The Problems with Metroid: Samus Returns

Boy, people sure do love some Metroid, huh?

Samus Returns was one of E3’s biggest surprises, though I certainly had trepidation when I learned that MercurySteam was the developer. They’re a bunch of passionate guys, obviously, but I’ve found their previous games (the best-known of which are the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow sub-series) to be… lacking, to put it simply. I tried to keep a little bit optimistic, saying “They must have made a hell of a pitch for Nintendo to give them the keys to a Metroid game.”

And then Samus Returns released. And it was… good, actually! Pretty darn solid. It’s got some cool map design, the atmosphere is great, and there’s some neat puzzle design. If I gave it a numerical score, it’d be a nice seven-out-of-ten. That means it’s quite good!

… but it’s still not the rave-fueled 9s and 10s I’ve seen handed out to the game. Honestly, I find those a bit of a head-scratcher, because while Samus Returns is good, it has problems. Some really big problems, even. And I didn’t see anyone really touching on them, either. I can understand the elation of finally getting a 2D Metroid again after so long, but Samus Returns isn’t perfect by a long shot.

Thankfully, on this wonderful web site o’ mine, I can eschew the standard review format and dive straight into everything that grinds my gears about Samus Returns. To be fair, some of these problems were also present in the original Metroid II: Return of Samus — but shouldn’t a remake try its best to fix some of that? I also haven’t played AM2R, so there won’t be any comparisons on that front. It’s just me, you readers, and a whole lot of nitpicking from someone who’s not a Metroid die-hard but loves this sort of game. So let’s jump right in…

(I wanted to get screencaps to better illustrate some of my points here, but the whole Miiverse work-around to get 3DS screens is a ginormous pain in the butt, so I eventually had to abandon the idea. So, this article’s going to be all-text. My apologies!)

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Stallion Solitaire: Pocket Card Jockey

It’s usually the games you love – or the games that are really, really bad – that are the easiest to write about. When you’re singing praise, the words seem to flow effortlessly from your pen – and the same goes for when you’re telling everyone about a phenomenal piece of hot garbage.

But Pocket Card Jockey for the 3DS? Hoo boy. I mean, how do you even begin to sell this concept of horse-racing sim solitaire to people? That sounds like the most aggressively boring thing on the planet. In actuality, though, it’s an amazingly complex and deep game! …with a huge mess of intertwining game systems that sounds like complete gibberish if you try to describe them rather than showing them.

But by god, I’m gonna try. Because you know what? Pocket Card Jockey is already one of the best games released in 2016. No horsin’ around.

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Interview: the minds behind Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam, Akira Otani and Shunsuke Kobayashi

It’s weird to think that Mario, one of the most influential and important action game series ever, not only has an RPG spinoff, but has multiple such spinoffs. The original Super Mario RPG felt like a unique, one-off affair back in its time, but the groundwork laid by that title has since spawned the Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi series. After years of doing their separate takes on the Mario universe – and producing some all-time classics in the process – the two series recently crossed over in the 3DS game Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam. (Can we stop and ruminate on the sheer brilliance of that title for a bit? It works beautifully on so many levels.)

I had the opportunity to talk with Mr. Akira Otani of Nintendo and Mr. Shunsuke Kobayashi of Mario and Luigi series developer Alphadream about the creation of this 2D/3D adventure. Read on for some fun little tidbits about what went on behind the scenes of this game’s creation!

Please note that since this was an email-based interview, it’s a bit shorter and doesn’t have quite the same back-and-forth as the interviews I do in person or over voice/IM. There will also be minor spoilers for events about halfway through the plot. Please be aware, and I hope you enjoy it!

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(Sort of) Review: Why NES Remix maddens me

It’s a feeling I think we’ve all experienced: the uncomfortable notion from withing that there is something deeply wrong with us for not enjoying a particular piece of media. It’s especially discomforting when it’s something that seems engineered to push all of our individual Like buttons, as though somehow we’re the ones that are flawed for not properly adoring this work made to cater explicitly to us.

This feeling cropped up when I started playing the NES Remix games on Wii U. Here were cleverly conceived compilations of classic NES titles with the addition of “remix” games: parts of classic titles remodeled and mashed together in unique ways to deliver bite-sized new challenges. I certainly love Nintendo history, having grown up on so many of these titles, so the concept excited me immensely. But actually playing NES Remix 1 and 2 on Wii U felt strangely unfulfilling,  even downright frustrating. I wondered if it was the platform – these sorts of short objective-driven challenge experiences, I feel, tend to work better in mobile games that you can dig out and play for ten minutes. With this in mind, I picked up Ultimate NES Remix on 3DS, but even playing it to break up long Persona Q sessions left me feeling more irritated than amused.  Obviously, it wasn’t the platform that’s the problem. So then, what is it that makes NES Remix considerably less than the sum of its parts?

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