Metroid II: Return of Samus
Year: 1991
Rating: E
Time Played: 7.5 hours
The forgotten child of the original Metroid trilogy, Metroid II is that weird transition between a neat idea and a video game masterpiece. Relying on most all of the same concepts that made the original Metroid on the NES popular, Metroid II suffers from the innate limitations of the Game Boy hardware. Color certainly helped delineate the different areas in the NES game and made the follow-on Super Metroid that much more vivid and haunting, which is why the lack of it in this game poses several problems. Still, it is a solid Metroid game at its base, despite its few flaws.
One of the flaws of this game is its lack of a map. Another weakness is the ability for the player to know what exactly changed when the screen shows a rumbling vibration. I spent way too long going back over the same areas, only to learn later that I had to backtrack a long way to access the new space that had opened up. I understand that most Metroidvanias reward some amount of exploration; still, when there isn’t much more to explore in an area until heading back to these unlocked regions, it becomes an exercise in frustration.
The controls and the challenge of the enemies were well balanced for a small portable game like this. A few spots were a bit tougher, but they were far enough along in the game that I expected the difficulty spike to stall my forward progress. And while the graphical limitations didn’t help navigate the maze-like world, they did a relatively good job of representing Samus and the iconic Metroid in a way that still maintained the base feeling of the series. So, while not an entirely bad game, it is easy to forget that it exists when Metroid and Super Metroid are better experiences.
A passable Metroid game for the Game Boy, I give Metroid II 3.0 stars out of 5.
