Tag: game boy advance

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 17 | …and the Omega

Friends, meet Samus Aran. She got the band back together. With Ridley-X defeated, Samus is basically back at full fighting strength — the one absence from her arsenal of goodies being the Ice Beam, which remains somehow impossible for her to use because… metroids? Science? It’s never really explained, since she can use ice-powered missiles that send […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 16 | Old friends

Metroids are the first of many returning friends in this segment of the adventure. Well, the game’s name is Metroid, after all. It just wouldn’t do if the actual last metroid had been in captivity last time around. Two things really stand out here: One, whoops, the Federation is just as rotten as the Space Pirates! Two, wow, […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 15 | Round two

Even after linking up again with Adam, and despite the continued linearity of this section of the game, Fusion continues to allow you to feel like you’re basically free-wheeling. It manages to hit the same sweet spot that certain parts of Super Metroid did, giving you a nudge toward your objectives but leaving you to sort […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 14 | Ahh, memories

With the Gravity Suit in hand (not literally), unsurprisingly the next phase of the game takes you back to all the underwater areas you couldn’t proper explore last time. This comes much later in the game than Maridia did in Super Metroid, where you acquired the Gravity Suit at the midpoint. Here, you have only a […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 13 | Bad dreams

A few housekeeping notes following up on the previous entry. First, I forgot (or maybe never realized) that you can temporarily freeze the SA-X to give yourself a moment’s respite during the big chase scene. This doesn’t do that much to help, but some help is better than none whatsoever in such a deadly sequence. […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 12 | Twisted mettle

When last we left Samus, she was dying horribly at her own hands. This latest encounter with SA-X is a particularly difficult one for a few reasons. For starters, it happens in the midst of the sector’s power outage; while you need to restore basic power to reach this point, that’s amounts to a save point and door […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 11 | Fresh hell

At long last, Adam has restored the lifts back to the initial zone of the station. Now that Samus is pretty heavily kitted out with skills and equipment, this means you’ll finally be able to poke around in all those areas of the administration zone that previously were unavailable to base-level Samus, right? A promising […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 10 | Porno for PYR

I always like to see developers making conscious, and conscientious, use of their selected platform. For example, here we have the real path to Sector 5’s objective tucked behind a hidden block that offers a small, discreet visual cue at the very right edge of the screen. This is something that wouldn’t really have worked in console Metroid games […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 8 | Heat of the moment

The journey to Sector 3 plays out differently from previous segments of the game so far. Each sector excursion until this point has sent Samus into an area to achieve a goal, then perform an unstated secondary task to unlock a new power. You don’t end up with a new ability after the surprise encounter […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 7 | Save Serris

After Sector 2’s design, which left players much to their own devices to discover most of the area map, Sector 4 reels them back in a little bit. You’re given more explicit instructions and a detailed breakdown of the obstacles ahead of you; the challenge here is to circumnavigate those obstacles in order to reach your blocked-off […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 5 | Fresh air

Fun fact: According to my in-game clock, the content covered in the previous four entries of this series on Metroid Fusion comprise the first eight minutes of the game. That’s ever the way of well-made games, though; they tend to be dense with mechanical information and ideas in the opening moments as the designers lay […]

The Anatomy of Metroid Fusion | 3 | Missile command

Beyond the save point, Samus reaches the lab proper. Technically, I suppose the whole space station is a lab, but it’s divided into quarantined simulation zones and work zones for the scientific support. This area is the latter. And here you find another Super Metroid parallel: Samus arrives too late to this lab to prevent its […]