Metaloid Origin review

As one of three android warriors known as Predator, players of Metaloid Origins are tasked to plow through 9 different levels in order to save their planet from an evil army of robots led by the Lucian Corp who have decided to invade our trio of heroes’ planet in order to exploit the planetary resources to fuel galatic wars.

Metaloid Origins is a 2D 16 bit platformer akin to the Mega Man X series; you shoot, dash, and jump your way through diverse levels on your way to the boss master. There are three characters to choose from; they have the same basic skills, the differences come down to their set of weapons.

As you run around levels, you’ll pick up pink gems that have a handful of purposes. First off, they act as your lives count. Instead of having a set amount of lives, your survival is dependant on the number of gems you pick up. When you die, you can use 50 of them to return. Fear not as each level has enough gem to ensure never being game over, unless you decide to quit.

The other purpose is that, unlike the blue bomber’s upgraded series, they are used to purchase new skills and weaponry. Each character can have up to four different attacks; the purchase ones use a power meter, much like the special weapons in Mega Man. There are also special skills that can be purchased; they use a battery as a meter; once depleted, you have to wait until it’s recharged before re-using your special skill. Both health and power meter can be refilled by picking respective capsules throughout the levels.

Each of the 9 levels are Metroidvania-like. Unlike most run n’ gun games, where most of the time is go from point A to point B in a straight line, players are recommended to explore every nook and cranny of each level in order to find secrets such as health increase, collectibles, power meter increase; just to name a few. And also the more exploration you do, the more gems you find. This comes as a risk as it could also lead to more death thus losing hard earned gems.

To up the level variety, you’ll sometimes have vehicle based sections in certain levels. There’s a few sections with a one-wheel motorized vehicle, a level which requires a mech like robot and a spaceship section. Sadly, they bring more annoyances than fun. The one-wheeler sections are frustrating mostly because the jump sign is basically fusioned in the background and small that it’s easy to miss and fall into your death. Which brings me to the checkpoint system; thankfully, when you die in a section, you’ll be kicked back to the start of said section and considering each level can take about 30-35 minutes depending on how deep your exploration goes, this is a nice benefit. It is frustrating when you screw up at the end of a section and then have to start all over again.

Metaloid Origin looks great overall; almost seems as if the game was straight out of the Super NES era. It’s very colorful for the most part. Backgrounds are well designed but sometimes enemies can be lost in the background. Also a lot of environmental hazards such as spikes or electrical fields can be easily confused with the background leading to unnecessary damage. The color palette and fonts used throughout the game are eerily similar to the Mega Man X series; the “Ready” text which appears when starting a level is basically the same as the one found in later MMX games, expect not italized. The soundtrack, while there are sublte similarities with the Mega Man X games, won’t attain the same level of success as Capcom’s blue bomber series; it’s fine for what it does, but quite forgettable.

It’s clear as day that Metaloid Origin was inspired by Capcom’s Mega Man X series, it’s not to say it’s a bad thing. The game’s unique mechanics such as level exploration, self-guided upgrade mechanic and more approachable difficulty makes this game a fun diversion. Add three playable characters on top of it all and you have a great little gem; Not only harcore fans of Mega Man games can have a fun time, but any fan of platformers will enjoy this game.