Spooky Mission 2: The Nightmare Before Christmas

Spooky Mission 2: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Release date: Oct 31, 2021	Author: Spooky Team	Download: Spooky Mission 2 v1.0 (580 downloads)
Genre: Exploration [?] Game:	Difficulty: Veteran [?]	Average runtime: 5:11 Average collection: 90%
Read Me: [None]	Forum Thread: [None]	Rating:

Description

Samus, ever the fool, decided to jump down Ing Ing's pitfall trap during the escape, and was crushed by the falling pumpkin at the end of her quest to stop Imago from bringing eternal Christmas.

But what's this? Imago has returned??? And he's threatening to bring eternal Christmas again? Samus turns in her grave, and her soul is snapped back to reality so that she can prevent this disaster! Join her on a new mission throughout Spooky Isle and find a way to stop Imago's devious plan.

Developers:
- CaptGlitch
- Caauyjdp
- Conner
- Ing Ing
- Jiffy
- JRP
- M3D
- NathanTech
- OneOf99
- Whalerynth

Testers:
- Bob4224
- Boomerang
- Caauyjdp
- Shaktool7

Screenshots

Ratings and Reviews

By FrenchLightningJohn on Oct 31, 2021 (

)

67% in 3:12

really great hack, had lot of fun playing it and exploring it, definitively recomand this hack, lot of spoopy creatures and enemies and boss, great music and level design can't say more 4.5 orb for sure.

2% away from nice% :(

time is not single segment IGT

By Digital_Mantra on Nov 02, 2021 (

)

100% in 5:28

I'll preface by saying I don't play gbatroid, but I was bored and decided to try this since I had played the first installment. I went into it spooky mission 2 thinking it would be a small halloween themed hack. This hack is massive. The regions felt fleshed out and fun to explore, backtracking was satisfying with the warp zone, there was lots of cool ideas scattered around, and the music fit the themes. I could tell a few hours into it that this was a labor of love by the people that made it. I'd go as far as to say it's a masterpiece in scope of how ambitious a halloween hack became, and I'd also say it's a solid contender for best Metroid game of 2021. Better than Dread.

By Cosmic on Nov 03, 2021 (

)

92% in 5:43

Finished. Recommended. But pretty meh as of v1.0.

Overall for me a really mixed bag. I WANT TO LIKE IT. I DO THINK it could become the best ZM hack. But it needs more polish, polish that it should have received before its release. Many members of Spooky Team literally didn't have the chance to playtest the hack before release because of this! Fortunately, Spooky Team has promised to fix issues and add more opportunities for sequence breaking, so this could one day be the King.

!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Don't get me wrong, this may be the most ambitious ZM hack yet:

+ It's chalk full of custom music!
+ New bosses and enemies!
+ The puzzles can be pretty genious at times, testing the player's knowledge of Zero Mission mechanics! Namely, with Speed Booster.
+ Like DMan I do unironically think the exploration in this hack is better than Dread's...
+ Tiles are not only BEAUTIFUL, like the animated boneyard tileset, but were also deliberately placed; there are minimal graphical tiling errors to speak of.
+ This hack taught me about some really cool engine tricks, like BG0 shenanigans with Chozodian save stations, and stop enemy block weirdness. Very cool!

But there's a lot of issues I consider to be FUNDAMENTAL that are holding this back from being the best Zero Mission hack. Namely:

- Setpieces are NOT memorable. For example there is a boss gate system. Kind of expected, considering it's a hack of Metroid, and most Metroid games do. But DESPITE being forced to go through the boss gate room, DESPITE being in a small area, DESPITE having weird music, the design of the room did not stand out enough for me to give a damn about the room. I never even noticed that there was a flame in the wall. If it wasn't for CaptGlitch and Quote being in voice chat with me I would have never returned to Express. Another example is the huge room in the left side of boneyard. Yeah, there's those teeth, and yeah, the filler behind the speed blocks is dark, but nobody's going to have enough time to register what's going on there when 80% of that screen's floor is covered in pit blocks.

- FUNDAMENTAL tiling errors are EVERYWHERE. Enemies are constantly clipping in and out of slopes because they are used in corners and ceilings, or out of bounds because no collision was added behind doors in some areas. It's particularly frustrating in Glacier when you're trying to charge up a spark because an enemy will just instantly appear and smack you, making you lose your momentum in the process. SLOPES ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE REGULAR BLOCKS AT BOTH ENDS!

- Segments of the game are either super linear, or chaotically non-linear, there is no in-between. This is especially the case in your first visit to Boneyard, expect to be there for a WHILE but once you're over that hill the game opens up.

- The music is inconsistent. Many (read: most) areas will use item room, save room and map room themes, and others will forgo this in favor of the area music. Personally I like the latter approach more, because in some places (such as the beginning of pumpkin) It's pretty stupid when the intended path's rooms have different songs 5 or 6 times in a row. Some areas are missing music entirely while most of the time the music will just decide to mute for 10 or 15 seconds. This is usually after using power bombs, but sometimes there are other triggers for this as well.

- Frankly I think some secrets are too well hidden, or things that shouldn't be hidden at all ARE for some reason. Your typical bullshart like "Redesign walls" that appear solid, but you can walk through them, or destructibles that are LITERALLY OBSCURED BY THE HUD like the screw attack blocks to get out of the loop near southeast Pumpkin's warp zone. As for things that get hidden but shouldn't be, how about the T shape room in southern Spooky that's all pit blocks? Most other pit sections have other ways around, but not only does this one NOT, you literally can't even check because it's one block off screen with a fixed camera. There is a missile tank puzzle in Glacier that forces you to use a ball launcher in the void zone, when it could just as easily be possible without the ball launcher if speed boost blocks were added in the ceiling of a room below the tank. It's pretty bullshit I have to re-do the speedboost puzzle again to go back to Crypt from top-right Pumpkin if I got that energy tank.

- Plasma beam is ridiculously OP and left untouched in this hack, yet authors felt the need to nerf screw attack and speed booster by making lots of enemies ignore those attacks?! Why?! It really just feels like a middle finger when you go to spark out of a room but you run into an enemy immune to speed booster so you get hit and fall back down. Or trying to charge up speed boost only for a Skree's shrapnel to hurt and reset me.

- Most of the bosses overall are still just as weaksauce as vanilla: The ones that aren't are super tedious, like Charlie reborn & Serris. These are also coincidentally the bosses that force you to play by their rules, deciding to negate all damage until they feel like it. Not fun to play against, especially when they take an excess of 20 hits to take down. On the other hand, Arachnus and Imago were literally oneshot! The boss I enjoyed most was Kraid.

- Map inconsistencies. Crypt's flame location room has incorrect map X/Y coordinates in the header. There is a one way missile door, but it's locked. The solution is to crack it open from the other side. If super missile doors weren't cum-colored, maybe people would realize sooner that it's a locked door and the correct path is nearby?

I'll grab 100% but after that I probably won't be picking this back up until it gets updated.

By raygun on Nov 03, 2021 (

)

77% in 4:50

4.9 stars. I had high expectations from this team and the hack still turned out better than I expected. Customized Bosses and music, funny dialogs, a diverse and creatively designed map, and scary creatures work together in a barrage of halloween hijinks. Sure, there are a few minor changes that could be made, but I went nearly the whole game without noticing any that stood out. And I am 100% certain that these might get fixed eventually.

By makazuwr32 on Nov 05, 2021 (

)

96% in 5:15

That is what i call Quality Content.

Graphics - 10 Ing Graves of 10
Atmosphere - 10 Pumpkin seeds of 10
Gameplay - 10 Sunken ships of 10
Bosses - 10 Spiders of 10
Music - 10 Spooks of 10
Final Escape Sequence and Final Boss - 10 Bugs of 10

Was able to get all items except 1 missing missile tank, 1 missing super missile tank and 2 missing e tanks - in total 96% items.

3 extra things:

1. Awesome resprite of Boss before Imago and of and dethgeega.
2. i love that you included old spooky missionas separate area.
3. Awesome landing.

By SpookerK on Nov 05, 2021 (

)

94% in 4:43

I created an account just so I could rate this, that was the most fun I've had with a hack.
Speed booster puzzles are my thing and this had so many great ones that I would give it 5/5 for that alone, but the great overall level design, music(love that subtle tune in the Glacier music), and awesome graphical changes help too.
The extra touch of references to the previous hack is good stuff.

By Abslb on Nov 06, 2021 (

)

100% in 7:04

This is a DEADLY good Hack!
Decent zm-mechanics puzzles, inspiring boss transportations, and impressive atomsphere and graphics.
I didn't open the sound but I do not need it to give a 10/10.

By Cirno on Nov 09, 2021 (

)

No completion stats.

By Kremit44 on Dec 06, 2021 (

)

92% in 5:15

Easily the best and most complete Zero Mission hack. Phenomenal. Doesn't take itself seriously but it manages to be funny instead which is all good with me. This is the first Zero Mission hack I've played that gives the best Super Metroid hacks a run for their money. Thanks to the creators for a great hack.

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