NES Metroid, being replaced by Metroid Zero Mission.
NES Metroid is interesting to play through to see where the franchise came from, or for the nostalgia factor, but Metroid Zero Mission is vastly superior in nearly every conceivable way, its not even close. Its not like Silent Hill 2 or Resident Evil 3, where the originals are still better than the remakes overall, everything taken into account (though in that case, SH2 remake is superior to the RE3 remake). Absolutely every element of Zero Mission is an improvement on the original.
Metroid Zero Mission did not make vast sweeping changes to alter the identity of the game, making only minor adjustments to designs that were not thematically important (for example, the physical appearance of Ridley or Kraid being different is not thematically important). There were not big amounts of cut content, with only minor elements being cut like the fake Kraid enemy, which was not thematically important. The music is all familiar with the same composition, but with added flair. Its not different just for the sake of being different. Items and suit upgrades are almost all in the same places as the original NES Metroid, with the addition of new items that were added to the Metroid setting later on such as the Charge Beam and Super Missile. A map was added to the game, and the beam weapons now stack like in Super Metroid, rather than replacing the last beam you had.
All in all, Zero Mission leaves very little reason for the player to play the original game, especially if all the player cares about is the overall story of the Metroid IP. The player won’t get more thematically important designs that enhance the story like they would playing the original Silent Hill 2, and they won’t get more original game content and story like they would playing RE3 Nemesis. They wouldn’t get an improved experience. The choice to play NES Metroid mostly just comes down to nostalgia, historical value, or personal preference. Or if someone only has an NES or device capable of emulating the NES but not the GBA.
If you have a smartphone, or a computer built after 2005, you can definitely emulate Metroid Zero Mission, but unfortunately Nintendo makes it really hard to do it the easy way.
I completely agree and to I’ll add that this also applies to Metroid II. As Metroid II was on the Game Boy the game resolution is far too small to ever revisit. For a side scrolling game you can barely see what is in front of you.
Luckily the fan game AM2R, or the slightly less good but still excellent 3DS remake do for Metroid II what Zero Mission did for the original.
Luckily the fan game AM2R, or the slightly less good but still excellent 3DS remake do for Metroid II what Zero Mission did for the original.
I just started with the Metroid saga (it is never too late I guess) and I started with Zero Mission, I am actually struggling with what is next for me, whether to start with AM2R or the 3DS one… Both look appealing to me, but as I don’t have nostalgia googles for the older 2D games and the 3DS one has always called my attention, I might lean more to it… On the other hand, AM2R is a fan game… And I have a huge respect for those…
Super Metroid is definitely the gold standard. Zero Mission definitely feels like it uses Super Metroid as its base. The same is also true for AM2R.
I think if you are getting into the series for the first time, Zero Mission, AM2R, Super Metroid & Metroid Fusion is the order to go in. They all share a similar set of gameplay & graphics.
I think the 3DS Metroid II remake is great, but in terms of cohesiveness, it’s going to stand out among the four games.
That being said it’s made by the same developers who will then go on to make Metroid Dread, which is probably my favorite Metroid game behind Super Metroid, which is the best.
If youre playing the games according to lore timeline order, I believe that the Metroid Prime games all take place inbetween Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid II. Prime 1, Prime Hunters, Prime 2, Prime 3, and potentially Prime 4. Then Metroid II, Super Metroid, Metroid Other M, Fusion, and finally Dread.
I don’t know if it really matters if you play them in any sort of order - Super Metroid really perfected the style and set the standard for the rest of the games
I’d think these people probably make up a single number digit of the amount of games bought and never played.
It would be interesting to have a breakdown of which games werr bought and never played. How many of them were gifts ? What’s the share by rating ? Even better : When were the copies the most bought but never played ? This could bring up some interesting partterns.
Which ones were ever present in humble bundles or other key bundles, what is the age of the purchase vs the age of the game, etc. I agree, a deeper understanding of the data would be great.
You’ll miss out on some spider-lore, but it’s possible to jump into Spider Solitaire for the Windows XP home computor system without having played its predecessor, Spider Solitaire for the Windows 98 home computor system
Exactly this is why current copyright rules are BS. Having multiple studios with pressure from competitors results in better games (and less micro transactions shit to sqeeze franchises to death)
… I’m imaging the natural extreme conclusion to this. There are 16 sequels to masseffect and you need to research which games you need to play before you play the newest one. This also leads to conflicting cannon and infighting
Like the F.E.A.R. games. There are four sequels but not all are in the same timeline. At least with Drakengard, the sequels in the different timeline have completely different names.
I would still prefer the extreme outcome over what we have today.
And I think the community will know and happily share which line to take and if you want sell in the franchise, you got to look out that the community is happy with what you create, which includes plot holes / inconsistencies.
The big corporations just want you to believe that franchises dies if other studios can use it, when it only is about earnings the last penny out of a franchise with the least effort possible. They happily save on production cost and invest a lot in lawsuits (or similar) to maintain their monopoly position.
I mean, that kind of stuff already exists today with the current copyright laws. I remember as a kid reading all sorts of X-Men books and wondering why the characters in the cartoon were so different. Did Han shoot first in Star Wars?
I played the Ratchet and Clank (2016) game this year that’s like… Kind of a re-make ish of the first game? Except the story is quite a bit different, there’s new characters added and some old ones removed. Half the old levels are gone and there’s a couple of new ones added. Mechanically it’s a completely different game. And yet that’s even from the same studio.
thats not really what happens tho before disney was the big evil king of intellectual property and they were running around adapting other works their stuff was stand alone despite being based on existing stories or being adaptations of existing stories. When superman became more or less public domain we didnt see this happen despite his popularity people just did their own unique adaptation/retelling of the story rather than a mess of sequels. What i think would actually happen is that people would retell masseeffects story with their own takes on it and make new stories in that universe or with the original characters (tho im sure it would happen idk why they are all so fucking bland).
And even if there were unofficial sequels the original studio can always slap a “from the original creators of” label to theirs so people obsessed with the official telling of fictional stories know what to obsess over.
Hold up, “enshitification” is just turning into a buzzword now.
Enshitification has from the beginning described a service or product which is first released one way, and then over time is made worse for the users in ways designed to squeeze more profit out of them.
Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.
Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.
While I disagree with your comment on the definition of “enshittification”, I agree that forced stealth sections are just bad design. I remember those have been a thing for a long time now, and before then it was ice levels.
Copying from a later reply: I was reading their definition as being too specific. Imo enshittification is any time the relative average quality of a class of products or services decreases, either due to increased prices or decreased quality at the same price. This can be applied to a specific product or service, but can also describe a decline in quality across an industry.
Wikipedia isn’t the end all, but in this case I think it provides a working definition.
Enshittification (alternately, crapification and platform decay) is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
I was reading your definition as being too specific. Imo enshittification is any time the relative average quality of a class of products or services decreases, either due to increased prices or decreased quality at the same price. This can be applied to a specific product or service, but can also describe a decline in quality across an industry.
Enshittification refers to a process with specific phases that ensure services will degrade at the expense of users, and then business customers, so that shareholders can extract as much profit as possible from both of those groups. It was coined by Cory Doctorow, who explains it here:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
On the one hand I get where you’re coming from, those sections are very thematically different from the rest of the game, but realistically it’s just a couple of minutes of very easy stealth.
I actually looked into this, part of the explanation is that in the 80s, Sweden entered a public/private partnership to subsidize the purchase of home computers, which otherwise would have been prohibitively expensive. This helped create a relatively wide local consumer base for software entertainment as well as have a jump start on computer literacy and software development.
This is the real explanation. Couple that with a push in the late 90s/early 2000s to roll out high-speed unmetered internet in the form of ADSL and later fiber.
Finland also has a disproportionate amount of highly successful games compared to the population. I guess one theory is that good social safety nets make it more feasible for people to take a risk starting an indie game studio that might not yield any money for years instead of working for a big corporation for a guaranteed paycheck.
Quebec also has a disproportionate amount of successful games for similar circumstances. Video game salaries are pretty well subsidized (although it was originally only meant to encourage Ubisoft to open a studio then other companies joined or got created so they kept it). The current government is threatening that though. That’s on top of socialized healthcare, low electricity cost, and the Canadian Media Fund but those all apply to the rest of Canada as well.
Quick list on top of my head: Indies: Outlast, Dead by Daylight, The Messenger, Spiritfarer, Ultimate Chicken Horse, Fez… AAA: Deus Ex, R6 Siege, For Honor, some of the better Assassin’s Creed and Farcry, Batman Arkham Origins
To be fair, BG3 is one of the most remarkable games I have ever played. Like ever. I have struggled to find other games like that which I really enjoy. Divinity original sin 2 I haven’t tried yet but I’m tempted to. Just really struggling to find stuff that’s decent and enjoyable I guess
The graphics are much simpler than BG3, but Owlcat has done some fantastic work with their Pathfinder games.
Wrath of the Righteous is much more polished and expanded than Kingmaker, but they’re both great. They both have the option to play in turn-based like BG3, or real time with pause like the old BG games.
I’ve heard a lot of concerning things about Pathfinder being way, WAY more complex and challenging than BG3, like absurdly, crazy complex combat and game systems that I’d probably struggle with and bar me from getting really into their game.
That’s a fair assessment. There are a ridiculous number of classes and subclasses each with their own quirks. And that’s without getting into multiclassing or Wrath’s mythic path system. I’ve definitely spent 20+ minutes leveling up before.
Do you like JRPGs? Yakuza: Like a Dragon is fairly recent and has a sequel (that I haven’t gotten to play yet). The story is NOT your typical RPG fare, it’s a modern drama about an ex-gangster trying to get back on his feet after prison (it gets emotional, I cried). But the combat is a classic turn-based RPG and it’s fun, stylish, and just barely complex enough to stay engaging.
That’s what the difficulty settings are for. No joke. Nearly any trash build can cruise through the easy difficulties with no more than a basic understanding of how turn based combat operates, and you’ll need to be a sweatlord with three spreadsheets open to reliably pose a threat to the hardest difficulty. Personally, I like to play in the middle but still overoptimize my party, so the early game is a challenge and then I just completely steamroll the final third of the game once we really get cooking with mythic levels.
If you already know DnD then you can play pathfinder with minimal confusion. An hour’s worth of reading a couple good build guides will give you a good idea where the differences lie and why certain choices are commonly made (Point-Blank/Precise Shot feats for instance). If you don’t already know DnD and you’re coming from something like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin, you might have a little bit of a rough landing. But that’s what a wiki is for, or just straight up following a build guide if you’re timid.
Pathfinder also has fairly detailed difficulty settings panel, you can tailor the difficulty to your liking. Story mode difficulty and auto level up presets makes the game beatable for even your grandma, so you can ease into the system.
There are also some great guides out there for different builds for both companions and main character.
Wrath of the Righteous is hands down a better game than Baldur’s Gate 3 in every observable metric except for graphics and I will gladly die on this hill.
Much as I love WOTR, hard disagree there. BG 3 is much better in terms of reactivity and consequences, polish, and all of its mechanics work properly. Meanwhile WOTR has the stumps that are 50% of its mythic paths, the not particularly well received crusade mode, and one of the worst dungeons I can remember in rpg history (I will freely admit that this last point is not as objective as the rest of my argument, but I know I am far from alone with this opinion).
Solo indie dev mashup of Risk of Rain, Helldivers, Vermintide, etc with its own soul and style of knights with guns. Dev is very active in the discord and takes feedback and actively plays with the small community the game has garnered.
I played the demo on a whim during a next fest expecting a janky joke of a game to laugh at but a decent and fun game caught me by surprise. It’s been improved and updated quite a bit since then.
HyperRogue has 352 reviews. It is a rogue like that is played on a hyperbolic plane rather than a euclidian one.
If you’re not familiar with hyperbolic geometry, don’t be fooled by the videos. It has the illusion of looking like it is on a sphere in many of the videos. It’s not! Also, you don’t need to be some master of hyperbolic geometry to play. I don’t really understand it but can still play the game well enough.
Essentially, imagine a hexagonal grid. Now, replace some of those hexagons with septagons (7 sided). The further away you get from a point there will be way more tiles in the hyperbolic grid than the euclidian.
The UI is pretty bad, the menus are pretty icky. Those are my only real complaints.
The game is charming. It has.a very retro feel to it. The music reminds me of something of hear from an old school point and click game or RuneScape. The graphics are minimal but charming.
The mechanics are easy enough. You get hit and you die. Most enemies die in one hit. There are no weapons or stats. It’s more like chess in a way. The game will also not let you accidentally move somewhere you’d die, so, yes, very much like chess with checkmates.
Because the game is so simplistic you can get into a flow state where you quickly move and attack enemies. It’s very satisfying to play.
Hyperbolic bonus: Hyperbolica, a first-person walking simulator set in a universe with hyperbolic geometry. You do odd jobs and play games that explore the strangeness of this geometry. Also, there’s a slight digression to explore spherical geometry as well.
Cyberpunk scratched that itch for me to a surprising degree. It’s not a perfect match, but it felt closer to the original than the sequels did somehow.
Hot take: Nintendo Switch Joycons. They’re a nice and clever concept but in reality they’re bad.
Too small even for casual games. The Wiimote was much better at it.
Very expensive at 80 € per set. Yes, you get two of them but in most games outside of Mario Kart you also need both. And even then they’re fine at best.
4 out of 4 of my controllers got stick drift. Nintendo had to be sued into repairing them.
It’s a conventional GameSir controller that has a Switch mode among others. The split design of the Joycons rarely plays out, most of the time it makes the controllers unnecessarily complex and thus expensive IMHO.
You mean both hands have to grip one controller opposed to having a Joycon in each hand? That split-design can be an advantage, but IMHO doesn’t cancel out the shortcomings of the Joycons. I find them still too small and not grippy at all.
Single joycon is barely usable, but the Wiimote was terrible for sideways holding.
Its shape was clearly never intended for it, and the d-pad was absolutely awful, one of the worst I’ve used.
The d-pad worked as buttons (which was how most games used it, in vertical mode), but for movement it was very stiff and almost impossible to get diagonals. For a console that featured virtual console heavily and needed a lot of classic controls, that was very bad design.
I hate the Joycons so much. The clicky buttons are terrible, the split dpad sucks for games that use it for movement, the sticks aren’t great either for precision (ignoring the drift issues), and I find them painful to hold.
bin.pol.social
Ważne