another doomed planet to extensively explore
It's been a while since my last post. I spent my extended Easter holiday slacking from things I needed to do online. It was liberating but it just meant a bigger backlog when I came back. Such is the fate of the modern internet-dweller.
The first round of GameFAQs Best Game Ever 2009 will be half done soon and the performance of my bracket has been rather spotty. I didn't make any effort to pay attention to what others were saying so the predictions are mostly my own (although I do remember one random person who convinced me to favour Mega Man 3 over Final Fantasy 4 in my bracket - thanks a lot whoever you were) and I don't know if the mistakes I made were obvious ones or not. The success of Goldeneye was the biggest upset for me because I never expected the game to still have legs like that after more than ten years. And since Mario RPG and Mario Kart 64 might split the Nintendo vote next round it might get all the way to round three... where it goes up against FF7, Mario 64 and Chrono Trigger. Ouch.
It took me long enough to see it but this is the best April Fools ever, but only if you're a Metroid fan. Where a non-fan might just see a lot of work a serious Metroid devotee will see a game they can actually play through in their mind. I spent over an hour last night tracing the tunnels and collecting the items, even restarting from the middle when I found I'd made a mistake. The maps may be even simpler than Zero Mission's but there's a fully-functioning Metroid game in here with a collection order and a real understanding of how a Metroid gameworld is designed. There's a little bit of fudging involved; because there aren't any enemies the Ice Beam doesn't seem to be necessary for progress and it's not clear where the new ability to repair broken computers is made use of either, but those are things that only crazy Metroid fans like me were going to notice in the first place.
To finish this off, I might never play this game but the trailer made sure I'll remember it forever.
The first round of GameFAQs Best Game Ever 2009 will be half done soon and the performance of my bracket has been rather spotty. I didn't make any effort to pay attention to what others were saying so the predictions are mostly my own (although I do remember one random person who convinced me to favour Mega Man 3 over Final Fantasy 4 in my bracket - thanks a lot whoever you were) and I don't know if the mistakes I made were obvious ones or not. The success of Goldeneye was the biggest upset for me because I never expected the game to still have legs like that after more than ten years. And since Mario RPG and Mario Kart 64 might split the Nintendo vote next round it might get all the way to round three... where it goes up against FF7, Mario 64 and Chrono Trigger. Ouch.
It took me long enough to see it but this is the best April Fools ever, but only if you're a Metroid fan. Where a non-fan might just see a lot of work a serious Metroid devotee will see a game they can actually play through in their mind. I spent over an hour last night tracing the tunnels and collecting the items, even restarting from the middle when I found I'd made a mistake. The maps may be even simpler than Zero Mission's but there's a fully-functioning Metroid game in here with a collection order and a real understanding of how a Metroid gameworld is designed. There's a little bit of fudging involved; because there aren't any enemies the Ice Beam doesn't seem to be necessary for progress and it's not clear where the new ability to repair broken computers is made use of either, but those are things that only crazy Metroid fans like me were going to notice in the first place.
To finish this off, I might never play this game but the trailer made sure I'll remember it forever.