An actual Metroid Metroidvania game! Released on the Switch Game Boy Advance Online Service Thing presumably to tie in with the re-announcement (and gameplay footage) of the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, I thought, why the hell not eh?
It’s good. Oh so good. Yes, I’ve played it before, but almost 20 years ago so I remembered very little of it. In fact, I’d even forgotten about the whole “zero suit” bit where Samus loses her armour and you have to sneak around a Space Pirate ship with a weedy little gun. A bit which inspired the whole premise of Metroid Dread, I’m sure, but still – totally forgot it. And didn’t really enjoy that section too much either, truth be told, but it’s fine as it’s only about 15 minutes of the whole game.
The rest of Zero Mission is glorious ‘vania exploration and traversal and it hasn’t really aged either. Being a GBA game, it’s a shame nothing was done to make use of the Switch’s extra buttons as some of the moves are a little tricky using just ABLR. Specifically, swapping between missiles and super missiles has to be done with the Select button, which on the Switch is next to your left hand, not your right like on a GBA, so that’s a minor pain. You only really need them for Mother Brain though.
What I also hadn’t remembered, is how bloody easy the game is. I’m used to Metroid games, and the genre generally, being pretty difficult. At least, more difficult than this. I died once. On Mother Brain if you’re interested. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve played a lot of these games recently, or I was especially careful here, but I was very surprised at how easy I found it.
