Scurge: Hive

As the game goes on, it becomes more and more like Metroid. Jenosa (the bounty hunter)'s power suit gets capability upgrades, including a grapple beam, and her "projectile gauntlets" (power beam) get new powers, ranging from new abilities like time slow to rock-paper-scissors elements. This is one of the differences to the classic Metroid formula.

A combustion shot burns biological enemies but powers up mechanical enemies; an electric shock shorts out mechanical enemies but powers up energy-based enemies; and an energy dissipator shot vaporizes energy-based enemies but powers up biological enemies. When you use the right shot on an enemy, nearby enemies also take damage, and enemies come fast and frenetic enough that you need to keep switching to keep up.

There are two other things that make Scurge distinct from Metroid. One of them is the perspective, which as I've mentioned, makes aiming a bit trying. Dancing around in order to hit enemies is aggravating to begin with but later becomes the main challenge of the game.

The second difference is that Jenosa can level up, gaining experience points from items picked up from exploded enemies. Though the effects of leveling up are apparent as the game goes on, they come slow enough that grinding is pretty pointless. Instead the effect is making backtracking slightly easier, which is pretty cool.

The story is beginning to become more interesting than it was, but is still not very much. Thus far it's a fairly predictable military-versus-botched-research-installation plot... like, say, Metroid Fusion.

EDIT: I forgot to mention another difference between Scurge and Metroid, which is probably the most important one. In Scurge: Hive, Jenosa is vulnerable to the titular scurge, and becomes gradually more infected until she reaches a decontamination room (save point). When infection reaches 100%, your health will begin to deplete. If you move fast this should almost never happen, but it does persuade you to ... move fast, and keeps the pace of the game very fairly exciting.

Progress: Excerpt 5 - Before we knew it...