I don't like Metroid. Come tell me how wrong I am!

Okay, that thread title might have been a bit of exaggeration to get your attention. It's less accurate to say I don't LIKE Metroid, as it is to say I feel like I don't GET Metroid. Or maybe just that I don't like Metroid as much as I feel like I should, given that it seems like the sort of thing I should like and everyone else seems to flipping love it.

The Metroid game I've played the most of is Metroid 2 for the old gray brick Gameboy. It was... okay. A fun enough time waster when I was on a long drive with my parents back in the day. As my options at the time went, though, well, it was no Link's Awakening.

I never owned Super Metroid, but I rented it a bunch of times back in the SNES era and have fooled around with it on various emulators (both the legal version on my Wii, and various, shall we say, others) over the years. This is one of those games that's held up as the ultimate pinnacle of all that is Metroid, the perfect evolution of the Metroidvania formula, a triumph of game design etc. etc. etc. And again, I thought it was... okay. Never finished it. Can't say how far I've gotten in it, other than the general sense that it's somewhat more than 1/4 and somewhat less than 1/2. Eventually I'd always reach a point where I was totally lost, wandering aimlessly through corridors I'd already slogged through twenty times trying to find a door or a secret passage or something to take me to someplace new, and I'd have a choice between GameFAQsing it (a tricky proposition at best with relatively non-linear games of the Metroidvania ilk, prone to much aimless scrolling up and down trying to find the point in the FAQ that can help you) or getting bored and doing something else. I always wound up doing the latter.

Metroid Prime? Played a bit of the first one. Found it competent but very slow-paced and boring as an FPS. This is where people always tell me, "Well, it's not really an FPS, it's more of a platforming exploration adventure blah blah blah in the first person blah blah blah" which is where I zone out. What can I say, it's in the first person perspective and I'm expected to shoot things, therefore it's a first-person shooter. It doesn't have to be as frenetic as an Unreal Tournament, it just has to engage me, and it just... didn't.

Threw in Metroid Prime 3 years later to see if things had changed at all, and it seemed like they kind of hadn't. Also I hated how much cruft was all up in the HUD clogging up my field of view-- couldn't remember if that had been a problem in the first one or not.

Tried Metroid: Other M, turned it off after maybe an hour. Common consensus seems to be I didn't miss much.

So there you go. Now tell me just how wrong I am!

You're entitled to dislike whatever you want even if it's considered a "classic."

I don't think that's the response you were hoping for.

Try Zero Mission? It's the first game but with the gameplay improvements of Super/Fusion tossed in. It also gives you objectives on the map. "Hey check out this area next, something odd is happening" So it would keep you from getting lost/bored as you did with Super.

Fusion is also the same way, albeit even more linear than ZM.

To me that puts both titles below SM in terms of greatness because I like sequence breaking and going off rails and getting stuff out of order and really pushing the game and/or myself. But if you're getting lost, those two games will point you in the right direction. While Prime has the same type of "hint" system to help you along, there is definitely a slower pace to it. You can avoid combat for a long time in the Prime games, but in the 2D ones every room has something to shoot. And 2D>3D for Metroidvania games in general.

Super Metroid and Metroid Prime are going to be very different experiences no matter what. The one thing they have in common is exploration...okay, two things, as they also do upgrades. Otherwise they're very different games, and both simply f*ck my pleasure centers to f*cking ecstasy man.

But that's because I love the Metroid and Zelda design style, where it's about exploring a world and finding rewards in all the little corners. An environment starts to feel real that way, and is probably one of the reasons I really dig Resident Evil on the GameCube. Also one of the reasons I like Darksiders. And why, even though it is a blatant rip-off, I like Shadow Complex.

But, that doesn't mean it's for everyone.

Also, while Super Metroid is mostly good at steering the player right, there are a couple of moments where it's easy to get lost and just start shouting "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL TO DO!". That would kill ANY game, so I can understand getting bored there.

I refuse to defend Metroid Other M in this thread, as I seem to be one of the few who loved the gameplay to that one.

Have you played Castlevania or Shadow Complex? Not as a recommendation, just to see if you're simply not a fan of the style of the game's design.

Nah, that's a completely reasonable reaction.

I come at it from another angle: there's this assumption that "we" all grew up playing the same games, so "we" all have the same frames of reference, primarily the 8-bit NES classics (which is itself very North American-centrist). In that respect I can feel left out of conversations that assume prior experience with Metroid or Castlevania or Zelda—or even more, an assumed universal love of those games. To dovetail this with the OP, not only did I not play those games when I was kid—because I wasn't interested in them—I'm still not interested in playing them (or much at all of their modern iterations).

Relatedly, it reminds me of Stephen Totilo's Must Your Game Journalists Not Stink At 'Street Fighter'?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You're entitled to dislike whatever you want even if it's considered a "classic."

+1

If it doesn't gel with you, that's fine. I like the series, and will echo the suggestions of Zero Mission and Fusion if you ever want to give it another try. Those are really good at providing some direction of where to go next which is lacking from the first three games.

There is literally so much wrong with you if you don't like Metroid.

...

I mean, hi!

More Metroids for me.

It's alright if you don't like or "get" Metroid, as long as I'm allowed to not like or "get" Chrono Trigger.

Stele wrote:

Try Zero Mission? It's the first game but with the gameplay improvements of Super/Fusion tossed in. It also gives you objectives on the map. "Hey check out this area next, something odd is happening" So it would keep you from getting lost/bored as you did with Super.

It's like this paragraph was written just for me before I ever even hit the submit button. I actually typed up a response in the deals thread and aborted after realizing it was the deals thread. I may look at Zero Mission.

Cesarano points out my biggest problem with Super Metroid, but it was compounded by my distaste for the 'atmosphere' starting to feel like it was bearing down on me as I was lost. I still really liked the game. Especially when I wasn't hopelessly lost for hours on end trying to bomb every nook and cranny like in Metroid 2.

Gravey, I never played the original Metroid, never beat Castlevania 1, and have no interest in returning to Zelda 1 or either of the 2 previously mentioned games, and I pretty much love the rest of the entries in said franchises.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Cesarano points out my biggest problem with Super Metroid, but it was compounded by my distaste for the 'atmosphere' starting to feel like it was bearing down on me as I was lost. I still really liked the game. Especially when I wasn't hopelessly lost for hours on end trying to bomb every nook and cranny like in Metroid 2.

Yeah, I didn't get to play Metroid 2 until high school, years after I had already beaten Super Metroid, and found myself spider-ballin' and bombin' everything I possibly could after getting lost. The black-and-white environments were not quite helpful at differentiating areas, either.

I went back and tried the first Metroid as well. Yeah. f*ck. No.

By the way, an interesting read: The Invisible Hand of Metroid. It's a blog post detailing a lot of things that pretty much every user does the first time they play the game, even though it's a "non-linear" title.

I don't agree with everything he says, but he says a lot of good things.

Gravey wrote:

Nah, that's a completely reasonable reaction.

I come at it from another angle: there's this assumption that "we" all grew up playing the same games, so "we" all have the same frames of reference, primarily the 8-bit NES classics (which is itself very North American-centrist). In that respect I can feel left out of conversations that assume prior experience with Metroid or Castlevania or Zelda—or even more, an assumed universal love of those games. To dovetail this with the OP, not only did I not play those games when I was kid—because I wasn't interested in them—I'm still not interested in playing them (or much at all of their modern iterations).

Relatedly, it reminds me of Stephen Totilo's Must Your Game Journalists Not Stink At 'Street Fighter'?

+1 - I grew up largely console-free (inconsolable?), so my limited experience of NES/SNES/Genesis/PS1 games came from occasional sessions at the houses of friends. I don't think I've sunk more than 5 minutes into any Metroid, and I'm perilously close to that with Zelda. On the other hand, I've got a deep mental back catalog of Interactive Fiction games for my Apple IIe that I've learned not to talk about, since very few people have that particular shared experience.

necroyeti wrote:

More Metroids for me.

You meant Samus, right?

o_O

Oh yeah... you're very wrong whoever you are who started this thread. I'm so worked-up about your opinions that I am not bothering to return to the top of the page!

ccesarano wrote:

By the way, an interesting read: The Invisible Hand of Metroid. It's a blog post detailing a lot of things that pretty much every user does the first time they play the game, even though it's a "non-linear" title.

I don't agree with everything he says, but he says a lot of good things.

That's an awesome read. Really points out some of why that's the best game.

Spoiler-heavy if you haven't played it. Or, it could be used as a semi-walkthrough if you're stuck.

Tanglebones wrote:
Gravey wrote:

Nah, that's a completely reasonable reaction.

I come at it from another angle: there's this assumption that "we" all grew up playing the same games, so "we" all have the same frames of reference, primarily the 8-bit NES classics (which is itself very North American-centrist). In that respect I can feel left out of conversations that assume prior experience with Metroid or Castlevania or Zelda—or even more, an assumed universal love of those games. To dovetail this with the OP, not only did I not play those games when I was kid—because I wasn't interested in them—I'm still not interested in playing them (or much at all of their modern iterations).

Relatedly, it reminds me of Stephen Totilo's Must Your Game Journalists Not Stink At 'Street Fighter'?

+1 - I grew up largely console-free (inconsolable?), so my limited experience of NES/SNES/Genesis/PS1 games came from occasional sessions at the houses of friends. I don't think I've sunk more than 5 minutes into any Metroid, and I'm perilously close to that with Zelda. On the other hand, I've got a deep mental back catalog of Interactive Fiction games for my Apple IIe that I've learned not to talk about, since very few people have that particular shared experience.

Curiously, I've seen a lot of this assumed shared background experience with the PC gaming conversations here on GWJ and elsewhere. There's an assumption that everyone has played, say, X-COM, Baldur's Gate, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Tribes, Unreal, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, some sort of Ultima, etc. Not only did everyone play them, but everyone acknowledges them as classics; peerless experiences.

It's funny to see conversations like this one ("I don't like Metroid! Tell me I'm wrong!") mirrored in other threads but about other games: Help me enjoy X-COM. Baldur's Gate fails to excite me. Man, Ultima is ugly. And these sentiments get the same sort of responses from people with a long history of PC gaming: You're crazy! Have you tried playing it in X way? Did you try the more user-friendly '94/'98/'01 sequel? I can see how it might not have aged well, but it's still a classic.

And just like people harken back to the original Legend of Zelda and its brave, open-world design or back to the immediate fun of the first Super Mario Bros. as benchmarks for what modern games should be more like, so do people reach back to the games they fell in love with long ago. You remember when games like Fallout just dropped you right into the middle of things without a lot of exposition and asked you to survive? You remember when levels were open and non-linear like in Thief? And the assumption is that everyone they're talking to agrees with them. Modern games should of course be more like those older games, because those older games are classics for a reason.

But without that shared past experience, these classic PC games, like their classic console counterparts, lose a lot of their luster. X-COM is obtuse and has a horrible UI. Metroid reuses far too much of the same architecture to build its world and so makes exploration both tedious and monotonous. Thief's stealth model is laughably unrealistic. The Legend of Zelda's big open world is fun until you have to look up how to find that last goddamn temple or wander into the wrong part of the world and get your ass kicked back to the opening screen. And why would we want our modern games to emulate something so obviously broken?

I don't think we as gamers give enough credit to familiarity and memory when talking about the new games we like and what we revere as classics. Because while we like to think of ourselves as objective agents cooly evaluating the quality of the games we play, we're far more likely to seek out experiences that are similar to what we've enjoyed in the past, going all the way back to childhood. And while we like to think of ourselves as being able to look back at games we enjoyed in the past and really discern whether or not they "hold up well," when we sit down to play them today, there's a very good chance we'll enjoy them today as much as we did back then not because they're flawless and stand the test of time but because we simply still enjoy them.

So if you don't like Metroid (or Mario or Morrowind or Unreal Tournament) there's not really anything wrong with you. You're neither seeing through the hype of nostalgia nor missing out on an objectively great experience. You just have different tastes forged by different experiences and don't value the same things as other people.

tl;dr: You're entitled to dislike whatever you want even if it's considered a "classic."

What Clock said.

I think what some people do with 'classics' is associate elements of them with the whole. I could probably acknowledge elements of any classic being great, but there's plenty of classics I just can't get into, how ever many times I try (or how much money I spent on them).

I think this leads into another touchy subject, remakes that change things up a bit. Sometimes it's not good, sometimes it is, but there's a knee-jerk reaction to assume the worst, although I'll say that quite often that reaction is valid when it's a company using an old name as just a recognised brand to sell boxes and not using the spirit or the elements of the classic. I don't think that should stop companies trying though.

trueheart78 wrote:

It's alright if you don't like or "get" Metroid, as long as I'm allowed to not like or "get" Chrono Trigger.

How DARE you! *flips table*

Scratched wrote:

I think what some people do with 'classics' is associate elements of them with the whole. I could probably acknowledge elements of any classic being great, but there's plenty of classics I just can't get into, how ever many times I try (or how much money I spent on them).

Yeah Metroid will always be the first game where you went left at the start. And also the first game where the badass bounty hunter is actually a woman in a bathing suit. Of course most people saw that from the "Justin Bailey" code, not from actually beating the game.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Curiously, I've seen a lot of this assumed shared background experience with the PC gaming conversations here on GWJ and elsewhere. There's an assumption that everyone has played, say, X-COM, Baldur's Gate, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Tribes, Unreal, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, some sort of Ultima, etc. Not only did everyone play them, but everyone acknowledges them as classics; peerless experiences.

It's definitely an easy assumption to slip into, whether it's 80s 8-bit console games or 90s PC classics. I'd be pretty comfortable conceding that most people each played most of those games. If I can speculate even further about why it's easy to make that assumption, I'd guess the pool of titles available was smaller plus limited public talk (print) for a fraction of those titles.

But again, there I am assuming a certain generation. I remember being irked when the talk about the classically best Final Fantasy game shifted from VI to VII, when the PS generation came into its own. But that's the slipperiness of trying to capture some sort of Platonic "gamer". As the beginnings of gaming, which many of us have a tactile living memory of, fade out of nostalgia and into dim history, and as the audiences become less and less homogeneous in experience, expectation, age, that exercise will become irrelevant.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us when the Call of Duty generation leads the discussion on the gaming canon.

I think what's needed is more 30+ year-old Brits berating others for not playing... um... whatever the hell came out for the ZX Spectrum.

Hah I love it when my British friends talk about Megadrive classics.

Also I hated how much cruft was all up in the HUD clogging up my field of view-- couldn't remember if that had been a problem in the first one or not.

Regarding the Prime series: Fortunately you can tone a lot of those HUD elements down (and, blessedly, off in many cases); when I first saw shots of the HUD in a magazine my eyes bugged out over the unnecessary visual clutter. It made me so angry I vowed to never play the game (HUD clutter (especially if it's just decorative) is one of my big pet peeves, often leading me to go a bit crazy.) Once I discovered that you can turn it way down (nearly off, barely visible) I decided to give it a shot. I ended up having a great time with all three games.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
Gravey wrote:

Nah, that's a completely reasonable reaction.

I come at it from another angle: there's this assumption that "we" all grew up playing the same games, so "we" all have the same frames of reference, primarily the 8-bit NES classics (which is itself very North American-centrist). In that respect I can feel left out of conversations that assume prior experience with Metroid or Castlevania or Zelda—or even more, an assumed universal love of those games. To dovetail this with the OP, not only did I not play those games when I was kid—because I wasn't interested in them—I'm still not interested in playing them (or much at all of their modern iterations).

Relatedly, it reminds me of Stephen Totilo's Must Your Game Journalists Not Stink At 'Street Fighter'?

+1 - I grew up largely console-free (inconsolable?), so my limited experience of NES/SNES/Genesis/PS1 games came from occasional sessions at the houses of friends. I don't think I've sunk more than 5 minutes into any Metroid, and I'm perilously close to that with Zelda. On the other hand, I've got a deep mental back catalog of Interactive Fiction games for my Apple IIe that I've learned not to talk about, since very few people have that particular shared experience.

Curiously, I've seen a lot of this assumed shared background experience with the PC gaming conversations here on GWJ and elsewhere. There's an assumption that everyone has played, say, X-COM, Baldur's Gate, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Tribes, Unreal, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, some sort of Ultima, etc. Not only did everyone play them, but everyone acknowledges them as classics; peerless experiences.

It's funny to see conversations like this one ("I don't like Metroid! Tell me I'm wrong!") mirrored in other threads but about other games: Help me enjoy X-COM. Baldur's Gate fails to excite me. Man, Ultima is ugly. And these sentiments get the same sort of responses from people with a long history of PC gaming: You're crazy! Have you tried playing it in X way? Did you try the more user-friendly '94/'98/'01 sequel? I can see how it might not have aged well, but it's still a classic.

And just like people harken back to the original Legend of Zelda and its brave, open-world design or back to the immediate fun of the first Super Mario Bros. as benchmarks for what modern games should be more like, so do people reach back to the games they fell in love with long ago. You remember when games like Fallout just dropped you right into the middle of things without a lot of exposition and asked you to survive? You remember when levels were open and non-linear like in Thief? And the assumption is that everyone they're talking to agrees with them. Modern games should of course be more like those older games, because those older games are classics for a reason.

But without that shared past experience, these classic PC games, like their classic console counterparts, lose a lot of their luster. X-COM is obtuse and has a horrible UI. Metroid reuses far too much of the same architecture to build its world and so makes exploration both tedious and monotonous. Thief's stealth model is laughably unrealistic. The Legend of Zelda's big open world is fun until you have to look up how to find that last goddamn temple or wander into the wrong part of the world and get your ass kicked back to the opening screen. And why would we want our modern games to emulate something so obviously broken?

I don't think we as gamers give enough credit to familiarity and memory when talking about the new games we like and what we revere as classics. Because while we like to think of ourselves as objective agents cooly evaluating the quality of the games we play, we're far more likely to seek out experiences that are similar to what we've enjoyed in the past, going all the way back to childhood. And while we like to think of ourselves as being able to look back at games we enjoyed in the past and really discern whether or not they "hold up well," when we sit down to play them today, there's a very good chance we'll enjoy them today as much as we did back then not because they're flawless and stand the test of time but because we simply still enjoy them.

So if you don't like Metroid (or Mario or Morrowind or Unreal Tournament) there's not really anything wrong with you. You're neither seeing through the hype of nostalgia nor missing out on an objectively great experience. You just have different tastes forged by different experiences and don't value the same things as other people.

tl;dr: You're entitled to dislike whatever you want even if it's considered a "classic."

On the surface your argument SEEMS valid, but you've overlooked one grave detail!

Unlike all those PC developers, Nintendo actually made games that were fun.

/troll

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You remember when games like Fallout just dropped you right into the middle of things without a lot of exposition and asked you to survive? You remember when levels were open and non-linear like in Thief?

Yes and no. I tried both of those games and hated them back when they were still fresh. I even tried fallout a bunch of times as it was given to me as a gift. Thief was given to me when I was working at a computer store so I gave the first level or 2 a try and uninstalled it in disgust in a way I've never done since. It just did everything wrong for me. I think that unrealistic stealth model really made it all go sour for me. Either way, stealth and western rpgs are no gos for me to this day because of those games. Metal Gear Solid only made it worse with stealth games for me.

For me it isn't really a question of whether new games should aesthetically resemble the stuff people remember from the classics; it's more about lamenting the various babies that were tossed with the bathwater of stuff like the Ultima series or Torment. IMO, many (most?) contemporary games fail to move the art forward largely because they make little effort to understand what we've already accomplished and how we did it; at the AAA level, at least, the art is instead moving sideways into this very narrow corridor consisting of, well, games that have very narrow corridors.

trueheart78 wrote:

It's alright if you don't like or "get" Metroid, as long as I'm allowed to not like or "get" Chrono Trigger.

*high five*

Thin_J wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

It's alright if you don't like or "get" Metroid, as long as I'm allowed to not like or "get" Chrono Trigger.

*high five*

A pox on both of you.

I like the 2D metroids and enjoyed the first Prime. Couldn't stand Echoes and Corruption was OK.

A discussion?

Echoes is sh*t.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Curiously, I've seen a lot of this assumed shared background experience with the PC gaming conversations here on GWJ and elsewhere. There's an assumption that everyone has played, say, X-COM, Baldur's Gate, Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, Tribes, Unreal, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, some sort of Ultima, etc. Not only did everyone play them, but everyone acknowledges them as classics; peerless experiences.

I must echo Clock's first paragraph. Out of that list I've only played Fallout and that was sometime between 2007-2008. I felt it was a fine game for the most part, but I never finished it because my save was corrupted and I was at least 3/4 of the way through the game.

I mostly encounter the sentiment Clock described on the podcast, but I've never really felt left out really because they've described how those games made them feel rather than just mention the game and assume everyone knows exactly what "x" game did for gaming.

ccesarano wrote:

Have you played Castlevania or Shadow Complex? Not as a recommendation, just to see if you're simply not a fan of the style of the game's design.

I'd also like to know if you've played other games that share some of the same core mechanics and enjoyed them and not Metroid hbi2k.

Maybe not the right place to put this, but I played through Super Metroid for the first time this weekend. I keep seeing people calling it the best game ever, saying it's completely without flaws etc. I take that stuff with a grain of salt but I heard the Idle Thumbs guys heap praise upon it so I decided that I had to play it eventually.

The game starts off well, it has a great mood and there is some strong environmental storytelling. After the first few platforming and enemy encounters however it becomes apparent that the controls have not aged well at all. I did not have a good time fighting the first boss (or any of them honestly) but as you get more equipment you're able to bypass more and more of the frustrating parts of the gameplay. I finished it yesterday and I already like it more than I did playing it, because I see it more for what it is when I'm not cursing at the quicksand every five minutes.

What's good about the game is obviously the level design and the ability progression, which are tightly intertwined. Unlocking a power and realizing how you can use it to access a new area is the highlight of the game. That part truly holds up, it is as well executed as you could possibly hope for in a modern game. Taken in the context of 1994 it's even more impressive and I'm not surprised heads exploded.

It's an interesting exercise to go back and play a game that was formative for so many people but that you missed, and to relate that to their own descriptions of it. I'm glad I was able to appreciate it, and I appreciate it way more than I enjoyed it. I can definitely see why it's going to be some people's favourite game forever (if you played it as a kid) but it's also far from perfect.

What I don't get is why people cling to the fiction and character, or why are there so many Metroid games. Everything about the game that isn't pure game / level design is utterly forgettable. Space pirate lizards are stupid basically, so why would you keep revisiting them?

Anyway, next up: A Link to the Past
I hope I like it but I doubt it will stop me from thinking that fanatical Nintendo fans are crazy and need to stop conflating "favourite game as a child" with "objectively best game ever".

kyrieee wrote:

What I don't get is why people cling to the fiction and character, or why are there so many Metroid games. Everything about the game that isn't pure game / level design is utterly forgettable. Space pirate lizards are stupid basically, so why would you keep revisiting them?

No one plays Nintendo games for the stories. People don't revisit the story of the space pirate lizards and tentacle paper lanterns; they revisit the tightly intertwined level designs and explorations of the gameplay. Each new Metroid game (with the arguable exception of Prime 3) has evolved the core Super Metroid design in some way. Prime takes the game into 3D spaces and adds a good deal of variety in the ways you interact with the space around you; Prime 2 adds a light world/dark world dynamic to the exploration; Other M perhaps adds the least to the core gameplay of progressively exploring a new space, but it really shakes up the combat model in some new and interesting ways.

It's the same reason people keep playing Zelda games or Mario games. It's not because we really, really like rescuing princesses, but because Nintendo does a good job of mixing up the core gameplay elements of their franchises without losing what makes them interesting in the first place.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's the same reason people keep playing Zelda games or Mario games. It's not because we really, really like rescuing princesses, but because Nintendo does a good job of mixing up the core gameplay elements of their franchises without losing what makes them interesting in the first place.

Where's my "like" button?