Hyper Metroid is a Metroid game.The only that features an less dense atmosphere than the original titles, an ammo system that can get obnoxious at times, boss fights that are worst versions of the vanilla fights and a laughable storyline.
However, despite of these minor shortcomings, Hyper Metroid is an amazingly crafted experience made by someone who truly understands what makes a good metroidvania and good game-design, it's a hypnotic joy from the beggining to the end.
The level-design is the star of the show, it's really open with tons of branching paths, and it's carefully design to never sap that feeling of progression out of the game.It's twice the size of Super Metroid's world, yet, it never feels that big since the game gives you a lot of movement options very early. It has a diverse tileset and mood for each area that keep you invested in exploring even more of the map, and once you do explore, the game rewards you, just like a Metroidvania should do. The only hiccup worth mentioning is the sequence where you have to do a suitless Maridia in order to get the gravity suit, but it's really brief.
This game, is better than Hollow Knight, and it's well-deserved of the title of *Super Duper Metroid.*
V I T A L I T Y by Digital_Mantra [ Exploration],
rated by LeOrangeTurtle on May 03, 2021 ()
And the award for silliest area names goes to... Vitality !! For, Tac Lacora, Elseq and, TCHORNOBOG ??!! What the- ?? Is that, like, Ukranian for Black God or something ??? Geez...
Vitality was my first experience with Super Metroid hack roms and it almost made me give up on the hacking community, the game is basically an ounce of neat concepts surrounded by bad game-design decisions.
Atmosphere, which is the strongest aspect of the game due to some really neat enviromental storytelling, is held back by a tileset that struggles to differentiate the foreground from the background, coupled with the fact that enemies can hide in this messy tileset and hit you out of nowhere, makes exploring Auriga frustrating.
Speaking of exploration, a lot of the rooms have a shallow layout that plays basically the same, some of them being nothing but hallways with enemies, Tchornobog (the hub) also has a lot of dead ends and it's confusing to navigate, even after getting myself familiarized with the map by my second playthrough, I was still confused and frustrated by the enemies that hit you out of nowhere, the arbitrary level-design changes and the boring room layouts.
The few rooms that were fun to navigate, were the rooms that led me to power-ups that were designed to be as unsatisfying as possible to collect, getting a missle expansion that gives you 5 missles isn't that satisfying, who thought it would be more satisfying to get a missle expansion that gives you 2 missles ??
In the end Vitality is a miserable experience and it feels like a hate tribute to Metroid and I'm very disapointed to give this game a 2/5
Exploration],
rated by LeOrangeTurtle on Apr 13, 2021 (
