Metroid Fusion Subverts All Expectations (Retrospective)

[Music] the year is 2002 the nintendo 64 and game boy color came and went with no metroid game in sight while we saw cameos from samus in other games during that time she famously never had an adventure to call her own on the n64 the last true metroid game was released over eight years ago and man what a game to go out on super metroid had pretty much always been considered a masterpiece from the day that it was released so hopes for a sequel remained high all throughout the hiatus eventually metroid fans got exactly what they asked for well sort of what the hell am i looking at here who is this and where's samus you would think that after an eight year hiatus they would go back to basics in the whole concept to keep things simple for the newcomers but no the entire metroid formula was about to be flipped on its head this is metroid fusion a game that was not afraid to tamper with fans expectations while metroid fusion is still a metroid game at its core it lacks or dare i say even corrupts many of the components that made super metroid so iconic it's because of these differences that in a lot of ways i feel like metroid fusion is the most interesting game to talk about in the entire series there's basically two camps of people that i noticed exist for it people that think it's too linear and not isolated enough to be considered a proper metroid game and people that played it as their first ever metroid game on that front why does a game need to meet a quota of non-linearity to be considered a metroid game return of samus and fusion are both fairly linear games but i mean that makes up half the series right there are you really going to be the guy that tells me that half of the games in a whole series aren't really part of that series what the hell kind of series is that of course these are proper metroid games metroid games are most well defined by their elements of non-linear exploration and isolation but that's not all there is to them and i think it's smart of fusion to subvert those expectations somewhat the map layout still feels like a metroid game even if the way you go through the story doesn't necessarily once again breaking from the precedent set up until this game metroid fusion's story is by far the most complex and involved one yet samus is assisting a team of researchers on the surface of sr388 the former home planet of the metroids she soon encounters a life form she had never seen before an x parasite which is then absorbed into her power suit the x parasites are dangerous organisms that take over the bodies of their hosts and absorb their genetic information killing the host in the process samus loses consciousness as she flies back into space her ship crash lands into an asteroid belt and the research vessel recovers her escape pod the x are embedded deeply within her power suit leading to portions of it being surgically removed dramatically altering samus's physical appearance she's given a minimal chance of survival but her life is saved when she's given a vaccine made with cells from the baby metroid that she rescued it's later revealed that the metroids were actually created by the chozo to be the sole predators of the x parasites an experiment that would later go wrong once they were found by the space pirates this is the major plot twist of the entire series and i absolutely love it it re-contextualizes the entire saga up until this point before metroids were seen as these parasitic abominations that killed anything they came into contact with and they needed to be wiped out at all costs now the metroid species are still dangerous when falling into the wrong hands but i mean think about it before they were discovered by the galactic federation and the space pirates they just peacefully did their job on their home planet they did exactly what they were designed to do and they were at the top of the food chain in their ecosystem but without them there something far more dangerous and sinister took its place the only reason anything even happened is due to outside forces interfering with the natural circle of life on sr-388 and samus is the reason that imbalance even happened in the first place she is the one that single-handedly eradicated the metroid species so she's at least partially responsible for this disaster happening throughout the game don't you feel silly don't you feel stupid don't you feel a little ashamed the metroid vaccine merges samus's dna with that of a metroid it gives her a natural immunity to the x parasites and even allows her to absorb them to gain health and ammo which is actually a pretty neat way of explaining item drops in universe she even kind of looks like a metroid now once again showing that fusion isn't afraid to tamper with the status quo not too long after there's an explosion on board the bsl research station orbiting above sr-388 which will be the main setting for the game samus is sent by the galactic federation to investigate taking the orders of the computer ai onboard our new spaceship samus privately names the computer adam after her former commanding officer when she served in the federation being the only other time that she had to follow direct orders and yeah following direct orders i kept alluding to the fact that metroid fusion subverts all expectations coming in from super metroid and this is the single biggest instance of that right here super metroid was praised for its progression being allowed to gain items and even fight bosses completely out of order all up to the discretion of the player progression through fusion is completely dictated by atom with no kind of sequence breaking in sight super metroid had an invisible hand that gently guided the player through the game with no text or dialogue or anything of the sort but metroid fusion has an iron grip and a megaphone on the player at all times adam will always tell samus exactly where she needs to go and doors will arbitrarily block the player to prevent them from going anywhere that they shouldn't look i get why all the dialogue is here they wanted to tell a more complicated story and some of these ideas are just too complex to be told through subtext but there needed to be a way to skip past it just mark where i need to go on the map bam done oh samus the x have created a new form of aids and you're only at five percent battle capacity so the federation is sending you the pee pee piss laser in sector two that i don't care i said in my super metroid review that there needed to be a way to skip past the opening cut scene by the way this game's opening cut scene is twice as long and that need still holds true here like i said i actually enjoy this game story but the fact that you can't skip any of the cutscenes or dialogue makes this game one of the more painful ones to replay i got to enjoy it once i don't need to see it again if i don't want to as for adam's navigation help i actually don't really mind it that much yeah it tells you where to go but not necessarily how to get there that's still on you to figure out there are even times where you have to find security rooms to get to where you need and those are never marked on the map but again it should have been optional as much as i don't mind it if people don't want any help don't give it to them i get that these gameplay elements are probably meant to be extensions of the storyline every aspect of the game is about the loss of samus's agency and i honestly feel like the player isn't meant to enjoy being bossed around by this computer so much it's supposed to rub you the wrong way the game is about same as fighting back against the x parasites but also regaining her former power including the ability to go off the rails when you approach the game from that way metroid fusion is a brilliant character study about samus and her relationship with the metroids the x parasites and adam malkovich but i just want to play the freaking game when you actually get to play it metroid fusion marks a massive leap forward and one of the most important aspects of any game the control samus's controls were simplified to account for the game boy advance's lack of buttons but i honestly feel this control scheme works much better than what we got in super metroid that game's controls worked fine once you get used to them but fusion's control scheme is comfortable and responsive from the very beginning to start off with samus isn't as floaty as she had been in any of the previous three games it might make it harder to land certain jumps but the heavier samus just feels more natural in my opinion she also doesn't have the ability to run anymore it might take options away from the player but i just see it as one less thing to worry about finally the ability to shoot missiles is remapped to holding the r button instead of toggling with select with aiming both dying up and down mapped to l holding r to use missiles feels infinitely more natural than having to move my thumb off the d-pad to press select which i don't think is even used for anything in this game new to this game is the ability to grab onto ledges from there you can either hoist yourself up onto the platform or jump off the ledge to do a sort of pseudo-wall jump speaking of the wall jump i regret to say that it has been nerfed in this game unfortunately in super metroid samus was able to redirect herself back into the same wall that she just jumped off of to do a ball jump again but fusion sent samus out too far to be able to redirect herself meaning no more scaling cliff faces infinitely that one wall wall jump was the definitive move that allowed for a ton of sequence breaking in super and i guess with this game being more linear they wanted to put an end to that and while we're talking about key things that were changed from super might as well bring up the map quickly it's a pretty substantial improvement secret areas that aren't initially revealed by the navigation room are now highlighted a different color from the main path and doorways between rooms are now marked it even differentiates the different levels of security needed to open each door and even secret connecting tunnels are marked differently and for the completionists out there the map also differentiates between uncollected and collected items and even tells you when you've collected all of the expansions in a particular sector the setting of metroid fusion like i said earlier is onboard the bsl research station the station is entirely artificial once again in stark contrast to the more naturalistic environments of the previous games the station begins in the hangar of the main deck and it eventually leads into a central hub with six elevators that lead directly to each of the six different sectors what i like about these environments is that the game doesn't use them as an excuse to just have generic throwaway level themes not only are the themes relatively unique sometimes taking themes that we've never even seen in a metroid game up until this point but it totally embraces the artificiality of the station my personal favorite is sector 4 it's an aquatic themed sector and the first time you visit it you see different kinds of machinery to suggest that it's a hydroelectric power plant but when you visit a different part of it later you're essentially inside of an aquarium it's a really cool and unique way to have a water level and every sector is like this to an extent unfortunately progression through the station isn't quite as graceful as what came before the puzzles needed to get through each sector sometimes feel about as artificial as the station itself super metroid has weird moments as well but it feels much more commonplace here almost like every single thing you do is hidden behind a secret block it's not as bad as metroid 1 but it is a downgrade coming off the super power bombs have been upgraded to reveal every destructible block in the area but it's not going to help later in the game when there are secret tunnels hidden inside of foreground tiles that can't be destroyed also you don't get power bombs until around the middle-ish of the game so good luck at the beginning you're gonna need it not only is the world a bit more obtuse to navigate but samus herself has been considerably nerfed her new look is a result of her old power suit being surgically removed and yeah it sure does feel that way the simplest of enemies deal massive damage and even later in the game after getting the varya in gravity suits samus can never take damage like she used to open-ended games tend to struggle with creating balanced difficulty if the player has many different options to choose at once it makes the most sense for each option to be equally difficult so that players don't get stuck or frustrated for picking the wrong option fusion being a more linear game means that it can have a much steeper difficulty curve and the developers took full advantage of that there are some bosses that legitimately kick my ass playing fusion the box security robot can be pretty annoying if you don't get a good rhythm going with its attacks and yakuza the giant enemy spider is almost guaranteed to get at least one kill on me every playthrough fusion's difficulty is such a meme within the metroid series that some games even have a fusion mode as its hardest difficulty namely metroid prime and samus returns for the longest time i considered fusion to be the hardest in the series but i think samus returns might have just recently overtaken it in terms of items to collect samus doesn't have a whole lot of new things to defend herself with there's a lot of simplification here coming off the super metroid the high jump boots now also grant the spring ball's ability and super missiles are an upgrade to regular missiles rather than being a separate item she can no longer get the grapple beam x-ray scope or reserve tanks and a side effect of the metroid vaccine means she has a new vulnerability to cold temperatures meaning she can't get the ice beam either in place of it samus can now find ice missiles and they do exactly what you think they do she can also upgrade them to diffusion missiles later which lets you charge missiles to let them explode in a larger expanding radius this ability is actually really neat but you get it so late in the game and there's only like one or two areas where it's actually needed samus can also find the wide beam which is technically a new upgrade but come on we all know it's just a spacer beam items are laid out a lot more evenly throughout the game rather than the approach of the previous games to front load most of the items towards the beginning fusion adopts a more mission-based structure with the end of each mission giving samus a new item to use this style of progression works fairly well for a linear game and especially for a handheld objectives start off fairly simple you know clear all the vents download item data defeat this boss etc later in the game it starts getting more involved one of my favorite moments coming right after getting the ice missiles out of nowhere alarms start playing adam tells you that the x somehow hacked the main boiler and then you have six minutes to run to the complete other side of the station to restart the cooling unit it's such a fast-paced frenetic section of the game and it completely blindsides the player it's also here where you learn that the x retain the intelligence of those that they assimilate they were able to get to the last of the crew members explaining how they knew how to work the station's computers the x are single-minded parasites that want only to assimilate and grow numbers and with their newfound intelligence they realize that samus is their greatest threat to that mission so they tried to destroy the station in hopes that it would kill samus and allow the x on sr-388 to live it's a really interesting development and it's certainly not the last twist in the story that we'll see not too long after this samus is made aware of healthy bio signs somewhere on the station but when she goes to investigate [Music] yep fan service actually i never really thought about it until now but yeah a lot of the enemies you fight on the bsl station or actually just reimagined versions of the same enemies from zebes so this really shouldn't be too much of a surprise the animals take refuge and same as a ship and i guess it's implied that the x never went after these guys because they were too weak to even bother assimilating well we know that's not true they were the ones to teach samus about her more advanced techniques but hey whatever ensures these guys get out safely i guess however something that definitely wasn't too weak for the x to assimilate yeah uh this is a pretty big part of the game that i neglected to mention until now remember how the x parasites infected samus's power suit and how it needed to be surgically removed well the federation brought the suit onboard the bsl station and it's the cause of the explosion that we were sent to investigate at the beginning this is the sax a next parasite mimic of samus i think the sax perfectly encapsulates what metroid fusion is trying to accomplish through its gameplay fusion's story is about the loss of samus's power and her journey to recover it while facing her greatest threat yet what better way to personify that than a literal clone of a fully powered samus from super metroid not only does the sax perfectly represent the danger that the x parasites pose on the galaxy but it serves as a poignant reminder of the power that samus had lost you were this character at one point you got to tear through super metroid you were the one that found those upgrades the sax isn't held back by anything it can go wherever at once it don't listen to no goofy computer man there are times where fusion genuinely feels like a survival horror game any time the sax appears on screen the music stops and all you can hear its footsteps as it slowly walks across the room and if you make the mistake of being detected by it well you might as well just reset the game at that point unless you have the vario suit the sax is able to freeze you with the ice beam and damage you with super missiles the same way that you took out the metroids back on zebus it's actually pretty fitting since you are kind of a metroid now there are four encounters with the sax before the final section of the game the first three are possible to slip through undetected but on that fourth you better be ready to face your fears samus still can't damage it mind you but with ice missiles you at least have a means to avoid it more reasonably the sax encounters are the most memorable moments of the entire game they were adored by not only the fans but probably even more so by the developers themselves every metroid game released after this one had some kind of major section where samus felt completely powerless against a greater threat it even seems to be the main gimmick of the metroid dread with the emmy robots hell even the name dread while previous games were somewhat unnerving and made you feel alone and small in a vast open world none of that compares to the feeling of well dread when you encounter the sax these encounters completely changed large parts of the series dna going forward and i think it's for the better i really enjoy these kinds of sections after that final sax encounter the tone of the game begins to change pretty dramatically the mission based structure i discussed earlier is beginning to fall apart at this point there are times where adam will just flat out and not tell samus where she needs to go and she's forced to keep going further and further off track a boss battle with nightmare deep in sector 6 eventually leads to samus breaking out through the bottom of sector 4 acquiring two upgrades along the way that she wasn't meant to get while the progression of the game is still just as linear as it always been you're not doing what the game is telling you anymore samus is fighting back against the game to regain her agency to regain her ability to go out of mountains it all culminates to this section here samus finds a restricted laboratory and discovers that the federation are running their own metroid breeding program complete with all of their different forms from metroid 2. the federation have been portrayed as this kind of shadowy and mysterious organization throughout the game so you know that something is fishy when adam tries to reassure samus that this metroid breeding program was only being done for quote unquote peaceful purposes the sax tracks samus to the secret lab and triggers the self-destruct this isn't an end to the sax however as the x can reproduce asexually meaning that there are no fewer than 10 sax onboard the ship this doesn't really amount to anything in the end since you still only ever see one at a time but it does explain how it isn't gone after the station explodes not too long after adam confines samus to a small room and reveals that the federation intends to capture the sax so that they can weaponize it for militaristic purposes samus apparently being the only one to realize how awful of an idea that is intends to trigger the self-destruct sequence for the entire station to wipe out all the x on board she tries to reason with the computer to release her and calls it adam out loud for the first time which seems to trigger something inside of it i hate to say it but i'm honestly not a fan of the game's final twist here the computer suddenly adopts the characteristics of the real adam malkovich and essentially tells samus that her planet is stupid and wouldn't work adam notes that destroying the station alone would still leave the x parasites on the planet's surface so he suggests to crash the station into the planet first so that it would get caught in the blast killing two birds with one stone so the entire game is about restoring samus's power and confidence and in its most climactic moment samus just accidentally gets the computer to come up with a better plan for her that's lame and there's even a bit that they throw in at the very end oh wow i had no idea that they uploaded the minds of high-ranking federal officials into computers that sure was convenient huh it just comes off as contrived and hokey to me this moment should have been samus's she should have figured out a way through this with her own agency but i digress this is the point of the story where you can finally go on the endgame item hunt but i regret to say that it isn't very interesting in this game a lot of upgrades can't be found until after the screw attack which means slowly combing over every sector thoroughly right at the very end main upgrades don't count towards 100 completion in this game meaning that there are 100 optional expansions to find each counting as one percent of the completion total eighty percent of that is just power bomb and missile expansions which aren't even needed in the end game at all also the amount of power bomb expansions in particular is just ludicrous you can have up to a max of 74. you just don't need that many also the same song plays throughout every single sector on loop forever it can be one of two different songs depending on if you already talked to adam or not but still what happened to the unique music in each sector i really wonder if they gave this part of the game as much thought as they did with the rest it just seems kind of odd to have the player repetitively run around to collect upgrades that they don't need in order to say they got 100 completion oh well whether you decide to go through completion or not samus ends up going to the control room in the game's final moments samus has one last go with her doppelganger it's cathartic to finally give this thing a taste of its own medicine and by this point samus is so powered up that the sax doesn't even stand a chance eventually it turns into this thing and it becomes even easier samus takes care of it and makes her way to the control room triggering the signature self-destruct sequence arriving back at the hangar samus sees a familiar husk and goes toe to toe with an omega metroid [Applause] holy shmoley this thing does not mess around samus has no way of damaging it but it nearly kills her with one swipe the sax recognizing its predator swoops in and is able to damage the omega metroid with the ice beam but yeah what did you think was gonna happen samus absorbs the sax and regains her ice beam in her signature orange color it's kind of weird that the ice beam is the only thing that can hurt the omega metroid this time around and not missiles like in metroid 2 but yeah whatever after landing the killing blow samus ship swoops in to rescue her and the station explodes in the planet's surface destroying both samus realizes that she'll probably be questioned and held accountable for the events that transpired but she finds solace knowing that she adam and her animal buddies save the galaxy anyway and that's where the series ended for 19 years yeah up until the announcement of dread fusion was chronologically the last game in the storyline for that entire time it was an alright ending to the series the fate of samus was left quite ambiguous and she still never returned to her former appearance showing that this adventure permanently scarred her in a big way but of course none of that matters at this point metroid dread is coming out in just a few weeks and it's going to pick up directly for fusion left off finally giving us proper closure to this entire saga even in dread samus suit still isn't completely back to normal just showing how much of a lasting impact this game had on the series easily metroid fusion's biggest contribution to the entire series is the sense of fear that it creates through its gameplay and characters that aspect became a key component in every game that followed it and now it's seen as a core part of the series everything else however seems to be much more overlooked most other metroid games released after this one weren't this heavy-handed with the story didn't feature this much dialogue and weren't this linearly designed obviously prime 3 and other m are the exception here but pretty much all the other games are more open and isolated similarly to what came before fusion overall i think fusion is an amazing game to play once it's still a metroid game at its core but it's not afraid to test the limits and see how much you can get away with by making the game more linear and by having adam talk to you and tell you where you need to go it's a complete subversion from what made super metroid such a beloved game but i think it worked out in the end but here's the thing all of those things are great to experience once if i ever come back to this game it's not to re-experience the same plot twist again it's for the refined gameplay challenging difficulty and cool art design of the artificial space station there needed to be a way to skip past all the cutscenes in dialogue it might not sound like much but it's the single biggest thing that keeps me from wanting to replay this game as much as zero mission and super i really admire everything fusion trying to do with its gameplay but it becomes increasingly difficult to appreciate it when the game forces me to stop playing it for reasons that could have been so easily avoided just goes to show how much a single innocuous decision can really affect one's thoughts on the complete package [Music] the next game in the 2d series doesn't continue the story set by fusion but rather it uses fusion as a base to update the original metroid on nes an outdated archaic game even by 2004 next time we're going to be taking a look at metroid zero mission my personal favorite 2d metroid game make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it it'll be out a week after this video if you liked this video please leave a like and a comment i want to know if you'd like to see more reviews and retrospectives like this in the future that does it for this week's video and i hope to see you next week for metroid zero mission take care

Channel: BasedSam

Views: 24,672

Keywords: Metroid, Nintendo, Samus, Review, Retrospective, Analysis, GBA, Game Boy Advance, Gameboy Advance, Fusion, Dread

Id: b55ifcc5g08

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021