General gaming discussion

Days Gone 2. John 'Deacon Jr' St. John II makes his way from the wilderness of Oregon to Portland where he encounters something far worse than zombies.

Hipsters on Segways.

It's only January and you have a contender for GotY already. 2009's game of the year has just been updated.

Dong dong never die is back baby!

Not played Castlevania or Metroid but makes time for days gone...

Honestly think Super Metroid is one of the best designed games of all time. There's a a lot in there that developers should learn about organic ways to teach the player how to play the game. There's really nothing in there that needs a walkthrough, although saying that the noob tube did catch me out the first time I played it. I can't really think of a metroidvania that comes close to it other than Castlevania Symphony of the Night or maybe Axiom Verge although I've yet to complete that one.

Yep I played super Metroid well after it came out. Probably early 2000s through emulation as I never had a SNES when I was younger. It blew me away how good it was.

I still think there's stuff that SM does better than any other Metroid. It teaches you relatively quickly to bomb any interesting features to uncover hidden paths. There's also the fact that it hides from the player that you actually have a very extensive Moveset from the start so when you replay you can really break the game with some of those abilities and the game actively encourages that. It's flow and how it organically teaches the player to explore and try stuff out is what sets it a part from other metroidvania's which kind of just gate stuff behind abilities.

The only games I think come close to that flow are La Mulana (which is a whole different type of metroidvania) and axiom verge with its glitch gun.

I really couldn't call it a proto metroidvania, there's lots of NES exploratory platformers and games like Wonderboy 3 that fit that. Super Metroid is kind of the first modern metroidvania but it also managed to perfect the genre on its first go.

Regency bias is definitely a thing, plenty of games suffer from it. Lots of games being held up as classics now that we're very much always regarded as mid or on re-evaluation aren't all that good. I do feel with some old games though people sometimes need to approach them on their own terms rather than what is expected from modern games. Like someone proclaiming that Megaman 2 is garbage because they started the game up and got absolutely bodied by the game on their first go.

I'm still baffled by the super Metroid slander, so much so that I think I'm going to give the Days Gone bashing a break because this is so much worse.

Being hardcore enough to enjoy contra is like being racist enough to enjoy birth of a nation.

Yep I liked Golden Sun at the time but looking back at it it was the first new rpg for the GBA when the system was in need of RPGs and it looked gorgeous. Now I recognise it as a stealth sequel to PS1 garbage rpg Beyond the Beyond and while it's not as bad it's still very bland and crummy.

Motoi Sakuraba didn't hold back composing that soundtrack though.

Yeah it's brilliant. Their GBC game was excellent as well. They also did some great tennis games and it was them that worked on the first few everybody's golf games for Sony.