AM2R Review

Where do we start with this one… It’s Another Metroid 2 Remake, literally. But I wasn’t really aware that there were others out there in the world anyway. Either way, this is a “remake” of AM2R. But is it? Let’s get into that and see.

The story is the same as the original Metroid II. Samus is going to SR388, home of the Metroids, to make sure there’s no more Metroids. It’s great. Not the story, really. It’s not very great. But what is great is that there’s no big text blocks like in other Metroid games. There’s no weird little static cut scenes… There’s no words in the game at all other than item names and Press Start To Save.

This game kind of sticks with that. So points there.

Gameplay is where this, for me, falls off the rails. Metroid II was a very basic game. It was for the Game Boy, it wasn’t fancy. Samus could duck, that was new. Morph Ball is here, high jump boots, ice beam, all the usual stuff with the addition of a couple of other things like the Space Jump. AM2R just pulls whatever from wherever else in the series and crams it in here if it makes sense or not. Super Missiles are in here. The Speed Booster is in here. I think even Power Bombs are in here. They don’t belong here.

Them being here means there must be a reason for them being here. And there is. And all of those things… none of them are in Metroid II. The controls are fine, things work fine, all the Metroids to be hunted are there, its fine. But all the other stuff is less fine. Playing the game, to me, eventually started to feel like someone wanted to make their own game but they had to put an IP on it to get it attention. It really didn’t FEEL like Metroid after a point.

Graphics are great. The game looks really good. The sprites, pulled from other games and tweeked, are great. Environments are pretty, enemies are well detailed, bosses look great. No problems with the graphics at all.

The music is also quite good. It’s mostly remixes of themes from other games and for the most part they work out just fine.

It really is a shame that everything works so well here… except the game play experience. And that experience not because because of poor controls or anything like that, but because it just doesn’t FEEL right. And, unfortunately, game feel is a big deal for me. It has to feel good to play. It has to feel right to play. That’s not saying a game should be easy or not offer any challenge, but it has to feel right. And this just doesn’t.