Hyper Metroid

[Cpt.Glitch]

Finished.
[spoiler=6:08/84%][/spoiler]
[spoiler=Review]
This is by far the awesomest hack I've ever played, but like every hack hack there, there's always a few cons.
PROS:
-Great Level Design
-Good Resprites
-Possibly the most exciting Escape sequence ever
-Non-linear
-HUD and Ammo System was very well done
-Even the READ_ME was impressive
-Custom Into movies
-Custom Credits, I don't know if other hacks have done this, but it is really excellent
-Good Use of Project Base. This hack blew out of the water the potential that Project base has for a hack.
-Easy IBJ for easy sequence Breaking
-Tourain Gate system was nice. Not once did I get frustrated while looking for them. Hints are placing in many spots to tell you where to look.
-Fast Paced
-Mini-Phantoon
-Most bosses were fun to battle
-Spazer + Plasma
CONS
-WS after beating phantoon before getting varia was very annoying. The WS ghosts were a hassle.
-Draygon was a joke.
-Were a couple bugs, but none really worth noting.
-A WHOLE LOT of enemies during the escape.

All in all, amazing. While WS and Draygon made me very frustrated, this is a 5 star hack. Many times I came across something and said "What was he thinking by doing this?" Only to come back later and discover why and call it genius. The mprphsound wasn't really annoying to me, but having the item jingle for major upgrades would be nice. Great job RealRed, amazing hack! It almost makes me want to give mine up because topping this is not possible. (Don't worry I 'm not giving up, I said almost.) Can't wait to see you next hack.
[/spoiler]

[Quietus]

Thank god missiles do a lot of damage.  My scenic trip through a chunk of Maridia with no suit and only Wave was not fun. :^_^:

[foosda]

Metaquarius: Bosses have strategies! No bullshit, promise! The only boss that lacks an absolute/constant strategy is Ridley, just as he was in the original.
(YES, there are strategies for phantoon and gold torizo)

[spoiler] phantoon was: stand still and mash missiles, as the fast firing missiles of pb lets you stunlock phantoon without stuttering, even.

gt was kinda tricky, but I ended up keeping my ammo count under 30 so he only spat the ammo drop gobs, and never shot crescents.

draygon was actually an interesting challenge, but with the rapidity of CF refills, there's no worry about ever dying during the fight really.

ridley was: unless you have lots of ammo or all beams, I hope you enjoy low ice/speed in vanilla, because you're gonna be there a long time.

honestly, the bosses had interesting strategies and innovations you had to come up with, but they were all so tanky that even once you figured it out, it just became a chore to sit there and do it over and over. maybe endurance was part of the added difficulty? [/spoiler]

[RealRed]

You can now rate the hack and post your reviews on the beta site, so check it out!

[OhCwap]

10/10

Just beated it, got stuck in gold torizo for 19 hours because i didn't know you had to get out of the room and come back for the crumble blocks desapears, hope that is something that can be updated.
The level design is really awesome, one of the few hacks that didn't made me feel bored!

[maxipower]

The rom hack does a lot right but it is far from perfect. Presentation is nice with some great use of original stuff but I feel some on here are rating it too highly. The bosses are hit and miss and there is no real flow to it as it was too open ended. 

[RealRed]

The rom hack does a lot right but it is far from perfect. Presentation is nice with some great use of original stuff but I feel some on here are rating it too highly. The bosses are hit and miss and there is no real flow to it as it was too open ended.

They have their opinion, you have yours. Would be nice if you could be more specific about what makes it far from perfect... If you mean the open-endedness, how would you recommend fixing it? The game is open-ended specifically to give players options in terms of where they would like to go. You can either force yourself through a more difficult area for sooner rewards or you can turn back and look for something simpler. I have no control over stubborn/angry players, nor do I want to take control.

[OhCwap]

I think most people that played think that way too maxi, but it's still 1.0, red can make it "perfect" with the feedbacks if he wants to.

[Cpt.Glitch]

Nope hack is perfect already.

[OhCwap]

Nope hack is perfect already.

True!

[maxipower]

Point taken, just wanted more of a lease on me at times. felt too in control to the point of which I lost any notion of what was the correct order to play the game. I was going into places were I should not have been too easily. got the space jump before marida making the grabbing challenges redundant.

[RealRed]

It's understandable. You can IBJ straight into upper/green brinstar areas with murderous bee-Hachis like ten minutes into the game, and I understand this. I guess, I try to use running out of health or having to walljump off of everything a sign that you're missing something or aren't ready. Or perhaps you are based on your skills?! It's up to you!

It's an incredibly difficult balance to reach as a developer. If you want open-endedness, you have to make later areas tolerable earlier. This means the monsters can still be defeated, blocks can still be destroyed... Otherwise there's the issue of forced item requirement if you make things too difficult, or players will feel like the structure is too rigid and they can't break away from my rule.

Socially, it's really interesting to watch players talk and discuss, "Where do I go next? What do I need?", and everyone is posting a different Samus window with a wildly different selection of items. People might be going the wrong way and getting frustrated, but nobody complains about linearity or a lack of things to do. That, at the very least, was a success.

[NARFNra]

Hey, so, need some help.

[spoiler]I have every major item in the game, I just don't understand how to get into Draygon's Room.

If I try going from all of the paths but one, I get blocked by Gate 15. So I assume Gate 15 must be like Spore Spawn's Gate 4, I get it opened after beating Draygon, alright. Makes sense for the last one in the game. Problem is, the only other possibility I see is through the door blocked by Speed Booster tiles in the lower right. This is actually what lead me to fight Ridley, but now that I've gotten that Ridley stuff taken care of... that door down there just won't open. I've tried killing the enemies in the room and nothing's happening. How do I get to Draygon?[/spoiler]

[RealRed]

[spoiler]Check out those speedbooster blocks you walked over on the way to plasma beam.[/spoiler]

[Lazymoth]

[spoiler]Ha, it's funny Narf, we got stuck at exactly the same part :p

Every gate except Gate 15 activated, have all the main items. I have to say I really love how you used the turtle for puzzle solving. Speed Booster makes for an awesome Ridley reward too, so much better than just an e-tank!

So far the only part that was particularly frustrating to me was Phantoon. I wouldn't say the hack is worse for it or anything, just that it's where I died the most. It was tough for me to keep him in a stunlock.

This is such an amazing hack. I'm really glad I joined Metroid Construction before it hit, it's really fun to be along for the ride of a new release![/spoiler]

[Riffman81]

Nope hack is perfect already.

Agreed! Unless anything major or game breaking is found, I'd leave it alone, just my opinion.

[Snowflame]

[spoiler]I'm also having trouble finding Draygon's room.  Are the speed blocks being referred to the two rows of gray blocks in a room filled with water on the bottom section of the map?  There isn't enough room there to get down with a morph ball speed boost[/spoiler]

[Lazymoth]

@Snowflame

[spoiler]That's the part you have to get through, yes. Get on the upraised part, turn into morphball, hold A and go left. You should go through both layers. It's a little tricky, I had trouble with it too (all the morph speed boost parts really)[/spoiler]

Just beat it WOW.

[spoiler]The ending is incredible. I don't think that escape sequence will ever be topped by anything. It's so well thought out and desperate. Jesus.[/spoiler]

[NARFNra]

Beat it, really liked it.

[spoiler]

I really liked the hack. I've always felt that exploration is the entire point of the Metroidvania experience, and Hyper Metroid is probably the most well done exploration hack I've ever seen. It also never becomes ridiculously hard; I had a lot of trouble with Draygon and Ridley, but not enough to sour the hack. My order was something like Grapple -> High Jump -> *Phantoon* Varia -> *Crocomire* Super Missiles -> *Kraid* Space Jump -> Spring Ball -> Gravity Suit -> *Botwoon* Power Bombs -> *Golden Torizo, Ridley* Speed Booster -> Screw Attack -> *Draygon* -> End

Every area looks very nice. The Wrecked Ship and Maridia are really improved from the original. Tourian wasn't the most amazing area gameplay-wise, but the design was pretty good (I wasn't expecting it to go all Contra!) and the escape sequence was awesome. Crateria, Norfair, and Brinstar were ok. The game had a lot of the original assets, but there was a large quantity of new stuff and none of it looked very out of place. The enemy choice was good and overall I liked pretty much everything in the way of level design and so forth.

If there's any cons... nothing really big I can think of. There's a few awkward mandatory speed booster areas, but that's probably just because I suck at using speed booster. This is the first metroid hack I've ever completed, and I enjoyed it from start to finish!
[/spoiler]

[Vismund Cygnus]

[spoiler=Long, spoilerific rant]
[spoiler=Really, don't read this if you haven't beaten it yet]
Let's also keep in mind that this is based on my personal experience, and not yours. Remember the game was very open-ended (more on that later), so I probably did a lot of things differently to you. Also don't get mad because I didn't enjoy myself. And with that out of the way...

I really, really struggled to enjoy this hack, which is terribly sad because I liked a lot of what I saw. Level design was great and everything seemed to flow quite well. At least, in the early sections of the game.
The whole thing came crashing down in the middle when I hit a brick wall in the form of a goddamn Ridley. You see, the game taught me very early on that walljumping was not only a good thing, but expected, given that it gave me my first missile pack. From there I assumed that I was supposed to be walljumping into a fair few places.

This leads me to Brinstar, where I didn't actually find grapple, because the room grapple was in appeared to me to be the only room that actually required grapple beam (I am aware there was a hint for this, but given how pretty the scenery around me was I assumed it was just filler. I kinda blame myself for this). So I never actually found grapple until I was going around picking up the few gates that I missed on the first go around.
So, without grapple in my possession, it took me quite a while to find any kind of Super Missiles, which I immediately used to get to Kraid. By fighting Kraid first (who I assume was not intended to be first), I was given the impression that the bosses were really, really bullet sponge-y, which will explain what I did later. So after finally beating Kraid and acquiring Space Jump (I TOLD YOU THERE WERE SPOILERS), I used that to get into Wrecked Ship (which you were meant to have grapple for but remember I never found it). So I went and beat Phantoon, and got Varia Suit. So far, still having fun, woo!
And then Norfair happened.
Remember how I said I had assumed the bosses were supposed to be bullet sponge-y thanks to our good friend Kraid? This philosophy kinda transferred to enemies as well. So I didn't realise I wasn't supposed to be running around spending 10 missiles killing single enemies simply because I didn't really know better. Of course, I'm still thinking there's no way I can go into Maridia, because I don't have Gravity Suit and Power Bombs, and those seemed to be the only way into Maridia, based on the couple of places in Maridia I had actually found. So powering onward, I eventually found and defeated Gold Torizo, then Ridley. And then I got really, really fucking stuck.
I ended up doing 3 hours of backtracking, searching every nook and cranny and gradually going insane as what started out as a great hack slowly crumbled around me. Eventually I was told that beating Ridley unlocked Speedbooster, and returned to the room that unlocked after I beat Ridley and wept for about 20 minutes, because I had missed what probably could have been painfully obvious but probably wasn't, because generally when I see crumble blocks and speedbooster blocks, I assume I'm going to need speedbooster, because another thing the hack teaches you is that falling through crumble blocks is a bad thing and you probably shouldn't do it, so I thought nothing more of that room until I was bluntly told that that's where speedbooster was.

At this point the hack opened up for a while, as I found power bombs, and found a big pile of other stuff, and I was starting to enjoy myself again, until I hit Maridia.
According to Squishy, I was on the wrong side of Maridia, which would have been fine if there was any kind of indication that I wasn't meant to be there. Because I'd explored basically everything else, I was under the assumption that Gravity had to be in Maridia somewhere, and hey, I was right! Except that because I was on the wrong side of Maridia, where I physically could not get to where Gravity was, I slowly traversing through what seemed to be a section perfectly designed for underwater suitless exploration. That is, until I got stuck just outside what turned out to be the way out of Draygon's room, because there was a wall too high to jump up and the way back was untraversable. So with another two hours wasted, I eventually found the correct side of Maridia, and after getting stuck once again eventually picked the one correct path out of three possible paths and found gravity suit. By this point I just wanted the hack to be over, which was fortunate because it turns out I had basically nothing left to do. The hack after this point was actually quite good and I probably would've enjoyed myself if not for the fact I was already so frustrated.
Tourian almost made up for it. That was perfect, and the escape sequence was tight, not because I felt like I was being pushed for time, but there was really a sense of urgency, like, "YOU HAVE TO GET OUT HOLY FUCK EVERYTHING IS EXPLODING!"

And so ended my first, and what will unfortunately probably be my only, experience with Hyper Metroid, for a while at least.


All of this brings me to the main problem, which is the general problem with having something as open-ended as this. There's this illusion in Hyper Metroid that you can go anywhere and do anything, but then it turns out you can only go there if you have X item, which you need Y item to get which requires Z. Exploration felt extremely unrewarding during the bulk of the middle of the hack because exploration just resulted in hitting brick walls with nothing to show for it. It turns out there's actually quite a specific order of "required" things to do before you finish the game, and trying to do that out of order makes the game punish you, while still keeping up this illusion of "oh hey, you're meant to be doing this, good job!" like the most sadistic asshat ever.
Of course, you could just turn around and say "oh but Vismund, if you had done X you wouldn't have had Y problem", and that right there is the problem I had with Hyper Metroid. I didn't know I was meant to be doing X, because the game was encouraging me to take the path I was taking right up until I hit a wall with nothing to show for it but hours wasted.
I'm sure Hyper Metroid could have been a fantastic experience, but it just frustrated the shit out of me in the end, which is a shame, because I had such high hopes going into it, and I know in hindsight if I'd done some stuff in a different order it would have been great fun, only I didn't know I was meant to be doing that because the game seemed to be encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing.

So a quick summary of pros and cons:
[spoiler=Pros:]
Gameplay was really fluid, the world was built amazingly well for the physics.
Level design was gorgeous. Tourian, Maridia and Wrecked Ship were all amazing, with Wrecked Ship in particular looking the best I'v ever seen it.
There were some really cool resprites of enemies, like Inphantoon and Derpfish.  :lol:
The escape sequence rates as one of the top escape sequences in a hack I'v ever seen.
Having actual strategies required to beat the bosses was a pretty good touch, though they were a bit sponge-y.
Open-Endedness can be rewarding if you take the correct open-end.
Gates were done well, certainly better than Chozo Guardians, though I still dislike having them in general. That's a personal taste thing though, nothing against how you implemented them.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cons]
Let's get this one out of the way first: The clue to getting to speedbooster was nowhere near clear enough. Seeing crumble blocks and speedbooster blocks means that 99% of the time, you need speedbooster, and this room was the 1% of the time you didn't need it. Perhaps lock the door behind the player, so they can't leave without picking up the item?
The same could kinda be said for grapple, but that could also have been my fault.
The game never hints at the fact that you should probably be leaving Norfair and looking elsewhere, because the change in enemy strength is almost so gradual that it just seems natural.
Gravity Suit being in Maridia. That was annoying, given the amount of places you could get really far in Maridia without quite being able to reach the end of a given path without the suit. More could probably be done to draw the player along the correct path.
On the subject of Maridia, being able to explore as much of it as I did suitless only to get stuck was quite frustrating.
Not having an immediate reward after Golden Torizo sucked, given that I know a lot of people went out of the way to defeat him early only to get no reward.
On Gold Torizo: The game seems to draw you towards fighting him early on. I know that it clearly states in the readme that he doesn't need to be fought early, but you're implying most people read readme's, and even doing so it seems odd that the game draws you toward his area.
Open-endedness is unrewarding if you choose the wrong open-end.
The only time XRay was useful was for getting out of XRay's room.
A lot of the time, exploration ended up being unrewarding.
The best puzzles were for reserve tanks.  :cry:[/spoiler]
It probably seems like I'm being quite nitpicky at the moment, and that's because I am. I wanted to enjoy this hack so badly, but I just couldn't, and that's a shame because I know how much everyone else loved this and I want that to be me too. I can see how it would be enjoyable, but due to some of the choices I made it ended up being one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with a hack. I feel like with a few slight adjustments I'd be one of the many people rating this hack as one of the best yet, but based on my experiences I just couldn't enjoy it.

Still, it's better than YPR.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]

[Zhs2]

[spoiler=On reaching Draygon]You can speed jump - that's space jumping while speedboosting - from another room into that one and fall down - all while holding the run button! - to break the blocks, too. Fun fact, the door between the area with the horizontal speed blocks and the intended speed building hallway was removed for that express purpose.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=To Vismund]I think the funniest thing about your complaint on crumble blocks is that, if you had found a certain item, you would have been encouraged to 'run' over those. You probably did have the item, considering you did acquire speedbooster in the end, but that's what the hack is kind of all about: taking away lessons from where you've been and what you've done.[/spoiler]

[Aura Of The Dawn]

Hmmm... overall, I've enjoyed this quite a bit, but there are some places where I feel the coloring could use some work. Wrecked ship post-phantoon has issue distinguishing water from non-water, sandfalls in maridia were... very extremely hard to see, especially while moving. (screenshot included)
[spoiler][/spoiler]If this is part of the challenge, so be it, but it feels like the coloration should distinguish more between these transitions... Otherwise, this hack has been fantastic so far. Good job.

[RealRed]

Vismund:
"this felt wrong, so I figured the next thing that rubbed me the wrong way was meant to, so I let it as I kept going at it."
To be fair,
[spoiler=powerbombs]Powerbombs before Gravity Suit is my least-planned out sequence break. I guess this could take you to plasma beam if you're lucky, but that's an awful lot of underwater suitless and I never really accounted for this. It's a little cool that it exists, though...[/spoiler]

I'm sorry you didn't have fun, dude.
I hope you give it another try at some point. Different route, less pain. It wasn't made to ruin anyone's day.
You're not required to walljump for anything, nor IBJ. Maybe work with others to see what they've found and where. I wish it wasn't so disappointing for you.

[NARFNra]

Actually, that is a good point from Vismund, it's similar to something that happened with me.

[spoiler]Early on, when you're supposed to get Grapple, I didn't understand the item room. The Morph tunnel was really well hidden, to the point where I didn't realize it was bombable at all. So I basically entered a room, saw a bunch of Grapple points, and went "Guess this is the Grapple path, can't go do something about this" and proceeded to assume that the only way forwards was to wall jump up the ripper room to the left. And then I spent a good amount of time getting really angry about that. I finally just went back and... walked across the spikes to get Grapple, but. Yeah.

That said, after seeing it once, that taught me how to go through the Speed Booster room. To be honest, I can't say the point about seeing the blocks and immediately turning around is quite as strong for me simply because this is exactly how the spring ball room works as well, and the direct path from the crumble blocks leads towards the item rather than back. HOWEVER, this is still a case of Hyper Metroid having a "backwards" idea for how the item rooms work sometimes, making it hard to realize the way you're supposed to do it at first.

That said, I can't think of a good way to fix any of these issues without completely changing the hack. For example, I found the Maridia entrance in Crateria after thinking about what to do with Spring Ball, etc.

What Vismund basically is talking about is a very reasonable point; no matter how good the hack is, when it's this open ended you can end up getting a terrible experience simply because you played the way you wanted to. It's really a shame. I'm still gonna rate the hack 5/5 cause I really do think that much work went into it and compared to a lot of the other stuff I've seen rated 4/5 it seems to deserve it, but it's definitely true that it's not perfect.

So yeah, Vismund's complaints are pretty good. The only direct point I can think of is, please make the Grapple room a little easier to notice somehow, I guess? Maybe only we had issues with this, but... It's really early in the game, so I think getting a freebie on it would be nice.[/spoiler]

[foosda]

Actually, that is a good point from Vismund, it's similar to something that happened with me.

[spoiler]Early on, when you're supposed to get Grapple, I didn't understand the item room. The Morph tunnel was really well hidden, to the point where I didn't realize it was bombable at all. So I basically entered a room, saw a bunch of Grapple points, and went "Guess this is the Grapple path, can't go do something about this" and proceeded to assume that the only way forwards was to wall jump up the ripper room to the left. And then I spent a good amount of time getting really angry about that. I finally just went back and... walked across the spikes to get Grapple, but. Yeah.

That said, after seeing it once, that taught me how to go through the Speed Booster room. To be honest, I can't say the point about seeing the blocks and immediately turning around is quite as strong for me simply because this is exactly how the spring ball room works as well, and the direct path from the crumble blocks leads towards the item rather than back. HOWEVER, this is still a case of Hyper Metroid having a "backwards" idea for how the item rooms work sometimes, making it hard to realize the way you're supposed to do it at first.

That said, I can't think of a good way to fix any of these issues without completely changing the hack. For example, I found the Maridia entrance in Crateria after thinking about what to do with Spring Ball, etc.

What Vismund basically is talking about is a very reasonable point; no matter how good the hack is, when it's this open ended you can end up getting a terrible experience simply because you played the way you wanted to. It's really a shame. I'm still gonna rate the hack 5/5 cause I really do think that much work went into it and compared to a lot of the other stuff I've seen rated 4/5 it seems to deserve it, but it's definitely true that it's not perfect.

So yeah, Vismund's complaints are pretty good. The only direct point I can think of is, please make the Grapple room a little easier to notice somehow, I guess? Maybe only we had issues with this, but... It's really early in the game, so I think getting a freebie on it would be nice.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
I just took the damage from the spikes. any time I see something that says you cant go this way or you take damage, I just take the damage.

I even found the hidden morph tunnel after I got grapple, heh

the grapple room is fine, imo
[/spoiler]