Metroid Prime: Federation Force - 100% Completion Journal

This is done. You're looking at my save file screen of Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which I have fully completed now after quite a journey.

It started last year with the free version of Metroid Prime: Blast Ball, where I managed to unlock all the paint jobs, which adds a certain percentage to your save file, if you import the data. I'm happy that I did that last year already, because this game is pretty much dead online these days and clearing all the "feats" wouldn't have been as much fun as it was back then.

For playing the full game I got joined by two online buddies, one who accompanied us through the "story" and one who joined me in the task of fully completing both Normal and Hard Mode. The latter also joined me in many Blast Ball matches last year, but it wasn't until after Samus Returns and Metroid Prime 4 were announced three months ago that we finally gave the full game a chance and got hooked. The three of us communicated over Skype and it wasn't the first coop game that we've played online together, because we already joined teams in Tri Force Heroes.

And saying that this is the "Tri Force Heroes" of the Metroid franchise would be very accurate. Both games appeared around the same time, focused on online coop and put the fans off with their style and story. It's just that Tri Force Heroes didn't have the issue that it was the first new Zelda in six years and that there were no other Zelda games on the horizon. The silence about the Metroid franchise put Federation Force in a really awkward spot and it probably wouldn't have been received as badly, if we knew about Metroid Prime 4 at the time.

Both games also had some issues of how they handled the online coop, but they differ quite a lot here. Tri Force Heroes was designed for exactly three players and as soon as one player left the game, the level couldn't be completed. Federation Force is smarter here and dynamically supports a player count between one to four players, much like the Four Swords games used to. If one player drops out of the mission, the others can keep going without him and can still complete the mission on their own. However, the game doesn't scale the difficulty towards the player count at all...

In most missions the rule of thumb is that the more players you have, the easier it gets, because you have more fire power and can do things faster. In singleplayer mode you can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemies that the game keeps throwing at you, especially in the later missions. You can bring "drones", which help you a little, for any missing player and in singleplayer you can also use the "Lone Wolf" Mod Chip, which doubles the damage you do and halves the damage you take. But this might not always be helpful, if you're in for the medals.

For each mission you can get up to three Medals by scoring a certain amount of points. Points are gotten from shooting stuff, but you can get bonus points by beating the level under a certain time (which is independent of the player count), by fulfilling a certain bonus objective (which differs for each mission) and for not using the Lone Wolf Mod Chip in singleplayer. This bonus can be deciding, which is why you're inclined to not use this special Mod Chip all the time (it's still better in missions with many enemies, because you score double points).

The same goes for the drones, who can lower your score quite a lot, since points from shooting stuff are also critical. You get more points the more damage you land on a single enemy, so even small fries like Geemers should be shot with Charged Shots for maximum points, which is where your drones get in the way. It's the same with performing headshots or freezing enemies to destroy them. All of this gives lots of more points, which is essential. And this is a concept many players online even don't seem to understand.

This game works much less with random people online than Tri Force Heroes did. In Tri Force Heroes two skilled players could usually bring an unexperienced player through a level with the simple means of communication the game offers. I often even enjoyed being restricted to ingame actions and the communication icons, instead of talking to other players. But in Federation Force using Discord, Skype, Teamspeak or any other voice chat is much more essential, because you often want to come up with a good strategy.

It already starts with distributing the AUX Ammo that you have available for each mission between the players. It's good to find roles, for example in boss battle mission two players could focus on fire power, one player could focus on using the Slow Beam or Freeze Shots to stop the boss, while the fourth player could function as a healer and deploy shields and/or decoys. With the right Mod Chips in place this could work all very well, but for this you need to communicate, where the predefined ingame voice commands are too inefficient.

The aforementioned "Mod Chips" are also an interesting topic. You can equip up to three of them and they give you certain abilities. Next to the silver "Lone Wolf" chip, there's the silver "Hyper Mode" Mod that you can unlock by doing all the feats in Blast Ball. It lets you charge your Power Beam while walking at full speed and it causes double damage with Power Shots, but only if you're at full health. It can be quite useful and it was nice to have this from the get go thanks to my efforts that went into Blast Ball last year. All other 82 Mods are found at random, where there's usually a handful of Mods hidden in each level. Unlike the two silver Mod Chips, the randomly found Mods can break, whenever you die or quit a mission (this even happens, when you turn off your 3DS). But you can find duplicates and they offer a good motivation to always explore all the levels, which is something Tri Force Heroes didn't really have with its hidden Rupees.

Since I wanted to collect at least one copy of each Mod in the game, I spent a lot of time farming in the 10th Mission, "Last Stand". You have a giant boss enemy walking towards a data probe here, while you can quickly find six Mods in caves at the sides. Then just get killed by the boss (don't equip any breakable Mods), because you still get the Mods, even if you fail.

The Mod abilities either enhance specific ammo types, make you take less damage, upgrade your drones, increase your storage capacity or the like. For example there is a Mod that lets you shoot double missiles or there are Mods for taking 20%, 30% or 50% less damage. The better the Mod, the rarer it is. In a way you can compare this to the outfits in Tri Force Heroes, just that it's not as visible what the other players have.

But the game also has the Paint Jobs unlocked by collecting all the medals. Those could have worked exactly like the outfits in Tri Force Heroes, where there's even the problem that the Paint Jobs unlocked via amiibo really give you special abilities. The Samus Paint Job lets you carry 10 missiles per pack instead of just three, which is probably the most valuable ability in the game, while Zero Suit Samus quintuples your Slow Beam ammunition. The other Paint Jobs don't have any abilities, so there's no good reason to use any of them, if you have the Samus Paint Job. Ideally they all would provide small perks and function much like the outfits in Tri Force Heroes, but this way you always run around disguised as Samus, which is somewhat ironic and sad for the only Metroid game that doesn't feature Samus as a playable character.

Anyway, completing the game was quite the task. There are 22 diverse Missions in the game, where for each mission you can score up to three Medals. That's 66 Medals in total, but you also have Hard Mode, where you take more damage, some missions are slightly altered and you have to score more points for the Medals. It can get quite tough, where for two missions (H04 Containment and H14 Tremor) we even needed the help of a third, experienced player. (Kudos to Kurumi for greatly supporting us here!) "Containment", a mission where you have to trap Ice Titans in four cages, is especially troublesome in both difficulties. It's overwhelming, how this comes as already the fourth mission in the game.

But while there are some good and selfless players out there helping people, you can also have bad luck with players online, because it's very easy to troll here. It already starts at the AUX Ammo, where you can take all you can and then quit the game. Or you just stand inside a door and block the way. Or you're just gunning at the players, while all hell breaks lose... It might not be as bad as with Tri Force Heroes, where you share a health meter, because you can still finish a mission with such people at your side. However, you might even feel forced to finish it, because you don't want to lose any of your Mods. A troll probably wouldn't even equip any breakable Mods, so there's no real penalty for him. But if other players quit on him, they might get penalized, which wasn't really thought through by the developers.

Fun fact, the save file screen has counters for how many Mods you've collected (including duplicates) and for how long you've played the game, but they stop at 999 Mods (even though you can collect more than that) and 99 hours and 59 minutes. It's like the developers never would have anticipated that anyone would voluntarily play this game for that long...


Well, this is really a game for cooperating with friends and enjoying the challenge of completing everything. Don't play it for the story, because it's rather silly. The whole "giantification" theme doesn't really play out in the game, because everything got oversized. Geemers, boxes, computer consoles, everything is gigantic, so it ultimately doesn't make any difference. It would be like playing The Minish Cap in a miniature Hyrule.

To make things worse, this game blatantly rips off Star Wars and even the new Star Trek movies in various occasions. It already starts with the very uninspired soundtrack, which sounds like some bad Star Wars bootleg at times. And the final mission completely jumps the Metroid...

The Space Pirates actually built their own Death Star, called the DOOMSEYE. You get in there by jumping through space in your suits, similar to how it was done in both the new Star Trek and Star Trek into Darkness. In there you fight an oversized Samus in Morphball form, but at least this one time the giantification had some influence on something. Afterwards the "Master Brain" awaits, which is some really weak Mother Brain rip-off.

This final mission made me almost feel ashamed that this game is part of the Metroid universe now. But like Other M it doesn't outshine the fun I had with this game. If you have someone to play this with, go ahead and give it a try.

Metroid: Other M Revisited

Let's revisit another Metroid, before Samus Returns gets released... After playing various 2D Metroids on the Wii U Virtual Console, I was in the mood for another round of Metroid: Other M. Or two rounds, to be exact, because I did both a 100% run and a Hard Mode run. With that I've beaten the game now six times in total - four 100% runs and two Hard Mode runs. And more runs might follow in the future. I've already beaten Hard Mode once two years ago and at that point I felt like I was completely done with the game, only to be drawn back in now.

Next to Super Metroid it has been for me THE Metroid game with the highest replay value. Yes, the game's story was badly written and doesn't shine a good light on Samus' character. Yes, the level design is too linear and the authorization feature was so wrongly executed that nothing made much sense whatsoever. I mean, why would Samus deactivate her life supporting Varia and Gravity Suits to begin with? All of this angers me every time, when I replay the game, because the game could have been so much better. But it never stopped me from enjoying, how the game feels and plays.

I thoroughly enjoy the hybrid 2,5D Metroid style with its simplistic controls, its auto aim, the Sense Moves, the Lethal Strike and the Concentration. It's even what makes this game work in Hard Mode to begin with. I couldn't imagine beating any other Metroid game with just one Energy Tank and no Missile Expansions (even though Zero Mission encourages you to do so with its different unlockable endings). But here it can be quite a lot of fun.

It's still challenging, so it's not that the game is just really easy. You have to master the mechanics and know when to dodge and when to shoot. The enemies are all very versatile and it can be quite tough at times. Even so that playing Normal Mode partly can feel like Hard Mode, sometimes when you simply try to get to the next Navigation Room alive and you have lots of strong enemies in your way. Getting to the Speed Booster in Sector 2 would be a good example for this. Concentration only gives one Energy Tank at first (you can upgrade this later) and you can't find any pickups like health orbs, so you're basically stuck in Hard Mode for a while.

Groups of Zebesians can be quite troublesome, especially if they shoot those green grenades around. And the Griptians (those spiked armadillos) also gave me more trouble than they probably should. Hardest parts are of course the bosses, but here at least the game is very forgiving, because it lets you restart right at the beginning of the boss fights.

Best boss fight certainly is Ridley and he can take a while in Hard Mode, because he can easily kill you with a single hit. But despite this it never gets frustrating, it never stops being fun, so I keep going, until I finally beat him. It's like learning a dance, with the right move in every step of the fight. And it's super satisfying to finally best him.

The Metroid Queen on the other hand is a little bit more frustrating, because you can't dodge her ridiculous fire breath (that she probably stole from Ridley) with Sense Moves, despite Samus doing the exact thing in the sequence before the second phase. At least the game is even more forgiving here and puts you at the beginning of the 2nd phase, if you die. If you had to beat all the Metroids again and again, I probably would have lost motivation.

But beating the Metroid Queen in Hard Mode is certainly a nice finale for my tour through the classic Metroid series, before Samus Returns gets released in less than a week, where we will meet the Queen again.

Hard Mode doesn't have the Phantoon fight, but the whole epilogue part of the game is about backtracking and getting all the expansions that you might have missed on the Bottleship, where it would miss the point in Hard Mode... Still, it would have been interesting to phase this as well.

In general I enjoy traversing the Bottleship quite a lot, because it has such a nice atmosphere. It feels quite eerie at times. And while the music isn't all that melodic, it certainly creates a fitting ambience. Downside is that the whole level "design" is based on long tunnels, which gets boring fast.

Overall I would really like to experience another Metroid game in a similar 2,5D style on the Nintendo Switch. There are things to improve like the usage of the first person perspective, which in itself is done fluidly, but the way it was integrated and forced in the game for Missile usage and those weird pixel hunts wasn't very good. It should be mainly used for looking around and scanning things like in Metroid Prime. You can compare this to the motion controls in Skyward Sword. In itself they worked quite well, but what the game made of them with all the "slash in the right direction" puzzles and fights wasn't all that enjoyable and sometimes even frustrating... With a new game on the Switch they could put Missiles on a button and implement the first person view differently.

But for now let's see, how Samus Returns will fare next weekend! Maybe this will become my new Metroid game with the highest replay value.

Goodbye, Miiverse!

Today Nintendo announced via Miiverse (oh, the irony) that Miiverse will be shut down on November 8th this year for good. Until then you will be able to download your post history including screenshots and drawings.

Overall this doesn't affect me too much personally. While I like the idea of a "social network" for Nintendo gamers, I mostly have been using it to "quickly" upload screenshots for my blog with the occasional achievement post attached to it. At least on the Wii U you can still upload pictures via the browser, while the Nintendo Switch does provide a much more comfortable screenshot sharing functionality. So, on these systems I will still be able to do, what I did the most with this feature. Not on the Nintendo 3DS, however.

For most games this isn't really a loss either, because Miiverse has been a side feature for them or completely separate. There's one title, however, where this will have a greater impact by killing one of its best features: the Tingle Bottles in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD!

This was probably one of the few titles that did a really good job with the Miiverse integration. I love collecting the Tingle Bottles and I love sharing rare Pictographs. It was very well executed and even though it has lost some of its magic, when I replayed the game earlier this year, it was still an excellent addition to the game, which now won't be available any longer.

So, if you haven't played The Wind Waker HD yet, I can only advise you to do this, as long as Miiverse is still available.

Zelda on Smartphone: Thoughts & Ideas

This year in May there were rumors about an upcoming Smartphone Zelda game. And the more I thought about the possibility, the more I grew excited about it. Unlike my Nintendo 3DS, which I mostly play at home, I use my smartphone quite often on the go, where a real mobile Zelda experience seems quite appealing by now.

Looking at both Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, we can get some ideas of what Nintendo could and should do (differently) with a Smartphone Zelda title.

Controls and Playstyle

Unlike the smartphone titles that Nintendo has developed so far, Zelda would probably utilize a horizontal playstyle in landscape mode, where you hold your phone sideways with one hand and play with the index finger of the other hand. The classic Zelda topdown perspective is best suited for this. Imagine something like in the following mock-up:

The touch controls would be almost identical to the Nintendo DS Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Link follows your finger around the environment, where moving your finger along the border will scroll. You can interact with anything by tapping on it: tap an enemy to attack it, tap a treasure chest to open it or tap a sign to read it. Simple as that.

You can use items by tapping on the icon in the top right corner of the screen. Link will then stand still and the game lets you utilize the item via the touchscreen, e.g. aiming and shooting with a bow. The menu in the bottom right corner will let you switch items, view the map or your inventory. These icons may move into the opposite corner for lefties.

So, this isn't exactly new, but it has worked quite well on the Nintendo DS and can give us a proper Zelda experience on the phone. There's no need to alter or simplify the core gameplay of Zelda to make it work on a smartphone, unlike what they did with Super Mario and Fire Emblem. It even could work with a vertical layout, if that's preferred.

Anthology Game

While the core gameplay would be classic topdown Zelda empowered by familiar touch controls, this shouldn't be just one classic Zelda game, where you make one playthrough and be done with it. Of course Nintendo could release a classic Zelda title in the size of Link's Awakening or A Link Between Worlds on smart devices, where you pay once, beat the game and that's it. However, this ultimately wouldn't be very satisfying on the long run. In times of DLC it's nice to get some new content on a more regular basis. It would even fit the free-to-play concepts better, which Nintendo is trying to use on smartphones.

How would this look like? There's one central Zelda title available on mobile devices, which they could call something like The Legend of Zelda: Tales from Hyrule or The Legend of Zelda: Ever Adventures or whatever. This hub game then gives access to smaller, individual Zelda episodes, where a new one gets released every few months.

One episode would basically be a small Zelda game with a normal overworld, a small story, about four dungeons and a few items. In each episode Link could be send to a different kingdom / country to help, similar to how it's done in the Oracle games. In fact this would become what Capcom originally had envisioned on the GameBoy Color, where they wanted to release six individual Zelda games one after another with a couple months between them.

Each episode could become completely different in tone, like one game that takes entirely place in some dark and scary country, where you have to defeat its evil lord. Items would also be different from game to game, so in one game you might get the Hookshot, while the other offers you the Boomerang instead. It's all about the variety and always having something to look forward to in the near future. Maybe there is even a bigger story that looms over all the games and that gets uncovered, if you play it all.

You would get the first "game" for free and if you want to play any of the future episodes, you will have to purchase them. Some progress would be shared between the games, e.g. certain items that you can use everywhere or a global Rupee balance. This could be used to unlock things that you normally wouldn't be able to access.

Alternatively the game could feature more simple levels similar to Four Swords Adventures or Tri Force Heroes as its episodes, but with the main difference that those levels are focused on singleplayer.

Multiplayer and Rewards

The nature of such a title would even allow for multiplayer-centric episodes that support certain player counts, though they should probably keep it dynamic between one and four players to avoid the inconveniences that Tri Force Heroes had. However, whether Nintendo would want to support real-time multiplayer on a Smartphone title, is questionable at this point.

One thing they probably could keep from Tri Force Heroes, though, are the outfits, because they would make an excellent reward that gets shared over all the games, both singleplayer and multiplayer. So, while Link might lose everything else on his journeys, he will always bring his wardrobe, where you can get the typical benefits. Maybe the outfits are even split up like in Breath of the Wild, where you could chose different headpieces and maybe even boots (probably not the latter, though).

My Nintendo then could be used to unlock special outfits or to get treasures and Rupees for buying outfits, if you're too impatient to actually collect enough in the game.

With a multiplayer in place, there also should be an arena mode for battling other players. Similar to the singleplayer episodes, there could be new levels released from time to time in both the coop multiplayer and the arena.

Conclusion

This might seem like a lot at first, but the idea really is to give the Zelda fans something more byte-sized in quick succession, instead of waiting for a new game for years. We already got a taste of that with all the DLC for both Hyrule Warriors and Breath of the Wild, but the 2D Zelda style should make it a lot easier for Nintendo to continuously produce new content and keep the Zelda fans out there excited.

Metroid Fusion Revisited

Another month, another Metroid.

To prepare for Samus' Return on the Nintendo 3DS, I decided to play through the major 2D Metroid games on the Wii U Virtual Console again. After Zero Mission in June and Super Metroid in July, it was now the turn of Metroid Fusion, the last one on my list. (I've skipped the first Metroid game, because I don't like it that much and it's not as fleshed out as the others.)

And out of the three, I probably enjoyed replaying Metroid Fusion the most! It's been many years that I've played through the game and I remembered it to be much harder, but playing through Hard Mode in Zero Mission probably prepared me on a level, where the game gave me little trouble. The European and North American versions of the game also don't have a Hard Mode or a Gallery, so it's already much easier to complete than Zero Mission. Similar to Super Metroid, I only went for one 100% run here.

The bosses can be still quite tough, though... But I like, how they are done in this game. They are usually the main goals, but not in some artificial way, where defeating the bosses destroys some statue or gives you some key item. Here they are direct targets, because they are either causing trouble on the BSL station or they provide you with a necessary power-up or both.

The X-Cores at the end of each boss fight could be annoying, but they really made me master all the boss fights in the game. There are no close calls allowed here, because you still have to face the X-Core at the end, which can give you quite some trouble, especially early on. But of course you can master this part of the boss fights as well.

Overall, I enjoy, how this game plays quite a lot, probably the best out of the 2D Metroids. The controls are spot on and collecting the X has a nice vibe to it, while the power-ups all really feel powerful, especially all the beam upgrades.

I also like very much, how the Missiles are upgraded to Super Missiles, because this streamlines everything much more. In both Super Metroid and Zero Mission you would have to switch between missile types, while Super Missiles were the real deal. You want to use Super Missiles in boss fights, because normal missiles are too weak. And often you are grinding for Super Missiles during boss fights... Metroid Fusion bypasses all this nonsense by simply turning them into an upgrade.


Of course the big downside of this game is the high linearity, always sending you from A to B, even closing doors right behind you.

At the end this shocked me a little, because I was missing a few items before the final boss. I then went back to a Restore Point to get them. One was a Power Bomb near the "Ridley Freezer" on the Main Deck and to get back there I had to go all the way over Level 2 and the Reactor Core. I also missed an Energy Tank on the Main Deck, right above the first boss, but luckily you could still get there via Screw Attack.

But I still ended up with only 98%, because I thought that 70 Power Bombs is the maximum (74 really is a weird number for one), so I was missing two of them in Level 5. Anyway, that's when I learned that you can freely explore the entire station after you've beaten the final boss. It even shows on the map, where you're still missing items and how many there are, similar to a New Game+ in Zero Mission. I didn't know that! I always thought that you have to be very careful not to miss anything, before you go to the final boss...

In a way this is similar to Other M, just without the added Phantoon fight. And both games certainly share many similarities, where Other M copied many of the concepts. I also think that Other M plays and feels very nice, but suffered mostly from the high linearity. But Metroid Fusion certainly has the better story of the two, leaving only a sequel to be desired...

See you next mission...?

Hyrule Warriors Legends: My Fairy Still Incomplete

I'm on vacation right now and brought my Nintendo 3DS with me, where last week at a Zelda fan meeting I was able to get the "Circle of Friends" Medal in Hyrule Warriors - Legends. This brought me back into the game for now, where other than completing Legend Mode on "Hero" difficulty I mostly just have grinding left to do.

Part of that is the new "My Fairy" feature, where I wanted to get at least one fairy with all skills unlocked. My motivation is quite low, however, and to a certain degree that's because Nintendo / Koei Tecmo never bothered with fully offering everything there is. Or does anyone outside of Japan actually have the following costume...?

No? Me neither. And that's bugging me, because I would really like to use it on my developed fire fairy, since most fire outfits don't look as nice.

Together with Link's Classic Tunic, there were four sets of My Fairy Clothing only available as rewards in special offers, e.g. as a preorder bonus. This was over a year ago and today Nintendo could offer these as a reward on My Nintendo. There are hardly any worthwhile rewards available anyway and these gifts were originally received as download codes, so it would work pretty well.

Other than that Koei Tecmo started adding new fairy designs, including the following beauty:

They only did so for the elements Light, Darkness and Water. But they never bothered with adding new fairies for the elements Fire and Lightning... Those could have been retroactively placed on any Adventure Map, but we never saw any more updates. And at this point it's doubtful that Koei Tecmo would provide another update for the game. They are busy with Fire Emblem Warriors right now and probably are going to work on Hyrule Warriors 2 afterwards.

But in the very least Nintendo should offer the missing clothing via My Nintendo.

Breath of the Wild: Update 1.3.1 Released

Nintendo released an update for Breath of the Wild today, which does fix the Medal of Honor Glitch caused by the first DLC. According to this, they also fixed a "world reset glitch" that was possibly thanks to the Trial of the Sword.

Additionally, the News channel of the Nintendo Switch will provide "Tips from the Wild" for the game, where you can receive items, if you launch the game from the channel. This is starting tomorrow, August 9th.

It's nice to see that Nintendo fixed the Kilton bug in Master Mode already, instead of waiting for the next big DLC update, but I'm afraid they only did this, because they wanted to get this news channel feature out now. I'm a little bit worried that this feature will include exclusive items, because I don't have a Switch yet, but I think it will probably just give you food items or certain weapons in the game, which you can obtain otherwise.

They didn't fix the issue with the Hyrule Compendium picture overwrite between Normal Mode and Master Mode and I somehow doubt that they will fix this, because this is probably intentional to save memory... In the very least they fixed the glitch, which was holding me back from starting Master Mode.