A brave and bold new step right off the side of a cliff.
Do to the fact that Other M relies heavily on its story and plot this review has about a billion spoilers in it. If you don't want to know anything about the game, don't bother reading on instead here's the condensed version of the entire review:
This game ruins the Metroid Universe and Samus as a character, it's not as good as previous games in the series, it has lots of risky design decisions most of which work ok but not fantastic. It's an alright game with some fun times and cool stuff but the heart of the Metroid experience has been mostly lost.
INTRO
Let's start with something that I like. I like the fact that the name's first letters of each word spell MOM. That's pretty clever since it creates great allusions to Mother Brain of course and the relationship Samus has with the baby metroid that Samus keeps on blabbing on and on about.
However this game breaks so many of the core elements that make up the Metroid sagas predating it that it borders on sacrilege.
I don't really care for the fact that they got rid of the different coloured doors which needed to be opened using different weapons, I've heard that it's a common complaint....it's just a detail which although of importance in the none linear backtracking game-play that made the other games what they were, it's definitely something that I can see changed. But there are other elements in the previous Metroid games which added a certain charm to the Metroid universe which they have either removed or twisted in such a manner as to render it completely mute in Other M.
The game is bad in many many ways, it is completely subpar in every single game experience to the Prime games: graphics, atmosphere, Samus' character, combat, camera, even story.........everything. It makes me sad, what a waste of development time, I guess it's fine, it's their license they can screw it up if they want to, but I hope that this is the first and last game made in this way because it's really not doing the Metroid universe any justice.
The sexism is so thick and rampant in this game that I don't even know where to begin. The only 2 female characters in the game both behave in a submissive and cutie-pie manner while every single male character spends their time locking and loading their guns and spouting one-liners.
CHARACTERS
I was disappointed in the character of Samus Aran. The whole point of the original story of Samus Aran is that she was the survivor of a Space Pirate attack on a crummy little colony of humans and who knows what else and she was rescued, adopted and raised and trained by the Chozo. That's right the Chozo, not other humans, not some idiotic general with a Polish last name. How the hell did she end up in the human galactic army anyway? And how would a general EVER end up in the middle of a Black Ops operation? The entire premise is plain ridiculous and not to mention not fitting with the original story.
Samus' subservient attitude is sickening. I know that it's a game from Japan where women are second class citizens but it's so blatant that it makes me froth. For a character who is supposed to be a bad-ass bounty hunter she sure let's pretty much everyone and their dog push her around. When I think of Bounty Hunters I think Bobba Fett or at most Han Solo who's more of a good guy. Both have attitudes, they both get the job done, they don't mess around and you don't mess with them. Samus in this game is a carpet that every other character gets to walk all over and wipe their feet on, I'm surprised she doesn't serve them tea.
Samus' motivations are also called into question. Samus has gone from getting revenge on the Space Pirates and wiping out dangerous life forms grilled into a military like structure to pretty much going to a Zoo aka the Bottle Ship and systematically wiping out all the innocent and used and abused creatures that have been reared there for the purposes of creating bio-weapons. She has just finished yapping on and on about the baby metroid making everyone nauseous for minutes on end and now she's slaughtering bio-forms left, right and center. She's got serious issues.
Finally let's talk quickly about Samus' blue suit. I know that Samus is supposed to be a hot babe in a skin tight suit inside her uncrackable Chozo War armour. However just because that is what most people dream about it doesn't mean that putting her into a skin tight blue suit where all a player ever sees is her butt and the jiggles of her breasts is a great idea in the game. Even in Super Metroid this was only done as an unlockable goody if you finished the game under a certain hidden time limit. At the time it was a good move, in this game seeing Samus careen around in her skin tight getup just makes her look like a cheap hoe.
About the rest of the cast, so we have Curly, Burly Larry, Moe and the Black Guy, the 5 stooges who seem to be able to not do what they are actually told but instead always show up exactly where nobody except for Samus with her "unique" abilities and gear could ever get. Then they force a whole pile of stupid cut-scenes and simple minded blahblah onto you. The stooges are eliminated one by one but it's never successfully explained why. There's a bit of talk about an assassin and so and so forth but the timing of the deaths of many of the members don't really make much sense or further the goals of either the alleged assassin, Samus or Adam Malkovich.
Adam Malkovich 's character is stone cold. I've seen these types of characters in games and movies before. They're always supposed to be deep and caring yet they show their love by being hard and by locking everyone out. That's not a character to look up to not unless you're a drone in the military or similar structure where obedience is rewarded and individual thought is not. He's not even really that important funnily enough it's Samus' reactions to him and whatever lame story they've slapped together to represent their past that really drives Other M's plot.
Ridley is another character who is definitely underused after all although he's supposed to be one of the core leaders of the space pirates you never see him give orders or do anything but basically behave like a dragon or gargoyle. He maintains this role with no further growth of his character or any other explanation as to his powers, wishes, goals or motivations.
I can now completely understand why Miyamoto refuses to give Link from the Zelda franchise a voice and a definitive personality. He would destroy the character of Link as surely as they have destroyed that of Samus. People need the mystery and they need the ability to use their imaginations in order to feel more in tune with their main protagonist. If you want to make your main character a certain way you need to do it from the beginning of a franchise so that everyone can accept the character for who they are. Samus and Link both come from a time when people could imagine them to fit who they wanted them to be, now the designer is trying to force their belated and obsolete view of this character onto those of us who already feel that we know who Samus is.........it's like George Lucas making Han Solo shoot first......Nintendo has just destroyed the Samus Aran of my childhood and of my imagination.
STORY
I realized what made me gag throughout all the cut-scenes in Metroid Other M, it's not just how cheesy and poorly done they are or how lame the story is, or how badly it tarnishes Samus' long standing bright and unique character....it's that I've seen this type of story before. This is the story of every single Van Damme movie. It's the 80's and 90's all over again you've got the token Black Guy, check, you have the main character who is a guy.....damn it's a chick, ok we'll make her emotionally unhinged and have a male military personality who not only keeps her on a leash, and commands her every move but we'll have her love it and lap it up willingly the entire time. We've got the girl falling apart repeatedly during the story and have every single male character pick up her pieces over and over again even though they just might get knocked off 5 seconds after in a ridiculous cut-scene. Then when the smoke clears we'll have the girl talk about her feelings in a complete monotone and have her tear up and make attractive girly grunting noises as she collapses to the floor. Oh wait that's not a Van Damme movie it's Metroid Other M.
The Daddy issues of Samus wouldn't have bothered me if they would have actually made sense with Samus' original character.........someone raised by the Chozo, but instead she is some young moron in the friggin' galactic army? That makes no sense.
Let's for the sake of argument look at the pecking order in the galaxy based on the original story ideas that are stuck in my head after playing Metroid, Super Metroid and Return of Samus.
So the Chozo, one of the most advanced and mysterious space faring races with intelligence and technology far surpassing that of most other races give Samus one of their battle armours in order to protect her and turn her into a Space Pirate hunting killing machine. The Space Pirates, themselves although highly intelligent and technologically savvy cannot understand Samus' suit's powers and their technology itself cannot rival that of the Chozo although it is still fairly significant. The humans who are somewhere down the ladder cannot compete with either Chozo or even the Space Pirates as far as technology is concerned and are pretty much at the mercy of these other alien space faring races.
Fast forward to Metroid Fusion, Prime 3 and now Other M where out of nowhere the humans have become the Galactic Federation and are pretty much running the universe. They can take apart, fix and enhance Samus' unique mysterious and impossible to figure out Chozo Battle armour, they can replicate Metroids, Riddley, Adam Malkovich's Soul, and even Mother Brain from bits of tissue and cells and basic computer technology and are now clearly focused on enhancing their iron grip on the galaxy.
So I ask you, why does the galaxy need Samus Aran when the Galactic Federation can pretty much whip up anything and anyone it wants using the technology it already has, what makes Samus Aran special and unique, the answer is NOTHING.
Oh my god! Bio-weapons? The galactic federation is building bio-weapons.....is this the main story....you got to be kidding me. That's is so ho-hum, Metroid is a Sci-Fi game not a documentary about Iraq. It's almost as if the team that whipped this game up was watching American television and they had just finished watching a documentary about weapons of mass destruction or Afghanistan. I cannot believe that this was the best they could come up with. That is so pedestrian, words fail me.
Why did they put in the cut-scene with Malkovich's younger brother.....it is so out of line with the rest of the history of Samus, and why would the player give a toss about this unknown character when all we feel towards Malkovich is contempt and hatred anyway do to his constant blocking of Samus' abilities.
The Ridley boss cut-scenes were so pathetic. Samus has only killed Ridley about 5 times in previous games, yet all of a sudden she freezes up? Oh man, and then you got the black guy spouting cheesy lines. Then all of a sudden Malkovich grows a brain and allows the plasma shot but not any of the rest of your arsenal of course, because Ridley is obviously not enough of a threat. The rest of the cut-scene just dragged out the painful idiocy until finally you're allowed to fight Ridley......were all those bad lines really necessary? Not by a long shot.
Does Samus Aran really have to be portrayed as a complete idiot? She follows the Deleter/assassin straight into an area and then she leaves the female scientist behind with the Deleter and goes to hunt Metroids....is she really this stupid? How can she possibly be the best bounty hunter in the galaxy when she can't even figure something that simple out, that the Deleter must still be in the same room, cause where else could he go?
And where are all the countless scientists and people who would need to be working on this giant zoo in order to take care of and research all of these "Bio-weapon" stuff. You only ever see 3 humans 2 of whom are dead. So basically they've all disappeared without a trace. If they all end up safe at the end of the game because they were hiding in some container I swear to god I'm going to snap my disk in half.
After vaguely talking to the scientist chick Samus Aran draws all kinds of crazy conclusions about what the ship and who the people behind this whole incident are....she really doesn't have all the facts yet she invents half assed ideas about it in her head and assumes that she is right.....not like a real bounty hunter at all.
The female scientist behaves like a lost child not like the head of top secret military bio-weapons facility....is this what the Japanese think of all women....sad. Right, it's an act....ok but if that's the case then they really need to give you more of a clue. Every other character behaves like something written for a GI-Joe special how come she gets this strange part and gets to act in that way before revealing her true evil nature.....I'll tell you why, because she doesn't, her behaviour is not the writers trying to be smart, it's follows a pretty clear trend in Manga and how women in general are showcased in those stories.....lame.
So nearing the end Adam who somehow managed to get all the way to Sector 0 in like 5 minutes knocks out Samus rendering her completely unconscious with a single move? Oh my god. So the famous bounty hunter who has craploads of plated CHOZO armour and all kinds of life support systems that nobody can replicate is taken out by some dude with a single shot of "magic fairy dust".........holy mother of all that is completely retarded! Not just that but this once again showcases Samus as the weak female being homeschooled by the MAN of the moment her father figure and so and so forth. The main character is being homeschooled because she is a women and obviously not as together and with it as Adam who as a man will make the right decision that Samus with her emotionally confused female mind couldn't make years ago and obviously cannot make now.......pathetic. Where is my main protagonist Samus in all this garbage? NOWHERE!
It's unbelievable. The marines at the beginning of the game couldn't get in through the main door because they couldn't figure out how to get passed a simple lock mechanism but somehow afterwards they all grew tremendously powerful and they were able to go not only where Samus goes but faster and better, and they never had to face any of the monsters that you had to kill, in fact they were traipsing around all the Sectors while Samus was stuck into one sector or the other because of Adam the prick who was locking doors and "forcing" Samus to not use all of her abilities.
I also really hate the suit transformation which is so Sailor Moon it made me sick up as soon as I saw it. What the hell is that supposed to be....that's the impossible to replicate Chozo technology that has been touted for all these games, she does a Pokemon stance and the suit appears around her......I'm sorry that is so incredibly stupid and childish that I am left with mouth agape and my mind reeling.
I always had problems with the "galactic" federation marines and their armour which so obviously ripped off Samus' suit, but now they have been given "Ice" guns? In Super Metroid what made all your weapons and abilities so awesome was that they were unique based on mysterious and impossible to replicate Chozo technology. In Metroid Prime they made the mistake of allowing the Space Pirates to start to take apart some of Samus' Chozo weapons. They went a little too far for my personal tastes but at least they had some hilarious stuff about the Space Pirates trying to replicate the morph ball without success, thankfully. In Prime 2 and 3 however they brought in the Galactic Federation which was starting down this path on which Metroid Other M finds itself on: the full introduction of humans into the Metroid universe. Metroid Fusion of course was the other abomination in this ever divergent path in which the humans have suddenly grown to become the dominant force in the galaxy.......again....for the friggin' N'th time. I'm so bored of the humans taking over the universe, in every badly written bloody science fiction story. What made Metroid stand out was the fact that humanity always seemed small, weak, scattered and helpless, therefore eliciting the help of the Chozo and their chosen warrior Samus. You take that away, you make Samus simply a grunt jar-head in the mighty human space military fleet and she becomes nothing but a brick in the wall!
I finally finished the game. It was unbelievably bad. First of all you're forced to use your Power Bomb but you're not told, next you have to watch one of the most painful cuts-scenes in video game history. Next you have to fight some beasties and you must look at a character on the other side of the room and focus on her otherwise the battle never ends and you die. Of course there are save points everywhere because otherwise it would be pretty much impossible to figure out what the hell you're supposed to do. After that you get to watch as everyone and their dog gets to spit in Samus' face and walk all over her again. Then they finish everything off because Samus is incapable, as usual, and you have to watch another terribly long and painful cut-scene as Aran yaps on and on about all kinds of boring stupid wank. Finally you get a happy happy joy joy cut-scene with enough sugar and spice to choke an entire small country's people. And finally it's over......no wait there's a surprise after that. You get to go back and collect all the things you weren't "allowed" to collect earlier and now you even get to use your Power Bombs, thanks game, you dumb dick-wad! Oh and by the way I was right about the token black dude, he survives just so he can come back and put Samus in her place at least 3 more times during the final set of cut-scenes. Oh and then you are forced to watch the entire credits....it's like they want you to know who it was that ruined Metroid....nice.
GENERAL GAME DESIGN
You get nothing for killing the creatures. So killing the creatures is just a waste of time. So despite the fact that things are supposedly more heavily based on the combat, the combat itself feels like a waste of time. If you could you'd just skip past all the annoying battles and move on you would, and you do in fact do exactly that whenever you get the chance. Unless the doors are mysteriously locked and the only way to open them is by killing those specific creatures.....wait isn't Adam controlling all the doors, couldn't he just force them open.......what a prick!
How come you can sometimes get a boost to refill your missiles and/or your life.....it super simplifies a core game element of Metroid. You never have to really care about any game-play including item management because the game will give it all back to you. Not only that but the way you get it back is by staying stock still and giving your Wii-mote a nice erection and spamming the A button until Samus erupts in extra missiles and life......seriously? This is only good to get hit some more since you're a sitting duck. Plus if Samus can just refill her life and missiles at any time then why does the player have to do it, why doesn't she just do it automatically. We all know why, it's because it's a Wii game and it needed a token Wii-mote interaction.....how irritating. I also think that removing the collection of ammunition was a strange decision. It streamlines the experience so much that the enemies become simple annoyances and not interesting foes and hurdles to overcome as you sweep the levels.
How is it possible that when you are in over the shoulder mode you cannot fire, aim or do anything important. This is a game breaker bad design as far as I'm concerned. It sucks away your time and the controls and the camera are both terribly painful while the entire sordid experience is taking place. Anyway it's basically just a crummy cut-scenes where the player is forced to interact in the most boring and mundane way, everyone would have just preferred to watch the cut-scene rather than suffer through this annoying turd of a setup.
There's also the mind numbing Pixel Hunt game-play forcing the player to look around and find something specific to focus on in order to continue the cut-scene events. Who was the idiot who thought that that would be cool or fun......wasting the player's time.
It's horrible, at one point one of the 5 stooges finally dies......wow didn't see that one coming, and you're supposed to focus on something with your idiotic visor. Of course there is no clue as to what that might be so you waste minutes on end looking around like a retard hoping that maybe you'll focus on the right thing.....this breaks the experience, breaks the game and just gives me fits of rage. It's not fun and not interactive all in the worst of ways. I had to actually go online to find out what the hell I was supposed to focus on.......that's bad. However there were no reviews out yet so I was forced to return and agonizingly search the entire 360field of vision. Finally it turns out that it was a spot of blood on the ground that is not clearly visible and it was only used to continue the bleeding cut-scene.
Every single character is able to get to any part of the ship with their archaic gear with no problems, they can survive hot magma, freezing colds, and probably even deep space. For god's sake Adam Malkovich is able to make it through a whole area where the gravity has been messed up and Samus only makes it through, through sheer luck and as many of her upgrades as possible. How is that possible? The bad writing boggles the mind.
So I'm playing and then the game commits a cardinal sin....up to this putrid excuse of a game the Metroid series has been pretty pure, you die only when you run out of life. However in Other M the developers decided to force feed a cut-scene onto the player in which the black guy who you don't give a flying rat's ass about is about to get slaughtered and they force you to save him, if you fail.........it's game over. Of course you can't do squat because Malkovich smeg-head has locked all your abilities and Samus the dumb and pathetic subservient loser won't use her abilities unless told to.......it's all so horrible, this cut-scene was pretty much the last straw the game has sucked big time and now it has become unbearable. As it turns out you must be standing directly in the right place and look up at the grappling shot hook and only then does ass-face unlock your ability. To add insult to injury the black guy called Anthony lives only a very short sequence more before being killed in another cut-scene in which you can't REALLY do anything and you're not supposed to anyway......so many uncouth words come to mind. I have a vague feeling that he'll more than likely come back at the end of the game just to undermine that tiny bit of drama that his death could have possibly created had it happened for real.
ATMOSPHERE
I need to put this into its own category because I believe that for the Metroid series as a whole including most of the previous games atmosphere was extremely important. Other M pretty much dumps atmosphere for cheap thrills and flashy lights. Not a single time did I feel that the way I did in previous games.
Both in the Prime games and Super Metroid the Chozo are an ancient race and their world is full of their relics, ancient mysterious objects surrounded by the ruins of their advanced civilization. Who were they, why did they choose Samus, what was their purpose, how could they disappear, these and countless other questions fill the player's mind as they unearth vast amounts of information, yet the mystery and the question linger even unto the end of the game. Will Samus ever see a live Chozo again, what mysterious Chozo powers will she unlock this time, what marvels will the ruins hold.
In Metroid Prime 2 the player is always nervous, what difficulties will lie in the dark world, what horrors must Samus face, the marines were slaughtered and the space pirates, your mortal enemies suffered the same terrible fate, will Samus prevail?
The metroids in The Return of Samus are scary and alien inhabiting a world that looks nothing like what a civilized race would be used to, they're vicious, scary, top predators and will fight to the death. As Samus you feel the loneliness. You're far away from any safe haven, you're on a merciless mission for the sake of the bounty you'll be paid, there is no help, no aid and no friends to back you up. You're on your own, but if anyone can do it, it's Samus Aran, the mysterious bounty hunter with the tragic past.
And of course everything, the level design, the art , the creatures and the music all play pivotal roles in creating that unforgettable atmosphere that permeates the older Metroid games.
Other M fails miserably to convey any of the previously stated emotions or atmosphere. There are loads of lame cut-scenes spewing all kinds of nonsense that completely destroys any of the mystery surrounding Samus' character and all in a bad cheesy way to boot. The environments are light and friendly you feel like you're playing a Mario game half the time. There is no surge of sympathy, no feelings of loneliness, no wonder, no lasting curiousity. Everything that could have helped with the atmosphere has been stripped from this game, leaving something akin to an arcade shooter with bad cheesy dialogue and no real feeling of danger or mystery.
CONTROLS
Oh the pain. Team Ninja gets special credit for almost completely ruining this Metroid experience with their hellish Wii-mote controls. The Wii-mote itself is stupidly uncomfortable to be used as a sideways controller. It digs into your hands, the buttons are tiny and the D-pad is minuscule and so low quality that playing with it is horrible.
Aiming the Wii-mote at the screen works fine but it severely limits anything that you can do, if you're not at a proper angle you have to switch back to 3rd person re-orient and then go into 1st person again....what a hassle.
Samus can get all her missiles back and get a single 99 set of energy when she hits critical low including 0. I know that it's a Wii and it always need some sort of motion sensor gimmick to satisfy the Nintendo execs but I could have done without this. Many a time I died horribly because the Wii-mote didn't quite except the fashion in which I was holding my Wii (hahaha). And anyway isn't this a bit of a kiddie glove treatment to begin with. Sure it can be useful to get your life back at the last moment if you're dying all the time but maybe the boss or game could have used a bit more tweaking rather than throwing in this cheap way to make sure that your difficulty curve passes the handy test.
Why is Samus so slippery to control. She cannot seem to stop where I want her to but always overshoots each step just enough to make me fall off a ledge or otherwise inconvenience me. Let's not even talk about jumping around in the platforming sections which are a massive pain in the ass.
How come she has a jet pack on her back that she can only ever use if she leaps from a grab hold to another grab hold? Oh and she uses it for the speed boost, still she uses it arbitrarily but not when I want to. Maybe a long jump or high jump please......like in the other games......oh right the current level design magic's the necessity of those upgrades away.
I guess I should just be grateful that she finally has a grab ledge move, it's about time, of course it's just following what they did in Metroid Fusion, so it's not even innovative.
The whole dodge mechanic is so half baked......it really reminds me of the Ninja Gaiden games made by Team Ninja........it doesn't really work if you're just a regular player, you either have to know exactly what you're doing and be a super hard core gamer to know the precise timing or you'll more than likely be sitting there spamming the buttons and randomly dodging when you didn't even mean to.
COMBAT
I'm either bored or angry at the unresponsiveness of the combat mechanics.
Because everything is auto-target all you end up doing is spamming the attack button and you don't even have to bother looking at the screen......it sucks. At other times Samus will fire her gun in the opposite direction from her enemies. If you're on a ledge forget it, she'll very rarely fire down or up at enemies unless you're at a perfect angle.
At one point I was fighting some Space Pirates who looked like birds......yeah, I know they completely changed the way the space pirates look like.....I don't know why. Pretty much I was just spamming all buttons left right and center so that I don't get hit. There is no strategy to the combat you just hope that you don't get hit, that Samus will dodge or whatever and you pray to god that she will fire in the proper direction and that the auto target won't fail you......but of course it does all the time.
Later on I realized that I truly cannot tell when an enemy will attack so all I have to do is just spam the D-pad whenever an enemy moves and Samus will circus freak all over the place and will even fire back at the enemies.......so much for strategy or deliberate game-play, half the time I feel like some sort of retard in the midst of an epileptic fit.
They made a lot of noise about how you can switch to 1st person point of view at any time. So let's talk about that pile of putrescence. Swapping back and forth between 2 distinct camera modes is not fun but a pain in the ass and tends to give headaches. Unfortunately to make matters worse in Other M while in 1st Person Mode you cannot move, you can only aim........using the Wii-mote which means that you cannot instantly go back to 3rd person. You must re-adjust your Wii-mote each time. So using the grappling beam means you go from 1st person to suddenly 3rd person and then you jump while you're juggling the Wii-mote and trying to get your grip back. Additionally in 1st person you're a sitting duck for any enemy or enemies that are out to get you, aiming with the Wii-mote is tenuous at best and requires time to correctly fix your aim, which you don't have when an enemy is about to eviscerate you. To make matters worse in the midst of combat when you do switch to 1st person Samus will always be facing in the same direction she was facing in 3rd person so you can find yourself with your back towards the enemy you were trying to lock onto.......oh man, what a pain.
Finally you can only fire missiles while in 1st person and aside from having to juggle certain enemies you must constantly switch back and forth for all manner of debris clearing in the platforming areas. This is neither fun nor entertaining and does nothing but tire your hands.
UPGRADE SYSTEM
Adam didn't authorise this weapon........WTF! This has got to be one of the worst aspects of the game, it's actually a culmination of the sickening plot the destruction of Samus' original character and the annihilation of the game-play from previous games that most have grown to love. For god's sake as Samus I died multiple times because the cock-wad Malkovich didn't feel like authorizing my F'ing Varia suit? It makes me so angry that the designers are lucky that they're in bloody Japan, otherwise I'd punch them in the throat. It doesn't even make sense that he would behave in this manner according to Samus' describing his character, the suit upgrades that Samus has have nothing to do with weapons they just keep her alive.....by removing her suit upgrades he does exactly what his character is not supposed to do which is put Samus in harm's way......it's like he's trying to kill her.
Dito for the speed boost and the grapple beam......these are abilities that have nothing to do with arms and weaponry yet by using this weak excuse the game forces the player to follow an arbitrary plot that half the time makes no sense. If Malkovich can really see what is going on and unlock doors whenever he feels like it than the real bad-guy is this a-hole who is pretty much stopping Samus from doing her job due to his irrelevant and bad judgement. Unfortunately you will never get to shoot the prick in the head, since we know that he exists in some form or other in Metroid Fusion. I can't believe how badly they're wrecking the Metroid experience and universe. So the bastard supposedly dies or something not that we care, so I guess that was an AI of him in Fusion.......an AI? Everybody is now getting their own private AI's for kicks now? Adam Malkovich was so friggin' important that the Galactic Federation created a whole bloody AI just for him.......I would never have guessed from the lowly position he holds, all alone in the entire game with no-one but Samus and the Stooges to boss around.
Adam finally bites the dust and I still can't use Power Bombs, what the hell is wrong with Samus why is she so useless and retarded? She doesn't even unlock the god damned Gravity suit until afterward I had to already deal with the entire Gravity stricken area. What is holding her back, why doesn't she unlock all of her abilities for god's sake?
What is she collecting blue crystals? No, those are missiles, individual missiles....hidden everywhere on a giant space ship zoo. That makes perfect sense. Couldn't they at least go with the flow and try to work with what they have.....couldn't they pretend to care about the continuity or the consistency of the Metroid Universe and how it all works?
Samus' suit doesn't change in-game when she gets upgrades. Wow! I mean they have been getting it right since Super Metroid why would you remove such an obvious perk that everyone loves, and it's pretty much free with a 3D model, it's just another skin.
The morph ball abilities have been completely stripped. There is no spider ball, no boost ball, and no engaging game-play that involves you rolling into a ball, which is sad because in previous games notably the Prime games they made a lot of noise about how morphing into a ball was so special and all, not to mention all the ton of game-play that was specifically made for the morph ball and its abilities.
The Swarm Missiles were so tacked on at the end of the game that it felt just like an afterthought. It was used to open 3 doors in succession which led towards a final confrontation. Was that really necessary....that's a serious waste of a skill, maybe they shouldn't have bothered, it just shows that they ran out of time and couldn't really polish what they had.
There are tons of other abilities and cool things that have been stripped from the game including all of your visors and pretty much anything that was interesting or related to the best games in the series: Super Metroid and Metroid Prime.
USER INTERFACE (UI)
The map system is now horrible. The 3D map system was awesome in Prime. The 2D map system was awesome in previous Metroid games. Now we have a map system where you can barely tell what the hell is going on. There are multiple locations where you have no map at all for absolutely no reason.
I don't think that they had a UI or interface artist or designer on the team. It's not possible because the menus are completely none-existent. Everything that the Prime series did to make Metroid as immersive an experience as possible has been stripped away. You get no backstory except for the crappy cutscenes and B movie dialogue. You cannot collect info about the enemies, the bottle ship, the metroids......NOTHING!
You can't even really look at Samus' suit or her abilities, it's done like something from the Atari, I didn't even go into the menus until about half way through the game because at first glance it seems like there is nothing there.
CAMERA
Wow, talk about atrocious. Why is it that when Team Ninja screws up the camera and pretty much the game, they are called brave and bold by the critics? It's not brave or bold to create a camera in a game that sucks, something that makes playing a pain, and that is exactly what the camera does pretty much everywhere in Metroid Other M.
One of the biggest pains in the ass is the crappy Crash Bandicoot Camera that is used by the game a fair share of the time. Samus is basically running straight into the screen or back towards the screen with the camera always starring in the same direction. You can't see nothing in front of you as Samus is running towards the screen. What kind of idiot came up with this point of view. It makes for one of the worst types of action perspectives ever.......you cannot see what you're running into, what enemies are out to get you etc, etc.....horrible. And when you're running into the screen you have no depth perception making any type of platforming a leap of faith. You cannot tell where to jump, how high and often end up falling into pits and other obstacles like water purely due to the stupid camera.
The only place where the camera works partially is the 2D level design areas and even there it fails because you cannot see far enough either in front or behind you to really make a difference. So basically you simply have to spam the fire button and cross your fingers that you don't run into anything deadly....which of course you always do.
This is also the case when Samus is in Ball form zipping through tunnels and other ducts. You simply cannot see far enough ahead.
One final note is that in the 2D level design you're still in a 3D game so that levels like to mix things up by having Samus run around into the screen in a sort of isometric fashion. Not only does this suck thanks to the crummy D-pad that is on the Wii-mote but it's not really that satisfying. Most of the time these quasi 3D spaces are simple rooms or empty platforms where all Samus can do is fall off or run around in circles before moving on.
There is one spot in the jungle where the path is specifically placed at an awkward angle so that when Samus tries to run along to gather speed she keeps bumping into trees slowing her down ruining her chances at gathering enough momentum for a speed burst, super frustrating.
ART & ENVIRONMENT
How is it possible that Metroid Prime looked better than this game. I'm serious, some environment textures are so friggin' ugly that I was reminded of stuff on my N64.
I wouldn't believe it was possible but they actually made the morph ball bombs even more ugly than before......I just don't really get it.
It's not that they don't have some talented artists, there was one scene where Samus rolls outside along the ship's hull and the view was great, but most of the time especially the lava areas the art is really not great and the effects are extremely underwhelming. The Ice areas are similarly bland and tiresome. The Jungle area since there are only 3 parts to the ship stands out for some of the wasp infested corridors but everything else is average at best.
I know it's a ship and the environments are all nothing but glorified holding pens but that is no reason for some of this sloppy work.
The box art is so ugly. I don't know who was the artist for that but somebody needs to get fired for that.
CUT SCENES
I know some people keep on talking about how beautiful the game is, which I really don't get but the cut-scenes, especially the first one made me wonder who made it. Was it some fan perhaps.....the model of Mother Brain looked so bad that I originally thought it was a joke when I saw it on the internet. Then I saw it in-game and boy was I ever surprised. Damn, that's the best they could do?
I heard that one of the creators for the Metroid series saw the cut-scenes and started to cry, now I know why, it's because the story is so horribly badly written and the cut-scenes are so B movie bad that he was crying knowing that this kind of crap was slated to hit the market to tarnish the Metroid name forever.
LEVEL DESIGN
Invisible collisions plague this game. Samus cannot jump over certain things, and she can only wall jump on very specific walls which makes no sense at all and only creates frustration. The levels are alright, but the horribly awkward camera makes it all feel more like a chore than anything.
Many a time even after you've gotten the space jump you simply cannot go where you want to. There is no excuse for this, and none is given it's simply poorly done.
I missed the intricate connections done in the Metroid Prime games where each environment had multiple puzzles and things to find and explore. The game has become so linear that half the time you're just pushing forward and watching Samus run down straight corridors. In fact this is helped by the forced movement in which by simply pressing forward Samus will auto follow certain corridors on her own. Just to confuse you there are certain other very similar rooms/hallways where this doesn't work the same way forcing you to choose Samus' direction yourself which leads to annoyed frustration.
The Bottle Ship better b e freakin' huge because most of the levels are taking place on flat ground. You don't really feel like you're in a huge ship with multiple layers, you feel more like you're in a huge parking garage that has been subdivided by pretend elevators. There are a lot of rooms and areas where not much is happening, in fact there are multiple rooms where despite the size you only have to deal with 1 or 2 enemies. The rest of the time you simply have to push your way through this snore-fest as you try to get from one area to the next especially when you're forced to backtrack through these same boring areas.
In the Metroid Prime games they did some clever work to reduced loading times and hid some of the loading in the opening of the doors. This worked brilliantly, in Other M they break the player's experience by putting this ugly "loading" sign up......just great and just when you needed something else to break the immersion.
ENEMIES
Why are we fighting armadillos? WTF is that crap! Seriously? The reason Metroid was kick ass in the day is because all the creatures look alien. I mean for god's sake the Metroid's final forms is a straight rip off of Geiger's aliens.....and for a good reason.
What the heck are those stick horse things, am I supposed to be scared? Amidst all the different creatures I had trouble seeing either alien creatures or deadly bio-weapons, most of the time I felt like I was stuck in some kind of Pokemon Zoo.
Thank god some of the older creatures make a come-back and at least for those they have been faithfully reproduced from the original drawings giving at least part of the time an authentic feel to the enemies.
BOSSES
There are quite a few bosses in the game. They're all quite well done and it just shows you that at least Team Ninja is good at doing one thing. The battles themselves are mostly hampered by the crummy camera and bad controls but the bosses themselves are still interesting, so you grit your teeth and force your way through it despite everything.
MUSIC & VOICE ACTING
The voice actor for Aran puts me to sleep. She drones on and on about useless jibberish in a monotone voice, there is no emotion in any of her voice acting which just makes this badly written story that much more painful. Thank god that she actually shuts up and lets' you play the game half of the time.
The music is pretty much none existent, where did all the melancholy and moving melodies from Metroid Prime go, or the dark and eerie haunting tunes from Metroid Prime 2, how about the amazing music from Super Metroid, all of these soundtracks are stellar beyond compare......Metroid Other M, I don't even remember the music and I was playing it only a couple of days ago. So yeah, I don't really know what happened did they not realize how important music is to the atmosphere of a game. Maybe they just didn't know but I sure wish that they hire back the people who did the music on previous games because I miss their compositions very much......yeah I think I'll go and pop in some Metroid Prime tunes right now.
CONCLUSION
Nintendo made a terrible mistake. They've broken what made the Metroid Series special in the history of video games. The character being a female protagonist has become nothing but a sad joke, Samus has been dropped to the level of a brainless girl sick with her feelings for a human father and romance figure.....the tween drama burns throughout the entire experience.
The atmosphere has been pretty much wiped out, following the badly done Metroid Fusion this game has lost the touch that made Metroid more of a Science Fiction and exploration rather than a linear Fantasy game.
The game-play fails to be entertaining in its hacked together knee-jerk combat system, and utterly fails with its horrendous camera system seemingly taken straight out of Ninja Gaiden for its poor points of view and awful visibility.
The cut-scenes are bad and bland and boring focusing on things in Samus' life that make no sense based on the previous games and giving out details that not only contradict everything Samus is supposed to be but even if they did are nothing but a shallow monotonous drawl written by someone who it seems never played the original Metroid games.
Congratulations Nintendo for ruining one of your prized game series. Metroid Other M is rife with all types of bad decisions and poorly done game design that would hinder this game even if it wasn't a Metroid title, but because it is all it does is let down the previous titles in this well known series.......except for Fusion because in all honesty that game was knocking on this same door with its bad story the only thing saving it's sorry hide is that it was in 2D and the game-play was a slightly altered port of Super Metroid.
So here's the nitty gritty, if you don't give a rat's ass about Samus or her role as a female protagonist in an atmospheric Sci-Fi game series spanning years and based more on exploration, mood, and the exploration of unknown and alien environments than you'll find Other M sufficient fodder.
If however you've played Super Metroid and Metroid Prime and are more aware of what has been happening in Samus' past games and her role in the previous incarnations than you'll find Other M lacking in many respects and my only consolation is for you to break out your older Metroid Games because they sure don't make them anymore like they used to.