Metroid Dead

Every time a new Metroid is release, I feel weird. I look back at Fusion, a game I despise, and think "At least that game believed in something. At least it had an idea."

I look at Zero Mission, a game that I am, at best at peace with, and I look at it with increasing contempt. It's wearing the metroid flag, doing the greatest hits, without building to anything that truly adds to Metroid. Zero Mission had a larger contribution to hentai than the series as a whole.

Metroid, for me, has been dead for over 20 years for me, a much longer period than it was "alive". A thing I said jokingly becomes increasingly true. Metroid Prime killed it. Not through disrespect, but through too much respect, codifying incidental elements into the core aesthetic of Metroid. Shiny chrome, fancy suits, opening color coded doors. I see Prime 4 announced and only feel sad. I see everyone excited, at the new red suit, and her weird psychic powers. It's not about where she goes, or what she does, or what tonal changes, or weird new atmosphere can be created, it's about a 20 year old aesthetic and stacking new, cartoonish elements on top of it as if someone was trying to sell a new season of GI Joe toys.

... And people are happy for it. Good for them. People love whatever weird homunculus Prime created. They shouldn't feel bad for it. Prime is good in it's own right, even though it's not for me. Yet I see everything that came after it and I can't help but to feel like corpse of the thing I loved is being worn around like a skin suit. I'm at peace with the fact I'll never get another Metroid I love. I can play other games. It's just painful whenever I have to see these Invasion of the Body Snatcher moments.

Oh well. Whatever they do with Prime 4, it won't be nearly as bad as Mercury Steam putting a morphball maze in the giant room in Metroid II.