Metroid Expedition Z by Gohan (Apex)
Completion Rate - N/AHere are the notes that I took as I was playing the hack (as I did for all of the hacks)
-lack of attention to detail in paletting
-required damage from players
-sometimes unfair enemy placement
-for a hack that is based around descent, i seem to be doing a whole lot of ascending
-contrived bomb puzzle?
-bullshit lava pit outside of spospo
-hiding save stations?
-really, I am ascending an awful lot
-the puzzle for getting the first super missile was completely dumb
-what the fuck
-fucking metroids
-fucking Gold Torizo
-nope fuck this
And so it was that I didn't finish Metroid Expedition Z. The hack was so full of contrived stupidity that I really just couldn't do it. I'm writing this just after I've finished so it's still fresh in my mind, but here's the main lowdown on the pros and cons.
Pros - * The ice area had a neat aesthetic
* Two of the three themes were presented quite well
*100%?
There were probably more pros than this, but unfortunately I couldn't remember much over all the bad things I found myself bitching about.
Cons -*First off, the map breaking after saving and loading is a huge issue in an exploration based hack, and ended up making much of the later item collecting (plasma in particular, but more on that later) more of a chore than anything else.
*As I said up there, there seemed to be a lot of lack of care in some of the paletting. The first area was all very Redesign Crateria. The red brick area was at least somewhat original, but then throwing in regular Spore Spawn threw the whole thing off. Why is the plant king living in a lava land? Was it that much effort to colour him red? Also in Red Brinstar, what was up with the random flecks of blue throughout the red? I'm sure it was due to the blue Omnoms, but would it have been that much of an effort to draw out the blue?
*There were multiple instances of required damage throughout the hack. Namely with Spore Spawn's room, where it was impossible to avoid both Spore Spawn and the lava in the bottom at the same time. Additionally with the elevator into the ice area, although the damage taken is incredibly low, it still shouldn't happen.
*As stated above, the puzzle for the first super missile (with the reflecs) was complete stupidity. There was absolutely no indication that the reflecs were there, which made for a good 20 minutes of running around everywhere before I gave up and cheated in SMILE.
*On the subject of supers, why hide such an important major upgrade in this way? I don't understand why people do this! Having an obnoxious puzzle should be reserved for optional, unneeded items. Hiding major upgrades like this is just a pain in the ass way of killing momentum. Do you see the original game doing stupid shit like this? If so, please tell me where.
*What was up with the save station in Brinstar being hidden in the wall? Though the hint was obvious, I did manage to miss it the first time around (there had been other instances of being able to see rooms from the other side of walls). The same could almost be said of the ice area, why hide the save station at the top of the elevator? Why hide save stations at all?
*I got stuck in the block underneath Varia and had to hard reset back to the start of Brinstar.
*Underwater spikes. It's so incredibly easy to get stuck on an underwater suitless spike when you have to jump to get off them.
*The Metroids. Yes, I understand it was part of your story to have them only immune to plasma, but why did they in turn have to deal so much damage, while you're running through a suitless underwater section with no way to get them off you and already having a low amount of energy? In a room designed to take a lot of time and effort to traverse through?
*And that's another issue. There's a huge number of rooms that take the Redesign philosophy of "how can I make this room take as long as I possibly can to traverse?" By padding out rooms with annoying things that kill your run and force you to walk around a silly contrived long path, it pads out the gameplay in the most boring way possible.
*Plasma, what the fuck? This was probably the dumbest puzzle of all of them in this hack. There was absolutely no signposting to suggest that I would have to travel
all the way to the start of the hack to find a required item. Then actually finding the item in itself with your apparent "hints" that weren't obvious as hints until after you had found the hints. In a hack as linear as this one, there is quite simply no need to make the play travel all the way from the very end point of the hack, right back to the start (with virtually nothing to do in between), only to make them travel all the way back to where they were in the first place. It killed any momentum the hack had going for it left, and left me in rather a sour mood. Instead what should have been done is you could have created some sort of quick loop back to the start, or alternatively made it more obvious that plasma was there from the get-go.
*Why, why, why, why, why, why is Gold Torizo immune to charge? Despite the fact that it doesn't seem his health has been changed from the original, he's now 200% harder to kill because he still follows the standard Gold Torizo behaviour of dodge missiles, grab supers. Meaning he's almost impossible to kill with a low ammo count. This is where I gave up playing the hack.
*And finally, what on the surface was not a big issue, but in terms of the rules is a massive oversight. You claim that one of your themes is "descent", yet for the vast majority of the hack I felt like I was climbing. I climbed to get out of Crateria. Yes, I then took a downward elevator, but that was followed by a climb up to Spospo. Then I took an upward elevator into the climby shaft land of Brinstar, where every single major upgrade I found seemed to be at the top of a shaft. The ice area was very descent-y, though it looped around then you had to climb back up through Brinstar to get the the end of the game. And though the escape is very descend-y, I don't believe it justifies that the vast majority of the hack was spent climbing up through the world.
And so if it wasn't obvious, ExZ takes my pick for the worst of the bunch. It felt incredibly unpolished and underwhelming, with some ridiculous expectations from the player backed with the Redesign-approved method of telling them to get better.
Gohan, I only hope that when you read the criticisms I've raised here in a very non-levelheaded way, you'll not immediately get pissed off, but instead you'll read into it and take away from it some idea of where I think your hack went wrong, and what you can do to improve on those things in future endeavours. If you can do that, I'll be incredibly happy. Don't just dismiss my ranting as the ravings of an angry lunatic, or you'll have taken nothing away from this experience. Just pay attention to the criticisms, take them in stride, and learn from some of the mistakes you made. Don't just ignore it because I think your hack was bad and it made me mad. If you were worried about people being negative about it, you should have never released it.
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Topic: A.N.T.I. Contest Voting and Reviews (Read 7891 times)