Another fine review for Metroid other m

[Nintendogamer]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=262116

87/100

 

 

Metroid: Other M Review

28-Aug-2010 In space, no-one can hear you swoon...

 

8.7 

Who is Samus Aran? That's what the adverts ask. Slightly worrying that Nintendo don't know. Thankfully, we have the answers.

Samus is an executioner. Female role model? She rolls, yes, but pray you never meet a girl inspired by this brute. Mario and Link kill; Samus executes.

The bloodied fingerprints of Team Ninja (working with Nintendo under the moniker of Project M) are all over this bold, brutal Samus. They take a character never properly seen in 3D - not outside of Prime's cutscenes - and imagine how she would work.

Uniquely blending grace and grunt, she floats as light as a feather only to crash like a falling piano on anything silly enough to squat below. Last action heroine Samus has learnt the evasive moves Team Ninja perfected in Ninja Gaiden.

 

 

Tapping the D-pad before an attack vaults her away in a spurt of slow motion. Woo! Both in the John sense, and in being very exciting. Holding shoot as you perform 'Sense Moves' instantly charges the arm cannon.

Dodging and firing gives Other M a distinct combat rhythm of its own. It looks flashy, too. As beam types stack up, the resulting explosions grow more flamboyant. By the game's end her arm is practically firing London's New Year's Eve fireworks display.

Focusing combat around timing, as opposed to positioning, helps sell D-pad movement. On paper, navigating 3D space with a digital D-pad is perverse. Nintendo invented the analogue stick to get around it. At some point you have to accept that Other M's scheme works.

Most areas of the space station game world appear side-on as 2D planes, while more expansive scenes are generally sculpted with the D-pad's rigid axes in mind. Hell, Samus' returning Speed Booster ability - a reality rippling sprint triggered by running in a straight line - would be tricky without the D-pad.

D-pad oddness has nothing on first-person play, mind. Pointing at the screen puts you inside Samus' visor to let you spot routes, identify firepower needed to open doors, scout out hidden switches and fire missiles for strategic takedowns.

Despite a smooth technical transition the change is too disorientating to offer a spontaneous combat option. Swivel the remote, get your bearings, aim, lock on... the process is far removed from Other M's otherwise instinctive style. Luckily, bar a few bosses that demand missiles/ grapple beam to defeat, Other M can be conquered visor free.

On the whole, Other M leans towards tradition. Set in a regimented space station, the Bottle Ship, the design favours old Metroid's linear architecture over Prime's organic, exploratory sprawl. We'll admit that after Retro's dazzling natural landscapes it's a little odd regressing to something so inherently 'gamey'.

 

 

Built for reasons we won't spoil here, the ship houses artificial ecosystems allowing Samus to gambol through forests, desert canyons, snow drifts and more. Their artificiality births surreal sights that would never have gelled in Prime.

Exiting a lift to discover a fully functioning volcano in the ship's belly is an eye opener, as are holographic swamps flickering between damp menace and the sterile warehouses beneath.

Project M share Retro's eye for 'evolving' level design. Exploring often uncovers switches or morph ball opportunities that turn entire spaces on their head. Morph ball tracks whisk Samus hundreds of metres above a sea of sinking lava platforms navigated earlier. Plop into another hole and she finds herself rolling about the Bottle Ship's expansive attic space.

Rooms are flooded, drained, rotated and - in one bravura setpiece - flipped entirely. Samus' returning Shinespark2 ability - firing her up like a rocket - adds vertiginous heights to the ship.

Prime had a head for heights; here Samus can practically power bomb the Pearly Gates. The Bottle Ship is packed with cinematic happenings, harking back to Super Metroid and Fusion. Repeat appearances from one persistent horror remind us of SA-X's Fusion performance, while a dramatic self-destruct moment takes the opening of Super Metroid and buffs it with graphical oomph not available in 1994.

However, with objective markers and regular map updates, Other M feels more hand-holdy than its forebears. Indeed, we never felt the helpless isolation that defines Samus' best adventures. Too eventful to be lonely, this doesn't mean Project M can't find elbow room for powerup hide-and-seek.

 

 

A new system marks hidden items on the map once all enemies are dead. Let us assure you this does not make them any easier to find - it shows their resting place, not the snaking routes required to sniff them out. As an indicator, we stormed through Other M in ten hours with just 42% of the pickups found.

Other M is a forgiving Metroid. Or rather, the most finely tuned. Nintendo hit that sweet spot: empowering without nannying. Digging out energy tanks takes the edge off the few difficulty spikes, but the natural rate of ability unlocks is expertly synchronised
with the task at hand.

Other M intended to break with tradition. Just look at the funky parentage. Weaknesses stem from the same place as strengths: this is a marriage of two very different minds, both trying to size each other up. As Team Ninja unleash their action savvy, Nintendo's accessible design principles ensure it doesn't treat us too roughly. Ninja Gaiden had bombastic spectacle and wincing executions but was so hardcore we lost a hand to an instruction manual paper cut.

Nintendoifying Team Ninja gives us a daring new kind of game. It's no surprise that it's a little wobbly on its feet. And it's not as bad as that sounds anyway. Along with removing choking hazards, Sakamoto and the Nintendo element protect most of the Metroid fundamentals. The stomach butterflies as you unlock a new skill and realise the new access you have. The satisfaction of finally grabbing the missile powerup that's seemingly out of reach. The goosebumps from hearing classic 8-bit and 16-bit ditties given to an orchestra to play with. The sense of empowerment in the final hour - when a whole game's worth of stacked beam upgrades flood the screen with every flavour of pain imaginable - belongs to Metroid and Metroid alone.

When Samus is properly in your hands, this is a true Metroid. "When Samus is in your hands." Ah yes, the caveat. The niggle. The flaw. The second health bar you didn't know a boss had. A big part of Other M - a profoundly important part, based on Sakamoto's various interview musings - is the story.

 

 

Other M likes cutscenes. Regressive, old fashioned cutscenes. Two hours of them, all told; a mix of D-Rockets' glorious CG and slightly lumpier in-engine offerings. Aren't Nintendo the champions of doing rather than
watching? Packed with lumpy exposition and back story these asides sit uncomfortably. Their tone is melancholic, their pace ponderous. Going from chameleons in chokeholds to Samus' glum recollections is jarring. It doesn't help that dialogue is of the George Lucas ilk: say what you feel rather than emoting.

Unusually for Nintendo localisation, dialogue is stiff and repetitive, bearing the hallmarks of its Japanese roots. Occasionally action and cutscene merge into unholy hybrids. In some, the camera locks in visor view until you scan a relevant item. Intended to draw us into Samus' helmet during key narrative moments it comes off as a duff quick-time event. Other times the camera locks over Samus' shoulder as she investigates mysterious facilities.

Slowly clomping through eerie corridors is spooky and lonely in that recognisably Metroid manner, but it does feel like two minutes of Resident Evil in a ten-hour Metroid game. Neither technique offends as such, but in Other M's brash and confident whole they feel noticeably less surefooted.

Who is Samus Aran? Other M paints a picture of a girl with a knotted history and daddy issues. This isn't our Samus Aran. Our Samus is the action icon who bounds across lava, rolls through a space station's guts and dispatches enemies with a flip, a kick and a laser between the eyes.

Like its heroine, Other M comes with unneeded baggage - but it doesn't change how she fires a cannon, melts a door or obliterates anything with a pulse. It's the execution that counts. And there's nothing Samus does better.