How I came to see the value in a sequel whose embracing of structural change I once viewed as an objectionable act.
So here I was, on an emotional high coming off of my experience with Metroid Prime, which had defiantly pushed back against a tidal wave of pessimism and proved itself to be not only a phenomenal Metroid games but also one of the grandest, most sublime video games ever made. This was a significant divergence from the events as I'd envisioned them prior to playing the newly released Metroid titles, whence I'd established a narrative for how my overarching experience with the two games would play out. As I stated in my Metroid Prime piece:
"Prime was essentially going to be the Metroid series' Castlevania 64. I'd endure it as best I could--all the while lamenting the fact that Nintendo had passed up the opportunity to blow us away with an expansive, revolutionary Metroid title in favor of tossing out a shallow, imitative assembly-line shooter that was of loose relation--and then quickly discard it. And then there would be Metroid Fusion waiting for me with open arms, ready to save me--ready to supply me the true Metroid experience for which I was now starved."
But now the narrative had been shattered, and what remained was a world of possibilities.
Really, I couldn't have been happier with how things were turning out: One of my gaming desires had been fulfilled--Nintendo had delivered a lovingly crafted, revolutionary next-generation Metroid game--and now so, too, would another; soon I'd find myself immersed in the traditional, Super Metroid-style 2D action-adventure game I'd been waiting to play since the mid-90s! Talk about the sweetest of bonuses! Come the next day, I was raring to go; I snapped that Metroid Fusion cart into my Game Boy Advance, parked myself under our den's wall-mounted light fixture, and readied myself for some labyrinth-exploring, surface-tunneling adventure!
However, as soon as the intro's purple-hued space motif came into view and its grainy musical accompaniment began to emit from the GBA's speakers, I was suddenly overcome with the sense that something was off here. I wasn't bothered by the music's unsurprisingly muffled quality, no, but rather its vibe, which, for whatever reason, spoke of some type of incongruity, though I couldn't articulate what, exactly, it was or why it was making me feel that way. Even now I struggle to give solid form to the wordless questions with which my mind was wrestling during those opening moments. Maybe my sense was that Fusion wasn't going to be tonally on point or that perhaps it wasn't going to be as ambitious as I expected? I don't know! I can't express how I was feeling with any amount of coherence.
"How ridiculous," you'd say, "to get all that from a single sustained bass note!" And I'd agree with you had there not been other worrying signs early on. For one, the backstory-establishing intro was dragging on absolutely forever, where in the previous games you'd get a minute-long scene, tops, and then jump right into action. Fusion was apparently incapable of delivering a succinct message; it was going way overboard, its setup too involved--to unnecessarily elaborate--for a series that had always done well to derive characterization and emotional complexity strictly from its gameplay.
I understood that the sprite-work had to scale smaller to compensate for the system's lower resolution, but it was still disappointing to see a compressed-looking Samus moving about an equally cramped cavern. The game hadn't started yet, and I was already missing Super Metroid's large, amazingly detailed sprites and spacious environments. It all felt so regressive.
Also, I was kind of annoyed by the described nature of the game's antagonistic force, the shape-shifting X Parasites, which were positioned to be such an unfathomable menace that they, like the Phazon in Prime, served to make the Metroid threat seem trivial in comparison. Again--weren't the Metroids supposed to be the galaxy's most feared species? Wasn't that the point of the series?! Metroid's creators seemed to be losing focus of what was most important.
Ultimately none of this would matter if it turned out that Fusion was a great Metroid game, which I still suspected it would be. That's how I felt, at least, until about ten minutes later, when I had to stop and wonder in puzzlement about what the hell was going on here. "Why is everything in this game blocked off?!" I angrily questioned as I uselessly fired upon and bumped against one securely locked door after another. "And why am I standing in front of yet another computer terminal listening to an AI talk for two minutes at a time?! Why am I being forced to stand here while this thing drones on and on about colored hatches and air-pressure systems?! What is this?! Where's the 'Metroid' action, man?!"
There was hardly any. Rather, I found myself stuck in an endlessly repeating cycle wherein I'd listen to the AI's instructions, immediately proceed to the next terminal room to confirm the objective, promptly complete the objective, and then report back to a navigation room for further instruction. That was it. There were no branching corridors to discover. No series of interconnected caverns to become lost within. And no signs that Fusion possessed any sense of exploration. There was only sickening linearity, and I was pretty pissed about it.
This wasn't what I wanted. This wasn't the game I'd waited 7-plus years to play! Following what was an inexplicable drought, I was expecting them to make up for lost time by hitting me with nothing less than the ultimate 2D Metroid! I was expecting a Metroid game that was cognizant enough of the series' strengths to throw me into a wonderfully labyrinthine world and leave me to my own devices--to if necessary let the surrounding environment by my guide, like it was in Super Metroid. Instead I wasn't allowed to go anywhere but the place the game required me to be at the time.
Fusion's world was neither sprawling nor perceivably deep; it did nothing to evoke the sense of wonderment that was so critical to the Metroid experience. Rather, Samus found herself confined to a stereotypical space station whose banal, aesthetically generic main hub spilled into six neatly arranged, brightly numbered sectors. And the way the sectors' maps were set up told the whole story, theirs a microcosm for the game's chief design flaw; they were overly structured to where every sector's entrance was comprised of the same trio of rooms: a navigation room, a save room, and a recharge station. The result was total predictability where traditionally the best thing about playing a Metroid game was not knowing where you might arrive next.
Though I understood why the controls had to be condensed to work on the GBA, which had two fewer buttons than an SNES gamepad, I wasn't particularly enamored with the results. I mean, you couldn't run automatically. You had to hold down the R trigger to fire missiles. And you had to compensate for the halving of shoulder-button input by holding down down plus L to point Samus' arm cannon diagonally downward. It felt like more regression, and I was worried that the compromised scheme might limit the number of available upgrades and restrict what they could do with those existing.
And then there was the transgression that made me throw my hands in the air and really start to question the creators' intentions: By defeating the first boss, Arachnus, I'd obtained both the High Jump and Spring Ball abilities at the same time. "Since when do you earn two major abilities via the obtention of a single item?!" I scornfully objected. No other event did as well to illustrate Fusion's condensed-feeling nature.
Considering what I'd seen to this point, I could only conclude that Fusion's creators lacked the will and the desire to craft a stunningly expansive Metroid game whose areas were home to multiple upgrades and the intricately designed environments built around their procurement and utilization, so instead they sought to use an intrusive narrative structure as the means to sell us on the idea that strangling linearity and compactness were necessary "advancements." "The truth has to be that they just couldn't think of interesting places to hide all of these upgrades!" I figured.
And that, right there, encapsulated my entire Metroid Fusion experience. I kept hoping that it would eventually blossom into the evocative, wondrously labyrinthine Metroid game I'd long been waiting for, but it never did. And by the time it was over, I was completely divested. I felt nothing but detachment as I watched Samus board her ship after destroying the Omega Metroid. "What happened here?" I questioned in defeat. "They had seven years to come up with an idea for a Metroid sequel, and this is what they settled on? This is the limit of their imagination?!"
I didn't think I was being unfair. I couldn't have been if I was willing to admit, upon reflection, that Fusion did have its moments--that it did feature some exciting sequences, like the SA-X chases and the emergency sprint to Sector 3's control room as the station neared meltdown following the activation of yellow hatches. It knew how to create tension in the buildup to major clashes and occurrences via its use of ominous musical cues, stress-inducing changes in lighting, and disquieting foreshadowing--the best example of such being the enormous, shadowy silhouette that could be seen menacingly darting across Sector 5's backdrop, whose protective glass barrier provided little sense of comfort.
And there were those desirable instances when the game would actually leave me alone, without direction, following an unexpected twist--when it would allow me to blindly blast and tunnel my way about environments that were suddenly mysterious, complexly designed, and highly destructible. That's when Fusion was at its best. And that's why I'd quickly grow disappointed whenever I'd resolve the issue at hand and find myself back in one of those navigation rooms, at which point it was a certainty that we'd resume the normal routine. I'd wait for the game to fully open up--to evolve into something that resembled a traditional Metroid game--but it just wouldn't; it continued to reject the idea of a freely explored open world.
"If only they'd done more with this gimmick," I thought while reflecting upon my encounters with the SA-X. I very much liked the idea of Samus being hunted by a cold-blooded doppelganger, so I was disappointed that theirs were limited to scripted encounters. I thought that it would have added a large does of nervous excitement and persistent anxiety had the SA-X's programming allowed for it to randomly wander about the station, its free-roaming opening up the possibility that the two characters could cross paths at any time! I realized later that (a) the GBA lacked the memory and processing power needed to render such a mechanic, and (b) implementing it would have been a logistical nightmare for the level designers, who would have had to account for every possible encounter point and craft hundreds of escape routes and potential hiding places.
At the time, though, it was fun to consider the possibilities.
For as much as I downplayed its visual presentation, I couldn't deny that Fusion was a good-looking game. It wasn't in the league of the aesthetically brilliant Super Metroid--whose every sharp, purposefully-rendered texture was brimming with character and vivacity--no, but it featured attractive sprite-work, a fair amount of interesting environments, and finely detailed backgrounds. In particular, I liked that you could see all types of creatures hopping around in the background layers; their thought-provoking activity worked to create a sense that the Biologic Space Laboratories had real depth to it--that its was a functioning ecosystem. Sometimes the smallest touches go a long way in helping to produce a memorable atmosphere.
I wasn't sure how to react to the appearance of the Etecoons and Dachoras, though. My first instinct was to cheer their appearance, but then my skeptical mind took over and told me to resist such a temptation; it told me that their inclusion was only but a means to create a cheap link to the much-superior Super Metroid, from which Fusion was hoping to get a rub.
Fusion's music was largely muted--its quality hampered by the GBA's crummy sound hardware--and it couldn't match Super Metroid's in terms of emotional conveyance and reverberance, but still the soundtrack featured a number of impressive pieces. Honestly, during that first play-through, I was too filled with feelings of displeasure to pay the music much attention. I'd come to appreciate it more in time--come to value how Fusion's distinct tones could arouse feelings of tension and unease. My favorites included the inspiriting, goosebumps-inducing The Final Command, which played whenever the mood turned hopeful (though, its replacing all other sector themes following Ridley-X's defeat was a bit much), and Sector 4's aquatic theme, whose depressive vibe so effectively communicated the feeling of what it must have been like to be all alone in the galaxy's deepest, darkest and most isolated recesses.
Oh, and man this game was tough--at least early on, when I was short on energy tanks. I couldn't remember dying more than a handful of times during the entirety of any Metroid game, but there I was, no more than thirty minutes into Fusion, and I'd already been forced to restart from save rooms about a dozen times. I mean, the creatures in this game hit hard; projectiles and physical attacks were taking off thirty points of health each time they connected. Truthfully, I was concerned that Fusion was going to be a grind--that its difficulty was such that I'd spend the majority of the play-through cautiously inching my way forward and worrying about getting beaten down for any hasty, impulsive movements.
Indeed Samus' heightened susceptibility did remain a constant for the greater part of the adventure, yet Fusion's difficulty never approached extreme levels, as I feared it would; rather, its generous doling of energy tanks (a record amount) and increasingly potent weaponry would slowly even the playing field and inevitably alleviate the problem of an area's foes completely outmatching her.
Eventually I caught on that Fusion's style of play was meant to be tactical: You couldn't rush in, guns blazing, and expect to endure; rather, it was designed so that you arrive puny and weak and survive by adopting a strategy of cleverly working around the problem until you locate the upgrade that neutralizes the current threat. Given the context, it made sense that the genetically altered, defensively compromised Samus would struggle to keep pace with an enemy force that was continuously growing smarter and more proliferate. I grew to appreciate this approach; after all--I felt that a well-developed survivablity factor was critical to the Metroid experience, and Fusion's was one of the best takes.
Fusion had aspects that were worthy of praise, sure, but the reality was that it had fallen short in almost all of the most important categories. For certain it failed to meet the standard set by Super Metroid, which I was expecting Fusion to at least match.
I didn't believe Fusion to be a bad game, no; it just wasn't what it needed to be. It was a solid action-adventure game but nothing more--surely not a top-tier Metroid game. To compare it to Super Metroid at even a base level seemed laughable.
That's how I felt about Metroid Fusion upon completing that first play-through. I saw it as a tightly structured, strictly linear action-adventure game that borrowed Super Metroid's mechanics and general aesthetic but otherwise bore little resemblance to the 2D Metroid games I so adored. I wasn't blissfully exploring a wondrous, perceivably vast labyrinthine world; rather, I was simply moving from points A to point B, as instructed, any excitement contained therein limited to those brief periods when the game would get out of my way.
In the end, Fusion was a letdown on two levels: It didn't deliver the type of 2D Metroid action I was looking for, and it failed to sustain Metroid Prime's momentum. Amazingly, the narrative worked out in reverse: Prime was the game that so excellently captured the spirit of the 2D games while Fusion was the pretender falsely carrying the series' name.
From then on, Fusion struggled to remain on my radar; I played it two additional times over the next eighteen months, and still, though I made an earnest effort to try, I just couldn't see the value in its unorthodox approach. And once Zero Mission had arrived and succeeded wildly in providing me the 2D Metroid experience I'd been craving, that was it--I no longer had any use for Fusion. My "true" 2D Metroid was here, and so it was an easy decision for me to cast Fusion away to my game cabinet, where it would likely forever remain.
But you know how it goes: Time can alter one's perspective. Perceptions can change. And a game's message can take on a new meaning when viewed in contrast to the history that unfolded in the years following its release. In time, Metroid Fusion began to take on a certain appeal; suddenly its was an attractively distinctive radiance. This was true for a variety of reasons, the most relevant of which was the series' move toward homogeneity: The Prime sequels had refrained from evolving the first-person formula in a meaningful way and instead chose the path of iteration. And for however much I loved Zero Mission, I had to admit that it simply wasn't offering anything new or original when compared to Super Metroid (outside of its post-Mother Brain stealth sequence, which was treated as something separate); really, it was the original Metroid in Super Metroid's skin--hardly a creature of its own design.
Frankly, as we entered the new decade, I started to desire something new and different, though, unfortunately, there didn't appear to be any more Metroid games on the horizon. Luckily, the answer was right there in front of me: Its name was Metroid Fusion, which now seemed worthy of a second look.
So after shunning it for as many years, I popped it into my DS (which has GBA compatibility) and began playing it. Suddenly I found myself enjoying the game; when I was able to look upon it without the constraint of bias, I could see that there was more to it than I realized--that I hadn't given it enough credit. I mean, yeah--it was overly chatty and linear, but it had soul, a fact to which I was originally blind because (a) I was angry about its perceived abandonment of the series' core values and (b) I was too busy complaining that it wasn't a carbon copy of Super Metroid.
There was a well-conceived, finely crafted game here: Fusion featured satisfying shooting action; intense boss fights; an emotive soundtrack; a whole host of cleverly constructed environments that would change from minute to minute, each alteration producing new forms of improvisational, tensely imbued platforming scenarios; a great many instances in which you could tunnel and carve your way through the BSL station's seemingly boundless environments; and a lot of cruelly-designed-but-inventive puzzles, most of which required skillful use of the Speed Booster.
And though not conventionally, Fusion did eventually open up its world to free exploration. Such was the case after you defeated the Omega Metroid, the final boss, and then reloaded your save file, at which point all of the hatches would unlock and the game would provide you a handy item checklist. It was then you'd realize that there was a ton of stuff hidden within the station's walls (including an excessive number of Power Bombs, which were basically a messy substitute for the X-Ray Visor) plus a large number of secret rooms to discover and explore.
And since we were now smack dab in the middle of the DS era, years removed from the GBA's reign, Fusion had also taken on a nostalgic quality. It now stood as a painful reminder of what we'd lost--a reminder that we'd probably never again see a sprite-based, 16-bit-style Metroid game. I would cherish the time I spent with Fusion, which, in contrast to what it conveyed eight years prior, now felt close in spirit to the older games.
Indeed Fusion wasn't the fraudulent Metroid game I'd made it out to be; it was just a little different. It didn't abandon the series' core values as much as it sought to blast its way through the walls of convention and discover new avenues for expansion. Besides--we already had Super Metroid; we didn't need a string of sequels that simply replicated its formula. No--endlessly repeating a formula is a recipe for diminishing the value of the original work; I learned this lesson well by witnessing what happened to the Castlevania series following the release of Symphony of the Night, whose multiple of iterative sequels functioned to strip it of its individuality and render it merely one from a growing pack.
Fusion didn't work toward that end. It wanted to be its own animal. It didn't care to be tied down by the past.
And that, it turned out, was a good thing.
Given time and some new context, Fusion could now show itself to be a fun, challenging action-adventure game, its unique style a strong complement to the existing Metroid games and not in any way an affront to them. And it's for that reason that I've returned to it a whole bunch of times since the late-00s (in recent years on the 3DS, where it's available as an Ambassador title). In fact, I've played through it more times than I have Zero Mission! That information, alone, has to tell you something.
While I'll never be a fan of its pace-killing chattiness or its overemphasis on story and character-building, I'll continue to regard Metroid Fusion as a game that bravely challenged the status quo and through resiliency earned itself an eventual victory. It really is a fantastic game. Hell--I'd even say that it's an outstanding Metroid.
"Do not worry," director Yoshio Sakamoto likely told his staff as they nervously wrapped up production on their boldly unconventional Metroid game. "Someday they will come to understand. Someday they'll see."
Fifteen years later, I finally see the wisdom in that sentiment.
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