Oi27's Hack Reviews - Metroid Construction

Super Metroid CRE 2 by Tundain [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Nov 06, 2022 (

)

78% in 0:31

Very good quickplay! Unique item loadout by endgame and very cool use of animated tiles.

Mintroid by Golden Warrior [ MZM

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Aug 28, 2020 (

)

96% in 0:21

Great hack! It was very clear where to go and what to do. Theming was fun and it wasn't too difficult either. 10/10

Sequence Breaking Fusion by Kazuto [

Vanilla+], rated by Oi27 on May 07, 2020 (

)

49% in 2:00

Very promising; still needs more changes to be completely nonlinear. It was a ton of fun; early pb's and plasma are easy, early space jump, but that's about all I found. Since you're able to finish all the sectors without returning to the main deck, you can skip saving the animals and that was interesting. Ending doesn't change though. ;P

MDbtroid by Infinitys_End [

Improvement], rated by Oi27 on Aug 16, 2019 (

)

No completion stats.

NEStroid with a new paint job. As far as I noticed, all of the interact-able sprites are redone, and all the edits are massive improvements. This is what NEStroid should have been.

Super Metroid: Ascent by Benox50 [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on Jul 02, 2019 (

)

77% in 5:11

Great hack, great puzzles. Favorite one was limited PB radius, it was pretty clever.

B2-TW by Grime [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Sep 12, 2018 (

)

10% in 0:09

Fun, short hack. Could stand to be longer, morphball-unique stuff is a cool concept.

Ancient Chozo by Albert V. [

Vanilla+], rated by Oi27 on Aug 22, 2018 (

)

84% in 3:28

Best hack I've ever played. A bit more difficult than the vanilla game, and sequence breaking is harder, but this hack looks gorgeous. Project Base integration makes gameplay smooth, and a lot of thought is put into the level design. Would be nice if there were fewer spikes that limit walljumping, which are usually the things that limit sequence-breaking, but Escape Sequence is the only real low point; it seems to have unavoidable acid dives that would make it impossible on low%. The rest of the game is fun for casual playthroughs, and I still can't get over how great the tilesets are!
8/10

Super Metroid CRE by Tundain [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Mar 19, 2022 (

)

64% in 0:33

Fun little quickplay; the CRE enemies were foreboding and eerie. It's odd how some of them came out looking legitimately really good? Standouts include the platform guys, the Rios, and the flat things that jump up/sway back down. Enemy placement was a little iffy in the room outside speed; having to deal with flying enemies and grapple at once was difficult. A few other rooms seemed like they had too many; I found myself ignoring the enemies and just tanking the damage.
Unconventional CRE is a solid 8/10; recommended.

Super Metroid Weekend IV by dewhi100 [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Jan 26, 2022 (

)

15% in 0:30

Pretty cool little hack; escape sequence was questionable and the supers counter on the HUD was invisible. 11/10 grapple mechanics, better than PB.

UpTroidDown by BuggMann [

Vanilla+], rated by Oi27 on Apr 22, 2021 (

)

61% in 1:27

Even more disorienting than Rotation!

V I T A L I T Y by Digital_Mantra [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on Oct 21, 2020 (

)

63% in 4:21

The rooms very very good looking, as stated in other reviews. Super Metroid has never looked so nice! Though, I had frequently problems looking at a glance and knowing what surfaces I could walk on, especially in rooms that have a solid layer 3 in addition to the normal level layer. Sometimes you walk on the background too, which looks pretty trippy in underwater/heated rooms since the background oscillates and the foreground (the layer you've been interacting with in say, the previous room) is solid.

On the same note, it threw me off that the lava and acid are a dark gray color; it makes it hard to see against a dark background. When I got to the first room that has lava, I just kinda walked into it and ??? woah why am i taking damage. OH THERE'S LAVA??

The best advice is to take the first playthough nice and slow; if you go running into new rooms at top speed, you will be confused and probably underwater.

Aside from those minor points, Vitality is a very solid hack that uses the game mechanics well. Nice 8/10!

Super Metroid: Y-Faster 2 Fast by Metaquarius [

Speedrun/Race], rated by Oi27 on May 05, 2020 (

)

72% in 3:50

Very good hack but the time limit almost ruined it for me. Dying instantly is a harsh punishment for taking time to explore the map (a worse ending would be better imo), but it's fine if you run out of time - it's based on the game's IGT so if you want to keep playing, you just need to reset the time to 0 in RAM.

Aside from the time limit, each area was well-made. My favorite was the Homenag red Crateria; it seems like a lot of effort went into making it look buggy and broken even though it's not. The elevator is a good touch. The palette changes for Homenag and the physics changes for Redesign sold it for me; it was crazy.

Another thing I think could be better about the hack would be making each area self-contained. They are for the most part, but finding Varia to complete the Redesign area was weird since it was required* but it was in another area, meaning to complete it visiting each area only once, you'd have to do them in a specific order, even though you can access all of them from the beginning.

On the assumption that each area could be beaten without items from other area, I had a pretty frustrating time with Redesign, but was barely able to do it without Varia after collecting every energy tank I could find.

The rest of the hack was a ton of fun. Did things differently from how you'd expect and had a lot of interesting surprises. 8/10!

Metroid: Oil Spill by Spedimus [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on Aug 14, 2019 (

)

11% in 0:50

Nice hack! The nonlinearity was well thought-out; I did a bunch of weird stuff and took some wrong turns; no softlocks, and I was able to finish it without collecting gravity or varia, or most of the items. The oil/acid dealt a lot of damage any time I ran into it, but that wasn't too much thankfully.
Other than that, the level design made for some really cool exploration.

Oxide by Cyclamen32 [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on May 10, 2019 (

)

170% in 2:31

Cool hack, but not perfect. Finding Kraid was difficult, and there's only 1 location to pick up your first power bombs. Aside from that, lots of drops, fairly easy, interesting level design. Too many "kill all the enemies" rooms, and one during the escape sequence(!), which the hack would be better off without.
Overall: 7/10

Super Metroid Nature by Jefe962 [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on Dec 27, 2018 (

)

79% in 0:00

This hack was amazing. The item placement stuck fairly close to the original, and advanced techniques allowed a lot of things to be gotten early, or in a different order. There are a few minor gripes here and there, for instance I think the escape sequence was a little too strict, and there didn't seem to be any animals to save. There were some significant acid dives in lower Norfair as well.
The rest of the level design was a joy to play through, and everything else was about vanilla difficulty.
Quality hack; 4.5/5

EDIT: The animals are in Bomb Torizo's room, like usual, but the timer makes saving them a lot harder.

Super Metroid Arcade : Endless mode by Lioran, Tewtal [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Sep 12, 2018 (

)

No completion stats.

Cool hack, played for a few hours and I keep coming back to it. Lots of replay value.

Super Metroid Ruin by personitis [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Aug 18, 2018 (

)

100% in 0:57

Very nice hack. Early-on challenges are jarring, being late-game bosses (Fight Golden Torizo with no missiles and the Power Suit!?!) but once you actually fight them, you find that the difficulty has been adjusted accordingly. Not terribly hard to 100% either; though one item is really obscure.
8/10!

Wet Dream by Crys [

Unknown], rated by Oi27 on Jul 29, 2018 (

)

73% in 3:35

Great hack! Not horribly difficult, but harder than the vanilla game. Advanced skills like wall jumping are required. It changes up the items a lot, but leaves the level design more-or-less intact.
The real draw of Wet Dream is how it changes the physics. Samus jumps really high and fast underwater, but sinks very slowly. It's a bit like doing a gravity jump in the vanilla game, except higher maybe. Usually her momentum stops if you exit the water while crazy jump acceleration, but I had a few instances where she kept the speed. All the underwater changes work in a really strange way, but it's a welcome change from the usual. The changes in level design play around the physics in interesting ways; it's very well-designed, save for a few rooms that have "don't touch the ground" gimmicks.
The other major change is that the timer on morph ball bombs is shortened a lot. They explode almost immediately, so you can just mash the button for infinite BJ, and it lets you hover above the ground when used underwater. It's weird, but it's a fun mechanic that the level design takes advantage of.
Wet Dream is definitely worth a play; it's one of the more unique hacks I've encountered. I loved it!

Super Metroid CRE 3 by Tundain [

Spoof], rated by Oi27 on May 25, 2023 (

)

42% in 1:15

Lots of custom stuff but it's a mixed bag - also no vanilla upgrades to be found. Beam is a peashooter the whole game and missiles have a drastically increased cooldown. Supers have been overhauled into a totally new upgrade and it's neat, but ultimately not very useful in combat. It's a door key essentially. Plus, all your attacks have nerfed range where they fizzle out like the short beam in NEStroid.

Grapple has been replaced by an all-new upgrade that lets you control which direction crumble blocks break from, which is neat, but doesn't meaningfully change the way the player interacts with the level design. It amounts to extra tedium where you need to fumble around for the right key to pass through solid crumble block barriers. Its most interesting applications are when you need to quickly change between breaking vertical and horizontal crumbles.
Another note: due to its nature where you select it and then do further selection, it essentially expands the HUD by an entire 4 slots! And people already complain about the amount of clicking in the vanilla HUD. I avoided using it when possible.
A better implementation of the idea would be to have any crumble blocks break on touch without player input - currently the end result of clearing the blocks doesn't scale with the player effort of using it and choosing which blocks to break.

All the custom enemies are super cool though! No complaints on the normal in-room ones. I liked the floor-lying enemies that snap shut on you, and the stationary things that shoot you when in range.

2 custom minibosses:
First one is really awesome and I enjoyed it a lot, even if it does move a bit fast. 9/10 custom boss!
Second one has SO MUCH HEALTH! It feels like more than the final boss has. It's also pretty tough to hit since it moves around erratically offscreen... the movement is predictable *most of the time* but sometimes it can just change direction, and that can happen offscreen when you can't see it. It hits like a truck! 4/10 custom boss.

And the final boss is pretty similar; moves fast and deals heaps. The mode 7 is very cool but makes it ambiguous when the boss is vulnerable or not. Its attacks are telegraphed and avoidable, but if you're in the wrong position [from avoiding another attack] depending on the RNG you can get a pattern feels impossible to dodge. Died a bunch before learning the patterns. 6/10 custom boss!

Overall CRE 3 tries very hard to be its own thing, and succeeds at the cost of many questionable design decisions. The effort is there though, and it's good to see. The music is cool too!
Recommended but only if you liked CRE 1 and 2.

SM:Decision by JoshShoeWah [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on Jan 03, 2020 (

)

86% in 1:46

Hack is well put-together, but has tons of tiling errors and the rooms feel designed to slow the player down. I missed a few majors like bombs and varia, and wound up exploring the entire map before finally coming back to them. In varia's case, I skipped it by accident and only found it after getting Gravity and killing Ridley. The other item locations seemed fine.

Super Metroid: Depth by Tedicles [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Jun 27, 2019 (

)

9% in 0:30

The atmosphere was interesting, and the item placement allowed for some skipping (looking at you spring ball). Maybe overused Metroids, since I only found 1 energy tank, and getting attacked by one killed me pretty quickly. The compact map offered several ways of approaching rooms, which was good and bad, mostly during the escape sequence. Good first hack!

Super Metroid: Recovery by MetroidNerd#9001 [

Exploration], rated by Oi27 on Dec 31, 2018 (

)

82% in 3:40

The intro sequence of picking up the morph ball and bombs is laid out in a very unique way, which sets the tone for the rest of the hack. Unique, and good for the most part.
Norfair is an exception to the "good" part; doors that put Samus under lava, enemies that deal loads of damage, confusing design, the works. Not enough refill/farming spots. Still unique though, I thought it was interesting to merge upper and lower Norfair using rooms in addition to using an elevator, even if it meant the player could accidentally go to lower Norfair way earlier than they would want to.
The rest of the game is well put-together, and the Tourian is a great example of where the hack shines. Despite being a half-hack, the room design and layout is vastly different from the original game, adding a few interesting new rooms and setpieces that give it its own flair. The escape sequence was another interesting bit, since it was so different from the original. You get more than enough time though, so you won't die even if you make a few wrong turns, and the hack is better for it.

Super Metroid: Cristener Homenag 8 by Juan Dennys [

Quick Play], rated by Oi27 on Mar 06, 2021 (

)

0% in 0:03

the legendary Homenag series ends not with a Bang, but with a block.

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

Spoof], rated by Oi27 on May 14, 2022 (

)

5% in 0:07

Landing site edit with two vanilla rooms attached to it. Lots of graphical bugs. On a positive note: Unusual trigger for the escape sequence.

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