Buckethead said:
The way you set it up is logically fallacious.
And you're making it overdramatic for the point of your argument.
Every criticism of Metroid is "why did Samus lose all her shit again?".
It's a completely valid criticism and is part of the reason why the Metroid franchise has always been pretty niche.
Going back to Arkham Asylum it made sense within the context of the story for Batman to "backtrack" to get the proper equipment to go after the baddies.
The Joker pulled a fast one on him and he was vulnerable to attack. Now they're going more open world with Arkham City because that shit would be boring as hell every game.
Yet Samus Aran, badass bounty hunter supreme manages to lose her equipment everytime she's on a mission?
She can't fly to the area where the end boss is and ice him with rockets? Give me a break.
8 year old me can see that's just lazy.
Nintendo needs to evolve the franchise. Change up the formula outright.
Well now you're talking about the story. That's completely different from backtracking.
This story/gameplay disconnect can be used as a complaint against pretty much any game. It can be a big deal if it's a story-focused game. Metroid's not. I don't see how, "Haha, Samus lost her power-ups again, that's pretty silly," is any different from, "Haha, the enemies leave exploding barrels all over the place and then stand next to them, that's a bit silly." You get a chuckle from it, then you recognize that it's a game, so taking some liberties with the story to make it fun to play is generally fine. Paying $50 to watch a ten second cutscene where Samus flies in and blows up final boss wouldn't be very fun.
If you want to bring up Arkham Asylum: Why did Batman go to his secret Arkham Batcave after shit started going down, only to grab one upgrade? We know there's plenty more stuff down there; we even go back later
to get an upgrade to that upgrade. Or why didn't he use the Batwing to help him out more? All it does is bring one upgrade, then disappears. Why doesn't he grapple up to it and fly to the Joker? If I really wanted to analyze the game, I'm certain I could nitpick the story even more, point out plenty of points where it would have made more sense for a character to do X, but instead does Y because it makes the game more fun.
But I enjoy the rest of the game, and I understand that the story exists primarily to make the game possible, so I let it go.
Now, I'm open to evolution and change. As I've discussed in this very thread, I'd like to see Metroid take a similar path as Arkham City seems to be, with a more open world to explore. But whatever changes are made, however the series evolves, the game should still, and always, be about exploring and collecting power-ups to progress. And there are some things inherent to that. You can't make Samus as obscenely overpowered as she tends to be at the end of her games, and then keep her that way at the beginning of the next. You can't start the game with her able to fly, shoot through walls, shoot through enemies, freeze enemies, and blow up everything on the screen. You can't really go up from there.
What I will say, though, is that collecting the same power-ups in every game does get old. They really need to focus on more
new power-ups. Start her out with the upgrades that don't make her obscenely overpowered - no space jump (except the Prime style double jump one), no screw attack (Prime or 2D style), no wave/plasma/ice beam, no power bombs - but keep some of her more basic traversal power-ups like the grapple beam and spider-ball (Prime style, 2D style would be too powerful to start with), and then work up from there with brand new upgrades.
If that's the case then they've been doing a piss-poor job of that.
Batman's gameplay was supplemented with a little detective work, an awesome combat system, tons of collectibles, and easter eggs.
And Metroid's gameplay is supplemented with shooting, puzzles, tons of collectibles, and awesome boss battles. I'm not really sure what you're saying here.
As much as I love Retro, secluding areas was an awful decision and don't get me started on scanning.
Secluding areas? You mean having rooms connected by doors? I hope they do something better if they work on Metroid on Cafe, but on the Gamecube it was a way to get around system limitations. I don't see how you can fault them for that.
And hate scanning? Don't scan unless you have to activate a switch, which really isn't all that common. I don't understand why this is such a frequent complaint.