Stumbling through Super Metroid - Part 10

[davidn]

Celebrating ten parts! But this is, without a shadow of a doubt, the dullest video to produce that I've done in this entire project. After making what I thought was great progress for the last few videos, here I was reduced to running around the entire game in a very big circle for just shy of two hours, after which I asked Kjorteo to give me a pointer and through him I remembered about the giant scary face in the rock that had scared me off several videos ago.

This video is mostly me hoovering up secrets, messing about and getting frustrated. Once again, over two hours of gameplay have been compressed down into exactly fifteen minutes.

http://youtu.be/Fh2_50_qgFw

Comments

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I'm so happy you're going back and getting these secrets that I've been willing you to find!

The Spazer has been available since you got the high jump! It might fire three beams, but it's terribly obsolete now - at least the plasma has a similar level of spread.

The X-Ray scope is the item that would have helped you a lot in Maridia, and you've been able to get that since you had the grappling hook. The idea is to watch you play in your way, as a new player, not to push you in certain directions... but I have been silently willing you to explore a bit more thoroughly at each turn. But it does take a while to, as you say, start to understand the language of the game, and the mean ways in which it can hide things.

I must say, you've been doing a remarkable job for your lack of resources. I always fail to get the spring jump, but I tend to be well-stocked with missiles and energy. And then I die anyway because I panic and fire them off everywhere. This next boss that you'll be facing always gives me trouble for that reason. And that damn snake miniboss in Maridia. Maybe you'll (Nor)fare better!

In saying you didn't understand the timing of the space jump, you led me to believe you couldn't reliably perform it! You've been doing very well with it instinctively. It has odd timing, in that you have to get it just as you begin your descent, and yet it's something that becomes second nature very quickly. At least it's forgiving, in that you can press the button early without ruining the whole jump, so long as you still hit it at the right time. That makes it easier to learn by far.

Likewise, good job finding out about the horizontal hyper jump! I think it's just jumping and pressing sideways at the same time (you don't have to hit up to do the vertical one). There's not a whole lot of use for that angle of hyper-jumping, but at least it looks impressive.

Hah, dread can be quite a progress-inhibitor. I thought when you saw the statue you'd be able to extrapolate the existence of a (major) boss in Norfair, that being the only area in which you hadn't faced one - aside from Crateria, but Phantoon in the Wrecked ship kind of counts for that. And, of course, there are all those unexplored areas on the map and a great big boss marker. I seem to have underestimated your desire to completely forget about Norfair and never, ever return!

I do think that, for all the game guides you, it does a poor job of letting you know that the gravity suit protects you from the non-bubbly lava. I guess it expects you to experiment in lava as well as with water once you find out you can move properly. Or, like me, you'll just accidentally fall in, panic, then find that you're safe.

Oh, oh! Um... okay, I don't want to spoil anything, but there are two parts in this video where you assumed you needed something else to be able to succeed, and you didn't.

I hope I don't sound too obnoxious in this comment - "You could have gotten this then! I hinted at that!" Again, that's the point of your Stumbling Through series, after all, and it has been fascinating to watch your uninformed progress as you gradually learn the game. But it still is a relief to A) see you find these things, and B) finally be able to talk about them without bottling it all up!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

The worst part isn't even the things that are hidden -- it's the things that are buried so far back on the 'path', that you'll never remember them even though they're in plain sight! (i.e. the x-ray scope!)

and, if I weren't familiar with the game's hierarchy, I'd have easily assumed that Crocomire was the "big" boss of Norfair.. he's certainly at least as big as some of the others! (Though, they do tease the presence of a boss monster out in the middle of nowhere on the Norfair map, at least :) Part of me is tempted to suggest that they should have let you view your other maps in-game, but.... maybe forcing people to move around to view the various maps is their way of encouraging people to accidentally discover secrets while travelling?

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

In response to your below comment, I suggested that visiting the statue would help him find the way forward - I could see he took it a little more literally than I intended (thinking that he could directly progress from the statue room) but I wasn't willing to be any more specific than that so I kept quiet.

It's true that, for a first time player, Crocomire might seem like the big boss of the area, but the are hints - he's not on the big statue and he doesn't have an eye door, nor a boss marker on the map. Then again, Phantoon doesn't have that last one either, because you can't access the map machine before you fight him...

I too find it awkward that you can't look at all your maps (I thought there was a way that you could, but if so it's lost on me now). I can see why they'd want to actually encourage you to move about instead of just looking at the map, but it would be helpful to be able to know that your goal is in Norfair if you're all the way at the top of Crateria.

As for finding things like the X-ray scope - well, it's hard to remember where everything is, especially if they're areas you visited at the beginning, but Metroid is fairly good at providing distinctive visual cues - like the distinctive gray grapple blocks, and the particularly tall or long geometry of the rooms that feature them. Besides, that's what the map is for!

I'm certainly not criticising David for not finding them earlier! It's his first time playing what is a fairly overwhelming game, and I know he was concerned with forward progress. It's a big ask to explore every nook and cranny, especially when easy to just assume that most of them hold missile expansions. I'm just, I guess, opining on the nature of the game's guidance, playing devil's advocate, that sort of thing.

But all the same, I don't want to pretend that the scope was particularly well-hidden. It's certainly one of the more awkward items to get, physically, but the room leading to it is quite distinctive. It's probably one of the most heavily-broadcast non-essential items in the game; it just happens to come at a time where the game is opening up considerably and it's difficult to know where to go first, let alone remember all the areas you have to revisit with your shiny new item.

[davidn]

The game's definitely unmanageably large by this point - I'd even forgotten completely that Norfair existed! Although that could have been a matter of blocking out bad memories. The X-ray scope was actually one of the easiest to find due to the corridor to it being conspicuously only half coloured in, but otherwise the map is... sort of inadequate at this stage, not indicating things like doors. I felt early on that I should have graph-papered it all out and added indicators like "lava pit", "hooks", "possibly green and/or yellow door", but that would have slowed me down a lot!

It's an interesting thought, that they deliberately made you travel around to view maps, and I could certainly believe it - without that ability, I would certainly have missed virtually everything that I picked up in this video. But I definitely wanted that ability starting very early on - I also had a dream that I'd missed the way you could teleport between save points, which would make travel a lot easier at this stage.

[davidn]

The X-ray scope is definitely the most useful thing that I've picked up that isn't necessary for progress! It's still a bit of a pain to scan everywhere, but it makes finding the presence of secrets much easier - it really feels like you've got a massive advantage while still achieving exploration on your own. That room was one of the most obvious incomplete paths on the map, the room is distinctively wide as you said, and also distinctively only half coloured in. It's definitely the easiest of the rooms to know you're now meant to go.

I can't believe I didn't check Norfair, in retrospect... somehow I just forgot about it (having only one entrance and not having to go through it on a lap of the game helps) but once you check the map it's obvious that you haven't got it all. Nevertheless, I'm glad I could spend some time lost and get some things that I'd been missing for a while!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I honestly didn't even consider that you'd forget about Norfair, probably because it was my favourite area of the game. So foreboding and mysterious on your first visit, with all those superheated rooms that force you to come back with the Varia Suit... Aside from the very beginning, with the morph ball and bombs, it's really your first experience with the rewarding feeling of revisiting old areas with a new power up your sleeve.

I suppose in contrast, Brinstar felt more comfortable as an area in the game, but something about all the insects and plants and dark colours made me feel uncomfortable - and I hadn't even come close to breaching Maridia yet! I can guarantee that quickly went from being thoroughly enticing to being the area I least wanted to visit, and wanted to escape as soon as possible. I think knowing the terrifying Draygon was in there helped to fuel that, but... it's not exactly welcoming on its own, is it?

As for the X-Ray scope, the time it becomes available is the time the game starts being meaner with its secrets - like it's re-balancing itself around you having the ability to see behind the scenes, so you have to start to not only anticipate the secrets (or use the scope constantly), but also deal with added tricks that they use to fool you even after you can see your goal - like having to come at a secret from below instead of taking the obvious route (Wrecked Ship) or avoiding sudden crumbling platforms or having to break oddly-placed speed boost blocks (Maridia).

[davidn]

Oh, yes - and I suppose another thing that got me lost was the complete lack of indication that I could now safely dive into lava! If I'd had a demonstration of that after getting a certain item, I feel fairly confident that I would have remembered about that sub-lava passage very quickly.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, you're so good at the wall jump that you got out of the boss room without it forcing you to find out how to learn the space jump! XD I never realised how unbalanced the wall jump ability is...!! Do most people play it this way...??

And now you've noticed one of the things that disappoints me about Maridia -- after you beat the boss, all the doors unlock.... which is KIND of the idea all throughout the game, but, here they break with their tradition of giving you some new means of opening them,and instead just..... literally unlock them! It's functionally the same, but... a little too transparent? It worked in the Wrecked Ship because you were ostensibly restoring power to those doors, but.... here it just feels like a video game artificially gating your progress, instead of the identical-but-satisfying "hey I've found my own way forward, huzzah!" I only mind because they've done such a good job with it throughout the game, but then they just.... stop trying partway through?? It's odd!

"ALANNNN!" XD Oh godddd, davidddd XD

"a spoon and a lazer", MORE HEADCANON

OH MAN, YOU FINALLY GET IT, BUT IT'S AFTER YOU CAN EVEN USE IT! Hahah, oh well X3

OMG, you nearly pulled off getting the speedboostybird out! Not that it does anything at all (he just runs back and forth confused) because the programmers clearly didn't INTEND for him to get out, but.... it's still fun to do (https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAABAAD4UV51K9yW4Q) for the hell of it :D

"forgot I could fly" XD

aaaaaa david things I want to say but aaaaa

Afraid of slugs! I was wondering why you had that reaction to the SLOWEST ENEMY IN THE GAME, the first time :)

"this isn't going to go well when that dialogue box disappears" XD;;; You're Wile E Coyote with a placard :)

surprise samus XD;;

So, wait, who told you to look around the statue? There's nothing around the statue.... unless they just said that as a way to drag you back through the game to find other secrets?

Regardless, I don't know why you'd say this one was dull -- it's great watching you finally find secrets that you've been running past :D Running around the game with super powers is the most satisfying part! (Unless you just meant it was dull to edit it, which I guess I could see!)

[davidn]

Yes, I did get out of the boss room by running and doing a mighty wall-jump - the comment about being blocked by the openness that the wall jump gave me just a couple of minutes into this video was very true! Although even at that stage, I knew that I must be missing something - I swear I tried double-jumping in the boss room and couldn't do it at all. Even now, I'm not quite sure what the correct timing is, I can do three in a row and it'll suddenly seem to stop working.

I felt for a while that the game was surprisingly heavy-handed with its exploration, after all I'd heard - the first few abilities you get are just different grades of explosive that open different coloured doors (which sort of defeats the point of a door in the first place). After that it starts giving you more movement abilities or things that you can use to adapt the environment, which feels much more rewarding - actually, now that I say that, I imagine it was very deliberate to make the first few exploration upgrades extremely obvious and then gently fall into letting you work things out.

And yes, I am very afraid of slugs, and also worms (and very slightly less so of snails because at least they have some sort of solid mass to them). It's difficult to explain why, it's just that they're... entirely composed of slime (yes, I know) and alien and... blaaagh.

I imagine we're getting close to the end of the game now, I can't think of any obvious passages that remain unexplored or items that are unused... (watch me be wrong here). So you won't have to bottle things up for long :) The retrospective on the final post when it comes is going to be just amazing...

Yes, it was just the production process that was dull, metal-detecting my way around the entire game and making no significant progress :) Actually, editing the video to cut out the dull parts is the best part, it's much more enjoyable to edit than Hatoful was because I'm cutting out vast swathes instead of patching and feathering over slightly-too-long pauses and technical issues. This fifteen-minute video is the interesting bits from two hours of gameplay - I'm always glad to hear that I am able to get something good out of it :)

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

"The retrospective on the final post when it comes is going to be just amazing..."

I'm looking forward to the finale of the game for different reasons than a retrospective on puzzles... without giving anything away, the wordless storytelling once again shows itself to be excellent. And... well, the name of the entire franchise is "Metroid", based on the particular species of creature, not "The Adventures of Samus Aran" so even though she's one of the series' icons, you know that there has to be something special about the other one. There's a mystique about them and you haven't even encountered one yet! Those ones in Maridia were poor imitations created by the space pirates.

You experienced a bit of that anticipatory fear when you encountered the fakes, and said that you didn't want to let them free... And there's a reason the real thing is supposed to be frightening.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine how helpful the Spazer would have been to you way back when...oh well, at least you got it now. XP

Anyway, have fun down in Hell-Norfair!

[davidn]

Thank you so much...!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

OH! I knew there was something I wanted to add.

Since you now know that the statue room is somehow significant.... I should also warn you that it's ALSO A POINT OF NO RETURN. So before you intend to go back there, when you save, make a copy of it on the save file editing screen! (or outside the emulator or whatever)

Though, honestly, it's not the end of the world if you DO get locked in, it just might interfere with experimenting with some of the stuff that people are bound to talk about once the game is over and the spoiler ban is lifted :D

[davidn]

Ah, okay - I'll definitely bear that in mind. I have about four emulator save slots that I rotate between (this video was the first time in ages that I'd actually stopped at a save point) so there shouldn't be any danger of really getting stuck with no way back. I'll be very interested to hear about everything I missed/did differently :)

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I found that out the hard way today, when I wanted to take an upside-down-Samus shot to complement my upside-down-Guile icon and just generally experiment. It wouldn't let me leave the final area. I had luckily made a single save state late in the game when technical issues threatened to interrupt my session... but it was, unluckily in the middle of the boss fight that David is approaching, and I no longer had the benefit of a controller!

Last time I fought him I had good control but played stupidly (panicking and firing missiles everywhere) and this time I was smarter but completely uncoordinated with the keyboard. I won by the same bare margin as before, and then after the fight I got to try the "crystal flash" move for the first time ever.

I think it's a bit short-sighted for this brilliant game to lock you in like that - save states aside, you only have one save file (unless you copy them on the main menu) and getting stuck in the final area is awful.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Small correction to that: Partway beyond the statue room is a point of no return. There's a fairly blatant warning that it's coming up (you literally cannot miss it), but it comes up almost immediately after that, so if you miss the cue, you're stuck.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Okay, a thought that just occurred to me...the other day, I suggested that, due to how you handled the surprises like the Chozo Statue coming to life, you should do a Stumbling Through Metroid Fusion video series in the future...

A moment ago, I remembered your reaction to Story of the Blanks and how that apparently put you off one fandom forever, and realized this might actually be a bad idea, as Fusion might put you off the Metroid series forever.

[davidn]

Aaagh, I don't have some sort of... irrational ponyphobia! Story of the Blanks didn't turn me off something that I would otherwise have enjoyed - from what I've seen it's a pretty well-made cartoon and it teaches good messages (and has made me laugh a couple of times), but it's still one that's aimed primarily at eight-year-old girls.

[kjorteo]

Agh, I am so conflicted about Metroid Fusion. I'm glad I played it and ... have the knowledge of memorable moments and such from having played it. Like, I'm glad I know what you're talking about when you mention the SA-X or something. It has some things in it like that that are neat.

But it's just SUCH. A BAD. GAME.

I honestly want to recommend that everyone I know gets to the stage wherein they have played Metroid Fusion, but ... that would mean they'd actually have to play Metroid Fusion.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Something I just realized:

Early on in the video, after you've gotten out of Draygon's lair, you mention not knowing how the Space Jump functions.

If you didn't know how it worked, how the hell'd you get out of there!?!

[davidn]

With a mighty leap, run and wall jump :) The knowledge of wall-jumping has got me out of the necessity of learning other things for myself a couple of times (here and in the ludicrous freeze-jump to the grappling beam).

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

73 comments later and you haven't finished the game yet! What's keeping you? ; )

I must apologise about my comment regarding the space jump timing. I said that it was just at the downturn of your jumping trajectory, but it's actually a little further down. It has to be the oddest-timed double jump ever, but it feels right after a while. It feels like you're sort of.. completing the jump arc before starting a new one.

[davidn]

What's mostly keeping me is replying to the tidal wave of comments!

It definitely has odd timing - I now find myself consistently missing it and then getting it on my second try, in a tap-hold sort of arrangement - it's not pretty but it works.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I agree with what's been said about Metroid Prime 2, however my problem with it is the draw of the game: there's a "light" and "dark" world, like in A Link to the Past. Metroid is a game about exploration, and it works because you have the feeling of exploring over this huge area. The world in Metroid Prime 2 is also very large, however the size of it is split between the two worlds. The sense I get when playing it, is that the game world is a bit claustrophobic, even, because you can walk from one side of an area to the other quite quickly, and yes there is a mirror world that's sort of different while looking mostly identical, yet the impression that the world is actually quite small, remains. It might have worked better if the light and dark worlds were two huge, continuous areas--like in A Link to the Past--because I don't think the way they presented the style effectively paired with the thirst for exploration in a Metroid game.

I sort of feel Metroid Fusion has much the same problem, in that the game is torn between the expected style of a Metroid game--exploring a world--with the desire to tell an adventurous story directly. I think it would be neat to play a game where Samus is in a totally different environment from her standard style; she's still Samus, but it's a totally different style of game. If you try to split it halfway with what's expected from a Metroid game, then that's very difficult to do successfully; personally, I'd be happy with a totally standard Metroid game, there doesn't have to be some strange twist to the style to warrant a new edition of Metroid. . . . .

Also, Metroid Fusion just isn't all that good. I honestly don't even know if I'm justified to say that, because: I can remember the start pretty well; and then I remember there's this one room that's half-filled with water, and there's a door on the right with a path that kind of slopes into the water, an the room's really long, with a door on the top with a long platform under it, and there's a power-up on the far left, so you have to do a fairly difficult shinespark in order to go over there and get it. Later, there's a long shaft, with sort of some vines near the top, and there's a little morph ball path behind the vines that you can get to if you manage to destroy a few vines and then climb up there; which is difficult, because if you mess up you just fall down the shaft. I remember Re-Occurring Boss Character, because he's awesome, although I don't actually remember. . fighting him. I remember sort of the lead up to the end of the game, and then a bit just before the game actually ends and there's the ending cinematic [I assume]. Oh, also there's a desert sort of area, where you get a, like, "wrist booster" to help you do chins up and climb up ledges, I think. That is literally, 100% of what I remember about Metroid Fusion. That is, everything. That I remember about it. So you've got to at least have some impression of the quality of the game, when I can only kind of remember about seven rooms, total, from the entire game, and that's it. I don't remember any of the game specific powers at all; I can't even remember shooting a blaster in it. That room half filled with water? What was through the door on the right? What was through the door on the top? Was this a "water zone?" Were there more rooms half-filled, or totally filled with water; or even featuring water at all? I can't remember. I literally have no concept of what existed in this game, beyond the few segments I described earlier. There's just nothing at all; nothing at all! What I remember is all completely disconnected from each other; I don't remember anything, other than specifically what what I just said. If you take a game like, "Spike Mc.Fang," which is, not a superbly excellent game by any means: I can remember more just from the first dungeon of that game; just from one section of that game, than I remember from this entire game. So I don't know if Metroid Fusion is really bad or what, it's an interesting concept, I guess? I just literally remember almost nothing about it; which is just kind of weird: just, nothing! I kind of want to play it again, but it's also kind of scary, so it's good that I have a dozen other games that are hollering at me to play them. :P

[davidn]

Having never played it yet I can't say how well it compares, but the exploration through light/dark worlds sounds to me like Silent Hill Origins, where you have to travel between two dimensions and use differences between them as part of the puzzle (a key behind a grate in the light world will be accessible in the dark world because the grate isn't there).

I'm getting conflicting opinions about Metroid Fusion - that it has good ideas but is a bad game, or on the GameFAQs boards, that it's actually great but very different from a normal Metroid game... who knows if I'll play it to find out :)