VixiChrome
Bio
Gamer plural system playing the videod game.
Though this is mostly for Vixi's sake. I'm here to keep my games sorted and to help chip away at the proverbial backlog. As well as dump my thoughts afterward.
A lot of older games I've rated but not reviewed are games I'm looking to replay since a good chunk of them I haven't played since childhood.
My general scoring system:
5 - Peak
4.5 - Excellent
4 - Outstanding
3.5 - Pretty great!
3 - Good
2.5 - Average
2 - Mediocre
1.5 - Tiresome
1 - Really Bad
0.5 - Agony
Gamer plural system playing the videod game.
Though this is mostly for Vixi's sake. I'm here to keep my games sorted and to help chip away at the proverbial backlog. As well as dump my thoughts afterward.
A lot of older games I've rated but not reviewed are games I'm looking to replay since a good chunk of them I haven't played since childhood.
My general scoring system:
5 - Peak
4.5 - Excellent
4 - Outstanding
3.5 - Pretty great!
3 - Good
2.5 - Average
2 - Mediocre
1.5 - Tiresome
1 - Really Bad
0.5 - Agony
Badges
1 Years of Service
Being part of the Backloggd community for 1 year
Listed
Created 10+ public lists
GOTY '23
Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event
Gone Gold
Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page
Clearin your Calendar
Journaled games at least 15 days a month over a year
Organized
Created a list folder with 5+ lists
Gamer
Played 250+ games
Loved
Gained 100+ total review likes
Well Written
Gained 10+ likes on a single review
N00b
Played 100+ games
Noticed
Gained 3+ followers
Liked
Gained 10+ total review likes
GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
Full-Time
Journaled games once a day for a month straight
On Schedule
Journaled games once a day for a week straight
Favorite Games
318
Total Games Played
022
Played in 2024
141
Games Backloggd
Recently Played See More
Recently Reviewed See More
From a gameplay standpoint it's a fine update to Metroid 2, but feels slower and clumsier than Fusion or Zero Mission did. Especially with the addition of Aeon Abilities that adds what feels like another unnecessary resource into the game and the melee counter attack, which halts Samus in place while using it and devolves a lot of the combat into waiting on enemies to do their very obviously telegraphed attack that allows you to insta-kill them and then your encounters with anything that isn't a boss becomes robotic and boring.
I'm mixed on the presentation. On one hand, I appreciate the soundtrack being reasonably faithful to the original; really atmospheric and unsettling tracks. But then it throws in random remixes from other game like Ridley's lair and Red-soil Brinstar and man. Remember when Ridley's lair was a cool track hyping up your approach to Ridley, it got brought back in Prime 1 as a nice simple callback, and here it's been reduced to "Fire level music". Jesus.
The backgrounds on their own are nice looking, but they really undercut the tension of Metroid 2 because of how brightly lit and visibly teeming with life they are. Metroid 2 is one of the mainstream Nintendo games with THE most rancid vibes ever and it feels off that a remake of it sticks in a giant fungus forest for no reason.
Speaking undercutting the tension, remember how in Metroid 2, it's just a constant decent deeper and deeper into a cave system, a linear trek downwards to a point where you can't help but think "wow I am really deep underground at this point, when the hell am I ever going to see the surface again?" Well, they stuck teleport stations in so you can just zap back to the surface whenever it's convenient to you. Yay.
And y'know, Metroid 2 is not a glorious game. You're almost basically doing a villain's dirty work by going to a planet to wipe out all of a species by some vague metric of them being "too capable of being used as bioweapons". And it felt very purposeful that killing a Metroid in the original game hardly ever felt gratifying. And that hits especially hard in a post-Fusion world where we see the consequences of Samus' actions, cause it turns out playing god and killing an entire species because they're too inconvenient isn't a very good idea because it can fuck the ecosystem up to a catastrophic degree. So it then feels RIDICULOUSLY tone deaf for Samus Returns here to have all these glory kill cutscenes against these things like it's trying to sell us on how cool Samus' job is.
And as if that wasn't enough, it completely butchers the ending. Like, Metroid 2's ending stands out because pretty much every other Metroid game ends on some big, climactic setpiece, escape sequence or not. Metroid 2 instead has you quietly take the baby Metroid back to the surface, in an almost somber and reflective manner. You just murdered this species out of existence when it's just an animal all the same as anything else. Is what you just did right? Or does it just make you as much a cold killer as the ones supposedly posing to use Metroids as weapons?
That's too lame for us gamers, gotta take the baby Metroid around the world to go 100% the game and then fight a boss because we need a big red arrow pointing at the REAL bad guy in this situation. Bllllluuuuuuuugh.
I like this game in the end, it's not like my mountain of problems with it makes it unplayable. But look at this game and all the missed potential and feel very :/
I'm mixed on the presentation. On one hand, I appreciate the soundtrack being reasonably faithful to the original; really atmospheric and unsettling tracks. But then it throws in random remixes from other game like Ridley's lair and Red-soil Brinstar and man. Remember when Ridley's lair was a cool track hyping up your approach to Ridley, it got brought back in Prime 1 as a nice simple callback, and here it's been reduced to "Fire level music". Jesus.
The backgrounds on their own are nice looking, but they really undercut the tension of Metroid 2 because of how brightly lit and visibly teeming with life they are. Metroid 2 is one of the mainstream Nintendo games with THE most rancid vibes ever and it feels off that a remake of it sticks in a giant fungus forest for no reason.
Speaking undercutting the tension, remember how in Metroid 2, it's just a constant decent deeper and deeper into a cave system, a linear trek downwards to a point where you can't help but think "wow I am really deep underground at this point, when the hell am I ever going to see the surface again?" Well, they stuck teleport stations in so you can just zap back to the surface whenever it's convenient to you. Yay.
And y'know, Metroid 2 is not a glorious game. You're almost basically doing a villain's dirty work by going to a planet to wipe out all of a species by some vague metric of them being "too capable of being used as bioweapons". And it felt very purposeful that killing a Metroid in the original game hardly ever felt gratifying. And that hits especially hard in a post-Fusion world where we see the consequences of Samus' actions, cause it turns out playing god and killing an entire species because they're too inconvenient isn't a very good idea because it can fuck the ecosystem up to a catastrophic degree. So it then feels RIDICULOUSLY tone deaf for Samus Returns here to have all these glory kill cutscenes against these things like it's trying to sell us on how cool Samus' job is.
And as if that wasn't enough, it completely butchers the ending. Like, Metroid 2's ending stands out because pretty much every other Metroid game ends on some big, climactic setpiece, escape sequence or not. Metroid 2 instead has you quietly take the baby Metroid back to the surface, in an almost somber and reflective manner. You just murdered this species out of existence when it's just an animal all the same as anything else. Is what you just did right? Or does it just make you as much a cold killer as the ones supposedly posing to use Metroids as weapons?
That's too lame for us gamers, gotta take the baby Metroid around the world to go 100% the game and then fight a boss because we need a big red arrow pointing at the REAL bad guy in this situation. Bllllluuuuuuuugh.
I like this game in the end, it's not like my mountain of problems with it makes it unplayable. But look at this game and all the missed potential and feel very :/
I liked the part where John Federation Force said "It's Forcin Time!" and Federation Forced all over those guys
I very rarely say a game's story actively detracts from how actually playing a game feels but oh god it really is just that bad.