Metroid Dread | NSW | Demo now available on the eshop

Kotaku basically focus more on trying to be lift wing morality police than they focus on gaming news nowdays... I'm a political person and more of a left wing one at that but I don't want to be preached at when I just want to know about upcoming games.

Balladeer wrote:
Tomous wrote:I can't believe Kotaku did a whole article on how Samus should smile more

...this feels like you fooling about, Tom. Please tell me it's you fooling about.

Sadly not: https://kotaku.com/dear-metroid-dread-s ... 1847875658

Orphaned as a child after Space Pirates killed her parents.
Raised by aliens, infused with their DNA and turned into some kind of hybrid and trained to become a warrior
Worked as a solo bounty hunter fighting all kinds of gooseberry fool across the galaxy and nearly dying countless times
Forced to cause the extinction of the genetically engineered Metroid race
Infused with Metroid DNA after nearly being killed by the X parasites and becoming even more of a hybrid

...

Crack a smile a bit more would you love?

GUYS I JUST WANT TO GET THIS OFF MY CHEST

I am really happy this game has done really well!

Chuffed for Metroid as a whole! Happy to see all the excited YouTube videos and memes!

But somehow I'm retroactively feeling more annoyed at it! Specifically every time I see it I think MercurySteam really committed to an aesthetic that looks so much worse than it could have! The cross-section-as-if-cut-through look means there is basically no foregrounding detail, and all the work has gone into the backgrounds which have depth and interest. But it's crap there! You don't see/notice it unless you pay attention! It doesn't feel like you're enmeshed in an environment!

Instead it looks like this overly straight-angled world of basic black geometry, with Samus upfront front as if on stage and some gorgeous background with that you have to consciously pay attention to if you want to get any kind of visual vibe. Half the screen estate is taken up by black like the thing's been censored! Like I'm playing some PAL N64 game but more! So the environments feel almost the same!

And the music is rubbish and too similar in mood and pace which blurs the environments together even more!

And this makes the whole adventure feel flat-ly paced so that it makes little impact!

Oh and all the breakable blocks are so crassly bright and coloured they look like some mobile platformer tile! And the half-rate animations when many things explode/break look naff!

The whole aesthetic is flat, with loads of gorgeous work misplaced to the back and not used to fringe the platforms and go on front of Samus etc. Such a shame

Oh oh and the map is too finicky with too many dead ends that you have to loop all the way around to miss, often via other areas!

And the multiple morph bomb thing isn't much of a power up and muddies the input for the power bomb!

And clicking down the control stick to run is crap because clicking down the stick is always crap! (except torch in last of us). Especially clicking whilst holding in a direction!

Etc!

My point is 7/10. And Rayman Legends is still the most beautiful 2D game ever made.

Tomous wrote:
Balladeer wrote:
Tomous wrote:I can't believe Kotaku did a whole article on how Samus should smile more

...this feels like you fooling about, Tom. Please tell me it's you fooling about.

Sadly not: https://kotaku.com/dear-metroid-dread-s ... 1847875658

I don't see what's so egregious about this opinion piece other than that dumb, clumsy line.

Rayman Legends was developed by UbiSoft and therefore can never be truly beautiful.

I'm not over-fond of the art direction or lack thereof of this game, but it runs smoothly and that's more important in this sort of game than too much frippery IMO. Also I've been begging for more handheld-esque games to fit the gaps in the Nintendo release schedule. Given that it would be churlish of me to turn around and get angry that it doesn't look like Wind Waker in 2D.

Tomous wrote:Sadly not: https://kotaku.com/dear-metroid-dread-s ... 1847875658

I'm not clicking that sh*t. Jesus Christ. What with this and the piracy thing Kotaku really has become the Daily Mail of shoddy clickbait games journalism hasn't it. :fp:

Also, outside of "she should smile more", did they even play the game? Samus emotes plenty.

But yeah, Kotaku continues being trash. More as it develops.

Re: Kotaku article:

Samus has loads of personality in this game. It's not subtle, it's just portrayed through body language and her eyes.

A good example that was discussed in the comments is when she sees Kraid chained up: you can infer what she's feeling from how relaxed and calm she is. You can clearly imagine her thinking "oh it's just you again, ha" but it would have been silly if they had her say it out loud.

I think the author completely misread the Quiet Robe scene. When she recognises him, she literally sits cross-legged in front of him listening quietly like a child. Her posture encodes her relationship to him and to the Thoha Chozo, and her complete, implicit trust. When he is assassinated, it zooms in on her transparent visor for a second, to show her eyes wide with shock then narrowing with rage. After you defeat the assassins she has a quiet moment where she looks at the body and the game lingers on her opaque visor, deliberately not showing you her eyes. It's very clear that she's sad. She doesn't explode or break - that isn't Samus - but the scene is still full of emotion.

I think the author has probably just missed all this and in doing so embarrassed himself a little. I feel a bit bad for him. People are very weird about Kotaku. It has a mix of good articles and cringe articles like any other gaming website.

Yeah there's loads of character conveyed in the small ways that Samus chooses to express herself, I have actually been thinking almost the complete opposite to that article during my playthough in that this seems like the most expressive and layered version of Samus we've seen to date - it's one of the things that has impressed me most about the use of small cutscenes and details in the game!

Half the issue seems to be this guy really liking Other M and wishing the narrative in this game was a bit more like that.

There's one particular scene where she shows buckets of emotion, explicitly, but unlike (what I've heard about) Other M it's done well.

Last edited by deathofcows on Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Balladeer wrote:I'm not over-fond of the art direction or lack thereof of this game, but it runs smoothly and that's more important in this sort of game than too much frippery IMO. Also I've been begging for more handheld-esque games to fit the gaps in the Nintendo release schedule. Given that it would be churlish of me to turn around and get angry that it doesn't look like Wind Waker in 2D.

Agreed on importance of performance.

But also think mood in Metroid is (to me) core and not frippery.

I'm grateful for the game and enjoyed it plenty, just a little disappointed that some obvious effort in making it is misplaced or undercut by some of the overall aesthetic choices. Some of of the background work (which is fully modelled as you can tell by the scanner traces) being brought to the foreground and having a single evocative, memorable tune like Phendrana or Maridia would have not only elevated it but alchemised it into something wholly different/awesome. To my taste anyhow. I realise your tastes (most tastes?) skew less towards that stuff (see: that old music discussion in Zelda thread)

Still really glad the game is going down a storm for others!

Everyone playing: Samus is a total badass

Kotaku: hey baby y u no smile so much get back in the space kitchen and make pappy some sugar

Wrt Kotaku piece I didn't find it too bad to read but just g very unrelatable - none of his concerns crossed my mind when playing. I was grateful for the lean efficiency of the cutscenes and small moments of telling Samus stuff. And her overall badassery.

Maybe that's how people feel when I go on about its visual design who knows!

Game overall did make me interested in Other M though, just because in videos the gameplay looks fun and fast-paced and responsive in a way people are also praising in this. The camera and stuff also looks very dynamic and involving.

Story might be bunk but it kind of looks like a noble failure that might be worth playing?... If it was released on Switch I'd bite.

Other M plays fine. Like DmC to DMC it's not the gameplay people ragged on. There are some weird gameplay choices in Other M (like those pixel hunt sections) that are awful, but overall it's alright.

It's just a mess pretty much everywhere else. It has some good ideas, but the execution is not great.

I love DmC...

And done, fook me that last boss is a toughy :lol:

Absolutely loved it :wub:

my GOTY of 2021 for sure, no part of it made me feel frustrated with it, dying was part of the learning curve and you just need to adapt with each death to progress. Loved the whole ending sequence as well!

Met wrote:Other M plays fine. Like DmC to DMC it's not the gameplay people ragged on. There are some weird gameplay choices in Other M (like those pixel hunt sections) that are awful, but overall it's alright.

It's just a mess pretty much everywhere else. It has some good ideas, but the execution is not great.

I replayed it along with all the other games in the series before Dread and I couldn't agree more.

It's got a lot of flaws, but if you disregard the biggest ones (Which mostly relate to the story and characterisation), there's an enjoyable enough game in there. One if the things that disappoints me the most with Other M is that we'll never get any kind of sequel to it so the problems it has will never be improved on. The combat and stuff was fun enough, the bottle ship was an interesting environment and it looked pretty nice as well. Fix the linearity and item progression, tweak the control scheme and add in a controllable camera and you potentially have a great game.

But it bombed and is despised by a large section of the fans so Nintendo walked away from it. Which is disappointing and means that they are afraid to do anything that isn't 2D or a Prime game now.

I recall enjoying Other M, it’s not the best game in the series but still decent in my opinion, only played it the once though and that was probably back in 2013 ish.

Hopefully I’ll be making a little more progress on Dread tonight, I’ll be asking for directions if I can’t find where to go :lol:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:

twitter.com/cheekydevlin/status/1447311282353418252

So tense. So well designed.

I kind of think this is by design and potentially a good thing - rooms don't individually load anymore (or do something akin to the streaming in metroid prime when they do), the whole area seems to be loaded into memory, so you can do whatever through them, including shooting enemies ahead of you and shinesparking.

I don't think I've even posted one impression yet as I got the game a week late. I'm about 10-15hrs (counter time not real time) through with a lot of deaths, and I think it's strawberry floating excellent. Definitely up there with super metroid for 2D metroids, maybe in no 2 just because it's so competent technically and well presented, and the movement is fantastic. I'm sure it'll drop when I replay the other games, I also recognise the game is pretty punningly hard and tense at times, but that's always been the case with metroid bosses (especially since Prime). I know the EMMIs are divisive but in terms of an HD 3D-rendered 2D metroid with its own twists and turns and additions its about as good as it could have been in my opinion, if the concept of EMMIs was going to be in it even 10 years ago then they were going to be in it and I'm glad they exist to differentiate the game. It's very satisfying when you've strawberry floated them off and I have managed to counter them a surprising amount of times (the game tells you to pay attention to the pulsating rhythm of the red light on their face). With there only being about 5 or 6 in the game it's certainly not ruinous even if you dislike those sections. It would be different if movement was painful and there were no rhyme or rhythm to how to despatch them and when you can it's just a couple of minutes getting it done (although it sometimes takes me 3 to 4 attempts to "warm them up" and then issue that final blow - which also needs charging up, which adds to the tension).

Metroid Dread | NSW | Demo now available on the eshop

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