| Pavolink said: I don't get the Other M hate. I love the game because, with the exception of intrusive cutscenes, is like playing Super Metroid in 3D. I hope Nintendo release a sequel soon with less cutscenes. And I liked the story. |
...assuming this comment is serious, which I'm not entirely sure it is...
The hate comes about because...
-It goes completely against everything we've known about our protagonist's personality to this point.
-The plot is hackneyed, cliched, and tramples all over everything that's part of the Metroid experience. Instead of discovering what's been going on, the game forcefeeds you long cutscenes and monologues where Samus explains everything that's going on. All sense of mystery and discovery is lost. Even if you liked the story, or even if the story was the most riveting tale told, it wouldn't work in a Metroid game. A long, convoluted story that requires a heavy amount of exposition to relay isn't suited for Metroid.
-The character of Samus as well is completely nonsensical based on what we know from previous games. Instead of being a battle hardened bounty hunter who's fiercly independent, she now basically begs for acceptance and to be let in on a Federation mission, even to the point where she's willing to run through an extremely dangerous environment without protective gear just because no one explicity told her she could. She consistently gets outsmarted by dumb conspiracies, makes very amateur mistakes, and in general acts like she's barely been in bounty hunting at all. If you removed the plot elements involving Super Metroid from the game, I'd have probably assumed it took place before Zero Mission or something.
-The side characters aren't much better either. Adam makes extremely poor tactical decisions, like splitting up his entire team throughout the station even when he knows there are bioweapons aboard, continuing to have his team split up after he knows there's an assassin present, not giving Samus permission to use powerups that could not possibly be harmful but could very well be life saving, shooting Samus in the back instead of stopping her like a normal person, and then blowing himself up in Sector Zero instead of trying some alternative method first, like evacuating the space station while setting the self destruct sequence, or getting Samus to fly in and open fire on it. The Deleter's actions make very little sense as well. Trying to take out a legendary bounty hunter with an oversized tractor?
-It's nothing like Super Metroid in 3D. The only similarity I could possibly see comes from how Samus moves, but it lacks the exploration, atmosphere, isolation, and level design of Super Metroid. If I had to list two defining features of Super Metroid, it would probably be exploration and isolation, both of which are essentially non-existant due to the game's extreme linearity and constant messaging from Adam. Past doors are consistently sealed and locked off, even ones from just a few rooms ago, preventing you from exploring anything until the very late game.
-It consistently breaks the bond between the player and Samus. In past Metroid games (with the exception of one brief moment in Fusion that I'm really not a fan of), the only bits of information that were revealed to the player were the ones that were revealed to Samus as well. Other M consistently reveals things to the player that Samus isn't aware of, such as the Deleter attacking MB, Ridley being killed by what turned out to be the Queen Metroid, or that one Asian trooper being offed. You're consistently aware of far more information than Samus is, which negatively impacts both my immersion in the character and the sense of mystery in the game. "Why isn't Adam talking to me anymore?" would be a very interesting question indeed...if the game hadn't revealed to me in a cutscene that he had his earpiece shot off by the Deleter.
-The game itself is unnecessary and just makes the rest of the Metroid storyline very awkward and much harder to believe, particularly Fusion. Instead of Fusion being a believable episode where the Federation tried housing some creatures/Metroids on a space station for the first time and then an X parasite broke out on boards, we now have to accept that the, after the events of Other M, the Federation still thought it was wise to clone Space Pirates, Ridley, and Metroids, and keep them on board some isolated space station, despite the fact that the last time they did so they murdered everyone on board. It makes the Federation look like Weyland Yutani, a cartoonishly evil greedy corporation that just wants to keep its precious aliens no matter how many people they kill, and it makes them retroactively look like an absolute cretin for calling Samus of all people, who knows their secrets, in to investigate when things go wrong.
-The first person "Find it" sections are stupid, obnoxious, halt gameplay for no real reason other than to pad the game's length, and again, break up immersion.
-Switching over to first person for missiles isn't awful, but again, kills immersion and is far more cumbersome than it should have been. In fact, everything to do with using a wiimote exclusively instead of a nunchuk + wiimote combo was a horrible idea.
-The game, despite massively overhauling the mechanics, has very little in the way of original story ideas or new powerups. All of the powerups are simply copypasted in from past games with the exception of the Diffusion Beam (which might as well be since all it did was take the power away from missiles and put it on the beam), the story is ripped straight from Fusion and an awful Aliens fanfiction, and the enemies/bosses are like 80% straight copies from Super Metroid or Fusion. Many times they show up with absolutely no explanation other than "Lol hey guys remember that cool boss? Well we're sticking him in here that makes us cool too right?" Why the heck is Phantoon now an evil space monster that attacks space station's windows?
And there's probably more I've mised. That's why Other M gets hate.
