Samus' Team

Samus Aran

Often credited as being the first woman prominently featured in a video game, Samus has gone through decades of consoles with great success on each… It’s just a bummer she ended up on the Wii.

Biography

Not much is known about Samus’ early life or personality, as developers have always wanted to leave those things up to the imagination of the players. What is known is that she was born on an earth colony that was raided by Space Pirates led by Ridley. Samus went out to try to make friends with Ridley, but he tried to kill her, and Samus’ mother sacrificed herself to save her daughter. Samus’ father was killed by Ridley too, so it was a real double whammy at that point in her life. After the raid, an ancient race of very intelligent beings known as the Chozo found Samus among the ruins of her planet, and decided to take her to their home planet. Since she was very young and the Chozo planet Zebe’s atmosphere wasn’t particularly favored towards humans, (Did I mention that the Chozo are large bird creatures? That might be important.) Samus was infused with Chozo blood to boost her chances of survival. While on Zebes she trained under the Chozo until she was fourteen. During this time she became extremely physically fit; like more than normal humans can even achieve because of her Chozo blood. After she was deemed ready by her bird-buddies, she joined the Galactic Federation Police.

She excelled beyond everyone at the federation police and eventually got promoted to Star-Tracker, which is designated as a position that only one out of a million members of the federation police force is qualified for. After an incident on with Space Pirates on Zebes that left the Chozo either dead or in a really, really good hiding spot, She joined a squad in the Federation army and stayed there for awhile. She left mysteriously for a long time, and came back as a bounty hunter, which is the profession that she has had ever since, even though she still frequently works with the federation.

Armor:

Varia Suit

 

The Varia Suit is an upgrade to the normal power armor that Samus got from her Chozo friends back when they existed. The suit itself is entirely of Chozo design, and as such is extremely advanced and great at many different tasks; most notably kicking ass. In its most basic form it can survive great depths underwater and in space for indefinite periods of time. When upgraded to the Varia suit, the shoulders become thick and rounded and the rest of the armor becomes more angled to better deflect projectiles. It also adds extreme heat resistance to the suit, allowing Samus to freaking swim through lava unharmed for short periods of time. The suit also enhances the already great agility of Samus, allowing her to jump very far, run fast, and do various combat rolls proficiently. Her strength is increased too, and she can lift about a thousand pounds in her suit. This armor contains her main weapon: the beam cannon over her right arm. This cannon fires most of the various beams and missiles she has in her arsenal. The suit bonds with Samus biologically, and because of this cannot be removed unless she wants it to be removed. Her left hand isn’t totally useless, since he has a device called the grapple beam attached to it. This allows her to attach to ledges and walls with an energy tether and pull herself up to it. She also has special boots with rockets attached to them, allowing her to get an extra jump while in the air.  She can even tuck her body up into a perfectly round ball and roll around small areas. While in this ball state, she is very hard to hit and anything that does hit is reduced in damage. She also has an HUD display built to her helmet that displays all life forms and shows whether or not they are hostile.

Strictly defensively, her armor provides ample protection against all forms of damage. Concussive force is absorbed very well in her suit, and small arms fire is deflected depending on caliber and part of the suit. For example: an SMG is only going to do damage to previously damaged parts of her suit, while a sniper round is going through anything but her shoulders. Her abdomen and limbs are the weakest parts of her suit, and can be pierced by enough concentrated fire by any weapon. Her chest and helmet are next thickest, and will only be damaged by the largest weapons. Her shoulders are indestructible, and while that may seem weird, if she’s turned to the side her head is fully shielded from direct fire.

Weapons:

Melee- Screw Attack

One of Samus’ many upgrades in her games is the screw attack. This ability allows her to turn a regular jump into a spinning jump that hurts anything it touches. She accomplishes this by quickly turning into her ball and spinning at extreme speeds directly after she jumps.

 

This attack can be situational, but very debilitating to anything it hits. It won’t be able to hit people on the ground, but any berserking Brute that’s jumping at her is going to seriously regret that decision when he gets hit with this. This attack is mainly a non-lethal one though, as it has a very low chance of outright killing the recipient. This attack’s inability to be used in normal situations combined with its unlethality makes it more of a distraction than a viable attack.

2d version of screw attack

Close Range- Wide Beam

The wide beam is an upgrade that allows Samus’ arm cannon to fire a shotgun blast of bolts that travel a short range but do a lot of damage. Each individual bolt of energy does that same amount of damage as a normal, uncharged shot from the arm cannon, so at a close range it can really tear people up. The spread of this weapon makes it pretty inaccurate, however, and the bolts don’t travel very far before dissipating. As far as close range weapons go, you could do a lot worse.

Looks weird in 2d, let's assume in 3d it would be more shotgun-like

Mid Range- Missiles, Wave Beam

The first of Samus’ mid range weapons are her missiles, which are fired out of her arm cannon just like any of her beams. These missiles are relatively fast moving and do decent damage. They don’t have as much splash damage as you would like out of a missile though, and as such only a direct hit or within a few feet around the detonation site is going to do damage. Missiles also suffer from a lack of ammunition, and since all missile types share the same unit of ammo she could run out of them early in the battle. They may not do enough damage to kill either, since the Brutes are tough mother fuckers and the ODSTs have a lot of armor on. She has much better missiles though, mostly due to her special ability.

The other mid range weapon at Samus’ disposal is her wave beam. This beam has the same damage and range as her normal beam weapon, but it moves a bit slower and moves back and forth. This makes it great for hitting fast enemies, or confusing some of the dumber (brute) enemies because of its odd pattern. The major downside is its slow movement speed, and its damage leaves something to be desired as well. Samus’ special ability is where this weapon is going to really shine.

Long Range- Normal Beam, Ice Beam, Plasma Beam, Seeker Missiles, Long Beam

Samus’ Normal Beam is basically just a fast straight shot that does a small amount of damage on impact. This is by far her most used weapon, as it has unlimited ammo and is very accurate. The downside is its low damage, so it could take dozens of shots to take down one of her enemies, and the shots may not even penetrate the more heavily armored foes.

Next is her Ice Beam, which is a great attack because of its ability to freeze enemies solid. It shoots straight and does moderate damage, but a normal shot can freeze small parts of what it hits, and a charged shot can fully freeze its target. Once frozen, a missile can shatter the frozen target. This can be a great way to take out a single enemy, but a charged shot from anything other than a normal beam uses a lot of that particular ammo type, so she would only use it in dire situations. Still, even the normal shot’s ability to freeze a body part can be enough of a setup to finish someone off.

The plasma beam is Samus’ most powerful normal weapon. It shoots straight just like a normal beam, but is superheated to do much more damage; nearly triple that of a normal shot. It also pierces through enemies, so it can hit multiple enemies with each shot. The main downside of this weapon is its ammo supply depletes very quickly, so fast that it would usually be saved for special circumstances. Charge Shots, while powerful, are almost out of the question due to its ammo usage.

Another version of Samus’ missiles is her seeker missiles. These missiles are just as powerful as her normal missiles, but have the added ability to lock on to up to five targets at once! If you’re wondering why Samus doesn’t just use these missiles all the time, it’s because it cannot be used in conjunction with her other weapons, while her normal missiles can.

Lastly for Samus’ Long Range weaponry is her Long Beam. The Long Beam is exactly what it sounds like: a version of her normal beam that travels further than usual. This beam is lacking in power, and the speed of the shots are not accelerated, allowing longer shots to be dodged, but this is the closest thing to a sniper Samus has at her disposal, so it could prove crucial against the ODST’s long range arsenal.

Explosives- Bombs

Besides her missiles, Samus has another explosive weapon at her disposal, and that is bombs. While technically a land mine, it does not plant in the ground and wait for someone to step on it, however it will go off is someone were dumb enough to step on it. It’s more of a grenade because it will go off on a short timer if its proximity trigger isn’t activated. Samus cannot throw or move them in any way either, so she just drops them where she is. That may sound like an awful weapon, but they are used only in her ball mode, so she can roll around the battlefield dropping these things to impede enemy movement and generally fuck with people’s heads.

ODST- “What the fuck is a beach ball doing rolling around an alien plan… is that a bomb!?!? What the Fuck! Get down!”

*boom*

Master Chief- “Where the hell did that bomb come from?”

ODST- *sobbing* “An alien beach ball pooped it out as it rolled by!”

Now there’s a mentally incapacitated marine on Chief’s team. Good job Samus.

Bad news is that the bombs are even less powerful than her missiles, so they’re more of a distraction than a killing attack.

Laying some mines in Melee

Big Guns- Charge Shots, Super Missiles

A Charged Shot is a much more powerful version of any of her normal beams. To activate a charged shot, Samus has to charge her beam for 3 seconds, and then shoot. This can be great, since her normal beam has unlimited ammo, so she essentially has a slow firing rocket launcher with unlimited ammo. Downside is its ammo consumption for the other beams, and some beams don’t benefit very much from the charge because the charged shot is larger and moves slower. Still, its unlimited ammo and high damage output could prove to be a game changer for Samus.

This bitch even has Super Missiles, which do even more damage than a normal charged shot, and move fast, AND don’t need to be charged. What’s the downside? 5 units of missile ammo are used per shot of this thing. Do you see what I mean when I said that even with starting out at 30 missiles her ammo could get very low very quick?

Non-Directly-Offensive Abilities

Agility:

Agility is definitely a strong point of Samus’ person. She can double jump to reach high places, move quickly to dodge grenades, and change into a ball to enter small spaces. She can run as fast as Master Chief (who already runs very fast) but her jumping and rolling (in and outside of ball mode) far surpasses him. Very few can outmatch her in this category.

Pain Tolerance:

Samus is rarely seen outside of her suit, and when she is it’s normally in her Zero suit, which still provides a degree of protection for her while suctioning to her body in ways only rivaled by yoga pants.

Above: The Reason I go to school every day.

But because of her training and experience, it’s safe to assume she can take a fair amount of damage before succumbing to the pain, even if she’ll never match up to Master Chief and his drug-infused self. 

    Minus 1 point for being a woman.

Training:

As stated before, Samus has been trained to be an ultimate warrior by an ancient race of alien bird creatures. This training put her in great physical shape, and she’s able to handle herself very well in one-on-one engagements. She was then trained again by military police, which gives her training in squad engagements as well. Samus’ training is one of the best in any fictional universe, and the variety of training she received will no doubt come in very handy.

Leadership:

This is where Samus suffers. As a bounty hunter, she is used to working alone for long periods of time, not having to worry about anyone else’s survival. Samus is a great tactician, but her ability to direct a squad is underdeveloped. She has, in fact, never been shown directly leading a squad into battle, so she will probably be more useful as a motivator than a strategist. This could seriously hurt her entire team.

Special abilities- Combining Beams, Ball Mode

Samus’ best and most useful special ability is her power to combine beams to create insane shots. This ability is not limited by any beams, so she can literally combine every single beam weapon described above and make a plasma/sniper/shotgun/rifle beam of death. This ability does use up ammo of each weapon type with each shot though, so doing that wouldn’t be very prudent. Still, combining the wave beam with the wide beam could yield some excellent results, and the long beam could work well with any of the beams. Most useful to combine may be the ice beam though, since it doesn’t burn through ammo like the plasma beam, but still has a very useful effect. This ability allows Samus to expand her arsenal and keep her enemy on their toes.

That'll fuck someone up

Her other ability is her ball mode, which is where she turns into a small ball capable of rolling around and laying land mines. While in this mode, she can move around the battlefield quickly without much risk of being damaged. She can also escape into small spaces that not even a normal ODST could fit into, giving her the option of guerilla warfare depending on the environment. This ability isn’t offensive at all, however, and may be best relegated to a distraction that allows her teammates to get in a few free shots.

Federation Marines

Backing Samus up is a squad of the galactic federation’s go-to troops for space warfare.

Background

Seen throughout the majority the Metroid Prime series, Federation marines appear to be the main military branch of the Galactic Federation, which means they have participated in hundreds of space and planetary battles. They mainly fight against the Space Pirates, who were becoming so out of control that the Federation Police could not contain them. They were replaced by the marines, which expanded their forces to become the dominant branch of the military. Besides this, little is known about the marines’ history and operations.

Weapons:

Because of the nature of these weapons (built in, not changeable), there will be weapons spread over multiple categories and judged separately on their functionality at that specific range. This is to compensate for the fact that each marine will only have one main weapon to use during the battle. Expect the same for Ridley’s team as well.

Melee- Basic Military Training

That may seem like a strange title for a melee attack, but if you would stop jumping to conclusions and let me explain you might understand better. The marines have never been shown using a melee attack in game, and since their gun is built into their arm they really don’t have a good reason to carry a melee weapon around. They do, as federation marines, receive excellent training, and as such it can be assumed that they received at least basic hand-to-hand combat training. They will rarely use it, and in fact compared to the ODST’s who carry knives and the brutes who are melee champions, it won’t do much for them. At least it’s something though.

Close Range- Energy Gun, Machine gun

The main weapon on the arms of the marines is a machine gun that fires energy projectiles. This weapon fires moderately-fast moving, moderately damaging projectiles at a decent rate. It is the epitome of average, which means that while it doesn’t excel at anything, it is also very versatile, which is great because this is going to be the only weapon for 5 of the 10 marines. They’ll need some versatility. This versatility will be helpful in the overall weapon score, but against a shotgun at close range, this weapon doesn’t work out well.

Another weapon that some marines use is the outdated model of the energy gun, which is a machine gun that fires energized ballistic rounds. That gives this gun plenty of advantages over the purely energized version, such as the speeds of the projectiles, which is ridiculously fast due to the energized nature of the rounds. This gun also fires about twice as fast as the energy version, making it much better for close range fighting. One small disadvantage is that the rounds will do much less damage to the energy shields of Master Chief, but this is countered by its ability to tear through flesh much better than the energy version. Its main disadvantage is its reliance on ammo, meaning that the three troopers that have this weapon can run out of ammo, which will make them useless in all but melee attacks (which are functionally useless in most situations anyways.) As far as close range attacks though, this weapon’s speed and power can closely match that of a shotgun, which makes it very useful to Samus’ squad.

Mid Range- Energy Gun, Machine Gun

Yup, that’s pretty much all these guys have (save for heavy weapons). The Energy Gun’s versatility shows off wondrously at this range, as its accuracy is great, its power is moderate, and the range is too close for anyone to be able to dodge the projectiles with any real success. The low kickback on it means that they can fire on the move without trouble, and the fact that it’s built into their arm means that they can fire from a lot of different positions that those with regular guns cannot. The unlimited ammo on it is also excellent, as they only have to worry about overheating.

The Machine gun also fares well at this range, though not to the extent of its close range abilities. Its accuracy is not as good as the energy gun’s, but its fire rate means it will still be able to hit enough to do major damage. The main problem stems from its ammo capacity, which is ample, but running out means that marine is useless for the rest of the battle. Because of this, it is best used in small bursts from a good firing position to maximize hits on target.

Long Range- Energy Gun, Machine Gun

The energy gun does slightly worse here than in mid range, but still fares well overall. At this range any acrobatic firing positions described in the mid range section would be mostly used for suppressing fire, which is still more than anyone else can do while running and strafing. Its accuracy still holds true at long ranges, but its projectiles move slow enough to duck behind cover before they hit here, which is a major problem since their enemies will not have that problem ever.

The Machine gun fares much worse at this range, and honestly shouldn’t be used here. Its accuracy isn’t enough to hold at long ranges, and it will be a huge waste of ammo to use it here. Only under extreme duress should this ever be used at long range.

Big Guns- Rocket Trooper

They're not all zombies, by the way. Just this guy apparently.

There has been one Rocket Trooper in the entirety of the Metroid Prime series, which is lucky for Samus, since this category was going to have to be empty if he wasn’t there. These two guys are identical to their machine-energy-gun counterparts except for the fact that they shoot missiles, and only missiles. This may sound jarring, but these are actually very powerful missiles, and they have a very good supply of them. These guys may be one of the greatest assets to Samus’ arsenal, since they are essentially moving rocket launchers that don’t have to reload. Downside is that just with the machine-gun trooper, once he’s out of ammo, he’s done for the match. Upside to that is that if he had the time to launch all of his rounds, he definitely did major damage to the opposing team.

Explosives- Det Pack

This is kind of a big leap here since there’s been one of these seen in the whole series and it was used by a specialized marine to clear debris. Since there’s nothing else I can find that could go here, I’m going to give two of the normal marines one of these each. It’s used just like C4, so it has to be planted in advance. Its explosive power is tremendous, however, and anyone caught within a few feet of the blast will die, while any debris around the blast will become shrapnel that could cause more casualties. There’s only two though, and since they must be placed before-hand they have few battlefield applications outside of traps, which won’t be possible in some situations.

It goes boom

Non-Directly-Offensive Abilities

Agility:

Their power suits give them enhanced agility, but not nearly to the extent of Samus’ suit. They will move slightly better than a person wearing no armor, which is an advantage over the ODST’s who are actually hindered by their armor.

Pain Tolerance:

As soldiers, there is a certain amount of training you’d expect them to have that is designed to help them better deal with pain. That base amount is what they’ll have going into battle, since no other information on the subject is present.

Training:

Being the main force of the galactic federation, these guys receive high-class military training, that is for sure. What may not be awesome for them is that they are not individually trained as Samus was, so they will be most effective working within the squad.

Special Abilities: Phazon Enhancement Device

These soldiers gained a very useful ability when the substance Phazon was discovered: they can go into hyper-mode. They all wear a phazon enhancement device in their suits, and activating it drastically increases all defensive and offensive abilities for a short time. For example, a regular marine with the normal energy gun would get pounded by a brute in CQC, and his weapon would do very little damage to his flesh. Once hypermode is activated, he’ll be able to escape the CQC range of the brute (they still can’t outright beat them at melee range, brutes dominate that completely) and their weapon will really burn the flesh of the brute, which could turn the tide of that battle. The machine gun and rocket troopers won’t have the same enhancements to their weapon power because they’re ammo based, but they’ll receive the rest of the enhancements.

Well, that took a month. Sorry, there were alot of parties the last few weekends. Next up is Master chief's team, who I know much better than this team, so it should be up much quicker.