Metroid (Series)

[Monocle]

Yeah lmao. He would always catch me in some fucking corner and hit me through walls. fuck that guy. Stun, through walls can at your through walls. hate him

[Moonface]

Yeah I've seen it shoot the purple orb that will stun you with electric but it's only got me one time and it wasn't near enough to catch up. I've not been stun locked by it like the ice EMMI though; I'd free myself only to be iced barely a second later because it's still looking directly at me on a straight corridor.

[Monocle]

It makes me feel bad when I see these videos of pros just trolling the EMMI. their patterns are actually really simple but they fluster us and our brains then off

[Moonface]

I find that if an EMMI catches me purely through pathing and not from freezing or whatever, it's when I first enter an area and don't know the pathing, so despite being invisible I'll get caught because it just decides it always wants to walk exactly where I'm heading or standing.

[Monocle]

I've seen videos of people blowing through the EMMI zones with no cloaking and no fucks given. pros are a scary group of people.

[Moonface]

I love how that video just makes the EMMI AI look really bad when it probably isn't bad at all. Poor thing. XD

I just defeated Experiment No. Z-57 and so far it's my favourite boss fight, and Samus acts like such a badass during the entire fight too and the little scene after.

[Monocle]

Oh that fight is fun af! plus there's that secret way to kill it using shinespark!

[Moonface]

So I'm at the point where I just have the last boss to do, but I'm aiming to get all the items first. I have to say that shinespark is not utilized very well in this game. It is rarely used until you go for items, and the puzzles can be so complex that trying to figure it out is harder than it needs to be at first because the game has not given you anything that is required to teach you about the different ways to retain speed. It should've also been attached to different buttons because sometimes pressing down just inputs as reversing direction if I slightly tilt it left or right, and having to cancel screw attack to perform it in midair gets painful. The Burenia puzzle can absolutely die in a fire and you know what one I'm talking about if you've seen it.

They're just so unnecessarily tedious more often than not I find.

[Monocle]

huh. that's weird. I found shinesparking and speed boosting to be easiest in this game. It's a huge bitch in other games. Plus there's so many bosses you can get with shinespark in this game.

as for that puzzle, you don't need to screw attack. You slide under and start shooting the blocks while you're falling. That way you aren't in screw attack and can midair shinespark easily.

[Moonface]

Yeah, I got it in the end. I wish shinespark was required in less optional ways though like other powers are. It feels a little like an afterthought to me.

I beat the game today too. Very cool last boss although it doesn't top Z-57 for me. Doubt I'll bother with hard mode though because I don't really have any urge to play it again harder right now.

[Monocle]

rip hard mode.

how'd you enjoy the overall game? it's not perfect, even for a super fan like me, but it's definitely I step in the right direction imo

[Moonface]

I really enjoyed it overall. I didn't really have any issue with the game until I was item searching, where I felt a few things weren't explained as well as they could. For a lot of the game, I thought the speed blocks had to be ran into from the direction being shown on them, and I thought the ones in crawl spaces meant I was going to get a morph ball power that would let me gain speed in that state, sorta like Sonic's ball form. When I realised I had no more powers to get, I discovered that I was supposed to be getting all those with the existing speed powerup, but I had no idea how to do the crawl space ones because the game hadn't given me anything to teach me it was possible yet. Same with retaining speed from wall jumping, I had no idea I could do that until I looked up how I was supposed to reach a tall speed block that couldn't be shine sparked into.

This one isn't a fault of the game but a personal thing, I'd have liked bomb blocks that weren't part of puzzles to remain broken forever, similar to speed blocks and powerbomb blocks. It just felt unnecessary to be dealing with them when traversing. Faster speed when rolling would've been nice too since I disliked how I could just sprint or dash when running but morph ball forced me into standard walking speed all the time. I was actively trying to avoid any crawl spaces when navigating the map to find things just to not deal with it. But that's a personal QoL thing so I don't view the game lesser for those things.

One of my favourite things about the game was areas having multiple entrances so that you weren't just going through the exact same thing every time you went back to an area you've been to until you reach something that a new power lets you get into. It helped keep the areas fresher for longer and it made traversing the map better since you had multiple ways to move around, which isn't something I think Hollow Knight did for example.

[Monocle]

oh there's a video series on YouTube you might like. It goes in and observes all the little things you never notice in the game that are subtle but really help to build the setting.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3eWg...juOJJeYlra

it's in that playlist. videos are called XX number of cool things in Metroid Dread. I think he's done 6 videos now?

[Moonface]

@Monocle: I'll check that out! I watched the Boundary Break for Dread earlier this morning, and it was neat but I was disappointed some stuff wasn't covered, like what it looks like during the cinematic moments in the Z-57 fight around the reactor. The arena appears to only have one side actually modeled, yet the fight appears to circle around a 360 degree room, so I would've loved to see more of that to know how it works.
I watched the first one of that playlist you linked and I knew a fair number of them, but #20 is my favourite thing to have learned just because it's so stupid. XD

[Monocle]

Yeah that boundary break was awesome but only scratched the surface. There's so much detail in Dread I never knew about. Those videos in that playlist were eye opening