(This is an old post, from the old version of this blog. I did not update it in any way.)



If you are reading this, then you probably know Metroid: Other M was leaked about a week before release. Well, you do now.

I was extremely hyped for the game — see, I like cutscenes and I like action. I also used to think Samus needed some character development. As the game neared release, however, second thoughts crossed my mind. Samus didn't sound that good, the gameplay didn't seem that polished, the music didn't sound that memorable. So, despite the hype, I decided to pirate the game first to check if I would like it or not, since I will almost always buy a good game.

I went to hell and back to get a dual layered DVD, since they are more expensive and not sold everywhere. And you know what? It wasn't worth it.

Beware a bunch of spoilers.

Other M starts with an amazing cutscene: the ending to Super Metroid. Definitely a great way to appease to nostalgia, and the cutscene itself was pretty good, but one thing bothered me from the get-go: Samus' monologue. I don't think it ruined the scene or anything, it was just a nudge in the back of my head, a feeling I did not understand. Anyway, after a somewhat fun tutorial with a really creepy guy teaching you to use your own powers in a falsely excited tone, Samus explains how she destroyed planet Zebes, monologuing about the finality of the situation and her love for the Metroid baby.

Remember this: the baby. Samus will not let you forget, anyway, because she utters it every five minutes of the game — the baby this, the baby that, ad infinitum. I'd prefer that she called it Metroid hatchling, as she did in Fusion, but I guess it would be a bit too technical for this game.

Actually, let me expand on that: I always thought of Samus as a really smart person. As far as I know, she designed her own ship. And she underwent Chozo training, and they were not all brawl and no brains. So, I never really imagined her going all casual like she does in this game.

Moving on. Actually, this is exactly what happens: Samus moves on with her life. An unspecified amount of time — sufficient for, say, a space biotech shuttle to be constructed and full research developed inside — passed, until one day, baboom!

No, wait, not baboom. I guess it would be more ungheeeeh or something. Samus intercepts an SOS codenamed baby's cry, and felt like the baby was crying to her (seriously), so there she goes to the rescue. Have I mentioned the woman doing her voice is horrible? Because she is.

Inside the BOTTLE SHIP (it is actually referred in all caps), Samus finds a Federation ship, whose logo you have to scan to proceed. Did I say scan? Oh, sorry, I meant look for it in first person and then be done with it. Because, y'know, scanning was much more interesting. Then she runs a bit and jumps and points her gun at a bunch of space soldiers, one of which recognizes her.

Turns out he is Anthony Higgs, a cool black dude that calls her princess (something which she explains to great extent) and was part of her old squad. Her old commander, Adam Malkovich, is there too, and he calls her an outsider, which PIERCES HER HEART.

Now, all of this must be pretty boring to you, right? I simply summed up the game so far, instead of reviewing it. But, see, story-wise, most of what is wrong with this game is right here. Samus' monologues (and dialogues) are always in a monotone, and she does it a lot. For instance, in this same scene she talks extensively about how she used to give Adam the thumbs down because she was so young, young and naive, in these exact words, and that he was her father figure that understood her better than anyone, and that she was so rebellious. The script is poorly-written — and because the focus is the story, it just can't be ignored. Some of these things could be shown instead of spoken, which is something Nintendo tends to do pretty well. Subtlety, people!

There is something else, too: most of what Samus says and thinks have absolutely no impact on the plot. You could say they do impact characterization, but not even that. Someone said that making a version of this game without Samus' voice wouldn't change much, and in fact would make the game better. I'm inclined to agree.

After a boss battle against a giant purple thing made of bugs, in which the soldiers used their freeze guns while Samus used missiles (a nice demonstration of teamwork), Adam accepts Samus' help under one condition: she must follow all of his orders.

This is where the egregious authorization system is shown for the first time (well, actually Samus decides not to use bombs or missiles before, but now you officially begin to operate under his command). Samus actually has all of her powerups from Super Metroid, but since most of her weapons could destroy the ship if used without caution, Adam denies authorization to use them.

Makes sense.

Except, at one point Adam sends you into a lava area without the Varia suit. You get damaged through three rooms, and he only authorizes it when the boss comes along. There are some other examples, but this is the most absurd one. I could ignore it, but something like this throws the suspension of disbelief and the entire reason for this authorization system out of the window.



Now that I'm done ranting (this is a personal blog, after all), a little sub-section for you guys:

GAMEPLAY AND ATMOSPHERE

You shoot by pressing the 1 button, jump by pressing the 2 button and move using the d-pad, all with the Wiimote held sideways, which isn't that great. When an attack is about to hit you, you can press the d-pad in any direction to sensemove — fancy word for dodging — and then counterattack by quickly pressing 1, which makes your beam charge instantly. By pointing the Wiimote at the screen, you go to first-person mode and can shoot missiles (actually the only way you can shoot missiles) and use the grapple beam, which is quite cumbersome. You can also jump on top of an enemy for some fancy shooting, but not after getting the stupidly powerful screw attack. Finally, by approaching a fallen enemy, you can use a finisher on him.

So, as you see, you basically go from room to room beating the shit out of aliens. It gets old after a while, making you turn your attention to the story, which as I said is not very good.

I'm not a longtime Metroid fan. Actually, I don't even know if I am a Metroid fan. Once, a friend told me I was actually a Samus fan, and I couldn't disagree with him. This means, however, that I was more open than most to the changes brought by this game, and thus actually enjoyed the gameplay, despite how shallow it may seem.

Two things I didn't enjoy, though: pixel hunting, when the game forces you to look for some meaningless pixel to proceed, and over-the-shoulder exploration, when the game forces you to look for some meaningless pixel in a slow over-the-shoulder perspective which has very clunky controls. It doesn't help that this is basically all the exploration you get, apart from looking for missiles, heart parts and tanks and accel charges (which make you charge faster) — and if you think this sounds good, you should know that most of this is post-game or within the room you currently are, pinpointed on the map. I know, I know.

Now, about the atmosphere... the amount of music tracks this game has is one hundred; the amount of music tracks this game uses is zero. You barely hear any music while you traverse a bunch of holopad rooms killing a bunch of aliens and listening to monologues.

Memorable music? Apart from the recycled ones (which are few), forget it.

So, I didn't find the atmosphere very good, and despite being varied, the scenery never really made me look at it to comment about how beautiful it was, something the Prime series did.

One last thing about the design that bothered me quite a bit: suits. Adam and his peers may or may not look like gay power rangers to you, but that didn't bother me. Did you notice that Samus, while in her zero suit, wears high heels? You might not know this, but it was pointed out how the heels shouldn't be too high in the original zero suit. Either as a Metroid fan or a Samus fan, these little things bother me, yes. Another thing: the suits. Since she was supposed to already have all of her powerups from Super Metroid, the suits themselves were discarded and became functions. Varia function, Gravity function. And apparently, the Gravity suit was too silly for such a serious game, so it was discarded and traded for some purple aura, because that isn't silly at all.

Way to go, Sakamoto. You managed to discard a classic element in the series, because you deemed it too silly for your game, while including something even sillier. I mean, it makes no sense — and it displeases the fanbase, something a niche title (compared to other Nintendo games) like Metroid should not do. Actually, I wanted to talk about that, too: Other M was supposed to appeal more to Japan, since it never had many japanese fans. However, in order to do so, they disregarded a bunch of things that pretty much defined Metroid to the western fanbase, and they still say it is a game that all fans will like to play.

It might be a good game, but it is not for everyone, and most definitely not for every fan.



I've talked a bit (okay, a lot) about the story before, but now I want to move to character development. Samus gets it. I happen to think the concept is very nice, too — Samus hides behind her suit, almost never taking it off, thus giving us the image of a stoic and badass bounty hunter, but in reality she is human, and an extremely fucked up one at that. The problem is, as I also said before, the game likes to tell instead of showing. Sometimes it tells while it shows, but almost always it simply tells, and as a result Samus' actions in cutscenes sometimes contradict what we came to expect of her. The prime example is — spoilers ahead — the battle against Ridley. I won't tell the circumstances of his rebirth, but Samus gets paralyzed with fear upon his sight (despite it being very obvious that it was him before, but I digress). Some have argued that this is because he just came back from the dead, but the game, which always plays captain obvious, never points to this, instead turning Samus into a child (literally, her render turns into a child), crying and needing to be rescued. I don't think anyone expected that, since she defeated him two times prior, five if you count the Prime series, but Sakamoto certainly does not.

(Ridley received the most epic asskicking ever after the aforementioned bsod, so I guess it might be justified, but you can't really say someone was expecting that; my point remains.)

So yeah, the character presented doesn't correspond to anyone's expectations, which is a bummer. Of course, I don't want Samus to be a bald space marine with no feelings, but I did expect the feelings she does have to be well-executed. Sakamoto himself isn't sure about what Samus is, because he described her as badass to Retro Studios only to take it back recently, saying Retro had their own vision of Samus. One particular quote enraged me:

"If many people have different ideas about what kind of person Samus is then there will be some problems about making the future franchise games. So with Other M I really wanted to determine and express what kind of human Samus Aran is so that we can really tell what kind of natural step she should be taking in the future."

But I think what he really wanted to say was:

"The Metroid fanbase has this idea of Samus, and it completely contradicts my idea of Samus. I can't let that go on any longer."

Someone else said that first, actually, and I agree with whoever he is. I don't think anyone ever imagined Samus the way she is depicted here, and of course not all reactions are positive.

Maybe they would be, but the dub and the script certainly do not help the cause. Remember when I said I felt a nudge at the back of my head when watching the intro cutscene?

Also, I don't like how this game completely disregards the Chozo, which were Samus' foster parents. Zero Mission made a point: she loved them and it was clear that their time together was good. She learned a lot. Even the gallery in Metroid Fusion supports that, and also that canon manga which apparently isn't canon anymore, since Other M contradicts it quite a bit.

Anyway, that doodle you find in Zero Mission was a complete tear jerker to me, because it was then that I realized she was taking back her own planet. And yet Other M pretends they don't exist and that there is only Adam. Not funny at all.

The one last subject I have is exploration. I mentioned it back in the gameplay section of this review, but since so many people consider it to be an important part of the series (it did give birth to the Metroidvania genre, after all), I figured it deserves a little bit more of attention.



I don't particularly feel I explored the BOTTLE SHIP. The game points out your destination and how to get there most of the time, so it is very linear. Fusion was linear, but it had a secret room here and there; Other M even points you out the location of the items once you defeat all enemies in the room, which is generally very easy. Some doors tend to close after you cross then, forcing you to proceed, and since this is very noticeable, the feeling I am exploring gets downgraded to something a little more elusive.

Sometimes, you can't even go back to get powerups you've missed.

People have pointed out that the after-game — again, spoilers ahead — feels completely different. Samus goes back to the BOTTLE SHIP to look for something that was left back, something irreplaceable. This time you get full access to the place and your powerups (power bomb included) and I guess it does feel a bit more like a Metroid game.

Then again, it might be nothing special. You get a few bonus enemies and areas (and one boss), and... well, this I won't spoil. Find out for yourself!

So, after all of this, you must think I hate the game, right? Absolutely not. I am merely recognizing the flaws it has, but I had a lot of fun. Many parts are cringe-worthy, of course, especially if you care about story and character development, which unfortunately the game assumes you do. The gameplay can get very repetitive, and it strays far from the Metroid formula, so if you care about that you probably won't like it. If I had to rate the game, I'd give it a 7/10.

That said, I won't buy it anymore.

Labels: games