When it comes to the Metroid franchise, I'm fairly ignorant. Up until Prime and Fusion, the only Metroid I played was Metroid 2: The Return of Samus for Game Boy. All I really remember about Metroid 2 was lots of jumping and rolling into a ball. And the post-credit pan along Samus in her underwear. I don't remember much about the storyline, the bosses or the levels. It didn't turn me into a Metroid fanboy at all; I bought it and beat it with the same attention I applied to Gargoyle's Quest or Cosmotank or any other Game Boy adventure title of the time. I didn't even realize it was a Nintendowned property until years later.
So when the hype hit for Metroids Prime and Fusion this past fall, I was admittedly unaffected. I don't even play Samus in Super Smash Bros. Melee. In the end, it was the overbearing quality of Metroid Prime that brought me into that title, and Metroid Fusion came along a month later (a Christmas present from Rhonda!) as a happy by-product.
So I've been learning about "the Metroid style" of gameplay somewhat late. Equal parts action and exploration, yer average Metroid game presents a claustrophobic sci-fi tale of Man (woman) Vs. Aliens. Each game in the series begins with a fully powered Samus who quickly loses her powers, so you spend most of the game hunting down her powerups so you can use them to advance to higher, hidden and better areas of the level. Although Prime made the leap to a first-person 3D title, Fusion falls right into line with the 2D classics.
Coming out of Prime (which actually takes place retroactively between Metroid and Metroid 2), I was able to apply much more meaning to Fusion's storyline. If you're playing Fusion as your first Metroid game, you're probably not going to be impressed by the plot. Knowing some Metroid history adds some gravity. Thankfully, a very nice Metroid primer (hah!) is included in the Fusion manual.
In Fusion, Samus faces a ecological lesson. Ever since she exterminated the entire Metroid species in all the other games, the beasts right below Metroids in the galactic food chain have been running unchecked. These parasites - named the "X", for lack of a better term - have severely overpopulated ol' SR388 (the former Metroid homeplanet and setting for Metroid 2) and now threaten to expand to attack the known universe. The X can infect and control other organisms, so get ready for the traditional Ridley boss fight, even though Ridley has been dead forever. Samus finds herself infected, wrecking her usual orange suit, but her transfused Metroid DNA (flashback to SNES Super Metroid) keeps her from dying. Now being the one thing in the galaxy resistant to the X, Samus must clear them out of a biological research station while coming to terms with the idea that even nasty, evil Metroids had a place in the universe.
The graphics are terrific... bright and vibrant. Samus is exceedingly well animated, as are the various bosses and more complex enemy types. The audio is great, especially in headphones, where you can fully enjoy the stereo effects and musical subtleties. The pacing is stellar... you're pointed from task to task with increasing tension and desparation. This is especially evident when you meet up with the SA-X, an X that has taken on Samus's form. Similar to Resident Evil's Nemesis character, the SA-X will hunt you down in certain scenes, and your only reaction is to get the hell away since you have no weapons that will affect it.
The other bits of presentation are also wonderful. The automap works two ways: a tiny nine-block grid that is always on your screen, and through pausing you get the full scrollable map. Conversations with your computer pal take place over that map screen, but with added animated bits and occasional inset viewscreens. Sometimes Samus will engage in a little internal monologue, which, like all imporant conversations in Star Trek: The Next Generation, usually takes place during an elevator ride.
Metroid Fusion can also be a very fast, very action packed game, which I always appreciate in a GBA title, because there just isn't enough handheld games that do fast action well. Many boss fights require you to keep moving - platform jumping and directional shooting simultaneously. Just about every boss is deep enough to require an attack strategy... many require experimentation to uncover a weak spot or a particular weapon that works better than others. I've already spoiled the Ridley boss fight for you, so here's an example of that...
Ridley (a re-animated pteradactyl monster) is a gigantic boss. He fills about half of the GBA's screen. He has a slow triple fireball attack that is easy to avoid, but his main attack is his spiky tail. At times the tail will attack straight up and down and Ridley flies back and forth, just like a hydraulic press on a conveyor belt. At other times the tail will attack diagonally, purposely seeking your position. He weak spot is his main body, and you need to empty about 100 missiles into him. But Ridley likes swooping in close to you to hit you with his tail, not to mention picking you up in his claws for extreme damage. You have to fire off missiles when your angle is right, and then ball up in the corner so he can't grab you (and endure a few tail lashings regardless.) It's a fast fight and it's an endurance fight, meaning that you need to avoid taking damage for as long as you can while still heaping out the missiles. If you slip up and let Ridley catch you, you'll likely suffer so much damage that you'll never make it through. Plus, even when you blow up Ridley, you still need to take down the free-floating X amoeba that was inside him.
(Ridley also has the coolest avian scream. You definitely want that in your headpones.)
That kind of boss strategy is typical of the best 2D games, and Metroid Fusion lives up to that standard.
Interestingly, Fusion's constant pace makes it easy to avoid the hallmark of the franchise: exploration. Each level is littered with Data Rooms, where you receive your instructions from Adam the computer. It's very natural to just follow those orders (always a directive to Get to Point A or Eliminate Monster B) and totally forget about using your new powers to uncover secret rooms and powerups. In fact, I fell right into this trap and ended up beating the game with a pathetic 42%.
I felt like Fusion was working against me in this regard. There's the constant pressure from Adam to get moving to the next plotpoint... and the secret stuff is so well hidden that unless you're attacking every wall in sight, you won't even realize it's there. Compounding that is that Fusion doesn't use the regular video game symbology to tell you that This Wall May Be Destroyed... IE, putting a little crack on the wall, or making a section of the wall a slightly different color. Most of Metroid Fusion's destroyable walls look exactly like non-destroyable walls.
The only surefire way to uncover "soft" wall segments is to light up a power bomb. Of course, you have a limited supply of power bombs. The bomb will reveal which wall blocks can be further attacked with a missile volley or a speed dash or whatever special attack will actually break through the wall. The concept of the hidden soft walls is at the very core of Metroid's exploratory gameplay, but you're being hustled through the mission so fast that you may not feel that you get the chance to explore thoroughly.
AND... Metroid Fusion doesn't support save-switching. You know, when you save your current game on a different slot so you can return to an earlier save if you end up not liking the new save? You're stuck always saving to the same slot here. By the time I got Samus's full assortment of weapons (and thus the complete artillery for uncovering hidden soft walls), I was deep in the final throes of the game, where I was saving after every difficult fight. My advice to you: ignore Adam's threats of speed (except in the timed levels) and set yourself a leisurely pace.
After all, your reward for 100% completion is a new look at Samus in her underwear.
