Adam has not authorized this review.
First review in a while, and on the highly-controversial Metroid: Other M to boot. Other M hardly needs an introduction, but what else am I supposed to do with all of this space?
Other M is the lovechild of one of the most bizarre and unexpected partnerships in gaming history: Nintendo x Team Ninja. Nintendo, known for their bubbly, child-friendly games and storied franchises and Team Ninja known for balls-to-the-wall Ninja Gaiden games and a very deep appreciation of the female form (NSFW). Depending on who you asked, that combination was a recipe for either great success or soul-crushing failure. Now that the game is out, opinions still seem just as split.
Let’s add one more to the mix, shall we?
SETUP
Other M begins with a beautiful retelling of the events of Super Metroid. Samus reflects on her battle against Mother Brain and her relationship with THE BABY the Metroid hatchling until she picks up a distress signal. The signal carries her to the moon space station where the entirety of the game takes place: the BOTTLE SHIP (referred to entirely in caps throughout the game for whatever reason). Once aboard the BOTTLE SHIP, you run into Samus’ former C.O., Adam Malkovich, and his squad. After some more cutscenes detailing the relationship between Samus and Adam, the action starts.
Before long, you’re thrust into the first boss fight and introduced to the now-infamous weapon authorization. Samus agrees to follow Adam’s orders while aboard the BOTTLE SHIP, meaning all of Samus’ toys are prohibited until Adam says so. Adam allows you to use Missiles and tells his team to use “freeze guns” rather than allowing you use of the Ice Beam. This kind of thing repeats several times throughout the game. You’re constantly taunted with upgrades and the like that are out of reach only because Adam won’t let you use the tools you need. Needless backtracking, ho!
The only case where Adam’s cockblocks make any sense at all are Power Bombs, but only because they’re apparently powerful enough to vaporize every living thing on the station at once or something. I view it like this, though: The alternative to Adam outlawing your equipment is yet another freak explosion that strips you of your gear and regaining it via one of two methods. Method one: Chozo statues. Why would the Chozo have any presence whatsoever on this Federation space station? Method two: Random upgrades. Why would the Federation be manufacturing upgrades for the Power Suit, the only suit of its kind in existence? Authorization seems less ridiculous when you look at it this way. Is it still stupid? Yeah, but it’s not quite as stupid as the alternatives (Aside from the Varia Suit authorization. That one’s just a dick move no matter how you look at it.).
GAMEPLAY
The game plays like a dream, if you’re ever dreamed about what a 3D Super Metroid would feel like. (And really, who hasn’t?) Team Ninja’s handiwork is most apparent here. Samus moves with a kind of lethal acrobatic grace never before seen from a Nintendo character. Combat is fast, fun and incredibly fluid, and stays that way until the first person mechanics come into play. By pointing the remote at the screen, you enter a very Metroid Prime-like first person view that brings the flow of combat to a grinding halt. Samus turns from an acrobatic death machine into a stationary target. Thankfully, it’s only mandatory a few times. Aside from a few scenarios, you’re free to dispatch enemies without the use of first person.
It’s more linear than most if not all of the other games in the series, but at its core, it’s Metroid: You collect upgrades, you do some light puzzle solving and you kill stuff dead, but this time you’re killing with an excessive amount of style.
SOUND
Staple Metroid tunes are here and there, with some new tunes sprinkled in between. For the most part, though, the music is little more than background noise. The most memorable tunes are going to be ones you’ve heard before, but the new stuff does a nice enough job of maintaining the atmosphere.
Voice acting is a mixed bag. Most everyone is done well enough, aside from Samus (no longer voiced by Jennifer Hale). Unfortunate, considering that she has the most dialogue. Most of her lines are either narrating a flashback or reflecting on her surroundings. I’ve always depicted Samus as kind of emotionless, but she sounds a little too monotone at times. Thankfully, she really comes alive during the more dramatic scenes.
PLOT
Taking place between Super and Fusion, Other M is essentially Metroid 3.5. The main point of the story is to explain Samus’ relationship to Adam, but this ends up only being part of the experience. After a bunch of flashbacks, you’re dragged into a murder mystery, and later, a full-blown military conspiracy.
The plot exposes Samus for such crimes as being human and having emotions. No longer is she the soulless automaton we all knew and loved. Now she’s a believable character with a traumatic childhood that will still wreck your shit from one side of the galaxy to the next.
VISUALS
The visuals as a whole are nothing short of astounding, especially considering this is a Wii game. Not only the graphics themselves, but the presentation and, of course, Samus’ arsenal of ass-kicking moves courtesy of Team Ninja all combine into one hell of a visual experience.
The BOTTLE SHIP is home to some mean ambiance. The station is dead in space and derelict aside from you, Adam’s team, and lots of critters that want you dead. Once the game’s murder plot comes into play, things start to get the best kind of creepy.
CONCLUSION
Other M was an experiment. It’s a brave game that takes several risks with an established franchise, with mixed results. Samus is shown to be more vulnerable than at any other moment in the series. She’s shown to be human. Yet, at the same time, she kicks more ass than she ever has before.
Yes, she IS fishing that horrifying monster out of a pool of lava using the Grapple Beam.
None of Other M’s flaws are things that couldn’t be easily remedied by a sequel using the same engine. Tweak this, remove that, get rid of those annoying search segments (or at least make them less strict), and suddenly most of the haters are having a blast.
Other M seems to be the kind of game you either love or hate. As of the time of this writing, I have yet to see a single lukewarm reception to it. It’s either brilliant and a must-play or the worst game in the series. I fall on the former side of that fence, yet a few friends with very similar tastes fall on the latter side. If you’re the least bit interested in it, do yourself a favor play it. Rent it, buy it, whatever, but give it a chance. Personally, though? I’m in love.
Although we definitely disagree on a few things (no surprise there), but I’m glad that you (and others) have enjoyed this. I know a couple of people who call it their favorite in the series now actually.
I really do think that anyone who even remotely considers themself a fan of the series needs to give it a try. Excellent review, sir :ahoy:
How do you think you’d like a sequel? What would you change? Realistically speaking, of course. I don’t think they’d toss the voice cast or go back to a mute Samus at this point unless it was a handheld game. Would any gameplay tweaks save it for you, or is the representation of Samus the biggest reason you’re not enjoying it?
I definitely wouldn’t mind a sequel! I’d like to see Team Ninja get another chance to take a shot at the series. I think that now they’ve gotten past a lot of the initial story bits about Samus and her past, I think they could possibly make a Metroid story that would be a bit less focused on her and more on whatever the ensuing danger is.
I honestly would love to see at least the option for Nunchuck support. I know a lot of people didn’t mind the control scheme, I thought it worked okay for the most part, but I really think the added support of that would make things a lot more enjoyable. I’m not sure how they would have both control schemes, as they clearly have designed certain elements of the main gameplay around it, but I’d like to see them try.
I just felt that the combination of the story problems and the controls not being as precise as I would like were the main problems for me. Also, they need to find a new way to allow Samus to gain new abilities (or regain old ones) to give the player that sense of accomplishment I think Other M was really lacking.
Didn’t mean to ramble, but that’s basically it. I’m just near the end of the game, and overall I have enjoyed it (probably a 3/5 for me, despite all of my complaining haha), but it’s definitely one of the weakest entries in the series for me.
Might lose some friends over this post but oh well.
Gameplay is shit. The game aiming for you is enough for me to consider it a failure. Every room is nothing but “stand far enough away and tap the shoot button until it’s all dead, or if it’s something strong stand back and use missles.” Once you have more than two extra energy tanks it’s not even a fucking challenge to obliterate everything around you with no effort or finesse as a player. No ducking and weaving, no enemies with complex moving patterns for you to dodge (not that it matters for them to dodge, since your shots home in perfectly anyway), no dreaded foes that go down hard, it’s a pretty much a piss in a hat. Some bosses were okay but most fall under the aforementioned category of “stand out of danger and barrage with missiles/super missiles.”
The game world is the biggest garbage I have ever seen in a Metroid game. The path is entirely linear, forcing you so rigidly to go in a straight line that, not only are new areas in direct paths, you’re not allowed to return to most other areas, since the game locks every location not immediately relevant to the current progression. It also lacks any mystery since they show you where items are on the map; yes, Super Metroid did this by some extent with their map, but you had to actually have been in the exact spot the item occupied in the grid for it to show up as present in that particular map square. Other M shows you the precise location if you were in that room at all (and you will be in every room since there are no hidden ones), and for those that never showed up on the map on your way along, don’t worry, after the first ending they’ll just tell you where everything is for free, leaving you to march your way there and blast whatever obvious thing it was blocking you from getting it in the first place. Instead of a hunt, it becomes a chore.
The story (THIS PARAGRAPH WILL CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS) was almost entirely about people besides Samus. Adam, Michelle and Melissa/MB were the main contributors to the game’s events, leaving Samus to just kind of wander around like a dope, wading through petty monsters running amok, trying to figure out what already happened before the game began so she can (attempt to) kick someone’s ass for it. Adam stopped the threat of the freeze-resistant Metroids before MB could exploit it, Anthony stopped the Bottle Ship from colliding with the Galactic Federation and alerted the higher-ups to the illegal activities, Michelle and the Galactic Federation killed MB, the Metroid Queen killed Ridley, etc. All of your legwork is wholly useless for anything other than to get Samus to some location where an explanation will occur, the only real contribution I can think of is helping a little bit to evacuate Michelle once you find her hiding from the Metroid Queen, and I guess saving Anthony once when he was under siege from that purple eyeball bug. Samus’s only real purpose in the plot is to observe other characters and talk about how they make her feel. Pretending that this makes her a deeper character is joke, since all it really adds up to is: 1) Her pissing all over herself about how hard it was being a woman (oh no!) when in fact most of her problems as an outcast sounds as though they mostly come from her being a disagreeable rebel-without-a-cause back in the federation (completely ignoring how she was basically raised under an alien culture from infancy to adulthood), 2) after Adam’s death, saying “*grits teeth* not gunna cry.” 3) Looking at what happened between MB and Michelle and just saying “hm, don’t see that every day.” She has no motivation, no goals, no needs, no fears, no impulses, no problems, no significant moral views, no character arc, inevitably coming to no conclusion as a character when all is finished. She is a husk of a character. For a game with this high of an emphasis on plot and writing, that’s inexcusable. The only two potentially interesting characters are Michelle and MB and the relationship between them, yet that entire conflict isn’t even introduced until the ending sequence of the game, at which their agon is immediately resolved, the entire game prior to this being Samus trolling about not knowing anything and filling time by pointlessly reminiscing and ineffectually scheming about what might be going on, like the passive blabbermouth she is. There was far more character in the Samus before this, who said nothing, but took action. By taking control away from Samus, not only in plot but in gameplay (letting the game dodge and aim for you), you also take away control from the player, leaving you pacing through sequences rather than engaging in challenges, making the entire experience at best a snore and at worst infuriating while also being a jarring iconoclast for Samus as a videogame hero.
Artistic design was cool though.
Stopped reading after the second sentence. I guess we’re still friends.
oh hey I agree with Linko on this one.
Pretty much a bad Metroid all together from the ones I’ve played.
I’d give it a 2/5 but I’ve yet to finish it. hoping some other things make me change my mind.
Woops, never mind. Turned out better as I went a long. 4/5 from me.