I had that problem until recently. What worked -- unsurprisingly -- was just to keep trying until I figured out the timing. I still don't find it easy; I have about a 1-in-4 success rate with gates, and less when there's an overhang in front. Much like ghetto jumping, you pretty much just hump the wall until you get it right. Super missiles work better than normal ones, at least for me.
This will be an issue in my Gravy speedrun, btw. I can save a lot of time by using the gate glitch twice in quick succession, but the first gate has an overhang (it's the wave gate right after the long speedball room), so it's a pain. I have to decide how many attempts I'll allow myself before restarting the segment. Making matters worse, the second gate is green and I have to pass through it again on the way back, so I don't get many tries.
On a related note:
I took this screencap because I couldn't get through and was planning to ask if it was possible. Shortly thereafter, I did get through. (For those who haven't played with the Justin Bailey patch, those are Varia colours, so it's possible without Gravity.) It doesn't lead to any earthshaking sequence breaks, though.
So I finally bit the bullet and found this game to see what everyone's been talking about for ages now. Just finished it late last night:
10:09 Time, 50.6% Items (Yes, you see that second number right.)
Unfortunately for me, towards the end it started becoming more of a chore than being fun, because there were a lot of design choices that didn't sit well with me throughout the entire game. (The most notorious of these is the wall jump mechanics - No matter how well I thought I had finally gotten the correct pattern, it would take me AGES to climb any of these areas.) But it wasn't all bad, and there are certainly places that I thought were good, but could've been handled better than they were. So here's my quick rundown of the notes I was taking as I played:
Atmosphere – * Outstanding visual quality to almost every room, great music selection when in practically every area of game
The Bosses – * Bosses that are normally easy to defeat (Kraid, Botwoon, etc.) offer new difficulty with their fights * Made most bosses fun to fight again
Path to Gravity Suit – * Didn't feel as constricted as expected when underwater * Ninja Pirates were interesting touch in underwater area * LOST CAVERNS (AKA unused Wrecked Ship! Wondered what had happened to it) * I actually like an underwater area! - Just to clarify, underwater segments are usually my bane in video games, and my least favorite areas in whatever game they appear in. But I thoroughly enjoyed the path in Crateria on the way to the Lost Caverns, Phantoon, and the Gravity Suit.
Wall Jumping – * Relied on this WAY too much for how difficult it can be to pull off * Easily my biggest complaint with game as a whole
Challenge from Enemies – * Especially early on, things do A LOT of damage to you (Like in Fusion, now that I think about it) * Re-Spawning enemies that didn't make sense (Side-Hoppers in Brinstar) - Some of these caught me by surprise the first few times they happened, but as I got farther into the game I expected things like this to happen * Samus comes out of doors often right in an enemy's face with no way to avoid taking damage * Enemies like to jump out of nowhere to kick you when you're focused on platforming elements, causing you to either be knocked off a high ledge or distracted enough so that when you're setting up again, the enemy can swoop back at you for another shot
Conservation – * Sitting next to tubes to recharge gets old QUICK * Having so little ammo at times can screw over player * EXAMPLE - The Re-Spawning Eight Super Missile Block Vertical Column in Lower Norfair hit me hard - had to backtrack OUT of Norfair completely since I only had a total of SEVEN Supers in my inventory at the time. * Purple doors eat ammo, little else due to how often they appear (Other than warnings for bosses, which is fine, they felt out of place)
Item Placement – * Some items hidden TOO well (High-Jump Boots) * Some puzzles outright ridiculous to solve (Missile in East Brinstar with spikes across from the 3rd Energy Tank room)
Forced Exploration – * Over-reliance on Locked Doors and Gates * Progression marred by dead stops in path WAY too often (The more natural blocks like the many power bomb debris segments worked better in my opinion) * Sometimes have to traverse LONG way around if you screw up in travels (Door locks behind you when you exit, one path from here to where you're going, random locked door that pops out of nowhere where you'd expect path to be going, etc.
Chozo Guardians – * No hints whatsoever on where to find them unless you stumble upon them * Too many rely on late game items to find - Breaks flow of game (Didn't feel like I could hunt for them throughout my progress) * Key-hunting mechanic heavily criticized in Prime series - In Echoes at least, you couldn't search for ANY of the nine required keys to get to the endgame until you were practically right on top of that segment of the game. NOT something that most players liked
Hell's Run – * Concept was good, execution was terrible * Too much reliance on perfect movement and memorizing what's coming (Luckily this is the only real area this happens, so it's not as bad as it could be in my mind) * No warning that you're going to have to run into a blazing hot area – Coming out of the elevator right into the heart of the fire may not have been smartest idea for that segment, but it does immediately tell you what you're up against, so I'm not sure either way what should've been done instead
Tourian – * Again, concept was good, execution was terrible * Definitely feared the Metroids as you should, so it gets points there * EXCESSIVE USE! (Throw as many enemies as possible at Samus!) - When I already had three or so of them on me, and two more pop out of the woodwork to try and eat me, that's simply overkill for how hard it is to get them off in the first place * No room to breathe between fights! - It seemed like every time I'd finally finish them off, two more would come swooping down on me before I could get my bearings. And then when they were dead, because they're infinitely spawning out of the tubes, here comes more!
Map Layout – * Hard to tell where everything leads to when looking at on map screen * Some segments (East Norfair) too isolated from rest of world * The REAL entrance into Lower Norfair (Ridley's Lair) felt TOO hidden * Can take AGES to get from one area to another (Maps are almost TOO large) * Not always able to tell where to go next (Not clear enough at times)
Physics – * Didn't feel like I had enough control with Samus until having late game items * Even then, felt like Samus moved TOO fast at times once I had all of the abilities in hand
Escape Sequence – * 25 Minutes is EXCESSIVE! * Until final 5 minutes of run when you get to upper levels of Crateria, it mostly felt tedious to me with all of the morph ball puzzles in Tourian * Nice touches like rising lava and damage to surface - Those small elements make that final push to the ship more threatening and finally set in stone that you'd better be off Zebes once the timer ends, so again, this gets the sequence some points
Now, I do have to note that from a technical perspective, what you and your team did with the Super Metroid engine was outstanding! I'd never be able to do half of the things you guys did to the game, and I know how much work that must have taken to get them all working correctly. So great job there.
But overall, there are just too many design choices that bug me, or in some cases downright frustrate me to no end, for me to want to venture back into this planet Zebes again. Plus, the borderline brutality of the game's difficulty is not exactly what I look for in games like others do, so that certainly doesn't help the game in my case. In all honesty, part of my problem with finding things may simply have been that the only upgrade I missed was the X-Ray Scope, so perhaps if I had that with me I could've found more of the secrets easier than I did.
In the end, though, this just wasn't my kind of Metroid I guess. Still, I give you A LOT of credit for shaping the game like you were able to. (Actually, is the creator even still around these days to see any of this? I wouldn't know.)
I'm glad you stuck with the game to completion despite the gripes. The good news is that all of your gripes are things that will go away after several playthroughs. Your ammo will increase because you will find more items (50.6% is low), you will begin to remember where the enemies are, and wall-jumping will come as naturally as it does in the original. Hell's run gets easier the more times you do it, up until the point where you get it nearly every time. Tourian gets alot easier with practice when you begin to remember where the metroids are going to come out, where the best places to stand are, and how many you need to kill in order to unlock the next room. So, if you're interested in playing it again, and then maybe even again after that, your list of things you didn't like will decrease dramatically. I hope you do, because this game has alot more for you to discover. Again - Bravo on playing through to the end.
Well, there's definitely some truth to all of that, based on prior Metroid games. If I ever do end up playing the game again, it's probably going to be a long time from now though, because there's some things I'm probably not ready to face again just yet.
And yeah, I know that 50.6% is pretty low for a first time completion of a game. (Had what was it? 8 e-tanks and a reserve, 130ish missiles, 14 or so supers, and 8 or 9 power bombs at the end, so I know there's PLENTY of stuff I missed in there) I just got to the point where I didn't really want to explore anymore and rushed towards Tourian and the endgame. (Partially because I wanted to see those lightning-fast Metroids and the escape sequence I'd heard so much about.) But I didn't want to leave it half-finished and simply give up either, just in case there was something at the end that made all of my struggles worth the effort.
As far as Hell's Run goes, I think part of my initial problem with it was because the first time I got down there I had two e-tanks, which let me just get to that first recharge spot and shoot the enemy before I died. So I started off thinking that I had to be pixel perfect through the first two rooms in order to do it, which caused a lot of stress until I went looking online for a better solution. (And to see if I was simply missing something, which I found out pretty quick.)
I ended up looking at a map of the game online pretty often, but mostly to see which direction I needed to go in order to get where I wanted to be. (And to see if what I thought was a hidden path actually WAS a hidden path) Obviously with more experience I could theoretically get as good at this as I am with the original Super and know the paths to take and the obstacles in my way, but it will probably take a long time because of how big and complex the map is compared to normal.
But who knows: There's a chance, a slim one at this exact moment, that I could go back and enjoy this game more. It's worked for other games that didn't give me a great first impression. (Majora's Mask and Phantom Hourglass are two that come to mind.)
Recent talk about Redesign caused a yearning to play it again. 6:50 85.1%. Everytime I play through this game, I end up falling in love with it all over again. I sometimes call it 'MOAH', I'm sure you can figure out what that means if you think about it. I really do prefer the physics in this game over the original. Now when I play the original it's gonna feel really really floaty to me. I'm thinking that I will attempt to use no savestates on my next playthrough just to see where I'm at skill-wise. There are no parts of the game that require using savestates, so it's actually my patience that will be tested. Still, there's something about knowing that you can't use them which really affects your play and ultimately increases your skills. The grapple room in particular will be a total cunt. I need to just stop typing and go to bed, I'm so fucking wasted right now that I can hardly keep my eyes open. G'night!
Getting past the whole Power Bomb / Grapple sections in Norfair is the real toughie. After that, the whole game's difficulty evens out.
Yup. There are plenty of places to fall in maridia, but you land in quicksand. Norfair's lava is not as forgiving. I think Sigfried has said that he wishes he had put a save station closer to some of those rooms.
Yeah, I noticed that the save points are pretty spread out. Might be why I relied so much on save states, and because of the frustrating segments like wall jumps and such. (Granted, this is the first hack I've ever played of anything, so save state usage is pretty new to me.)
When I'm playing a new hack or one that is otherwise difficult, I set one of the buttons on my gamepad and use it to create a save state every time I go through a door.
That's more or less what I started doing later on, especially once I got to Lower Norfair and Tourian.
And in all honesty, I do wonder how much different my experience would've been if I wasn't stuck with using the keyboard, but up until this point I've had no reason whatsoever to invest in a controller for the PC, and one game isn't going to change that. Might've made wall jumping easier for me to do though, seeing as I can do it with a controller on the original Super pretty well.
And in all honesty, I do wonder how much different my experience would've been if I wasn't stuck with using the keyboard, but up until this point I've had no reason whatsoever to invest in a controller for the PC, and one game isn't going to change that. Might've made wall jumping easier for me to do though, seeing as I can do it with a controller on the original Super pretty well.
I cannot comprehend how anyone could actually enjoy playing a game like super metroid with a keyboard. My logitech gamepad only cost about $15-$20 USD. It's quite worth it to get one.
I enjoy emulation all the time, so not using a controller would be impossible. I've used one for so many years that just the idea of using an emu without a controller seems really weird.
I don't understand you fools. how come you need a controller? I only use a keyboard and to me it feels the most comfortable and natural. The game was built with only one being used. in a way I should have tested with a controller since wall jumps are very difficult to do with a controller than a keyboard.
I wouldn't say I need a controller. It's just my preferred control method. Also, as far as difficult wall-jumps go, I'd only say that single wall-jumping was tough, but the normal ones are fine.
I don't understand you fools. how come you need a controller? I only use a keyboard and to me it feels the most comfortable and natural. The game was built with only one being used. in a way I should have tested with a controller since wall jumps are very difficult to do with a controller than a keyboard.
LOL it's funny you should say that. I have tried many times to do a wall jump using the keyboard and cant do it even ONCE. With a controller, I can't even NOT do one successfully. Keyboards are for typing, imo.
Can someone please point me to the best demo of IBJ in Redesign? I seem to have lost the ability and was never really good at it to begin with. I'd like to watch a tutorial vid or hear a description of how to do it.
1. Lay a bomb. 2. Lay a second bomb just before the first explodes. 3. Lay a third bomb after you've fallen about one tile from the peak of your first jump. 4. Lay another bomb at the peak of the next jump. 5. Repeat as necessary.