Fantastic classic title that reduces even the most hardcore gamers to tears!
The game opens up to an alien world in which the protagonist, Samus Aran, is surrounded by unique creatures, armed with what can only be described as a pea-shooter; Samus must embark on an epic quest to travel through the environment she's found herself in. After collecting the first power up, opening up more areas and incidentally the path to the next power up players begin to realise the game has a very linear premise, which is to jump from platform to platform, shoot enemies and collect certain abilities to enter the cycle once again however gamers of a generation that grew up a Nintendo console will feel right at home.
The environments of Metroid are one of great simplicity, re-using textures and simply re-colouring them to show new areas is a very cheap trick done by developers, but one Metroid gets away with because each change in colour has a significance; when Samus first encounters a door it's textured with a bright blue colour, signifying it can be opened with the starter weapon, however doors become red, green and yellow to show which weapon is necessary to open which door. The same goes for the enemies, certain enemies can only be defeated by certain weapons, the colour showing how to kill what. This very simple idea is a very easy way of knowing how Samus can progress through the world and how to overcome challenges without the annoyance of a prompt box coming up and interrupting the immersion of the environment you're in while also adding a certain difficulty factor to the game play.
The sound that is used in the world of Metroid is particular immersive, the starting point has very environmental, fast paced music which fits the sense of adventure very well, collectables flash on screen and play a loud beep over the background clip to become more obvious to the player and when enemies are shot certain sounds play whether or not the attack is hurting the opponent or not. What's particularly interesting is when Samus enters a seemingly empty room with nothing but a statue, at this point the usually fast and upbeat music has stopped. The door then greys out, meaning using this door is no longer possible, leaving Samus to only approach the statue which suddenly springs to life and triggers new battle music, creating a certain fear and desperation as you fight the statue. As fantastic as they are however, scenes become stale when they happen again and again, which is a problem Metroid has, it's rather repetitive.
Although Metroid is a game that is a lot of fun to play and certainly keeps the player involved in the world through its use of colour and simplicity, it becomes a bit long winded in the sense that no matter how far you get through the game, it's difficult to become involved with the situation Samus has found herself in; with little story and unvaried design, most would put the controller down after the first annoyance of being killed by the sheer lack of health that the player begins the game with and the persistent enemies that seem impossible to get past at that stage. Anyone willing to stick out the hardships and make it into the next area, the same problem would return with faster enemies and on occasion an environment which will drain health from Samus.
Sometimes the basic narrative of collect this, jump there and shoot generic enemy A and B is broken by the inclusion of a boss battle which will force the player to think on their feet as they have to fight a larger, more unique enemy. Ordinarily, when Samus enters a new area using a previously collected power, a new type of enemy would appear which would perhaps have different ways of attacking Samus, the boss at the end of this area, which holds the power up the player needs to enter the area after that, would be a larger version of these new enemies, and would have some particular way of defeating it, which could be using weapons collected in other areas or using its own attacks as platforms to shoot the enemy from a different perspective.
Metroid is a very frustrating game, with a simplistic design and immersive sound however, it's well worth the toils the player is put through, and this original Intellectual Property is a fantastic product which any gamer would be proud to be able to say they have beaten.