Hello and welcome to ToriJ Reviews. This week we'll be looking at Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance. Metroid Fusion is the fourth installment in the Metroid franchise starring bounty hunter Samus Aran. Samus made her debut in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System and naturally due to the lack of female protagonists at the time we all thought she was a man. Or a robot. Or a man robot... Moving on.

We start off with an opening title sequence of Samus crashing into an asteroid belt.,“Oh them women drivers.” Before we get our title screen. In classic Nintendo fashion you have three files available allowing you to have three separate games going on at once. After selecting a file to record your game on we're given a cut scene that unveils more information leading up to the dramatic crash shown earlier.

During a mission on the planet surface of SR388 Samus is attacked by an unidentified organism later identified as a X Parasite. How very original. She was unknowingly infected by the creature causing her to lose consciousness and crash her ship on the way back to the station. She was picked up by the Galactic Federation who discovered the X Parasite had infected her central nervous system. Just when things seemed to be all over for our hero scientists have discovered a cure.

“HOORAY FOR SCIENCE!”

Spoiler:

Using a DNA sample they had left over from the baby Metroid that Samus took care of in the last game, they were able to successfully repair the damage cause by the X Parasite due to the fact that the Metroid was the natural predator to the X Parasite. Convenient.

Spoiler:

While they were able to save Samus the Power Suit had to go. Is it just me or does the Zero Suit look longer? I mean at least in the eighties she wasn't afraid to show some skin!

Okay, okay, the reason it looks like that is because parts of her suit was too integrated into her body to remove safely so bits of the old suit combined with what she was wearing underneath hence the name, “Fusion Suit.”

Spoiler:

Not long after the operation is Samus sent back into action to investigate an explosion at the Biologic Space Laboratories (BSL) station only to find that it's swarming with, you guessed it, her old friends the X Parasites. Your objective, and believe me you're going to be seeing that word a lot, is to eliminate the parasite presence. And thus our game begins.

Wow, Nintendo games openings are longer than what I remember them to be. Remember when it was just a text scroll? Good times.

Controls: The control schemes are probably the most simple out of any game I have reviewed, as one can expect from a handheld system. You move with the D-Pad, jump with the A button and fire your weapon with the B button. You got all that? At any time during the game you can press start to look at the map which highlights save points, navigation rooms and your current designation. As you progress through the game you'll start to retain your latent abilities which Samus lost during her previous run in with the X Parasite, including rockets and the morph ball.

No I'm not going to make a joke about the morph ball.

Metroid Fusion takes everything that was great about the previous games and upgrades them for the Game Boy Advance with more graphical details and beautiful artwork to help unravel the story. The game offers plenty of new enemies, stages and challenges to provide for a fun gaming experience. Metroid Fusion was the first Metroid game alongside Metroid Prime for the Nintendo GameCube to be released in eight years and did it ever come back with a vengeance. One plus to owning and beating both games was the fact you could hook them up and either play the original Metroid game for the NES or play through Metroid Prime with the Fusion Suit depending on which game you completed.

All in all if you enjoy side-scrolling action/adventure games with exciting gameplay and a good story, or are a Metroid fan and haven't gotten your hands on this title yet, I would definitely recommend giving Metroid Fusion a try.

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