PREVIOUSLY ON METROID: Samus Aran, galactic hero, nemesis of the evil space pirates, and bounty hunter who to my knowledge has never actually Hunted a Bounty, commits genocide.

this isn't a game theory or another example of a leftist unwilling to read a game in a way that isn't materialistic (i mean. not entirely, anyway...), this is just textually what occurs in Metroid 2. Samus touches down on SR388 and doesn't leave its surface until she's exterminated every single Metroid, except one, a final act of mercy that's immediately dropped off for invasive scientific study.

difficult to approach and often really quite tedious, Metroid 2 is nonetheless a truly remarkable game accurately described by FMTownsParty (https://www.backloggd.com/u/FMTownsParty/review/1831/) as an "art game for the Game Boy", and something of a black sheep in Nintendo's vast catalogue. it's a game I respect immensely even if I will probably never play it again, and its uniqueness stands out all the more for the abject failure of its twin remakes to replicate it, even if they are accomplished works in their own right, and one of my sticking points with Super Metroid, a game I like but cannot bring myself to love, is that it largely excises these more narratively complex elements in favor of something far more traditional. super metroid is an exceedingly fine game, but it doesn't really go for it, y'know?

thankfully, Metroid: Fusion makes up for it's predecessor by going for it harder than few games could ever hope to match.

becoming a new kind of life-form made out of the DNA of the single act of mercy you offered to a species you exterminated only to find yourself hunted by the physical embodiment of that past extermination wearing your face and using your powers is enough of a killer hook to hang an entire game out of but somehow Fusion just keeps going, adding layer upon layer of incisive thematic work interrogating it's central character relentlessly, until it cements itself as (with the possible exception of Majora's Mask) the single most thematically rich, narratively accomplished nintendo game with no input from Shigesato Itoi. every pixel of this game is bursting with resonance and detail and purpose that is near un-rivalled. fusion isn't just the best metroid game, it's one of the best games, period.

i think we've mostly chilled out on decrying Fusion for its linearity, but i wanna highlight what the game's structure does to serve it. the game's loop is simple: you arrive in a sector, adam tells you roughly what you need to do and why, and then you go do that thing, usually with some little hidey-holes you can poke in along the way to get an upgrade. but within this loop, the information you are given and the information that is withheld is pointed. even before the big reveals it's clear just how much the federation is manipulating and lying to you, and as you question your orders more and more, the game widens the scope it offers you, going from your first run in sector 1 being practically on-rails to the sections where the game lets go of the reins entirely, inviting you to find the path forward on your own, which are inevitably the moments where you push up against and bomb your way through the walls of the conspiracy around you. portal wishes it could do this as well.

everything about the storytelling in this game is so incisive, so pointed. the way the game emphasizes the destructive/predatory nature of Samus by making clear that you are not only the reason for the X's existence, by wiping out its natural predators, the Metroids, from the ecosystem, but also for it's spread throughout the station, as the AI reminds you that by opening up other areas, you are letting the X spread into them. the federation and samus' intertwined culpability in this incident is never left in doubt, the very act of playing a Metroid game, of increasing your ability to navigate this space, is toxic and bringing about it's destruction.

this culminates in one of the most remarkable sequences in the game and, indeed, the series, when you trick your way into the restricted zone and discover, inevitably, that the federation is breeding metroids. for "peaceful purposes", they claim. contrary to the game's reputation as constantly talking (Samus has some internal narration but it's genuinely quite sparse, and her actually talking back to the AI at the end is a big moment) this entire sequence, from the reveal to the knife-twisting that is the SA-X showing up to do as Samus does: butcher Metroids, to the final escape, where you drift upwards through an elevator shaft filled with other metroids - your kin, now - it's all done wordlessly, and communicates far more complicated feelings than anything in Super Metroid.

more than Other M could ever conceive, Fusion is about Samus. her destructive and violent past in the prior metroids, and her current status, a tool of the federation that they are preparing to discard once they find multiple, mass-produced SA-Xs they believe they can control. after all, why not? they controlled Samus, at least up to a certain point. the way the game pulls back its tight linear pacing ever so slightly as the story reaches its climax communicates Samus' push for personal autonomy beautifully, which is why I wish the ending was just a little tighter.

don't get me wrong, it's a knockout in many respects. facing the SA-X, the embodiment of what Samus once was, and triumphing over it with the new(ish) powers you've obtained from interfacing and embracing the life forms you destroy is a fantastic final battle, as is the last-minute reprise of being saved by the baby metroid. much-mocked as it is, I actually like the Fusion one far better, because rather than being a straightforwardly paternalistic relationship, the SA-Xs motives are far more obscured. is this the Samus part of it? or is it the X, protecting what could be the last remnant of its existence inside Samus? or is it a bittersweet reclamation and restating of Samus Aran as the one who kills the Metroids? it could be all of them, and that's why I like it. i like metroid when it's not doing gender, frankly. i like it, even more, when Samus Aran is ultimately saved by the funny little animals she saves innocuously around halfway through the game. i think that's why i like samus, ultimately, despite her genocidal tendencies, despite the fact that she is absolutely someone who would take away one of her hands, one of the ways she is able to reach out and embrace the world around her, with a gun. here, at the end, she still has enough good in her to save people.

which brings me to the actual sore point with the ending: Adam. there's a generous read to be made on the game's depiction of Adam for much of it, and I maintain that the game is genuinely critical of him as a person, as the twin reveals of him actively deceiving Samus throughout the adventure and also being the actual mind of Adam Malkovich do much to paint the picture of a kind of shitty military guy that Samus is all too willing to absolve him due to her own guilt. the problem is, of course, the Gender. the "any objections, lady?" shit and Samus' frankly embarrassing "no wait hold on it's fine actually his misogyny is secretly woke come on" is hard to swallow and impossible to muster the enthusiasm to do so after Sakamoto went on to write and direct Metroid: Other M, a fucking dumpster fire with the biggest gender essentialist TERF energy imaginable. Other M's very existence makes it a bit harder to be generous to Fusion in the way that I would like to.

there's so much to like about the end of this game, but there's just a twinge of (ahem) Dread it envokes. from the (genuinely forgotten by me until this most recent playthrough) backpedaling of Samus' revolutionary act against the government by Adam insisting that "someone (in government) will understand" to the aforementioned gender, there are things about it that could be taken in a bad direction. nevertheless, it's hard to hold the mistakes of the future, be they in Other M or, potentially, in Dread, against Fusion too hard. it remains an absolutely singular work that I love dearly, a thematic embarrassment of riches that deserves to stand up and be counted as a true classic.

i didn't even mention how much fun it is to shoot da guys! it's very fun. five stars.