You can if you want. I'm not asking to go to great lengths or anything. No pressure :)

Nah, that's just standard world building. The larger structure may not be expliciated, but it is still reflected in the games. Of course, that's not the where the essential/original appeal of the series lies, but there is nothing here to suggest the developers do not aknowledge that.

A vast amount of the game is soundtracked by silence with the occasional drum and bass to set the mood. Scanning will not feature in the game (perhaps it will feature very rarely) to make way for a more action-focused game. In the game ONM consider it has one of the most revolutionary scenes in the Metroid franchise (I am not sure if this features in the gameplay or cutscenes). The boss fights are less frequent but offer more variety whilst facing them, the overall difficulty is in fact in the middle of the Metroid games' difficulty, perhaps slightly harder than Metroid Prime. The length of game is also in the middle of the Metroid games' length however Metroid: Other M offers wider locations and the artificial terrains can be switched with a control module. 

Samus Aran is more athletic overall and can dodge various obstacles by one press of a button. She can ram her arm cannon down her opposing threats which fires any beam down their throat, this means their will be more close-up combat in the game.

The main concepts of both parts of the Metroid franchise have been kept but some parts are new and others have been dropped. You can regain health by raising the Wii Remote and pressing A, though this only works if you have minimal health.

According to Nintendo this is one of the best Metroid games but just falls short of Metroid Prime. 

About what i had figured. Prime is going to be hard to top, given the direction this game is taking, but it still looks to be an excellent addition to the franchise.

"Length in the middle" means little, given that the length of older Metroid games is hard to define (length where you know what you're doing, speedrun length, length for completion, or length because you have no fucking clue what you're doing). If it means length in the middle of the later games, then we might look at 8-10 hours? Not sure.

Over 15 hours!

That's actually pretty good. I was a little afraid since R&D Metroids have tended to be more compact, better for replayability/completion runs/speed runs and such, but worse for your value of the initial run. 15 hours is more than you could expect from a lot of single-player games these days.

And that is if you are rushing the game (completing the game without the various items spread around each location)!

15 hours?

sounds solid.... I like the new direction taken with the frenchise.... prime was boring

they look the same