Metroid Fusion

I am slowly but surely making it through the list of games that Nintendo was gracious enough to give to all those suckers who paid full price for the 3ds as part of their "ambassador program." This program should be called the "suckers who paid full price for something that dropped almost a hundred bucks shortly after launch." Anyway the list of games that they gave had so far disappointed me but I have played a few lately that have made me think they are not a complete waste. First I played Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, then I played Zelda: Minish Cap and now I have finished playing this gem of a game, Metroid Fusion.

This is my first finished Metroid game. I remember playing the NES game as a child for many hours and not making it very far past the first couple of screens. I didn't make it far because there was no real save feature it just gave you a 16 digit or so code to enter that would give you the items and stuff back but I never had the patience to enter the code. In fact I never really had much video game patience at all. The little bit I do have is a somewhat recent development. Anyway, I digress, I finished this game and I enjoyed the crap out of it. It was a fun game once you get used to the Metroid style of gameplay. I had to learn how to be specific in my jumps and be prepared to grap on to ledges precisely and once I did that this game became a bit easier.

The game starts out as you approach a space station and you have to investigate a weird situation. Samus starts out with almost none of her abilities and as you progress through the game and decode the landscape you slowly reacquire her latent abilities therefore making it possible for you to turn into a ball, jump higher, jump spin as well as increasing gun capabilities such as the charge beam attack and the addition of missiles. The increased capabilities come from downloading at specific rooms in the station and from defeating bosses.

The bosses in this game are probably the best part. Most games start you out against a boss fit to be defeated by an infant. An early slam dunk to boost your confidence. But not this game, the first boss took me more than half a dozen tries to defeat and I realized soon on that I had to employ a well thought out strategy or face a quick defeat. There wasn't a boss in this game that I managed to defeat in one try and each of them had their own weakness that you had to employ to bring about their demise. The final boss took me three full sittings and about 75 attempts to beat. I had almost given up on the game when a friend of mine convinced me to power through.

All in all I enjoyed this game and I am glad that Nintendo allowed me to download it for free.