Bloodsonic's Ratings and Reviews
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Metroid + Saving by snarfblam [M1 Improvement], rated by Bloodsonic on Mar 29, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
This hack puts in the basics that Metroid 1 was sorely lacking.
Hallow Eve by Grime [SM Quick Play], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 04, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
Badass. It's small, but very carefully constructed. Check points would be nice because not running low on health is very hard, but that's what savestates are for, huh? It's pretty difficult, so be aware.
Super Metroid: Battle by Banana Oyaji [SM Boss Rush], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 03, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
This hack is pretty cool... It's like a boss rush, but there's a central hub you need to branch out and explore with your new powers. Each area and boss provides new powers to further explore the hub until you beat the game. It's boss-focused but still has super metroid in-between to give you the proper power-ups. An excellent quick-play.
Searching for Items by Terimakasih [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
67% in 1:06
Short, easy, simple, fun. Play it.
Super Metroid: HISHE by Scyzer [SM Unknown], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 0:01
Can you say "instant gratification"?
Eris by Digital_Mantra [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
Eris is the culmination of DMantra's hacking works, featuring awe-inspiring levels that treat super metroid's tilesets like paint for a canvas. It's beautiful.

... But, of course, ball-grinding difficulty (thanks to overpowered enemies) that makes the hack not nearly as accessible as it could/should be.

Eris offers worlds that no other hack could. If you're cool with rewinding/savestating, then this hack isn't worth missing. Play it.
Arena 7 by Jathys [SM Boss Rush], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
This is an excellent quick-play. A few interesting puzzles, and a new last boss.
It ends abruptly but it has a lot of new new quirks that in themselves make it a cool hack just to check out. Give it a try, it's cool stuff.
Super Metroid: Redesign by Drewseph [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
57% in 5:49
Throw out what you knew about Super Metroid, because this is a completely different monster.
Redesign is a rigidly linear adventure that will reward you with endless challenging gameplay as you reach deeper and deeper into the massive planet.

Samus is no longer an unstoppable badass. This is not the story of samus versus the space pirates, this is samus versus the world. At every turn, the game will make you feel like you're one powerup short of the necessary arsenal. The gravity, the powerful enemies, and the exacted sequence will test you at every turn.

It's painful, but it's beautiful. Redesign has a few ugly flaws (ie. Norfair), but it offers hour after hour of gameplay that will satisfy the itching for some SERIOUS Super Metroid hours.
Legacy by Banana Oyaji [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Mar 30, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 2:24
Legacy is more or less the granddaddy of all super metroid hacks. As far as I'm aware, it's the first full hack to ever come out. Detail-wise, Legacy's constantly minimal design hasn't aged well, but that does NOT take away from the excellent simple and vanilla gameplay. I recommend this hack to everyone, but most especially to new hack players. Its excellent difficulty setting makes it a good foot-in-the-door for newer players.
Super Metroid: Darkholme Hospital by Cloud12 [SM Quick Play], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
For the purposes of making an eerie hospital that gets creepier and creepier, not to mention out of good old super metroid tiles, this hack is a success.
Its flaws lie in the complete lack of enemy variety (it's almost literally one enemy through most of the game) and the unending ceres music that rapes your ears after the first two minutes. Good but could easily be a lot better.
Exia by Acheron [SM Challenge], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
A savestate-heavy grappling beam challenge with a pretty new graphics set. Not much more to say.
Ice Metal Uninstall by Crys [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Mar 29, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
55% in 2:52
This hack is somewhat of a mixed bag.
The difficulty was just about right. The openended-ness is good, but it's a little annoying that the terrain almost never sets you on one specific path. It's not always bad, but the map is incredibly vague, so it's very easy to find yourself in a spot where you're running around in a large area that you've already covered and can't find anything new.
Non-linearity is good but I often found myself ill-equipped beam-wise, which was very frustrating.

Levels-wise, it's a little bit disappointing. A lot of rooms are very clunky and claustrophobic. lots of crumble blocks and thin walls and just randomly placed obstacles that made the game feel a lot more like a toybox rather than a mysterious foreign planet.

It's a good hack but it's difficult to ignore the bad.
Super Metroid: Z-Factor by Metaquarius [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
This hack frustrates me. Frequent design flaws in the levels that punish the player just for walking forward (anti-sonic rooms, crumble blocks that require savestates to get around if you don't want to suddenly lose 5+ rooms worth of progress, etc.) and the levels are uninteresting once you get over the shiny new enemies that woo you up to morphball and then proceed to disappear.

The hype goes over my head. It's a brand new world, but it sucks and can't really be played without a map. Pass.
Super Zero Mission by SBniconico [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Mar 30, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
This hack features new graphics, new code, and all new levels. It's large and highly ambitious. It all sounds good on paper, but in play, everything is executed poorly. Countless times certain actions will lock you out of other areas without you knowing or make certain items you missed nearly impossible to go back and obtain, and the difficulty ramps up exponentially to almost TAS level when reaching chozodia. The game essentially punishes you for playing it.

SZM Could be a triple-A hack, but it's botched by poor design choice after poor design choice.
Phazon Hack by A_red_monk_called_Key [SM Exploration], rated by Bloodsonic on Apr 02, 2015 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
Super Metroid Phazon Hack is like if Ice Metal tried to be serious, and tried to be Redesign.
An endless supply of new graphics and new levels sounds awesome in its own right, but phazon hack spreads itself too thin in terms of content and is really just an over-sized hack with muddled quality in every area.

The graphics are either ripped or obviously imported from photoshop with no evidence of an artful hand in any of the areas, with frequently dull palettes that do no justice.

New features, like the navigation room, seem innovative, but really just end up being make-up measures for the oversized, directionless world that you simply can't navigate yourself.

Samus's movement and physics are no different, which is fine, but feels clunky and irritating when considering the hacks open source contemporaries, like Project Base. It feels like there's no reason to not at least have spinjump restart.

All of the weapons are so obnoxiously weak, it makes ice and wave beam on redesign look like plasma beam in the original.
The enemies are frequently indestructible and do trillions of damage per hit, making later game navigation frustrating bullshit.

Finally, permastucks. Stupid ones, too, like red gates leading to one-way areas, or cages made out of respawning speedbooster blocks. It's like they were intentional.

When I think about it, the only good quality about this hack is that it's done. Lots of other hacks have managed this, and they didn't receive their good rating simply for that.
Others enjoy it, but I hate this hack. Don't play it. There are much better ways of spending your time right here on the hacks page.