Super Metroid: Bye Bye Draygon and Ridley

Why hello there gamers! I sat down to take down this game once and for all. And wouldn't you know it, I took down two bosses in one sitting. This game has gotten a whole lot more interesting and I feel the end of it is near. Not to spoil any secrets, but I've already picked out my next game. *big evil grin*

So, without further ado, here are the tasks and challenges I faced today.

Well we left off having been brought back to Brinstar and me not knowing particularly where to go next.

 I took that door to the right there and soon discovered that my new suit had the ability to withstand most forms of lava. SO this made for plenty new discoveries and a lot of missile and health tank upgrades. Some new passages brought me to this interesting thing I wanted to show you guys.

 It's a giant turtle. Although I couldn't do any damage to it, once I shot at its babies, it would go into his shell and start flying around trying to knock me on my armored ass! I jumped on top of it and discovered it then would go straight up and show me secrets. Then I made my way through the other new areas....

 I thought this was a pretty cool pose. Using the grappling hook on walls.

I mosied along and it wasn't very long before I made my way through the weird underwater/sand levels and found myself in a new boss room. This guy is Draygon, and he was easy once I figured him out. I shot at his stomach, and he took lots of damage, but wouldn't die. Then I had the bright idea of shooting out the cannons on the wall, letting him catch me, then electrocuting him! He flew pretty close to the electric buzzing stuff where the cannons were and I used the grapple beam to kill him. I took a lot of damage in doing so, but he was instantly dead.

 He/She sank beneath the sand and its babies followed.

My reward? Space Jump!

The trick with Space Jump powerup is that I had to jump JUST after descending from a previous jump and I could theoretically jump infinitely . I say theoretically because the timing was really rough unless I was in shallow-roofed tunnels, then it was easy. Soon I also got another upgrade to my weapon. A Plasma Cannon!

This just simply dealt more damage, so I could take on the space pirates when they became more powerful. So, with my Space Jump and Gravity Suit, I was able to dance my way through a lake of lava and get to the entrance to Ridley's lair. The iconic bad guy awaited my arrival.

But first, an upgrade! I fought a Golden Chozo for this sucka.

 The idea of this attack was I could do damage when jumping into things and baddies. it also opened up cave-away rooves. So I dropped into a dark room and something sinister was...

 ...waiting.

Then BOOM! Attack of Ridley. I emptied every missile I had at him and when I ran out of those I gave him nothin but charged shots, all the while trying to discern his dip and lunge patterns. He was hard, but easy to hit. Lots of damage was done on both side, but in the end...

Ridley was nothing more than a health and ammo dump. *spits on Pterodactyl corpse*

So now that I've defeated the bosses of all the worlds, I'ma head back to that creepy golden statue thing and see what happens now. Keep on gamin, gamers!

Mega Man X: Holy Boss-Battles Batman!

So I demolished the rest of the old bosses in this one level, and fought a new robo-beast; which ended up having me face 6 boss fights in one level! SIX. I was running low on all counts of powers and energy tanks as the level progressed. It also felt like the bosses were a little more difficult than the first time I fought them... not that I DIED a whole lot. The fights just felt harder.

The first boss door (which again was pretty much as the start of the level) was the Armored Armadillo. I knew I had to electrocute him with my lightning shot to get rid of his armor, and then continuously do so until he died.

Don't worry, I'm not invisible, I just got hit by his forehead shot.

After defeating Armadillo, I made my way through some baddies and got myself to full health; just in time for the next boss door (which was pretty much a single hallway away.)

And within this doorway was that bastard who can actually turn invisible: Sting Chameleon. He was just as annoying as I recall, the first time we fought. Only THIS time, I found his weakness!

THE BOOM!... erang.

So I made my way out of his chamber, down a little drop where there was some health behind some pipes. I used the boomerang to snag them up (that thing is all kinds of handy, ain't it?)

Onto the next boss! Here I had to face off with Spark Mandrill! I already knew his weakness, so I could use my wonderful Ice Shot to freeze him whenever he was getting to close for comfort. I did not leave the battle unscathed however, as each one of his flying punches would knock me off the wall if I tried to avoid them that way.

You know what killed the dinosaurs? The ICE AGE!

So that was 3 bosses down, so I was imagining I would be facing a new boss right away, but I was wrong! I dove down into some water and instantly knew what was coming.

Hmm... I wonder who I'm fighting next?

Oooo... Surprise, surprise.

Octo-whatever his face is was a bastard. I very much did not enjoy fighting him. Mainly because I couldn't figure out his weakness, and also I couldn't remember how I beat him last time. So I switched rapidly through my powers and buster shots, trying to avoid his missiles and keep away from his whirlpool thang.

Then I killed him with his own powers; just for the hell of it.

Then I leapt out of the water and found another boss door. When I entered I saw the conveyor belt and knew right away I was to be facing Flame Mammoth. Last time I didn't have his weakness, and I knew I did this time. As far as I could tell, it seemed the tornado power did more damage to him. I jumped away from his fireballs, and soot shot, and blasted him down as much as I could.

I finished him off at the same time as getting knocked into the air by his fat-ass weight coming down.

So I had finished them all off. All them old guys. And the level wasn't over? Who was I supposed to fight next?... Some rather large robot, T-Rex head thing? This guy was annoying as hell. He killed me a fair amount of times, to be honest. He only had two attacks really. His upper half and lower half would split and move seperately attempting to hit me. The other is if both halves come together and shoot a large electric orb out at you. I had to dash under that one. You can't hang up on the wall to avoid it... It will launch at you.

Also, in trying to jump through the gap of top and bottom, the top would often be too fast and crush down on me, causing a fair amount of pain. How I ended up winning was getting into a rhythm of his movements and blasts; I scrolled through my powers, charging fully as well as I could to do the most damage possible. And in the end, it was still a damn close call.

HUZZAH! I won! Whew... That was DAMN stressful.

But I finished him off, that I did. And was then sent to the boss screen again. This HAS to be the final boss now; Sigma. I'm also curious as to whether I'll get some answers of some plot? Maybe?... Maybe I'm hoping too much. I guess we'll see.

Catch ya later gamers.

Super Metroid: Upgrades and Non-Pirates

Sat down to play for quite a while today after a horrible day at work. Good news is I kicked a lot of butt on Super Metroid. To begin with I managed to immediately get stuck and after about 20 minutes of just goofing around and laying splatters of bombs everywhere until finally a hole in the floor opened up. As seen below.

So, long story short, this opened up limitless possibilities for me and I found many useful tools. Once I found the Power Bomb...

 I was able to open up an entirely new area of Norfair. Where I unlocked the full map and found many secret missile depots...

Down in those deeps I discovered a few upgrades to my weapon. The Spazer, which split my shots into three and dealing more damage...

...which was somewhat helpful when battling this big-n-ugly. Found out his name is...

 Crocomire.

He gave me a scare, had to pummel his mouth with missiles and super missiles until he backed up into the lava, Bowser-style. Also, he briefly attacked me through a spiky wall as a skeleton (also Bowser-like). But he just gave me loads of health.

After defeating big orange dude there, I FINALLY found the Grappling Beam. I was so relieved because now I was able to go anywhere in the game...

.... except in that thing's mouth... probably later.

 So then I made it back to the surface and could fully recharge my energy and my weapons in my ship, which rocked...

 ...then made my way due east to find a busted down ship....complete with space ghosts.

A note on my speculation of Space Pirates. During my googling to find out about Crocomire, I discovered that the little alien things that shoot lazers, sometimes fly, and crawl on walls (which I've been killing a lot of this whole time) are indeed the "Space Pirates"....kinda disappointed, but meh, I guess they can't all be the eye-patch wearing, rum drinking kind. *sigh*

Super Metroid: Die alien vermin and space golems!

So I logged about an hour and a half on Metroid today. Most of it was spent going from my save point to the golem that's guarding the morph-ball bombs, dying, then doing it again. Finally, after I decided to stop sucking at fighting this mini-boss and use some real strategy I beat him. Then I got killed by wall-crawlies only a few rooms away, having to start from the save point all over again.

Now, about save points. I have played many games with this feature and most of them strategically place them so when you finish something really hard, you save, and you never have to face that horror ever again. Unfortunately, in Metroid, this was not the idea. The save points are more like off-the-beaten-path rooms that you have to go well out of your way to get to, so obviously you're thinking to yourself...well I have two full energy tanks, why bother saving. Oh wait, the giant plant eyeball boss is in your way!

PS: Here's my WTF of the day.

I don't know what this is about yet, but I have a feeling I'll figure it out later. As of now, it seems a bit early in the game for such huge mysteries. I might just be dumb, but I personally was weirded out by this monstrosity's appearance. 

Moving along. I did defeat the giant plant eyeball thing and I felt pretty good about myself up until I discovered the super missile and promptly got killed by those little egg sacks that spit baby egg sacks. Sending back to the save point quite a ways before the eyeball thing, but (thankfully) after the killer golem. So I saved and shut the game off, and shaking off my rust before getting back into it.

Oh, and another thing. I've discovered (due to all my deaths) that Super Metroid has got to be the only game in history to have a slightly positive twist on player death...

Yes...Samus's armor explodes and you get a brief glimpse of her in her bit-sized skivvies. I personally found this weird. I pulled the image off of this guy's blog, btw. If you want more extensive information on Metroid and it's history I suggest checking it out:

http://metroidgameculture.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Anyways. Until next time, I'll be hoping for space pirates and killing stupid ceiling jumpers.