Metroid: Takeover

Metroid: Takeover
Release date: Jan 30, 2019	Author: Spedimus	Download: Version 1.3.1 (US) (2244 downloads) Download: Version 1.2 (US) (1159 downloads)
Genre: Exploration [?] Game:	Difficulty: Vanilla [?]	Average runtime: 3:07 Average collection: 77%
Read Me: [None]	Forum Thread: Release Thread	Rating:

Description

Takeover is a Zero Mission hack with layout changes, changed tilesets, sprites, and palettes.

Credits:
BioSp4rk for MAGE, Unknown Items GFX & asm
Captain Glitch for StartItems asm and Palette fix
Trunar68 for the Crocomire Hack
Nintendo for creating ZM & Fusion

Version 1.3 includes an extra save station, some map and tile touch-ups, an extra missile tank, and some shortened rooms.

Screenshots

Ratings and Reviews

By gotrice on Jan 31, 2019 (

)

57% in 0:00

Overall the hack was fun and I enjoyed it. Couldn't find all the powerups though. Believe I was missing screw attack, gravity suit, and plasma beam.You can traverse the Sunken Caverns pretty early if you got the ice beam, which was the last item I found because I missed obvious blocks to blow up to get to it.

By alexman25 on Jan 31, 2019 (

)

No completion stats.

Certainly not the best hack out there, but pretty solid for (to my knowledge) a first attempt. The room design could use some work (a lot of tile errors/misuse and can be pretty blocky), and the map could use some work too. For a veteran difficulty hack, it's pretty easy too.

The most fun I had with the hack was traversing Norfair for the first time. The platforming was difficult and fun, and whenever I messed up it felt like it was my fault and not bad design. Going through the heat runs was pretty good too, but I'll admit I'm pretty sure I didn't get everything I was supposed yet to before I got into Norfair.

Overall, a decent hack, and I look forward to future hacks made by Spedimus.

By caauyjdp on Feb 02, 2019 (

)

83% in 1:42

Great hack.

By WowFamDesu on Mar 13, 2019 (

)

94% in 2:49

This is probably the most conflicting hack I have ever played. The level design was amazing at times, and then downright frustrating at other times. I spent a lot of time grinding for power bombs as sometimes you will get locked in an area where power bombs are required to progress but there are no refill stations.

For anyone reading, while walljumping and bombjumping are not technically required to beat the hack, they are required if you don't want to softlock yourself. Shinesparking is absolutely required to beat the hack. I really enjoyed the tricks required to reach some of the expansion packs in the game, they were intuitive and made me (a speedrunner) struggle to reach them. They were extremely rewarding and by far my favorite part about the game. There were some parts in the game where I struggled to figure out what to do next (during ridley i gave up and opened up mage to see where I was supposed to go because the next step was pretty out there)

The map/world is by far the largest that ZM hacks have to offer. IMO this made in-area-pacing pretty good, it wasn't like you were just running into item after item, you actually had to look for items and it felt extremely rewarding when you did find one. To add to that, it was like whole sections of the map opened up when you found an item, which was incredible. In a way it felt like each area had "tiers" that open up when you found an item.

However, because of the "tiers" and how the map worked, the backtracking was extremely painful. If there were interconnected sections running throughout the map to make backtracking easier, I certainly didn't find them. The fact that the route from norfair to kraid in brinstar is basically a big line and the least fun of all the areas to traverse through definitely did not help. Maybe its just how I played the hack the first time around, but I spent a lot of time backtracking to see what exactly i had opened up in each area. I would have to play it again or open it in mage to see if they exist, but the game could really benefit from more connecting passages.

There were a few graphical bugs, like the sprite for mecha ridley was all messed up, and some platforms we'rent displaying correctly (actually not sure if that was intentional or not), but nothing too major or gamebreaking. The gameboy soundchip could clearly not handle the music at times, but I don't necessarily think that's Spedimus' fault.

Because of the size, it really feels like a full-on metroid game rather than just a hack, which I think is the first ZM hack that has made me feel this way. Despite the issues I touched upon, I really enjoyed it and would say it is absolutely worth playing through. It might even get me to make a 100% route for it.

By SN_Ivan on Jul 12, 2019 (

)

70% in 3:31

Don't look at the completion time, i messed up really badly with sequence breaks, awful HBJs and Suitless maridia (which is doable to a point)

Overrall, really good hack i enjoyed it a lot. Almost perfect design, the rooms were as good as a regular metroid game, little mistakes here and there with graphics or weird slopes but, in general, very very good design, also it is a long hack.

The only thing i'm complaining there was waaay too much backtracking, and that ruins a bit the experience, maybe some shortcuts or connections because it really is bad.

Power Bomb grind is also an issue but not nearly as big as backtracking.

By the way, this hack is speedrun worthy, routing this has to be really interesting.

By Syphon on Dec 18, 2019 (

)

76% in 3:15

I liked this hack a lot.

Level design was pretty great but a lot of backtracking was involved. I wasted a lot of time doing Maridia suitless because I missed the entrance to Crocomire.

I loved the Shinespark puzzles. Plasma Beam (and with that the access to Screw Attack) was very rewarding considering how hard it was to get.

I recommend it. This would be a 5-orb hack easily if it weren't for the amount of backtracking.

By Sapphron on Dec 20, 2019 (

)

74% in 3:08

Pretty cool hack.
Really liked Maridia. Hack was rocky at the beginning, but opened up a lot at later points. Throws some curveballs at you, and the green pirates suck.
Exploration is great and Tourian is different. Good hack, I recommend.
Finished.

By Contendo on Mar 23, 2020 (

)

69% in 2:47

Its alright.
The thing that makes it good is the size.
The tiling is horrible ngl but there are a lot of cool Ideas in the hack.
Finished.
Rcommend if you have a lot of time to spare.

By Azagroth on Jul 26, 2020 (

)

80% in 3:20

I took a lot of time to just walk around this one as it felt special like no other hack has. The world is huge and a lot of fun to explore, puzzles are nicely hidden and some quite challenging (mostly the speedbooster ones). If you like speedbooster you'll love this hack, the large areas are a lot of the times built around speeding like a madman.

In terms of challenge it felt ok, where the blend of enemies and hidden paths forward would push you to search everywhere. This can sound annoying but it isn't as for the most time upgrades are flowing at a nice pace, which I did not expect in a huge hack, most feel like they space things out too much.

In terms of exploring it I will say that you need to know bomb or wall jumping to not get stuck.

In terms of the negatives of this hack - well tiling can use some work and the special boss has a weird hitbox at times, but it is nothing too major.

I wholeheartedly recommend this one to any players looking for an experience that would feel like ZM revamped.

By Door Ladder on Dec 02, 2020 (

)

80% in 5:00

This review may be a bit all over the place, I wrote down my thoughts on the hack as I was playing. I'll start with the things I disliked first to get that over with quickly, and then end with the things I did like and what the best parts of this hack are.

CONs/PERSONAL NITPICKS:
---------------------------------
[] I took my time with this hack and thoroughly explored as much of the world as I could, but somehow I still only ended up with an 80% completion rate. I scoured the entire map and power-bombed many parts of many rooms looking for more item accessways, and still found no more items. Where is the last 20% of items hidden?
[] Tiling errors are sometimes common, and result in some actual gameplay glitches (eg. being able to phase through the whale wall at the Kraid elevator while the wall is still intact).
[] I could not find the power grip upgrade for the first three hours of gameplay. This really necessitated a lot of bomb jumping on my part. Maybe I'm just bad at exploring, so this could be my fault, but it really gave me a hard time not having it for so long.
[] Much of my time in the hack was spent simply running around back and forth to different locations to try new upgrades on parts of the map I could not access before. I wish there was more inter-area navigation added so that I didn't have to make the same repetitive commute through Brinstar every time I needed to go somewhere.
[] There were far too few save stations for my liking, so I had to resort to using savestates for much of the run.
[] Many areas in Crateria or Norfair/Lower Norfair can almost 100% softlock you if you lack certain abilities. Why does the player even have legitimate access into these areas if they can't escape once they go in?
[] Many rooms in Norfair have invisible platforms that are impossible to see and discern. Why? Is this a tiling error or was this intentional?
[] Acquiring high jump without power grip or ice beam was extremely painful, as the exit route for the high jump upgrade required several extremely precise bomb jump exercises that had to be done quickly enough to avoid getting hit by fast-moving enemies, while still being able to get the morph ball into the opening at the top safely. this was probably the worst part of the hack for me. I spent about an hour total trying to escape from just one room because of this.
[] Maridia first visit was more troll-y to do than it ought to be. It really would have been better if it had more platforms to help the player traverse. Single wall jumping in water is not my idea of fun, personally.
[] Many of the shinespark puzzles felt incredibly unfair in their design. I used at least 100+ savestate reloads retrying just two of the shinespark puzzles in Kraid and Maridia respectively on this hack. I cannot imagine how frustrating this would be for someone who doesn't savestate and is just retrying it manually each time.
[] The ending sequence with Mother Brain and the Space Pirates felt rushed and unfinished. Given how much detail was put into the rest of this hack, I was expecting for there to be a suitless segment of the hack after fighting Mother Brain, which forces you to survive stealthily for a while until you re-obtain your gear at the chozo ghost battle. It was a shame that this segment is missing from the hack.

PROs/THINGS I REALLY LIKED ABOUT THIS HACK:
---------------------------------
[] The total world map is very large in terms of scale, though is arguably a lot less dense in terms of rooms clustered together. Fusion and Zero Mission had rather compact area designs with most rooms adjacently touching each other, but Takeover's level design has most rooms very spread out and not hugging each other.
[] On the issue of the map being stretched out, it results in the hack feeling more like an alternate version of Super Metroid.
[] The fight against Kraid was actually made really good due to a noticeable health buff applied to him, and now he is a very fun and challenging boss to fight. This is also due to his boss room being made much larger in the hack.
[] I really liked how the long beam's texture was changed to be the same color as the standard power beam shot from the Metroid Prime games. That's attention to detail!
[] I also really liked how Samus's power and varia suits have been changed to look like their Super Metroid/Prime counterparts.
[] The new appearance of the Plasma Beam was also a welcome change. It looks much more piercing in effect now than it did in vanilla ZM.
[] The use of Metroid Fusion tiles and alternatives (like the Fusion chozo statue design) were nice to see as replacements in this hack for Zero Mission's textures, however Brinstar felt quite odd. It is tiled in most rooms to look exactly like the Main Deck of the BSL station, with the super-upbeat Brinstar theme awkwardly playing over it. I can't help but feel this part would have been nicer if it instead just played the environmental ambience music Fusion used at the start of that game.
[] Adding Crocomire as a new boss fight, while glitchy and obviously unfinished, was a genius idea for the hack. It adds some much-needed challenge to Lower Norfair, and is a fun fight to do.
[] Acquiring the gravity suit near the end of lower norfair was so rewarding after grinding through the game for many hours. It opened up so many areas of the game once I got it.
[] The double boss rush at the end was surprisingly very fun to play despite the end area being very barebones. The player faces Mother Brain and then has to immediately fight Mecha Ridley quickly afterwards - all while the timer was still running down. This worked quite well here, primarily because the player is given ample time to chew through the second fight. I hated this same mechanic the way it was used in Ing-Ing's Stargazer hack, but here, it works very well.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
---------------------------------
This hack's strongest suits are in making the less-relied-on mechanics of the traditional 2D metroid really stand out more than ever, all while providing a very large and elongated map for players to explore. Bomb jumping, single wall jumping, bomb and speedboost combinations, plus space jump and gravity suit, all felt so important throughout this hack -- far more than they have in any Metroid game. I never felt more like I was accomplishing so much with bomb jumping in many places as I did with Takeover. Spacejump really felt like an important part of Samus's loadout in this game too, and it felt so rewarding to use it everywhere in the large vertical shafts around the map. The Shinespark mechanic is put to good use in acquiring several major upgrades in this hack, though some of the shinespark puzzles, as mentioned before, are annoyingly difficult. The design of the Maridia environment, though lacking variety and most rooms feeling fairly empty, was the most aesthetically pleasing part of the map to traverse. The color in the rocks really caught my attention.

This is a very enjoyable re-interpretation of Zero Mission's world and provides for many hours of explorational gameplay. Just keep in mind that every area you step into incurs a great risk of almost certainly dying unless you obtained some specific items first!

Have fun exploring!

Finished.
Would recommend.

By LetsPlayNintendoITA on Jul 10, 2022 (

)

83% in 3:04

painful for 100% (some expansions were pain. looking at you super missile in kraid and power bomb in maridia below plasma beam)
for the rest a very very cool hack. it pushed me hard on my knowledge of ZM.
i'd advise being an expert before attempting to play this.
max% is 83% on latest version.
besides some weirdness (yeah the invisible platforms - including a few on the way to tourian though untouchable lol) it was really good. play it!

By Zincoshine on Aug 02, 2022 (

)

No completion stats.

This is the first normal length hack in my list of zero mission hacks to play and it is likewise the lowest rated one. However, If anything, this is overrated. First of all, it's only a 2/3 hack, second of all, neither the intro cutscene nor the title screen was changed. Most importantly, the world plays out like a really crappy version of the original game with all kinds of poor decisions taken in the level design. From empty hallways with little purpose other than to add more gameplay time, to very poor enemy placements, to unintuitive layouts in Norfair to poor platform placements in brinstar.... Yeah, just stay away from this one. It's not worth your time, neither as a ROM hack nor as a Metroidvania. If you really want to do a replay of zero mission, use project ZM instead.

By RX-78-2 on Jan 04, 2023 (

)

83% in 2:59

Pretty decent ZM hack, I liked it and enjoyed it

Finished
Would recommend

By Zhs2 on Nov 16, 2023 (

)

74% in 2:44

Pretty good hack. For as lazily tiled as it looks, the author placed great emphasis on letting the player go where they want and do what they please, upgrades permitting. It's a fun hack to explore, with some obvious missteps like invisible tiles that are also shot blocks and overlapping rooms that look bad as Samus moves through them. It's a standard ZM hack, and it's nice to play a hack every once in a while that doesn't casually murder you aside from with barely tested ASM additions like Crocomire. Protip: You can aim at his mouth from the floor, and once he's angry lay a power bomb to obliterate him. The plasma path is also somewhat annoying and I needed slowdown for it, so keep that in mind if you want the strongest powerups or 100%.

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