AM2R: The Fandom's Defiance | GEEK CRITIQUE

[Music] when I started the metroid season I set a patreon milestone for a bonus episode the milestone was literally twice as much as I was getting and I didn't really know if what would happen but to go back even further three years ago now I started working really really hard on making good content because I am a dream so to be here actually doing this bonus episode to hit 10,000 subscribers and then to double that with 20,000 or I could even finish this script to still be here still trying to make this dream come true and to finally finally feel like everything I've done over the past three years paying off I have all listened to things - that about you I'm just a dork babbling into a microphone you make all the time that I put into this worthwhile so from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has ever taken the time to watch this channel - thank you every one of us on YouTube and to that matter enter video game series out their lives our dies by the support and passion of its fans me it's just too bad that Nintendo doesn't see it that way [Music] August 6 2016 was the 30th anniversary of the Metroid franchise 30 years Samus Aran a space pirates of cohesive worlds commitment to continuity and stellar groundbreaking game Nintendo celebrated this milestone the only way they knew how which sticks the Badger you know everyone's favorite character from sonic boom Oh an up few weeks later here's the first Metroid game in 6 years it's a dippy co-op action game that literally nobody wanted in 2017 it is safe to say that the Metroid franchise has settled into its second Dark Age one that's now lasted nearly as long as the first for the past 7 years cameos and spin-offs are all Samus has had it's been almost 13 years since the last 2d Metroid it's been nine years since the last game that anyone actually liked and seven years ago this game seems to tear the heart out of not only look serious but its fandom as well but I know from experience fandoms have a funny way of surviving and even thriving through times like this in Metroid's there's no exception the fans have never stopped bleeding in this franchise I've heard countless articles begging Nintendo to make a real Metroid game I've seen reviewers get death threats for daring to give Donkey Kong Country positive coverage because retro studios had the audacity to make it that instead of war Metroid games despite that I'm proud to count myself as a new member of this fandoms but long before I came to appreciate Metroid there was a fan by the name of Milton Guwahati who went by the alias dr. n64 after zero mission success there were a ton of projects seeking to remake Metroid 2 and give it the same treatment that zero-emission had for the original so in Kwazii started working on his own band game in 2006 he chose a rather tongue-in-cheek title another Metroid 2 remake of course all those other projects would end up like most end games can be abandoned but even when a m2r was the only one left the name stuck as the project grew a small team of dedicated artists programmers and musicians came together it took them 10 years but on August 6 2016 all their efforts paid off a m2r was released in honor of Metroid's 30th anniversary as a free download for PC and that hit mainstream gaming hard cambridge who weren't even Metroid fans were captivated by the story of a game ten years in the making and blown away by how complete it was some even said that it was a better Metroid game than Nintendo itself had ever made I remember seeing this outpouring of passion all the work that had gone into it and I thought to myself you know maybe I should give Metroid another chance less than 24 hours after the game was released Nintendo issued a DMCA claim to the site's hosting it forcing them to take it down and of course by then it was already on the internet so no copyright while the universe can stop it now but the team did intend to keep working on it and even released a patch that fixed a few bugs in these indirect Omega Metroid but about a month later Milton voici received a DMCA addressed him personally and all further development was suspended after 10 years in development another Metroid 2 remake ended at version 1.1 despite that and maybe it's because I'm a fan but I was all ready to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt I was already to excuse their decision and say something like well if they didn't want it released why didn't they shut it down at any point while it was in development I mean they had 10 years you know what I bet they knew about an 2r but they wanted it guru and they only shut it down afterward to appease their legal department that's what I was going to say let's in Nintendo threatened to pull their sponsorship of the Game Awards unless the two fan games based on their properties were just qualified from being nominated not Alayne I couldn't make that argument anymore Nintendo just doesn't want people to know about this look Nintendo clearly had every legal right to do this I'm not arguing what I am arguing is that doing so was still the wrong move from a business perspective worse yet it made very little difference in actually protecting their intellectual property because believe it or not there is precedent here I only recently became a Metroid fan but there's another phantom that I have always been a part of for better and worse critics to this day say that 2006 was the point that Sonic the Hedgehog should have died but he didn't right when there were no real sonic games were playing the fan gaming and modding scene exploded and Sega which remember at this time was one of the most backwards incompetent directionless game studios this side of Konami despite that Sega decided to turn a blind eye and let this team thrive here's a particularly impressive band game that I played back in those dark ages retro Sonic by a guy called pack stank taxman would eventually pitch his work to Sega who brought him on board he's been the next few years proving himself by porting a few of the classics and now this very same retro sonic engine is being used to build Sonic's 25th anniversary game so how's that for contract Nintendo Lexus their legal muscles to get Sam projects taken down and threatens anyone who dares to acknowledge them Vega on the other hand hires the fans who made those games to create their official Sonic titles Sega still does what Nintendo is Milton guapi if on the extremely unlikely chance that Nintendo were to have a kink apart and offer him a similar opportunity would he be willing to bring a m2r to Nintendo's platforms in an official capacity despite what Nintendo is done voici said it would be an honor sadly I really don't think there's any chance of that happening because they got understand something that Nintendo's a game like Ames you are like any other piece of fan created content whether the artworks fiction or even this video series does it's negligible damage to Nintendo's intellectual property that the pros of trying to break that out of existence are vastly outweighed by the cons because what was damaged was Nintendo's reputation and their goodwill with not just Nintendo fans but the entire gaming community I owe this season 2 a.m. to our and that means I owe a lot of my recent success to it I would not be a metroid fan as it wasn't for this game and I intend to give it the critique it deserves that means I won't be getting any leeway just because it's a fangirl I'm going to allow a m2r to stand on its own merit and search it just as I would any other game in the series so let's get critiquing know right there's an intro sequence Metroid's our threat the Federation wants been exterminated I was the best candidate the way to who's uh-oh oh it's samus talking okay you see the path games establish the first person voice but out whatever there's our girl in her adorable little left hand and okay okay that's better I love the cinematic flyby of the gunship as we get our first look at the in-game engine but this intro sequence feels unfinished it fails to communicate the name of the planet the game takes place on says nothing of why samus is a suitable candidate for the mission and doesn't even mention the research and rescue teams that were sent in which is particularly silly since this remake unlike the original is going to reveal what happened to them yes I know that's all spelled out in the walk book but I even have an intro that's going to omit mission critical details like this we're super metroids intro was perhaps a bit convoluted for newcomers a and two hours has the opposite problem it omits too much to engage a new player and it lacks the depth to excite a dedicated fan a snappy intro worked really well for zero mission and something more akin to that would have been preferable to this I bet you can't even skip it oh oh you can umm I was wrong I am to our central is pretty much perfect for a oho like I said I'm not going easy on this just because of a van game but even though it's a missed opportunity it is just the intro creating specialized art like this takes time and this is the kind of thing that likely would have been put off to focus on more important things like you know the actual gameplay just like in the original Samus arrives on sr388 with the morph ball and missiles unlike the original all of her moves and abilities from the later games are also available walljumping octo directional aiming and a brand new mechanic receive bolts over small ledges the physics are even more snappy and precise than zero missions and enhanced with new animations and movement effects but if you prefer a different control scheme she's never been so customizable either this commitment to player customization is one thing that band games tend to get very very right you can carry examine sustaining controls and weapon loadout to a Super Metroid style and even from the new enhancements off if you like and hey Bama can hang from legend I'm stuck at the GBA game but I noticed that though I put on my dorky a pair of glasses and said well last call for the game design but it's in congruent with my head Canon about the fusion suit being lightweight and that's why the Power Grip had to be an upgrade but no no the Power Grip is listed along with all of SAMHSA's other default our ups which like an super can be triggered on and off for no real reason at your discretion ha and details no seriously the details water drips from the cave ceilings and dissipates when it hits and subtle lighting effects are implemented for atmosphere and guys the morph ball turnaround the fact that I experienced the adventure that looks like this makes me appreciate all the more just help complete the art overhaul really is it's such a spectacle the sr388 brought up to these standards and in a world where so many retro style games are 8-bit it just it just hits me right here to see such a gorgeous 16-bit aesthetic which is Milo's realistic stock explosion effects all the enemies keep making hit me right in the uncanny valley exceeded my dress and the same kind of applies to the music I mean it's a beautiful interpretation of the overworld theme but it lacks the upbeat energy of the original competition so now is a good time to talk about personal preference and interpretation and all video game Metroid 2 is a Game Boy game so the graphics the aesthetic and what little story could be conveyed we're all very open to interpretation when I described it back in that episode I use the word watch luckily because of a few key elements most notably the initial avatar strength of the player character the ease with which her primary targets are dispatched and the upbeat overworld theme I interpreted this game is an action book of caper to the Metroid homeworld taking down the universe's greatest threat as its greatest warrior and what a blast it was what wasn't a blast was how bear in the final area God and I critiqued the complete lack of enemies because it meant you had to backtrack way too far to refill your health I focused on how that decision impacted the game design and then I got this comment which rightfully pointed out that I had completely missed the point upon samus's arrival sr388 is teeming with life but the deeper you go the closer you get to the metroid queen the smaller and weaker the other enemies gift by the end the Metroid's are all that's left this 8-bit game is subtly communicating what happens to a planet overrun with Metroid's and letting the player experience it firsthand illustrating through its design why they're the universe's greatest threat this was one of my favorite comments to see them for the same reason I always seek out analysis from people who don't focus on the things that I do it enlightened me to details that I never would have picked up on because I really don't tend to think about games like this I think about in those games above all else nothing else matters to me if it isn't fun to play it's why I prefer the upbeat music of the original Metroid to the Stalin ambience of super but naturally it isn't really known for such a serious ethic and regardless Metroid 2 can be read so much more somber than I initially noticed which is not to say that a m2r is drowning in ambience if not nearly as lonely as Super Metroid or is realistic as crime and of course the central thrust of the whole game is to exterminate the Metroid so at some point I guess I could stop babbling about aesthetic interpretation and actually fight one of them and whoa these are not the same Elvis from 1991 back in the Metroid's were squishing and went down past even as they evolved they only really presented a challenge near the end what am too are does makes a lot of sense the Metroid fights has been made more dynamic and challenging by limiting their weak points and keeping them more complicated and competent AI even within the same evolution for instance the alphas now can only be hit from below and as you progress they'll start to dog your attacks and rushing the repetitive Metroid fights were one of the biggest problems with the original and this really is the obvious solution I'm just not sure if the obvious solution was the best one oh they're more interesting now for sure and they're much more challenging but that second point is kind of the problem in Metroid 2 the real challenge was just finding the things once you did that it was really just a simple matter of spamming missiles in a m2r each individual Metroid fight is much more of a real fight but it's a fight you'll experience over and over and over again and because individual battles take so much more time they're way more of a chore especially because it's some frustrating design decisions like when your missile bounces off a weak spot just because the Metroid is programmed to dodge but it failed the Dodge if the game still didn't count it even if they were balanced perfectly the fact of the matter is a bit no matter how well designed a boss may be having to fight it dozens of times is gonna get old however this critique only really applies to the Metroid's you find most frequent the alpha and gamma common as they are they still only take of a fraction of the game's runtime but the dan am too ours well reasoned decision to make the fights more dynamic doesn't solve the problem it makes it worse in the 8-bit original these acid pits blocked you from moving ahead when I played it I was embarrassingly deep into the game before it really clicked the killing all the Metroid's in each area was what caused the acid to lower I still don't know why Metroid's being alive directly controls that but regardless this critical part of the game's progression wasn't conveyed well well am two-hour conveys it perfectly you see it happening right after you kill the first alpha and in case it still didn't click samus's scanners automatically kick in and bring up new information this is an adaptation of Samus a scan visor from the Metroid Prime series what I enjoy about am too large implementation is how optimal it is if you want more background information and hints it's all about and press away the scan happens automatically when you enter a relevant area so it never forces you out of the game and if you really don't like the scanner you can even just turn it off for the most part I found it enhance the experience the interface in general is just happy it doesn't waste the players time faves are quick transitions or crisps navigation is simple and you can even skip item and upgrade jingles and draw in power-ups with a charged payment and all these little quality of life improvements add up to a superb player experience when I hit the chozo ruins the first thing I noticed was the music the Gameboy game only had four real songs and this grading number was its worst and two are takes that melody and mixes it into an introspectively ancient tomb as a remake and Torah was tasked with finally having to bring back two spider ball wow it controls so much better with a little practice you can now do tricks like this to get stuck where you need to and that agility feels good I was a little surprised that it was still so sluggish but considering the scope of samus's arsenal this time around its steady speed doesn't distract what it used to what was so cool about the spider ball but how perfectly it complemented the toys usable exploration and outside the box thinking it was a natural fit for the series that ever came back at least not in 2d where mystery 2 left plenty of its upgrades of mountain the open m2r has a range different new challenger there very well implemented but I do wish more of these early puzzles put the spider ball to you there's just a lot of untapped it was the first section where I started looking at the map which is the one of the biggest game changers in and you are in contrast to all of its previous appearances there are no map stations that fill out the area which makes sense the whole structure of sr388 is a linear path down the branches out and knowing exactly where the metroids are what kind of a road the point it's sort of revealing the path it helps you keep track of where you are where you've been and where to look by this point in the original game you've seen pretty much everything you were ever going to see to the last section there were caves there were temples there were more caves there was a never-ending cavalcade of Metroid well a m2r is just about to break the mold and it all starts in this corridor this is the ancient Guardian he serves as a sort of tutorial box making sure the player is familiar with all the ways sandwhich can dodge attacks this boss wasn't here before and this first Golden Temple is the only temple all of the others have been reimagined as some kind of functional system within chozo society each with their own gimmicks challenges and boss fights I asked dr. him about this decision and he confirmed that all of these changes and additions were very much the reason that the game spent a decade in development but that's not a bad thing the benefits of all that work are obvious and it allows aim to are to achieve things that a gameboy game never could so back then this next section was just another temple but a m2r has recast as a water treatment facility for sr388 complete with whirring machinery and geysers a blast Samak through the compound pushing through these cramped aqueducts reminds me of a summer job I once had and stalling heating systems nice houses like the architects really didn't give much thought to who might have to squeeze through here though it continues to take on the facility has been abandoned for decades look at the way seaweed is breaking through the walls on that music what you've been hearing is the main section of the hydro station but check out what happens when you venture under the combat the soundtrack smoothly transitions into a deadlier remix of the original scene these transitions have been happening every time I moved from one second to another but it was so subtle and well integrated but I hadn't even noticed it until now the way to music graphics and gimmicks of in a larger sections vary around a theme like this remind me of the X transitions from Sonic 3 and you ought to know what incredibly high praise that is coming from me in the Gameboy game this they can feature directness no that's not a rightness I mean I know that sounds like a spider but yeah yeah that's it now back then he was little more than a forced morph all bomb tutorial but that was enough to take me down on my first go he reappeared as the first boss in Metroid Fusion and am too or his integrated and improved on that battle adding a slew of powerful attacks and incorporating an inspired gimmick where you have to bounce him into electrifying nodes that take him down he's a much more significant threat here meaning it's all more rewarding me finally blast him up there and OH or maybe he took me down again well I don't think it's dude as high as fusion a m2r is proving itself a bit tougher than the average Metroid cause it probably would have helped if I had to remember to get the Varia suit at the start of this section instead of waiting till the end check this out for just a moment Samus goes grayscale just like the gameboy original and stuff like that is one of the coolest elements of the Metroid series the way the power-ups tropes and especially bosses get reused and reimagined throughout like I didn't know it back when I played Super Metroid but these hostile chozo statues are actually called Teresa not only thought that's a neat concept taking was normally such a welcome sight to the player and surprising them with a boss fight so in a m2r and I got the space jump whoa the chorizo has been roboticized get wailed on me until I learned to dodge but do whatever to hard to take down now if this was all there was to it it'll be a pretty cool reimagining but no this right here is where am ii our takes an old concept and takes it to the limit yeah yeah yes I can see where some people might think that at Arrigo Sacchi with freaking jet propulsion is a little too over-the-top but I love it the Theresa dive-bomb view streaking across the screen and up and then it releases eggs that hatched and home in on you oh I've seen that somewhere before I don't know if doctorin made a better metroid the Nintendo but he definitely made a better upload than ridley more practically this high altitude boss serves as a tutorial for that new space cub the Space Camp was also in the original game but back then it required some really awkward inconsistent timing and as soon as you screwed up you'd fall all the way down it was a lot safer albeit a lot more boring to just mosey upward with the spider Bowl not so here just like in the GBA game samus can starts been jumping in midair and combining a usable space jump with our modern snappy movement she has never felt more controllable and agile by this point in the original you had almost every powerup you were going to get but one of the strongest aspects of this franchise is to always let the player feel like if they were evolving that Samus was always growing stronger and more capable so when I bombed away these blogs and saw that symbol all I couldn't help but smile just like zero mission aim to are incorporate all of samus's most famous upgrades and lucky me now first is the speed booster god I love this thing and it's put to use in so many wonderful ways both for solving puzzles and making backtracking a breeze and this level design is just so clever like naturally never had a place like this before this industrial complex conveyor belts are used in conjunction with the speed booster and all of the way these robotic enemies break apart if they take damage the industrial theme is put to use when Samus takes direct control of one of those robot guards and it's just such a unique concept the second half of the industrial complex are what I've taken to think you know that's the act - this is my least favorite section in the entire game look mental games in the past experimenter with sliding effects but they were kept of single rooms or little puzzles this is an entire section based around fireflies any darkness and wandering around in the dark for that long just isn't fun I don't get me wrong it's an impressive effect it's just overdone plus the sides resembling the graphics from the original game I don't even see how this theme relates to the industrial complex above the preemie section had a clear divide in nature encroaching on civilization yeah you still felt like you're on the outskirts of a water plant and you were seeing sr388 break it down aside from one brief respite back into the facility there's almost none of that here the Gameboy original had a ton of convoluted backtracking at this point requiring sanest a zigzag back and forth through this tunnel over and over that's when I played it I thought to myself that if there was anything a m2r would fix it would be this I was a little let down and a little surprised to discover that nope it was doing the same thing thought that was a little peculiar but then I came to a door Metroid 2 didn't have these doors like most of games did what was oh oh this is what remains of the research group the original instruction manual said that they'd lost contact but the game itself never made mention of it and it really serves as a reminder of how dangerous this species is because to alpha Metroid's did this to the entire crew while I generally liked the logbook entries this was one time I wish I'd turned them off finding the crew quarters seen their remains and especially that minimal soundtrack had me putting the pieces together in the log book coming up and giving away exactly what had happened took away from that eerie atmosphere metroid is real good at telling stories through subtext and this section would have been stronger without it nonetheless finding what's left of the research team was a brilliant resolution for the manuals plot thread the next area was my absolute favorite in the original the part where I really started appreciating it for what it was a m2r has reimagined it with an ominous name of a tower deep trenches are hollowed out around this massive structure a top which sets a monument to kozo themselves holding the entire planet in their hands one thing I didn't talk about when I covered the Game Boy game with this even though you might have bought the same sort of Metroid's over and over the location and hazards didn't keep things at least a little very I bring this up because a m2r expanses to its fullest potential by this point game on metros are becoming pushovers is long about got enough super missiles but well this sucks but the gameís should be pushovers by now because here's where we start encountering the data Metroid I love these guys I think it helps if they don't fly anymore so they can't just homed in on you it feels so much more tactical than what came before and since there's only a few of them the fight doesn't get stale although this one really shouldn't be able to knock you completely out of the room still the way these Metroid sites get so much more interesting and fun as the game goes on makes me wonder if they were designed in order I feel like the game is getting better as a progressive given a 10-year development cycle that may well be the result of the team itself getting more skilled to unravel the mystery of what the tower is am too are implements in another new area it seems the lower half of the tower has been buried progression downward is almost agonizingly slow we're getting closer yet the game is making us wait building up that anticipation finally an elevator another iconic element that wasn't in Metroid 2 uneven it's slow but it takes Samus down to the lowest point on the entire map the geothermal plant in contrast to the research team demise this is an excellent use of scanning function being used to explain something that really could it be communicated through subtext this area's proximity to sr388 score allows it to channel that heat and turbines powered by the hydro station generate energy for the entire planet the logbook notes that one of those Power Cells has lost structural integrity and the change in temperature could overload it and oh look how our bombs just so happened to be down here I'm not questioning the happenstance of SAMHSA's upgrades being found in convenient places and stuff like that is just part of game design but here's what I do take issue with overloading this cell is going to lead to a signature of the Metroid series I count down escape sequence so let's see what caused those iconic explosions up till now both of SAMHSA's missions on service required her to take down Mother Brain and she may not have known that the AI would trigger a self-destruct in Super Metroid it's unclear what caused Sarah's to blow but Samus was responding to a distress signal and caught off guard by the space fire who got what they came for and probably rigged the station in fusion Samus chose to crash the BSL station in order to wipe out the X and in zero mission again he had no way of knowing that the ridley robot was rigged with a bomb what I'm getting at is that Samus always had a reason for finding herself in these situations whether due to her mission are her own goal but why in the world would she think it was a good idea to overload a geothermal power cell especially when she's standing right in front of it why because apropos of nothing the door locks behind her when she picks up the power bomb it's just it's so unmet Royd it doesn't follow from anything it happens just to set up the escape and I'm not usually the kind of gamer who even thinks about this stuff I mean I might not have even noticed if I was going for taken but it stands out in a game that otherwise has its finger on the pulse of what makes this franchise special however while I may be overthinking of this I have no qualms at all with the execution and to our sets itself apart from all those other escape sequences where others had boss fights before the escape next one has a fight during it and where others had a somewhat logic-defying countdown timer this one has a temperature gauge that one long low root down here now has to be frantically navigated and reversed and it's set up in such a way that you are guaranteed and makes these black boards with literally no time left to spare and then yeah okay it's a bit of a cutscene the gauge goes up regardless of how quick you are and there's no way to avoid that explosion but it's so well executed that I don't even care Metroid can make an impact on you with stuff like this and that feeling I had when the second blast or just barely didn't open in time oh I'm going to remember that now that I've got power bombs I can actually blast open this door into the tower and bring it back to life again the logbook is put to good use as it can now detect the business to show those weapons research and development lab and at the heart of it all is the boss of this area the tester but on the nose there another Metroid to remake the tester is another fantastic loss though unlike anything Metroid's ever done before it's computerized drone using 360 degree fire text and it pulled off a weirdly impressive thing in boss design if challenge feels totally artificial it neither knows nor care if the samus is there it's just doing what it's programmed to and it's variety of weaponry and defences means it's a steep difficulty spikes not to mention a bullet health but it is so much fun afterward I noticed that most of these rooms can be furrowed into with more fall bomb and they keyed down to a hidden entrance into the power grid I think I missed the pathway and I could have actually gotten in here before I went down to the geothermal plant it's a nice touch to give the player a choice like that especially in what's otherwise one of the most linear Metroid's at this point on the game boy that line would have been pointing toward the penultimate area that a m2r has already broken from that path and it's about to do so even more significantly instead of breaking into the Metroid hive the past diverts to a brand new section complete with its own upgrades gimmicks and Metroid the distribution center the purpose of this operation is to store and wire energy from the core do the rest of the planet which sounds great but a fun draw arrival is unexpectedly dance super metroids meridia was naturalistic fusions undersea area with a fish tank and a m2r has its own spin something has caused an underground pipe to burst and water has partially submerged the distribution center it's an artificial structure that's not supposed to be flooded I love the contrast between the wide-open caves outside and the flooded chamber inside once again your enemies are largely mechanical but I don't think a m2r is just lazily repeating so I didn't see it before but a technological motif runs through the entire game this is where an to RT something the original simply couldn't in the same way that Super Metroid brilliantly built a cohesive natural world and to our shows the remnants of a cohesive society every redesigned area informs the function of the other letting the player experience firsthand the scope of the chozo raises technological prowess so it's kind of appropriate at this brand new area with featured gimmicks and graphical effects that couldn't have been done on a less capable tech the 2d metroids of the past have been on these don mokuba why are the screens projectiles when they're disturbed I thought the tester was a bullet hell and these little round power cells have to be bounced into conduits to re-energize the facility but like the box they'll overload if you didn't with beam weather which results in it's awesome explosion that disables enemy it also disables samus's weapons as long as she's in the vicinity of it and I love that static of that showcased in the interference all of these functions are touched the player in simple direct scenarios then combined and tumbled and just designed and increasingly complex and satisfying ways it's indistinguishable from a skill curve the professional design of the very best official title the distribution center true to its name outputs all over the planet and so it functions as a.m. two hours fast travel system he's kind of a cute samus fact earlier section but I was surprised to find the Power Cells have been deployed in places I had already explored I can't remember any other instance of a Metroid game so directly incentivizing a backtrack like this given how linear the math is sr388 needed fast travel it is a little clunky though with this room full of conduits that lead back to earlier areas also happens to feature the one conduit you need to move forward I didn't take that one first and it took me a while to check it because I had already categorized the room as a sort of level 4 central hub but when I did figure it out he has led to the gravity suit and hey I see what they did there then I found this ominously large empty room and just past that the ice beam but to get out with the ice beam I had to pass through that room again and cigarettes this is enough Dame he was that tough be nice boss from fusion and he he was the one who burst the pipe and flooded the whole Center all of a fan service but once again and you are gets it literally doesn't do fan service haphazardly it has to make sense and remember all the enemies from fusion were the exes imitation of BC from sr388 so it does make perfect sense that saris would be here but the blade itself is no throwback it's less a particularly brutal variation on box wound if you three sections of the beef and shatter its armor aesthetically it's ends up looking a little too day me since the platform's all show themselves of missile blocks it's not as tough as fusion serious but it is probably more fair and man the reward was worth it back on the Gameboy the ice cream was the first being upgraded fine but in a game where the beams in stack if usefulness was limited and to our lips amicus multitude of beam types they equipped over each other and so the ice beam is now her final powerup it has never been so satisfied enemies don't just freeze in place and hang in midair they fall to the ground and shatter or just die and float upward oh it's awesome and a little unsettling at the same time if no coincidence such satisfying power-ups are in the same area that lets use it back to the top of the map and to our scuttling edges you towards even a planet another tour it is ridiculous that's how our power exam appeals by now and if you do go back you just might discover one more new area and this one is entirely optional clearing this calf near the research site reactivates an elevator but I ain't gonna be lazy seriously I love it the game just lets you do this if for some reason you want you it's another great detail and a look at the surface may look the Sun is setting and uh-oh huh this area is the landing site of the GSS throught the starship that brought the research team to sr388 it's it's enormous but it's desolate there are no Metroid's and enemies are sparse even the music is clean so it's appropriate that this area is kind of a tribute to the darkest game in the series Metroid Fusion is the same one where the excellent xamon a little further down the timeline and I got that cool fan service II feeling when I found this fusion style save points on the Federation ship right where you'd expect it to be trekking to the top deck of the ship reveals the boss of the area it called Genesis and how appropriate is that in a game that is the modern-day epitome of what Nintendo actually Genesis is an adaptation of a pretty minor in amusement future reimagined into something much more dangerous the logbook claims that these are biologically the oldest creatures on sr388 but aside from some surprisingly flashy attacks it's not very hard the only other thing of interest is the rescue teams puzzle hanging out back there via a very nice Erlik scrolling effect actually huh I found a scientist but I wonder what ever happens there a rescue team that the area is so wide open and desolate I mean there's no other place like this in the series and I think it's evoke a exactly what the team in forward to this is the research team that the Federation failed to save and so it has the aura of a graveyard experienced here it's a poignant reminder of what Samus is up against unfortunately on my initial playthrough I didn't actually find it until after everything else in the game and in that context it was more of an unsatisfying coda I mean I really do see what they were going for and I do think they pulled it off but it might have been better served to open up more obviously after you find the research team after all that creativity though it is kind of nice to get back to Metroid 2 as usual yeah yeah I know how this goes we find one alpha take it down then head down to discover but overall the total collapse and I like super surprised when I climb back out here to discover what yeah well there's a rescue team but there's no way to rescue them if the Metroid reveals its final form in slaughter son it sucks for them the Samus just barely got here too late but the way they're used to put over the final evolution of the Metroid is brilliant but on the downside if you notice the problem yet the Omega Metroid has some pretty cool attacks and it's a neat touch the way it's armored open but when I wanted but I'm not really struggling here it's kind of just taking a while to whittle it down but when it finally did go down the path open to the penultimate area the Metroid hive originally this place featured nothing more than a boss Rajic in three of the toughest Metroid's in the game of course you could refill your health weapon to get in mind backtracking for 15 minutes and that you would need to do so with pretty much a given in a m2r the music is appropriately tense and the graphics are repetitive and evocative of the mindless instinct of built this hive this is where I might have really appreciated that save points now double is recharge station unfortunately I probably could have goes out the recharge this time this just crystallized it for me Omega Metroid's are way too easy either you aim the super missiles well and they go down in no time flat or you're left with regular missiles and the fight is just boring i skim the patch notes that aim to ours one and only update in nerfed Omega Metroid's but I think they overdid it getting through the nest is the last obstacle before the end it should be challenging but I breathe through it in about five minutes and the lips feeling weirdly unfulfilled maybe I should try playing on hard next time because oh yeah and to our ABS back to die using the original it's a winding climb upward toward the final area so planted this time with some gorgeous waterfalls and tranquil backdrops you know I think this section would have felt better without music the music from the hive keeps playing famous on the Gameboy but if it just had the ambience for the waterfalls it would've made a better contrast a moment of silence before the end at the top of those waterfalls you come to the genetics laboratory the origin point of the series namesake the place the Metroid's themselves were born so larvae swarm from the background and I was impressed at just how fast they drain you if they catch you I'd like him to be a thrush finally you drop down and discover the metroid queen the final boss was already a real impressive technical achievement for the Game Boy and it starts out pretty much the same but after a few rounds she starts blowing holes through the wall and pushing you back into the lab the metroid queen is just about perfect even if it does get a little repetitive with how often she pulls back to fire projectiles it might be nice if she had another attack but even as it is it's probably the best final boss in the 2d series from a gameplay perspective eventually stands up corner and the clean clamps down looking to finish her off but I've been terrible I remember how this go and committing suicide has rarely been so satisfied Dargis just gone one more time damage watches the last metroid hatch and two are into the same way it's 25 year old predecessor did not with an explosive countdown but with an earnest peaceful trips back to the surface although this is the end of the game we now know that this is just the beginning of the series most famous articles in the final screen and to our shows you is that this one the last metroid is in captivity the galaxy is that piece and to our is not perfect but most of its imperfections rise directly as a result of the fact that it's remaking Metroid to an epic game for its time but one that was even then flawed at the core most of Metroid 2 squads are circumvented to some degree in this remake but a few are exacerbated there's a reason the series didn't move toward this more linear style as it went forward there's a reason samus never again had to hunt down the same sort of thing over and over and over again that stuff only came about because of the game boys limitations and as a remake a m2r can't get around it but let me clarify what I said am to our flaws arise directly because aim to R is a remake of metroid 2 and that is incredible because this is a fan-made video game the flaws don't come from engine problems consistency issues bizarre difficulty spikes or even fortuitous fanservice and fail if I had to think of the early Metroid's in context to their time I've had to think of every other fan game I have ever played in that context as something made by a hobbyist that aim to are is on a whole other level it doesn't really matter if Milton glossy and his team made a better Metroid than Nintendo what matters is that they made a real metroid game because this is a real metroid game it deserves its spot in the season and more than that it deserves to be held in the same regard as the very series that inspired it dr. M and his team created the definitive celebration of Metroid's anniversary incorporating callback just about every other mainline title taking the best aspect of both worked in all of them expanding on those aspects and forging ahead with their own distinct style and best of all the team was committed to continuing development on this game building onto what was already a complete experience they plan to add a new game plus mode for the whole map would be open from the start and being combos that would allow you to fight Metroid with more than just missiles and look the distribution center even has this pipe that you can't enter could more areas be added yes and two are was a modern game that could be upgraded change make even better Milton voici never even ask for donations for EMG one in fact he outright refuse them but his team through thousands of hours of work across an entire decade transformed a 25 year old Gameboy game into a playable representation of their love for this series they gave one of the most important games in the Canon the remake it needed and built a game that could satisfy 12 years of longings for anyone who has ever been a fan on the 30th anniversary of one of gaming's most revered franchises doctrine and his team gave Metroid the celebration it deserved it's too bad Nintendo didn't see it that way

Channel: The Geek Critique

Views: 600,793

Rating: 4.904151 out of 5

Keywords: The Geek Critique, TGC, Geek Critique, Josh Wallen, metroid, am2r, milton guasti, nintendo, nintendo dmca, dmca, another metroid 2 remake, metroid 2, metroid 2 remake, metroid remake, metroid game for pc, AM2R, review, analysis, am2r download

Id: YmnVaTNhts0

Length: 42min 56sec (2576 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/joe_copp]

This is an absolutely superb video.

[u/[deleted]]

This was a great video to end of TGC's Metroid review series. He summed up AM2R well, and this whole video was not only a review of the game, but a tribute to Metroid in general. I'm glad the Metroid reviews have given him more attention, I've been around since the Sonic reviews, and I definitely think he deserves all the subs.

That last line really hit me, though. Nintendo really doesn't seem to care much for Metroid at all, the franchise is woefully neglected. Seeing SEGA and Nintendo having polar opposite reactions to fan games definitely makes it even more of a gutpunch. Fingers crossed for this E3...

[u/SoundProblem]

It's crazy how all my favorite 2D Metroids these days are either fan made or SM hacks.

[u/Suparedman]

The only single thing I disagree with is the part about Alpha and Gamma Metroids becoming tedious. I feel like the game is made in a way where you improve, Gammas and Alphas become fairly easy, and then SUPRISE, Zeta Metroids!

[u/DestroyerOfAglets]

Gravity Suit Upgrade

"I see what you did there."

I don't see what they did there. Help?

[u/ukulelej]

You can climb into the queen metroid to power bomb her insides? I had no idea, I just fired missiles

[u/Lusunati]

Good work to Geek Critique, I enjoyed the video.

And if any of the team's seeing this, well done. If you make any more games, I'd certainly like to see it.