Review For: Metroid :: Zero Mission (GBA) Date Written: March 5, 2004 Written By: Webmaster Christopher Beley Rating:

Storyline

When you turn on the game, you get a little “eye-catcher” which tells you that your mission is to exterminate all metroid organisms on planet Zebes and defeat the mechanical life form, mother brain.

 Before I end this section, I should note that this is a sequel to the old game, and from what I have heard, in the last game you stopped at defeating mother brain. 

I have mixed feelings about Metroid :: Zero Mission. One side of me is saying that this game is extremely boring, while the other side of me is saying this game is kind of fun. This is one of those games where usually just the fans are going to like it, and everyone else would rather spend their money on something else… 

Game Play

Enter a room, shoot weird looking creatures, go through door, enter a room, shoot weird looking creatures, go through door…oh, sorry. Anyways, no one will have trouble learning this game. Basically you only need to know 4 things: press A to jump, B to fire, press R then B to shoot missiles, and press down to curl up into a ball. Usually simple is good, however, in this case it isn’t. 

 In this game you do almost no thinking at all, because all you have to do is go through a room, shoot creatures, and then go through another door. To make it worse, there are rooms that you simply just walk through with no weird creatures or anything. What is the point of that?! Don’t be too disappointed however, because every hour or so you will run into a boss that may require about 10% extra thinking to defeat.  

 Another thing is that the game isn’t a game where you can walk all over the place. By this I mean that you can only go forward, or backwards. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but with a little extra effort the developers could have made the backgrounds better… 

The Graphics

 This is one of the major aspects in the game, which I have mixed feelings about. Because of this I will split this section into 3 parts instead of having it all be in one big paragraph like my other reviews…

 The backgrounds are OK, but they are definitely not up to the standards they could be. Most of the backgrounds tend to look similar to the graphics of games from the NES, additionally, the design of the game makes me keep thinking about the old Metroid game I use to play on the NES (the one I didn’t like…).

 The character designs range from good to bad. First of all, the design of the character you play does not look that great. There is almost no detail in your suit and for some reason the suit looks like stone. And, unless it’s just me, most suits tend to be made out of metal. As for the monster character designs, some look good and some look bad. Actually, most look bad, however there is one character that is very detailed and looks very nice…

 Finally, the cut scenes, and for a GBA game, this game has a lot of them. Now, you are probably expecting me to start complaing about the graphics of the cut scenes, but there you are wrong! The cut scenes are very good in my opinion, and are kind of like mini-cartoons. So this game scores my approval in it’s cut scenes.  

The Sound

Let me put it like this; some of the music is good…and some is not. Personally, none of the music in this game is something I would actually want to listen to for a long period of time, but, the music does suit the game well, so I will not say any more about the music.

 As for the sound effects…they aren’t that great. Explosions seem “weak” and a lot of the sounds seem unrealistic. Not much more to say here, other than that the sound effects are bad. 

And on to the Good Stuff…

 Well, this game has its good points. First of all, the game will probably have some replay value for some people, because it has different levels of difficultness to choose from. At first you can choose between “Easy” and “Normal”, however, after beating the game, new levels of difficulty will be unlocked. Next, I have heard that there is a lot of bonus material in this game. One of the things is the Gallery. Pictures will be added to this whenever you finish a game, depending on different ending percentages and completion time. There are more things, but you will just have to win the game and find out;-) 

This game is very hard for me to recommend or not recommend, because I know some people will love this game, and some people will hate it. Here is my rule of thumb…if you are into the RPG games and like things with strategy this game is probably not for you, however, if you don’t like to think a lot in games, and just like to blast things away, there is a good chance you will like this game. Also, if you are a fan of Metroid, this game is absolutely for you;-) However, I would not buy this game for myself.