Metroid: Other M

Metroid is my favorite Nintendo franchise. Other M looks interesting and bizarre at the same time. Hopefully the mish-mash of styles works well together. I'm definitely checking this game out come the end of June. I doubt it will come close to surpassing the Prime series in quality though (not to mention old school Metroid). All three of those games are excellent.

Yeah, I love me some Metroid (beat all of them except for that awful Game Boy game), but I'm not sold on this one. I've never been a fan of the Team Ninja games and this still looks a bit too actiony for Metroid. If anything, I'm glad they're taking the series in a new direction as Corruption was proof that the Prime series was getting a bit stale.

Glad they're making Samus talk. The more Nintendo's games improve visually, the sillier it becomes for the protagonist not to speak.

I heard that this was a direct sequel to Super Metroid and actually opens with the ending to that game. This trailer looks great. Going 2.5D was a wise move, I think.

I want this to work, but the lack of tension or atmosphere is a little disheartening. Nobody really talks about how genuinely creepy the series became in that stretch between Super Metroid (which is still one of the more eerie game intros in history) and Prime 2 (pretty much anytime you shifted to the alternate dimension, your blood pressure goes up).

Team Ninja's rarely done me wrong when they've made a game that didn't involve volleyball, though. I remain optimistic.

I forgot Team Ninja was making this....Ridley is probably going to be a nightmare to defeat.

Not to mention all the potential Rule 34 that a Team Ninja-produced Metroid is capable of.

You sick son of a....you've just made me picture Mother Brain designed by team Ninja.

More like Metriod: Another Meh.

AMIRITE, Guys? Right?

No, you're not right. While it certainly has a stupid title, the game still looks interesting enough to anticipate. Who knows? Maybe Other M will end up being a train wreck. At this point, I am very interested in it, and there are no previous Metroid games that deserve a "meh" so this game certainly can't be "another" one.

I don't even own a Wii and I want to play this. Huge Team Ninja fan this looks awesome.

OMGOMGOMG!!! It isn't a POV game!! Thank the baby. I love Metroid, but FPS make me sea sick.

So touchy.

Actually, The Metroid Prime games went from "interesting with potential" to "mind-numbingly dull." But maybe I'm wrong. See, I get bored watching paint dry so maybe one's snoozefest could be another's thrilling experience.

No game with a gameplay mechanic as cool as the Echo Visor could be called mind-numbingly dull.

Although, the bits I played of Corruption may very well qualify.

Corruption was an epic misfire by Nintendo (and they know it), by rushing final production which lead to an insanely slow flow and cutting of multiplayer, which would have been awesome.

You gotta call it... MOM.

Other M

M Other Metroid?

Pregnant Samus gonna give birth to Metroid babies man, I just know it.

Nah. They went from "one of the greatest games of all time" to "who cares."

Metroid Prime was really, really good. Super good. Best of the generation good.

Sorry man. I didn't mean to come off as touchy.

Personally, I really liked Corruption despite its flaws. It still did so many things right though that it was nowhere near a complete failure, at least in my eyes. The new control scheme, some great looking planets (at least once you get past the introduction), actual voiceovers, and the corruption hyper beam mechanic all helped to give it a bit of a different flavor from the first two Primes while retaining the exploration and mood a Metroid game should have. The Skytown area was awesome both in both art and level design, and I loved the saturated look of Bryyo as well.

I am of the mind that Echoes is just as good as the original Prime, only getting edged out by the first because it's a sequel. Corruption is a still a quality entry in the series even if it doesn't quite reach the height of the previous entries. I think to call it a bore is a bit of an overstatement.

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing how Other M turns out. Hopefully it isn't an epic failure. Also, I think calling it MOM is hilarious!

Echoes was samey in spots, but the level design for the Dark World and the new weaponry were fucking aces.

Prior to Bioshock, the first Prime was easily the most satisfying FPS on a console.

There will be concerns about the atmospherics and level design. If we are very lucky, this will come off like Metroid Fusion - more focused, more action-oriented, more linear, but still plenty awesome.

If it's too action-oriented and linear, it ceases to be Metroid in my eyes. I hope they can pull it off. I never played Fusion so I don't really know how far it went in that direction.
Metroid is all about exploration, atmosphere, and isolation. MP: Corruption kind of fucked up the isolation aspect in a lot of areas, but I still think it's a great game.

Partnering with Team Ninja was a good chance to create a new IP*. I kind of wish they had. Maybe they were worried about another Eternal Darkness(great new "hardcore" game published by Nintendo that doesn't sell worth a shit).

*I hate this term.

Fusion definitely had more action, but it didn't entirely abandon the tension at all. The few encounters you have with Samus X were perfect. If anything, it traded the atmosphere for well-designed claustrophobia.

I also seem to remember something highly fucked up going on with your ship's AI at some point in that game.

Fusion is great, though fanboys seem to shit on it just because it's not as great as Super Metroid. Zero Mission is still the best portable Metroid though.

Looking forward to this if only because I dearly want to see the Metroid series redeemed after the disappointment of Corruption. That trailer definitely gives me a lot to look forward to-- seems like a lot of fast-paced and energetic game play, something that the Wii definitely lacks in its catalog of titles. That said I agree with Justin's concerns about the dearth of tension and atmosphere in the footage, but maybe both of those elements will come through more when we're actually personally invested in the game play.

Does anyone know the extent of Nintendo's involvement in this game?

If memory serves, Miyamoto was looming over Retro the whole time they were making Prime, to quality results. I suppose Nintendo just sort of left them to do their own thing after that, which would be why the 'tightness' of the gameplay sort of spiraled out towards Corruption (still solid, but not 'Nintendo tight').

Nintendo is actually more directly involved with this than with the Prime games. It's being co-developed with one of Nintendo's internal teams, and Yoshio Sakamoto is supervising.

All these years bad ass Samus was actually an Evanescence album away from slitting her wrists?

Cut scenes look great, suitless Samus looks great, but holy hell stop with the internal monologues and let me enjoy the game already.

So how is the gameplay in Other M? I think it looks interesting, but it's hard to get a grasp of it from reviews and a few videos. Is the 1st person view completely worthless?

It plays like old school metroid. Balls, bombs, wall jumping goodness. Little nooks to explore/unlock for upgrades.

Samus is generally good about auto-aiming at the bad guys you'll run into, but I need to see (in the manual) if there is some kind of auto-lock button that'll let me strafe instead of just outright turning tail to get some distance between some of the enemies.

1st person view so far has only been for scanning objects and for firing missiles when necessary.

Overall, the presentation (aside from emo narration) is good.

Holy bad. The acting and writing are garbage in this. That fucking thumb thing...Jesus. The actual feel, the vibe from the game is kinda cool, but all the written stuff is pretty weak.

I get this feeling they were trying to go for a noir take on Samus. A noir take would've been badass. Bounty hunter. Tragic back story. Loneliness in space. Constant GODDAMN narration. Just add some booze, cigarettes and a lost love (Adam could have easily filled this role) and you could've have a slick little story. But they fucked it all to hell by making it shitty and hiring crap actors. Now I see why they've been worried about voicing the Zelda games. If you give your character the VA of whatever chick the game's director is banging, it's gonna be kinda bad.

That being said, it's mostly fun to play. It feels really, really finicky at times and really...auto-y. I know I'm not too far in so maybe that complaint will go away, but I kinda feel like I'll always be fighting the controls here.

I know I'll definitely finish it, but Super Metroid is on my main Wii page and I almost just want to play that, again.

That sounds awesome. I can get past the silly story. I wasn't really expecting much in that department anyway. Add one more game onto my ever-growing "must play" list.

You kind of know that once they say 'Japanese' and 'cut-scene' you're going to have to slog through nonsensical melodrama BS. Which is why I kind of avoid Japanese games with stories at this point.

It utterly surprises me that they evidently didn't bring Jennifer Hale back for another go-round as Samus. WTF? And why did they not use the nunchuck for analog control? First-person would still have worked, and made this game amazing.

Also, have been playing this for a little while, and there's no brightness adjustment?

No, I'm serious -- I'm having a real hard time seeing things in the corners and such, so I try to find the "Options"...option...in the menu, and there isn't one. Which also means that I couldn't find any sort of brightness-adjuster. So naturally, I try to turn up my TV's brightness (playing on a 52" plasma), but I tried for twenty minutes and my first death came from Shriekbats that I just did not fucking see. They were as ninjas in the night.

I finally found the TV's brightness setting, it helped a lot. I moved it up like twenty notches, and all of a sudden I can see every little corner and such.

I always saw Samus as a strong-willed, badass heroine. But in a attempt to make this game appeal more to the Japanese gamer audience, they turned her into a whiny, submissive little girl constantly seeking Adam's approval. Still think I'll be having some major fun with this one, but man, XPlay sure raped it in their review -- "2 out of 5," I think it was.

Fuck you Kamikaze rock bat things...I think you were talking about those, right?

Only after being told you could auto-regen your missiles do I go into first person mode and just blow them all away.

I like how they mix up the enemy varieties as you explore the world. You don't just go around killing the moths or porcupines. Out of nowhere you're fighting god damned snakes and weird dinosaur things. Messes with your comfort zone and is challenging all around.

Yeah, those are the ones -- took me forever to finally get their attacks down. First-person seems to work well against them, like you mention, although I'm still pissed that Nintendo failed to mention in the documentation that you could dodge while still in first-person mode.

I'm thinking now that they should have mapped "dodge" to the B button, and given it a cooldown if you don't "dodge." I found myself just tapping the D-pad during fights, and was nearly invincible. It makes the game easier than it could have been, but other than that, I think it still has a really good combat system. Spamming the hell out of it works well, especially during the Crab-boss battle.

The times when the game throws you into first-person view and expects you to play "Where's Waldo?" with the surroundings, so to speak, are very annoying. Metroid Fusion nailed the overall franchise formula slightly better, I think -- in Other M, you basically have unlimited health and missiles, and I've never felt pressured to even bother looking for energy tanks and expansions. Still, I'm enjoying it.

I'm pretty close to beating it. The game has been a blast so far.

It's not as perfect and iconic as the Prime trilogy, but it's fun and addictive. If you stop and think about it, the puzzles and environments rarely rise above servicable, but the way it all comes together is pure gaming comfort food.

There are some surprisingly intense enemy and boss encounters too. Even if they only take 2 or 3 tries to beat, you feel like you really had to earn it. A certain big bird boss also took me about 8 or 9 tries.