So, Metroid Other M was a good game

[DevilRising]

@OP

I'm afraid I'd have to disagree. From the moment that I saw that Team Ninja was developing it, I had a bad feeling, because their games are exponentially awful. But I figured I'd wait and give it a chance, because Nintendo would never let anyone ruin Metroid like they did Star Fox, right? Even when other people were bitching and moaning before it released, and even though I had a sneaking suspicion/fear that it would play like dogshit, I was willing to give it that chance, I tried to be positive about it and hope it WAS indeed going to be a good game.

Unfortunately, when it released, and I got it day one, I got it home, and while I tried like hell to like it, honestly, almost everything about the game was fairly awful. The story is absurd garbage, yes, and it illustrates perfectly why they absolutely SHOULD NOT give Link a voice, or try to "fill in his back story" in any Zelda game. Part of the allure of a Samus or a Link, is that while sure, there are some foundations and building blocks of story/background for them to go with, all the finer details are left for the gamer to "fill in the blanks", and so the character can be as cool as you imagine them to be. As soon as you start trying to fill in those blanks, suddenly the character "isn't who you thought they were" anymore, and in Samus' case, they drew her in Other M as a teen girl in her cadet days who acted rather like a spoiled, insolent child. And considering that she wasn't raised by humans, but by Chozo, and likely might not have ever even been around another human (since her early childhood when her family was killed) until young adulthood, the fact that her character would NOT act "teenage" and "girly" makes perfect sense. She would have acted more like however Chozos acted, because that was her childhood. So they drew her out to be kind of an emotional moron, the stereotype of how "women are supposed to be", they basically made Samus Aran like every other dumb female anime heroine out there. And the whole dichotomy with Adam and everything....just the entire thing sounded retarded.

But it wasn't just the story. To me, the gameplay sucked ass as well, and for all the reasons I feared. Bottom line: it played like a Team Ninja game. Everything wrong with their games, especially their 3D Ninja Gaiden games, was wrong with Other M. Shitty camera-work, floaty ass/imprecise jumping and platforming, iffy hit detection, just a very "sloppy" feel to the controls all around. Not tight and precise like Metroid is supposed to be. The game wasn't "unplayable", but it certainly wasn't very fun to play. The worst thing I could say about it, is that it simply didn't feel like I was playing a Metroid game. Even with the Prime games, being in 3D and first person, somehow they did still manage to hang on to that feeling of "Metroid-ness". Other M is, at least in my experience, mostly devoid of it. The gameplay itself just wasn't fun to play, and the moronic "turn the Wiimote to stand completely stone-still and fire missles, even in the middle of heated fucking boss battles", was one of the worst game design ideas I've ever experienced.

I myself only managed to stomach about half the game before I eventually quit. Unfortunately, I allowed a friend to come over and check it out, and he kinda liked it, so he insisted on playing through it, and I had to see the whole game play out. My opinion didn't change. It's not even like you could say "Well the game had some nice ideas but it just didn't excecute them well". I've certainly played plenty of games like that. But Other M isn't one of those. It didn't, to me, have much positive going on in the first place to build from. It just wasn't a very good game. The only real positive I'd give it, is that "for the Wii" (or for that gen period), the graphics were fairly nice to look at. Not EVERYWHERE, there were some shit ugly areas in the game. But in general it did look nice.

But that's about it. I can appreciate if for whatever reasons you and others liked it. But I simply didn't. And trust me, I don't enjoy that I hate that game so much. I was bitterly disappointed. The only reason that I was MORE bitterly disgusted with Star Fox: Assault on GC, is because the early trailers that only showed the first two (good) levels of the game, fooled me into believing that it would be the worthy SF64 sequel I was hoping it was. But it turned out to be complete dogshit also. To be fair, Other M is a better game than Assault, hands down. But that simply isn't saying much. To me, Other M was a major dud, and I really hope if Nintendo ever works with Team Ninja again, it's allowing them to just work on their own new IP, and that they NEVER let them touch another Nintendo property again.