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Resident_Hazard on 25 May 2011
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tolu619 said:
Resident_Hazard said:


I would rather see:  

Metroid Other M stricken from existence, and removed from the Metroid continuity.

and

A new original Metroid game made with competence.

 

There are simply too many problems with the game.  The brainless run-n-gun gameplay was very un-Metroid, there was zero exploration, there was no atmosphere, and Samus's character was completely assassinated and replaced by wretched teenage girl stereotypes.  Suffice to say, I thought the gameplay flat-out sucked.  It was fun at first--but eventually it was brainless running while mashing the attack button.  Metroid has always had shooting, but it was never so brainless as this.  

The FPS mode was disorienting.  Almost without fail, I'd switch to it, only to be facing some random direction that ended up screwing me over.  The FPS dodge move almost never worked.  What should've been a simple motion-based dodge usually caused me to be hit twice.  Everything in the Metroid Prime games was seamless.  First-person to morph ball, First-person to space jump/screw attack, swinging on the grapple beam, etc.  Absolutely nothing was seamless in Other M.  It was bulky and cumbersome and after a while, it started to feel like a flat-out hassle to me.  

 

In the end, aside from a couple nice boss battles, I felt that Metroid Other M had no redeeming value (and it's insistence on re-using Ridley yet again was annoying)--it was extremely badly written, and it didn't play like a Metroid game, it didn't look like a Metroid game, it didn't feel like a Metroid game.  It had no atmosphere, no new items or weapons, no real exploration, no open-world player-focused gameplay.  Everything was just wrong.  Linear gameplay, boring disrespectful writing, and nonsensical game design built around the worst plot device (permission to use weapons) imaginable made for one of the worst experiences I've ever seen in such a high-profile AAA franchise.  

 

I would rather see a new Metroid game--first-person, side-scrolling, 3rd-person, I don't care.  Just so long as it's made by a company at least as competent as Retro Studios... if not actually being given to Retro Studios.  If they're going to keep going down this path of shitty anime-style writing to force asinine linear gameplay--I'd much rather they shelve the franchise than continue ruining it.  

The bolded parts scare me. I've already prepared my mind to witness the assasination of Samus' character. As a fellow gamer, you know how hard it would be for me to decide to never play this game just because of all I've heard. If you were told all this before playing the game, you would still have gotten it, right?


I'm a huge, huge, huge Metroid nerd.  I love the solemn exploration, the deep evocative atmospheres, the moody music, the large environments riddled with secrets, the discovery of finding or earning new upgrades, weapons and items.  And once the Metroid Prime games came into being, I felt that the gradual story unveiling was absolutely perfect for the Metroid franchise.  Because it was like you were exploring and discovering the story.  Reading Pirate computer terminals, deciphering ancient Chozo texts, and so forth.  

Now, if I knew that Other M was as bad as it is before hand.  I don't know.  I can't say if I would've purchased it or not.  I heard one snippet of a harsh review before playing it, and it was G4's notion that it was sexist and that is ruined Samus's character.  I scoffed.  Then I foiund out it was true.  And I didn't scoff anymore.  I was pissed off.  

I can't say if I would buy it, to be perfectly honest.  I probably would've thought twice had I played through Ninja Gaiden II before hand.  But I played through it some months afterwards, and then I saw what was pretty much "standard" Team Ninja design, and realized just how wrong they were to be making a Metroid game.  

If you're going to play it, rent it.  It's not worth owning.  And it pains me to say that both as a collector of games, and as a Metroid fan.  Everything that I listed that I love about Metroid games was completely absent from Other M.  Linear gameplay, small environments, boring run-n-gunning (and I normally love run-n-gun games, but that's not what Metroid is!), microscopic environments, cumbersome controls, no new weapons, only a single (barely interesting) new item--and a bland, predictable, horribly cliche and offensive story told straight to your face with no amount of gameplay involved for to uncover it.  None of that stuff is Metroid in the slightest sense.

Here's the one thing it had that was good:  About 3 of the boss battles were really impressive and fun.  

 

Oh, by the way, this doesn't get mentioned much for this game, but it irritated the hell out of me:  It has among the worst loading of any Wii game.  Frequent load times, obvious load times, illogical (often random) load times--and the action literally halts as "now loading..." blinks in the bottom right corner of the screen.  Remember in the Prime games that Retro went the extra mile to craft seamless loading and environments.  You never saw "now loading" cluttering a stalled gameplay screen in those games.  Here, it was constant.

And you know what?  It even happened to me during the infamous Metroid "escape" sequence at the end.  As I recall, the timer kept counting down while the screen stalled to finish loading the area I was trying to run through.

If you collect games, then maybe buy it.  If you just have to finish your Metroid collection, then maybe.  Otherwise, rent it or don't play it at all.  It's dreadful.  The more you love Metroid and Samus, the more Other M is going to piss you off.