ppowersteef

EDIT: I'll probably still be using DA to upload fanart, but for OC's and general status updates, I'll have other places to visit instead.

 Let's take it short, my interests in drawing anything that's not my OC's has been really low lately.
And with DeviantArt Eclipse been forcing upon us, DA will become a sinking ship.

All activity I do in artworks that's not game fanart is just borderline low, I could of course draw more fanart, but that's no longer my interests.
Sadly nobody likes OC's unless you've already an active following. Which feels discouraging.
Still, although indirectly, I love all the support you've given to me in the past 7,5 years.
It's been really heartwarming to see how many views some of my creations have gotten. Some even reaching the 3.000 or 6.000 views. I'm really grateful for that!

Perhaps if I'm using DeviantArt more, I could care more about it. But most of the stuff I do here has already a replacement. And I'm neither browsing as much as I used to.
Sooo yeah, I don't care about DA anymore.  

I'll mostly be hanging around in different places. If there's still anybody watching me, you can give me a visit (or view my creations) here:

- Twitter (Most active!): twitter.com/ppowersteef
- Toyhouse (OC profiles!) : toyhou.se/ppowersteef
- Itch.io (indie games!): ppowersteef.itch.io/
- Terraria Community Forums (Yes, I'm still using it!): forums.terraria.org/index.php?…

Still a month left to consider using Eclipse, but with it's current design, it's far from ready.

It's been a while since it was released, and now that I've seen that Samus Returns managed to become the Handheld game of the year. I feel like that motivated me enough to write my review about it. Mostly because I've an opinion of myself that I wanted to write out:


Concept:
The concept of the game was to remake the 26-year-old game 'Metroid II, Return of Samus'. 
I really love the idea myself, Metroid II had the most unique goal of everything from Metroid.
In fact. several years ago, before I even knew about the possible remakes, I had once the idea to remake Metroid II myself when I got older.  Because I really loved the game's concept and it had a huge need to be remade.
Hence why I'm so glad to see an official remake as well.

New Features
There were quite some gameplay changes that made this game different from the other classic games:

360-aiming
It's hard to get used to it at the start, but once you've got the hang of it, you want to keep using it.
You're much more accurate to fight this while fighting, and that makes the game quite quicker too.
And in case you prefer the 8-directional shooting while walking, That still exists as well, if you walk, you can aim just as in Zero Mission.

Aeon Abilities
At first I thought this is a bit of 'easymode' material to make it easier for those who can't do it without, there's almost a paywall behind it like most free mobile games. However, they've actually become essential, which makes it much more reasonable as well. 
-The Scan visor makes mapping much easier, however, there's no map room in this game, so you kinda have to rely on it as well. It also shows breakable blocks, but it doesn't tell you how to break them. and in case you're really bothered about it, then I guess just only use it when you're really stuck.
- The Electroshield is basically an extra form of energy tank to me, My main use of this shield is when I'm low on energy and when I want a bit of extra energy during bossfights, but your aeon abilities are also essential to progress so I don't overuse it.
- The hyper beam is pretty similair to the hyper mode in Metroid Prime 3, as said before. But it's consuming a lot of Aeon, and since I also want to use the shield and for progression, I mostly use it against enemies that can give the same amount of Aeon energy back. For bossfights it's a matter if you prefer offense over defense, which is quite a nice thought. 
- I've used the slowmotion time rarely myself, only when I really need to use it to reach the next area. It's consuming too much to find a situational use for it over the other aeon abilities.

Counter Attack
It's a great concept, but it had needed tweaking. The counter attack defeats every normal enemy in a single blow. 
Which is disappointing because this makes most of the combat very monotonous: 
Enemy flashes and charge > You counter with X > you shoot back with Y > enemy defeated.
The counter attack is more fair during the Metroid fights, because it just helps you doing extra damage in a cool grabbing cutscene. 
I've however tried to play the game without the counter attack, and suprisingly, the game became much more Metroid-like to play, which I did really enjoyed. There were though a few enemies that were too hard to beat without using the counter once, but for most of them, just using missiles works just as fine, maybe even better because you don't have to wait for it.


[Further reading will have Spoilers]

Gameplay and 'Classic Metroid' Design:
Metroid: Samus Returns has given me an unique feeling of a Metroid game, it has made quite some changes that one would rather seperate them from the 'classic 2D Metroid' games. When I was playing Samus Returns, the gameplay feels kinda like "Metroid Prime in 2D". The way to swap beams, the full aim control while standing still, the slightly slower movement, the cutscenes. They all give me more of a 'Metroid Prime' idea than a 'fast paced classic Metroid' game. It's not really a bad thing, but I did enjoyed the fast paced action of Speedrunners in games like Zero Mission. It's a bit of potential I've missed out. But I think that the game would be much harder to control if everything was faster too.

I've also noticed that every way of reaching a point in a different way is almost impossible, for one puzzle path, there's likely only one solution because it's blocked by other simple obstackles (say, you've spider ball and grapple beam, then when you need to use the grapple beam, you can't use the spider ball because it's blocked away with spikes or slippery, there are also tons of airvents that disable possibilities of using bombs too). I like variety and ways to finish a game without needing to use every item. But this game doesn't really allow you to. It's a bit like Metroid Fusion in that trend.

Art Design:
The art design is a 3D setting where you walk in 2D. I found it funny because that was also once the idea I wanted to see as well.
The visuals did really good to me and I've even took the time to see the way how Samus is aiming around. The Introduction artworks and Chozo Lore artworks were also really stunning and as an artist myself, I've really liked to look at the details of every pictures, because every detail could tell a bit of lore.

Music:
The Music overall is kind of an odd case, it's a mixed bag of both great soundtracks and forgettable ambience. However, the same thing also happened to the original game Metroid II as well. In that case, I do prefer Samus Returns' ambience music over Metroid II.

Personally, After seeing the ambience music of Other M and Federation Force. I hoped that Samus Returns wouldn't end up like that as well. It started off great with the remixed "Surface of SR388" theme, which has become my favorite remix as well.
But then I noticed that the surface theme only appears in just a small area of the surface, because it's not a part of the purple toxic area.

Afterwards, My feelings about the music became rather mixed throughout most of the gameplay. Because most of the memorable tracks were remixes from other populair soundtracks like Red Brinstar and Ridley's Lair. The rest of the normal area's were mostly ambience. But then I heard the Chozo Labratory theme and that has completely made my day! The feeling that great and new soundtracks of Metroid can still appear has given me good thoughts about the future of Metroid music.

Some of the Metroid/Boss themes were really enjoyable as well. to add to that.

Cutscenes:
The cutscenes were great, but in some cases I've the feeling they overdid it. 
The Intro, and encounter of a new Metroid 'transformation' or a different bossfight is great. But there were too much Cutscenes at the start of the game.
Almost at every new game feature, There were Cutscenes of Samus going "what is this?". of an object that was already common to me: A Chozo Statue, The Aeon Statue, a Teleportation Station, a second Teleportation Station that activated the first one, At least she didn't do that during save stations. But I find an object already interesting if I saw it right away. There wouldn't be a cutscene of some sort needed for that. Just a bit of a nitpick because these cutscenes happen every time you play a new game.

I didn't mind the boss encounter cutscenes, those were well done and I enjoyed them. Although they do appear again if you lost from the boss, but these cutscenes are skippable by then. So I don't mind too much.

The Bosses
The goal of the game is to defeat all Metroids, and there are like 40 of them, and each Metroid fight is kind of like a boss or mini-boss to me. Most of the Metroids have a bit of the same AI, but because of the different and harder area's, then most of the Metroid fights did felt unique. Some of the Metroid's AI also improved too, having new attacks or they try to run away which made the battles longer. 

I really liked the ambience how you had to preparate yourself for the Omega Metroid, the music was a lot more dangerous, and during the Omega Metroid itself, a Psycho thriller intro started, that was amazing.
It was that moment that I thought the Omega Metroid's were the biggest threat, but that wasn't the case.
Because there's also a new boss called the Diggernaut....and dang...it certainely was a big spike in difficulity. 
It took me an hour to beat that boss, it was a sudden, unpredictable suprise that it was much harder than the Omega Metroid. But I've enjoyed the bossfight nonetheless. And it felt really statisfying to finally beat the boss as well. Samus was also totally done with it. XD

The Diggernaut wasn't the only boss though, There's also Ridley who finally got promoted as Final Boss Rank.
There are a bit of a mixed feeling about Ridley and the lore. The one side liked that the metal remains of Ridley's body parts can refer to make Metroid Prime more canon. while the other side says that Ridley is shoehorned and doesn't fit with the 20-year old lore. I don't care too much about, sometimes you want to make changes in things because old games can only refer to released data that happened before them. I just had a great Ridley fight and it shows more connection with the baby Metroid, which I enjoyed. 

And about the Baby Metroid itself, I just find it super adorable that you can
walk around in endgame with the baby Metroid like a pet.


My overall rating, The game's not a 'perfect' Metroid game, but it certainely is decent. 
While I don't see it as a successor of Zero Mission, it's a great successor of Metroid II for sure.
And in my view of remaking Metroid II myself, I've gotten even better expectations of this game than I could even imagine. The way how they have done the details of almost every idea I once had planned to implement has gotten implemented. creepy, but amazing. 

Samus Returns gets a 7,5/10 for me. Because it had both good and bad designs. And I'm enjoying the parts that they did right much more than the parts that went wrong. I can't really suggest changes to Samus Returns since it's already released. But I'm looking forward to see how Metroid Prime 4 will become.

EDIT: This remaster has been cancelled. It's time to move on to the better things.

whew, that's almost a quarter of my lifetime so far. and counting.

time flies, doesn't it?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HYPE OVERFLOWN!!!!