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Re: A Selection of Freeware Metroid-Alikes by Bananadine 09/12/2011, 5:23am PDT
Mischief Maker wrote:

Within a Deep Forest

You play an anthromorphic bouncing ball exploring a colorful fantasy realm on a quest to stop the mad scientist who created you. You collect new ball materials whose properties open new doors to you. I like this game, but I never finished it because the bouncing-ball mechanics coupled with the precision platforming drove me into hair-pulling fits. Give it a try if you're the patient type.


I saw this recommended somewhere and played through it. It was okay. I didn't find it to be all that hard. I got mad at it a few times, but I didn't feel the need to give up.

It has a nice atmosphere, but nothing hugely exciting, and almost none of the backgroundy stuff actually does anything. In real Metroid, you run across a mysterious critter and maybe by watching it for a little while you realize it's showing you how to do a special move! In this game the alien is just a cute alien. And the story is clearly intended to be disposable (the evil mad scientist is named Dr. Cliche), so all that's left is the jumping on platforms, which is less generic than the rest. But not by a lot. I had some fun with it because it was well-made and because the central ball-bouncing mechanic was novel to me--you have to carefully manage not only your motion during your current jump, as in almost any jumpy game, but also the maximal height from your previous jump, because that helps determine how high your current jump goes--and that happened in the past so you can't control it anymore and now you're gonna fall in the lava sucker! Until you get used to planning ahead. That was kinda cool. And there are different bodies you can take on in order to attempt the puzzles in different ways, which is neat, and some cool ideas based around your ability to freely kill yourself, change to a new body, and reappear at the last checkpoint with different powers.

But too many of the challenges were just about jumping from one platform to another in a way that anybody who's played a lot of platformy games will already know they can do, and in that situation I'm always like, "I've done this a lot of times, and yeah it's tricky this time but come on computer, you should know that I will eventually succeed at this and I know you are smart enough to do it without my help so why are we even going through this?" and if you also tend to have thoughts like that then you might as well not bother with this game.

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A Selection of Freeware Metroid-Alikes by Mischief Maker 07/15/2007, 7:11pm PDT NEW
    The Super Metroid rom NT by Grumah 07/16/2007, 8:09pm PDT NEW
        Cave Story. NT by Jhoh Clbbl O_____O 07/16/2007, 9:20pm PDT NEW
            Also Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission for the GBA. NT by Jhoh Clbbl O_____O 07/16/2007, 9:20pm PDT NEW
            I assumed everyone already knew about that one. NT by Mischief Maker 07/16/2007, 9:28pm PDT NEW
                Underside too then? by Worm 07/16/2007, 9:44pm PDT NEW
    Re: A Selection of Freeware Metroid-Alikes by Bananadine 09/12/2011, 5:23am PDT NEW
 
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