who signed off on the Metroid Weaponization Plan? Commander Adam Malkovich. Oh, and right after Samus leaves, telling the doctor to stay put until after Samus blows up all the Metroids and Mother Brain - again - the guy we were chasing previously walks up to the doctor and a gunshot is heard. That said, she doesn't look very surprised or scared, and we don't actually see her die.
DeathCount++;
I bite it again on the way back out of Sector 1 - these new spined armadillo monsters are actually much tougher than expected. And right as I'm about to leave the room that housed the chameleon boss from part one, I get jumped again by the recurring boss that I've fought a couple of times in this part. Well, this time we kill him for good, and he drops the Seeker Missile.
Item Attained: Seeker Missile
Allows Samus to launch multiple missiles at once at up to five different targets.
And we're going to stop there for the moment. Not sure when the next part is going to go up - I have plans both tomorrow and Friday, so probably not until Saturday. Join me next time when we get to the bottom of this conspiracy!
Status:
Energy Tanks: 5
Energy Parts: 3
Energy Recovery Tanks: 1
Accel Charges: 3
Missile Tanks: 23 (33/33)
Power Ups:
- Ice Beam
- Diffusion Beam
- Varia Suit
- Speed Booster
- Shine Spark
- Wave Beam
- Plasma Beam
- Grapple Beam
- Super Missile
- Seeker Missile
- Space Jump
- Screw Attack
Death Count: 8/15
Play Time: 08:13:29
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