Metroid: Zero Mission Review

This was the first Metroid game I ever actually finished and after recently replaying Super Metroid, I decided to return to Zero Mission 10 years later, and what did I think of it?

It's still a pretty good game but I got some issues with it that prevent it from being great, I never played the original Metroid and it really feels like I should just to have a much better appreciation for ZM but as it stands even without the context of the original Metroid, Zero Mission is easily one of the better game remakes mainly because it doesn't really do what many remakes tend to do and be the same game but with "better graphics".

Right off the bat, what is improved in this game over Super Metroid are the controls, like holy crap, these controls eat SM's controls for breakfast, it actually feels like I can precisely move around for the most part, you can ledge grab, moving between diagonally aiming feels better and this is the biggest difference, using missiles no longer requires you to take your thumb off the D pad, now you can just hold the R button, and the you can just fire missiles that way, this alone to me makes ZM better than SM. I know these controls were introduced in Fusion but it goes to show how much better Fusion's controls were than Super's and it was very smart of Nintendo to use Fusion's controls for this remake.

The music is pretty good, I have soft for the Brinstar theme and the Norfair's music sounds something straight out of the Prime games which is awesome since I love the musical motif of the latter.

Zero Mission isn't as braindead easy as Super either, I have seen some people call ZM the "easy" game but I argue Super is much easier, ZM's moment to moment combat can still feel a little too easy for my tastes but at least in Zero, some enemies are immune to the ice beam, I wish more were but by comparison where 99.9% of the enemies were weak to it, this was a welcome change. In ZM, 95% of enemies are weak to the ice beam as opposed to 99.9%.

The level design in Zero Mission is good about 90% of the time, outside of Kraid, the areas in ZM do a good job at scratching that exploration itch. Energy Tanks are pretty reasonable on where they are hidden while missile upgrades felt a little too easy to find for my tastes. But that metroidvania itch of, "oh man, this area is so hard to traverse, it feels like I can barely get anywhere" then you get more upgrades and unlock more of the map is still here, and probably more refined and better made than the original game. The only issues I have with the exploration and power ups, is that space jump and power bombs you don't get late game, I would've really loved to have power bombs early in the game since this will lead to my first negative:

You will have to morph ball bomb EVERY SINGLE TILE in every room you enter in order for you to have some clue to where to go. Don't let the much derided hint system fool you, there will still be lots of morph ball bombing in order to have some clue on where to go, this is what I mean of having power bombs earlier, this would eventually cut down on the tedium on needing to constantly bomb things. The hint system also doesn't do much to make things easier to look around due to the aforementioned issues. It straight up lies to you it says you need to go to Norfair but you actually need to go to Crateria to unlock ledge grab to progress furthur.

Kraid is also a very badly designed level, it's easy to be bottlenecked borderline have the feeling you are getting softlocked at times due to immense bottlenecking.

Then there is also the fact that there are some parts of Norfair where it's establish that lava flames hurts Samus, so I decided not to go there just to avoid getting damaged just to find out that YOU DO need to go under that fire to progress. Was this to promote strategy guide sales in 2004?

The next two issues are interconnected but the Mother Brain boss is awful and the stealth section after is awful.

Mother Brain boss is bad because it not only has the floor that hurts you, but you need to deal with multiple bullet hell projecticles while also dodging MB's energy attack while standing on the two platforms to make eye contant with her just to hit her with your missiles. It has you doing at least 3-5 things at once and it felt like the fire floor was there just to make it hard for the sake of it.

The stealth section can't decide if it wants to be a that or a scripted set piece I say this because there are moments where need to avoid sightlines, but then you will HAVE to get caught and get chased. It makes this section really frustrating which is a shame since once you get the armour back, it can feel liberating all those pirates you were hiding from, the section preceding this could've been much better handled.

Overall, Metroid ZM is a very good remake but at the same time, I got a lot of issues with it. I still say Dread and Prime 1 are better but you could do worse regarding first Metroid games.