Overclocked On Caffeine v.1.1

Metroid Fusion

GBA

4 hours 29 minutes

I remember playing Super Metroid on the SNES one summer when I was about 13. I'd play it til stupid hours of the morning, determined to explore every last corner of the map. A sort of penance/revenge for getting utterly stuck about two hours in on the Gameboy version, Metroid II. I have vivid memories of exploring the Crashed Spaceship level, shooting everything with the Ice Beam. I was so out of my tree on lack of sleep, I was convinced the weird noises the enemies were making were telling me how the ship crashed in the first place. Of course, that only made things worse, since it only compelled me to stay awake that much longer. For some reason, I don't quite recall how that night ended. Probably for the best.

A lack of games for my machine resulted in me playing the few games I owned endlessly. People still don't believe me when I tell them I was able to run through Super Ghouls and Ghosts (a legendarily hard game on a par with the infamous Battletoads) perfectly, playing through the game twice in a row to get the best ending, losing only a handful of lives from one end to the other. At the time, the record for running through Super Metroid (without sequence-breaking, glitching or performing any other acts of skulduggery) was somewhere in the region of about 2:29. My best time was about 2:34. The fact that I was about five minutes off the world record was enough for me. While time has dulled my skills with these games (witness me derping into each and every enemy whenever I try and play SG&G), when you consider my experience with Super Metroid (and all the recent 2D Castlevania games which 'borrow' almost every play mechanic from the series wholesale) it's pretty fair to assume when it comes to these style of games, I know my shit.

So tell me then: why did I find Metroid Fusion so unbelievably goddamn hard?

Fusion follows on almost directly from the climax of Super Metroid. Samus Aran, poster girl for both armour and latex fetishists everywhere, has finally eradicated the Metroid menace once and for all... only to discover that they were keeping something even worse in check the whole time. A new type of parasite, dubbed the X is discovered, which can absorb and mimic whatever it comes into contact with. The parasite immediately makes a beeline for our bounty hunting heroine and gets to work on her. Barely making it back to home base, in a moment of oh-so hilarious irony, she's given a vaccine made of Metroid DNA, along with a new suit of armour. This comes with several advantages and disadvantages: first off, she can now absorb the X, much like Metroids could. Unfortunately, it also means that, like the Metroid, she's especially vulnerable to cold. Not much of a problem as long as no remnants of the X parasite remain in her old armour, ready to reanimate it and have it chase after he with that nifty Ice Beam of hers.

...oh dear.

Give the designers credit where it's due, it's a good way to explain why Samus starts off the game armed with nothing but a popgun and a stylish suit of armour. It's always somewhat funny to play a sequel to a game where you ended a borderline demigod, only to start the next game as vulnerable and weak as you were at the start of the last one. At least they justified it here. Anyway, you're dropped off on a research space station which has been infected with X. There's lots of rare and exotic (read: dangerous) lifeforms up here, which The Federation, Samus' employers, would like to see kept safe. Doesn't take a genius to work out how this goes south rapidly.

The major complaint you'll hear about Fusion is its linearity. Super Metroid had a sprawling map that rewarded exploration with power-ups and new weapons. With Fusion, you're directed to your next goal via Navgation Rooms, computers that explicitly tell you where to go next. They're not optional either, helpful little terminals you can visit whenever you're stuck that give you a vague pointer on what to do now, oh no. They all mandatory and tell you exactly where to go next. Of course, there's always something in the way that prevents it being a straight A-B trip, but for a series based on exploration, this constant hand-holding seems completely contrary to the spirit of the series.

Musically, the game doesn't do anything really spectacular. With the other games in the series, there was always at least one or two pieces of music you'd have stuck in your head. Thinking about it, there's only one song that really stands out, and it's a pretty puny rendition of the classic Ridley boss theme (because it's not a Metroid game til Ridley shows up). The few pieces I do try and recall inevitably segue into tracks from Super Metroid. Graphically, things are better. Samus moves with a practised fluidity, the areas are nice and vivid and the enemies are nicely designed, if often awkwardly placed. Several classic enemies show up, with Space Pirates inexplicably making an appearance before the end. Much like with Ridley, I guess it's not a real Metroid game til these dicks show up, getting in the way of your carefully-timed acrobatics. Of all the bosses, the one that stands out most is Nightmare, not just because it's one of only two bosses actually named in the entire game. Nightmare is described as a bio-mechanical monstrosity capable of warping gravity. In practice, it looks like a TV with bad posture. In order to beat it, you have to shoot the glowing ball on it's underside. Yeah. He stands out for two reasons: first off, he's fucking hard. Not in a 'Hell yeah, I could do with a challenge' kinda way, but in a 'why the hell are you flying around like a lunatic with no real pattern DID YOU JUST DO THAT MUCH DAMAGE WITH A SINGLE HIT?! WHAT THE FUCK?!!' kinda way. Second, when you do enough damage to him, his face melts. No, really. It's surprisingly grotesque for a game that, well, isn't.

This is the main problem with the game though: enemies hit way harder than they should. In In past games, each new full suit would give you extra abilities, like being able to move freely in water, as well as well as significant damage reduction. In Fusion, it doesn't seem to matter how much damage reduction you have, the enemies will still cheerfully cut huge chunks off your life bar. Even with the damage reduction, it's like the difference between taking 60 damage per hit and 56 per hit. One boss will happily rape you for two whole tanks of life with a certain attack, which it uses every opportunity it gets. The balance of the earlier games seems lost, the areas between boss fights becoming a war of attrition. Not what I'd qualify as fun.

Then we get to the single hardest section in the entire game. You encounter Samus' old suit several times during the game. Since its infection by the X, it's known as the SA-X, and if you ever see it, you start running. No ifs, buts or maybes, you make a run for the exits ASAP. It only shows up on a handful of occasions, and most of the time, you just need to wait somewhere for it to do its thing and leave. One of the final times you face it, it starts chasing you. You can stop it in its tracks with Freeze Missiles, which do exactly what you'd expect, but that holds it in place for about two or three seconds tops. Whenever the SA-X hits you - and it will hit you - it does a ton of damage. And its rate of fire is surprisingly high. AND IT'S CHASING YOU. Hope you like repeating sections, because this one's going to take a while. Oh, and the save point was a ways back yonder. Have fun!

By the time you get to the final two bosses, you're expecting a monumental encounter, a battle of hair-tearingly sadistic difficulty. Only they aren't. The final obligatory fight against the SA-X is pretty simple, and in the actual last battle, your biggest foe will be time, the mandatory self-destruct timer ticking down in the background. The final boss' most deadly attack? A claw swipe that stuns you for a couple of seconds. That's it. They've tried to replicate the Mother Boss fight of the last game, but it just doesn't work. There's no build-up, no sense of grandeur or finality, just 'I shoot u now ur ded'.

I wanted to like Fusion - I must have on some level, I played it from start to finish. But this is a series you expect more from: merely 'good' isn't good enough. It's frustratingly hard in places and the hidden paths are often a little too well hidden. More than once you'll curse the God of Fake Walls. It's good for what it is, but a complete let-down when you think of what it could have been. At least it's not Metroid Prime: Hunters, my official point of Ruined Forever.