Board 8 > Super Metroid-- where am I going?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is there any way to zoom out the map to check other areas or can I only check areas I'm in?

Not really sure which area I should be looking in. I have the following items:

Varia suit
Gravity suit
Charge beam
Ice beam
Wave beam
Spazer
Morph ball
Bomb
Spring ball
Hi jump boots
Speed booster
Grapple beam

My best guess would be Maridia since there were parts I couldn't access, but not sure.

(Also, fuck quicksand)
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Maridia would be the most productive place for you to be, yes.

Yes maridia.

That is where you get your next upgrade that will take you into the next area.

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Ok, there's no way I would've figured out to powerbomb the glass tube without looking it up.

Also, again, fuck quicksand.
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y cant metroid crawl
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You dont have to bomb the glass to get where you need to go. It is just a shortcut to that part of Maridia though.

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The answer is always power bomb the glass
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VintageGin posted...

Ok, there's no way I would've figured out to powerbomb the glass tube without looking it up.

The internet tells me there's an already broken tube elsewhere as a hint. I don't remember such but it sounds right.

Also one of the demos in the game shows you this. As well as crystal flash.

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Leafeon13N posted...

VintageGin posted...

Ok, there's no way I would've figured out to powerbomb the glass tube without looking it up.

The internet tells me there's an already broken tube elsewhere as a hint. I don't remember such but it sounds right.

There is, but I didn't recognize it as a destroyed tube until after I used a power bomb on the intact one.
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VintageGin posted...

Leafeon13N posted...

VintageGin posted...

Ok, there's no way I would've figured out to powerbomb the glass tube without looking it up.

The internet tells me there's an already broken tube elsewhere as a hint. I don't remember such but it sounds right.

There is, but I didn't recognize it as a destroyed tube until after I used a power bomb on the intact one.

sounds like a you problem tbh
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People try to justify the glass tube power bomb but it's clearly the worst piece of level design in the entire series. They've never done anything else even close to that again.
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foolm0r0n posted...

clearly the worst piece of level design in the entire series

This needs its own thread....perhaps thread series.

Pretty sure it wouldn't even win a vote for worst level design in Super Metroid!

Animal pit mightttt be worse but at least that's optional
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I'm still bitter because a few years back I posted a Super Metroid first playthrough topic here, and someone thought they weren't posting spoilers by randomly saying "just remember power bombs can break glass" in the topic before I'd even started (or maybe like within the first couple hours of gameplay).

How is it poor design? Big powerful explosion device destroys obviously breakable barrier.

Sounds like you're just bitter you got stuck...

turbopuns3 posted...

someone thought they weren't posting spoilers by randomly saying "just remember power bombs can break glass"

turbopuns3 posted...

Big powerful explosion device destroys obviously breakable barrier

uh huh

If you were ever gonna design a metroid style game I would gladly explain it to you, but you already seem to get it
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foolm0r0n posted...

If you were ever gonna design a metroid style game I would gladly explain it to you, but you already seem to get it

....

......

O...kaaaay

*thumbs up*

You seem to be saying that, because it got spoiled for me ahead of time, I can't have a valid opinion on it?

This take from you only seems to reinforce my suggestion that you only dislike it because it tripped you up.

I'd like to hear you articulate your reasoning if you are willing...

Explain to me how "glass is breakable" is a spoiler and then I'll explain my reasoning
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foolm0r0n posted...

Explain to me how "glass is breakable" is a spoiler and then I'll explain my reasoning

Correction:

Not "glass is breakable"

Specifically: "power bombs break glass"

Anyway, it's a spoiler because the first time you enter that room (the only room in the game in which you are completely surrounded by glass, I think?) It's not supposed to strike you as anything more than a hallway. Later once you're contemplating where to go is when you eventually think of it.

Yeah you get my reasoning then
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imagine being upset about spoilers for an almost 20 year old game

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Aecioo posted...

imagine being upset about spoilers for an almost 20 year old game

uhhh
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Aecioo posted...

imagine being upset about spoilers for an almost 20 year old game

he's describing a time when someone posted the spoiler in his playthrough topic when they knew he had just started

I wasn't really that upset, it was just dumb

Also that bickering from me last night was dumb. At least I'm keeping things more tame lately

turbopuns3 posted...

I wasn't really that upset, it was just dumb

Also that bickering from me last night was dumb. At least I'm keeping things more tame lately

Yeah I was drunk posting, sorry from me too!

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I'm upset
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Your take is essentially that it is poor design because it's not, like, blatantly color coded as to be obvious. Idk man! I like having to think outside the box sometimes.

Can we agree that the x-ray visor thing is designed poorly? Using it feels like a chore.

foolm0r0n posted...

People try to justify the glass tube power bomb but it's clearly the worst piece of level design in the entire series. They've never done anything else even close to that again.

Didn't they bring back the power bomb tube in Metroid Zero Mission?
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Metroid Prime has one of those, even.
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turbopuns3 posted...

Can we agree that the x-ray visor thing is designed poorly? Using it feels like a chore.

There's a few areas it's used well and a few areas that are just kind of arbitrary.

I mean it's just mechanically clunky and slow

certainly the scan visor in metroid prime was a huge improvement. the scan visor is actually remarkable for how intuitive and unintrusive it felt

people use the xray visor?

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Lucavi000 posted...

people use the xray visor?

no because it sucks ;)

I used the x-ray visor to conserve power bombs because otherwise I would have just done that all the time to find hidden passages

Which is ironically what prevented me from progressing

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Lolo_Guru posted...

Didn't they bring back the power bomb tube in Metroid Zero Mission?

Yeah as a gimmicky nod back to the original tube, and this time it was only hiding another power bomb upgrade
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Glass tube was awesome
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10:24 completion time
85% items

See you next mission

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There could have been a crack in the glass.

I agree that makes things obvious in its own way, but then you could have maybe given more hints. It's very "gamer" to assume you can't break it when you never really used pure intuition in the game before.

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I think i just eventually decided it was an oddly shaped room in an odd spot.

I mean there was a broken glass tube somewhere nearby right, and the top and bottom areas scroll off the screen? That really was hint enough for 9 year old Lopen. Not sure why it needed to be more obvious

Think this is a gaming convention gap. Like in the days of the SNES you had to intuit things more often than you do these days. These days it's all like GET TO THE CHECKPOINT and a giant blinking thing on a minimap and SNAKE, USE BOMBS WISELY.

Like I guess the slightly more obvious way to do it that doesn't ruin every bit of thinking would to be have the already broken one start heavily cracked and unbroken, only breaking when Samus steps on it with the same effect it does after you powerbomb the solid one? *Shrug* It seems a bit excessive though.
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Lopen posted...

I mean there was a broken glass tube somewhere nearby right, and the top and bottom areas scroll off the screen? That really was hint enough for 9 year old Lopen. Not sure why it needed to be more obvious

Think this is a gaming convention gap. Like in the days of the SNES you had to intuit things more often than you do these days. These days it's all like GET TO THE CHECKPOINT and a giant blinking thing on a minimap and SNAKE, USE BOMBS WISELY.

Like I guess the slightly more obvious way to do it that doesn't ruin every bit of thinking would to be have the already broken one start heavily cracked and unbroken, only breaking when Samus steps on it with the same effect it does after you powerbomb the solid one? *Shrug* It seems a bit excessive though.

I mean, there were two reasons it seemed non-obvious.

1. Like I mentioned, the broken tube doesn't really look like a broken tube. I just thought it was a weird plant thing because it was green. I spent a lot of time investigating things I thought were weird in Maridia that turned out to be just weird with no real purpose.

2. The fact that it only reacts to the power bomb. What kind of glass are we working with here? A super missile isn't enough?

Also the fact that it doesn't react to the x-ray visor, which shows breakable blocks. You could argue that because it's glass, there wouldn't be anything to see, but the game's internal logic with the x-ray visor is more about showing what breaks a given item rather than looking inside something.

On a related note, Portal did breaking a glass tube for a puzzle in a much more intuitive way.

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VintageGin posted...

2. The fact that it only reacts to the power bomb. What kind of glass are we working with here? A super missile isn't enough?

This never crossed the mind of the pro game designers ITT even once. But nah it's clearly intuitive.

There's something else about the intuition that is fundamentally wrong.
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foolm0r0n posted...

This never crossed the mind of the pro game designers ITT even once. But nah it's clearly intuitive.

I don't think anyone called it clearly intuitive.

Our point isn't that we're da best and ur dum

Our point is just because something isn't immediately clear doesn't make it the worst design of anything in the entire franchise.

Now that said, considering for a second a hypothetical scenario where we're already at the point of thinking "hmm I wonder if this glass is breakable?"....Now in that case, yes I do think it's on the player if you try a missile...nothing, try a super missile...nothing, and then give up. "Trying everything" in a game when you think you should be able to interact with something is a pretty basic idea. Criticizing it based specifically on the point that "This glass is scientifically inconsistent because super missiles don't blow it up" is a pretty poor point, I would say.

IIRC doesn't the game force you to break some glass upon getting the power bomb?

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pjbasis posted...

IIRC doesn't the game force you to break some glass upon getting the power bomb?

Does it? I don't remember that

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