neen's Hack Reviews - Metroid Construction

Eris by Digital_Mantra [

Exploration], rated by neen on Oct 29, 2023 (

)

75% in 8:09

amazing visuals and style as you would expect from digital mantra. the ending got me to cry a bit. my only real issue was not knowing the existence of one particular grey door which confounded me for some time. that is not worth deducting an orb, though.

there's really something special about the amount of attention to storytelling and visual design that goes into dman hacks. they are all worth playing

Cliffhanger Redux by Digital_Mantra [

Challenge], rated by neen on Sep 15, 2023 (

)

68% in 9:13

creative, cryptic, difficult, worth playing. used savestates at some points simply to hasten retries (rising water room in eldridge, i'm lookin at you).

Super Junkoid by P. Yoshi [

Exploration], rated by neen on Aug 22, 2023 (

)

85% in 4:23

amazing tilesets, boss and enemy resprites, reworked items, and story. no spoiling from me, just play this hack.

Super Metroid: Ascent by Benox50 [

Exploration], rated by neen on Jul 02, 2023 (

)

79% in 6:39

very gorgeously colorful rooms. big fan of the pink and purple. good puzzles, good new mechanics. kinda got stuck near the end because i didn't realize where the unlock for the last gate was, but that's mostly my fault (linked gates could probably be labelled like the linked doors). also this hack has a great sense of humor which is fun

[78.9%, site rounds]

Super Metroid: Pit of 100 Trials by MetroidNerd#9001 [

Challenge], rated by neen on Mar 23, 2023 (

)

80% in 1:53

health and ammo management are the main challenge, since there are no farms or refill stations, and i assume no respawn points (i didn't die). because of that, i played very carefully. some cool optional puzzles (like that for obtaining springball).

overall very nice.

V I T A L I T Y by Digital_Mantra [

Exploration], rated by neen on Mar 20, 2023 (

)

61% in 4:56

very creative and beautiful looking hack. i gather that i would understand the plot if i watched more films (doesn't really stop the enjoyment but i'd probably understand more of the references). i got kind of bored of the "grey door but you can (or must) circumvent it with a morph tunnel" thing, which this hack does all over the place. i'm thinking i will go back to try for hundo at some point (the empty space in the hud makes me wonder), which i think requires a replay in order to do? (point of no return at the end)

extremely good hack though, play it now.

60.9% in 4:56:48 (site does not display correctly)

Super Metroid: Hotlands by MetroidNerd#9001 [

Exploration], rated by neen on Feb 25, 2023 (

)

56% in 1:04

very nice short hack. it is well designed in that it's usually telegraphed pretty well to the player if an area is something they should not be in yet and requires another upgrade. i did not find ice beam or the custom item. (looked up youtube playthrough afterwards to know they existed)

Polarity by Oi27, Moehr [

Exploration], rated by neen on Oct 12, 2022 (

)

66% in 2:20

very cool hack. i got lost and confused a bit (does the infection mechanic do anything?) but did not have to resort to watching a video of someone else play it =]

Super Metroid: Subversion by TestRunner and AmoebaOfDoom [

Exploration], rated by neen on Sep 06, 2022 (

)

100% in 14:13

My original completion was 68% in 9:55.

This is an incredible hack with new mechanics, a huge world to explore, and tons of secrets to find that will keep you occupied and having fun for a long time. I don't want to spoil anything. Just play it yourself!

Cliffhanger by Digital_Mantra [

Challenge], rated by neen on Mar 24, 2024 (

)

85% in 12:21

this took me about 30 hours of real time over several weeks to complete. i played without savestates for maximum pain.

you should probably play redux if you want the more polished experience. this original version does have some differences and some extra jank. the rising water room (you know the one) is not here, and i'm very glad of that. there is one room that can crash on console and some emulators, but it seems to not happen too often. it only happened to me once, and i was in that room a LOT.

there are parts of this that get me sweating and my heart racing because one mistake is death, and death means respawning at the ship and redoing the whole segment. if you can deal with that, it's actually pretty rewarding to replay the sections and get better at them each time.

buy the ticket, take the ride.

Super Metroid: Redesign by Drewseph [

Exploration], rated by neen on Jul 27, 2023 (

)

75% in 17:12

samus is climbing a mountain. why is she climbing a mountain?

i chose to play redesign not because it is easy, but because it is hard. pretty unfairly hard at some points, but still worth playing because it is an important ambitious milestone for super metroid hacking. and hey, if you don't want to do the escape the intended way, you can just x-ray climb out of bounds in the room to the right of the ship and trigger the escape. ;] can't do /that/ in axeil.

Super Metroid Biohazard by Mentlegen, SMILEuser96 [

Speedrun/Race], rated by neen on Jul 05, 2023 (

)

56% in 2:51

rounded up from 3.5 orbs to 4

as a contest hack, this is a bit rough around the edges. if you can get over some of the jank it's pretty good. did not collect gravity suit just for fun

Super Metroid: Recovery by MetroidNerd#9001 [

Exploration], rated by neen on Mar 11, 2023 (

)

81% in 4:43

this hack has some cool ideas. tourian is neat. never found plasma. did some suitless maridia including getting one item early but it didn't amount to much. it definitely felt like maridia was designed to be done suitless. if you can double spring ball jump, you could probably kill draygon early. i get the feeling that multiple progression paths are possible; i found my first power bomb pack about halfway thru (didn't discover it until later but it was accessible earlier).

Metroid: Falling by TN [

Exploration], rated by neen on Feb 22, 2023 (

)

84% in 5:13

interesting item progression for subsequent playthroughs should be possible (varia's location was humorous to me as i already had gravity). much like Hidden, this is full of crumble block one-way passages. used g-mode for ridley just because.

Super Minitroid by Noxus [

Vanilla+], rated by neen on Feb 08, 2023 (

)

69% in 2:31

physics are kind of wonky (horizontal speed without dashing, getting stuck in walljump pose sometimes, getting ice was a little annoying), and there is a bug where you can fall oob in at least two places. otherwise this was pretty fun.

has smol samus

Super Metroid: Hidden by TN [

Unknown], rated by neen on Jan 23, 2023 (

)

83% in 5:18

"hey i found a thing. oh, it's a crumble block". progression is fairly obfuscated. only slight discontiguous door maze nonsense.

Super metroid familiar by Tundain [

Exploration], rated by neen on Nov 07, 2022 (

)

69% in 3:59

[played on 1.0]

good hack, world feels lorge because many rooms are very tall or wide, often in the opposite way the corresponding vanilla room is, so it has a touch of Rotation feel which is cool.

Super Metroid Alliance by Mentlegen, Tundain, Dewhi100 [

Quick Play], rated by neen on Oct 02, 2022 (

)

72% in 1:53

i got stuck in the beginning with some gates that close quickly preventing you from going in some doors, so i just kago'd a horizontal gate to proceed. no idea what the actual solution was. found some broken scrolling but nothing too bad. there are a lot of rooms whose only purpose seems to be to fill space. i got lost often but that's probably just me. overall, very nice hack, i had fun.

Super Metroid CRE by Tundain [

Quick Play], rated by neen on Sep 02, 2022 (

)

68% in 0:58

very cool, fun and short hack. had a good time with this unwinding after work. definitely play this.

Oxide by Cyclamen32 [

Exploration], rated by neen on Jul 03, 2022 (

)

162% in 2:24

it's certainly larger than you think it would be based on other reviews. (other people called it short, or small; i think it's decently sized but it feels small because of how fast you can get around). a lot of rooms look the same. but overall it has cool ideas and still has that metroid feel: i got lost a few times. this was a nice easy playthrough for a sunday afternoon and i enjoyed it, even if it was a bit too easy. could probably remove most of the energy/missile refills. tourian and the escape were the most interesting parts for me.

i downloaded this in 2019 but for some reason only just got around to playing it now (probably because i just forgot i had it).

SM:Decision by JoshShoeWah [

Exploration], rated by neen on Oct 01, 2023 (

)

84% in 1:59

a bit too easy for me, but it's an ok hack. could definitely do with some more polish. there are some morphless stucks early on that really should have been caught, and broken demo allows starting in a tourian escape room with some equipment

Platinum Hexidecimal by seastorm [

Unknown], rated by neen on Sep 23, 2023 (

)

No completion stats.

I approach every rom hack I review as if it were a rom hack and judge them accordingly, ignoring any similarities to super Metroid (for obvious reasons). The idea is to analyze the hack from the perspective of someone who downloaded a rom hack from metroidconstruction.com. With this disclaimer out of the way, here's the review:

it's fine

Super Metroid: Hermit Kingdom by Kojakt [

Exploration], rated by neen on Sep 18, 2023 (

)

77% in 2:16

some neat puzzles, but nothing too difficult. not terrible but not without some issues, like: there's a room in maridia that traps you in solid tiles if you go thru the door; and there is some map weirdness (maybe just on theme/flavor?).

i'd be interested in another kojakt hack if one exists, this seems mostly like an exercise in learning an editor.

Reimagined by SavageWizzrobe [

Exploration], rated by neen on Sep 01, 2023 (

)

47% in 5:42

i enjoy an off center door as much as the next person but if you do it all over the place it doesn't feel as special

Super Metroid: Pantheon by squishy_ichigo [

Exploration], rated by neen on Apr 19, 2023 (

)

61% in 5:51

for some reason, all of the boss rooms are not placed correctly on the map. no save stations. this would be a good candidate for a remaster or improved version. modern tools would allow for making sufficient room states to eliminate the problem of saving during the escape.

overall, not bad. some frustration with room and level design. after obtaining supers, the path to use them to progress was relatively clear. i found spore spawn to be the most difficult part of the hack. used savestates.

Legacy by Banana Oyaji [

Exploration], rated by neen on Dec 03, 2022 (

)

76% in 4:38

pretty good for an ancient hack. not without its share of bad design though. pretty sure i sequence broke early on for power bombs. there is one puzzle that seems like a required mockball but isn't. grapple was one of the last items i found. there's one false door puzzle that kept me from finding progression for a long time.

its progression can be confounding: i am pretty sure that the intended boss order was not kpdr, but i ended up killing them in that normal vanilla order out of pure chance from stumbling around.

Screwed Chopped and Restitched by Noxus, InsomniaDX [

Exploration], rated by neen on Nov 30, 2022 (

)

31% in 3:56

used save states because i'm a coward. this is weird, cryptic, and has rooms connected which should not logically be contiguous in two dimensions; has some cool ideas. the lack of map is annoying, but it forced me to somewhat learn the layout without relying on one.

i believe i got sofloct @ croc because their projectiles stopped dropping missiles once i was in health bomb range.

Eternal BS by dagit [

Speedrun/Race], rated by neen on Oct 26, 2022 (

)

33% in 1:10

(played normal mode)

this is a good bit of fun and mostly a good time, though you can die easily due to lack of i-frames (on spikes, for example). i was not able to do either a shinespark or standard ice zebetite skip and so had to refill.

Reverse by Sin [

Unknown], rated by neen on Oct 22, 2022 (

)

59% in 3:14

beginning: halfhack
middle: fever dream
end: halfhack

strangely recommend

Super Metroid CRE 2 by Tundain [

Quick Play], rated by neen on Sep 02, 2022 (

)

89% in 0:27

super metroid freadom-3 by nobucky.25 [

Exploration], rated by neen on Jul 15, 2024 (

)

27% in 0:54

it's fine. extra platforms thrown everywhere that can get in the way. got a bluesuit from draygon and used it to reverse-halfie out of there only to hit a platform ;_; zeb skip seems harder to do, or maybe i'm just playing badly today. overall i was bored by this i guess

Super Metroid: Dependence by Black Telomeres [

Exploration], rated by neen on Jun 20, 2024 (

)

76% in 6:28

things i depended on whilst playing this:

-viewing the hack in smile and going "whaaaat?? whyyyyyyyyy???"
-setting off powerbombs purely to identify bomb and shot blocks
-x-ray scope

i am really puzzled by the author's comments about springball, because i never found it, and never found any place that seemed to require it, and i didn't even have to r-jump. so much of this hack is mazes and grids, and they are not great.

rounded down from 2.66 orbs to 2

AngryFireChozo by DSO [

Quick Play], rated by neen on Feb 11, 2024 (

)

39% in 2:13

punishing hack towards the end, but has some really cool looking rooms. blast ball can go to heque, i turned it off and diagonal bomb jumped when possible. this has possibly the weirdest draygon yet seen in a hack. (this is good.) i missed out on wave, ice, botwoon, kraid, probably a bunch more.

Super Madtroid by dewhi100 [

Quick Play], rated by neen on Oct 29, 2023 (

)

3% in 0:26

exactly what it says on the tin. good for a madlaugh, and it'll be over quickly. if you like repeatedly yelling "c'mon!!" at your screen, this might be the hack for you

it's not even a quarter hack, more like a 7% hack.

Super Metroid: Cristener Homenag 4 by Juan Dennys [

Unknown], rated by neen on Nov 24, 2022 (

)

No completion stats.

had a bout one grillion percent. actually had fun with this until the escape sequence, which is where i gave up. big hopes for no. 5...

Super Metroid: Cristener Homenag 2 by Juan Dennys [

Vanilla+], rated by neen on Nov 20, 2022 (

)

69% in 1:51

worse than the first. a huge chunk of the rooms are exactly the same. i got so bored that i reverted to an old save to do gt code just to tap out of the true experience. big hopes for number 3

Super Metroid: Cristener Homenag by Juan Dennys [

Vanilla+], rated by neen on Nov 19, 2022 (

)

77% in 5:00

rounded down from 2.5 orbs (40% perceived perfection)

this is: a somewhat challenging, absurd, strange, and frustrating half-hack, but i still had some sort of fun.

420 spike landing site cre edit insta death barf kraid grapple clip hack by H A M [

Spoof], rated by neen on Oct 02, 2022 (

)

5% in 0:02

this hack is exactly what it says on the tin, and can provide several minutes of entertainment. a completely vanilla ceres station existing in this is pointless.

Super Metroid: ZigZag by jailsonmendes [

Challenge], rated by neen on Mar 03, 2024 (

)

10% in 0:16

much less punishing than some other pedro hacks. has a little gimmick that works but is just annoying. the one-tile walljumping is possible, but tough because of how fast you have to mash to break the surface of the water. holding right should be easier when you do this too, so you end up on the ledge to the right after coming out of the water. can't really justify a second orb on this one, but it's not extremely bad like some other pedro hacks. rounded down from 1.5 orbs to 1.

Super Metroid: Cristener Homenag 3 by Juan Dennys [

Incomplete], rated by neen on Nov 20, 2022 (

)

No completion stats.

tried exploring oob but gave up. i wonder if you could get into the vanilla game somehow. that's about the only fun to be had here. i hope 4 is better

Username:
Password: