That means you have no problem with the actual game, just the controls, right? @Gumby, started the game tonight. Will post first impressions within the next 2 days but the thing I've noticed already is that you can't jump/fall of some ledges. They're fenced off by railings or invisible walls, like God of War and other linear, non-free roaming games. This is unusual for Metroid, Zelda, etc but it's not neccessarily a problem. It just removes that feeling those games ge me of I can go anywhere in the game world.

If Other M truly pioneered a new type of gameplay, it would've caught on and been used in more games.  But it appeared only in Metroid Other M.  

I would say that the fact that Other M's particularly bad gameplay set-up has appeared only in Metroid Other M is testament to how crappy it was.  

The game locks doors on you which is kinda lame, but after you finish the game you have free roam of the ship just like the old days.  Plus you can back track a fair amount while you do your playthrough.

Other games have pioneered new types of gameplay and weren't immitated.  Such examples as Kirby's Canvas Curse Sin and Punishment or Sim Copter.  And they weren't emulated by other companies.

My point was that they developed a different type of gameplay which was unique.  Not that other companies should (or will) copy it.  But simply putting it on 3DS won't improve it.  The Wii also had options for a joystick controls or more buttons.  Changing to the 3DS wouldn't change anything.

I completely agree that putting it on the 3DS wouldn't fix it.  But generally, a successful gameplay or control formula gets copied.  Used again, so to speak.  Sin & Punishment on the Wii didn't do anything really different--it just replaced C-button N64 controls with the Wii Remote.  

Offhand, I can't think of anything else that has a control scheme like S&P (Panzer Dragoon comes close), but I know there are other games like that.

Other M only came out 9 months ago.  If something was going to copy it, we probably wouldn't know about it yet.  Other M did have new gameplay.  Just because you don't like it, or it doesn't get copied by another game, doesn't mean it wasn't new.  Besides, there are pleanty of great games that don't get copied.  Even though this is a copy cat industry, it is usually only the really succesful games that get copied.

Suppose it would but I actually enjoyed the game and controlling samus with the D=pad wasn't that difficult.

Oh right, it wasn't all that long ago.  I guess I just tried to erase it from my memory that much harder.  

At any rate, I guess this is just a matter of semantics.  I see "pioneering" as something that carries over and is used by others.  You know, like when dual-analog for FPS was pioneered and became a staple of the industry.  Other M's control scheme certainly was different... but also crappy.  So, new--yes.  But I seriously hope it doesn't catch on. 

He's right, only really succesful games get copied, evn if the gameplay is crappy. And most metroid games sell only about 1 million lifetime sales. The D-pad control doesn't feel bad now that I've started playing, it just takes away the ability to walk, which won't be useful in this game anyway.

The D-pad was only a minor nuisance to me.  Aside from stupidly limiting Samus's 3-D movement to occasionally awkward 45-degree angles, that is about the only thing in the controls that functioned, one could say, as the developers likely had planned.  Pretty much everything else about the controls bothered me.  From the often disorienting swtiching to 1st-person views, to the next-to-impossible to use Health recharge move during boss battles, to the brain-dead button-mash auto-aim run-n-gun gameplay, to the moronic and initially confounding pixel-hunt sequences, to the generally empty and useless "scanning" to the motion-controlled dodge moves in 1st person mode that succeeded only in making me an even better sitting duck...

I think you get the idea.  I mean, play any other Metroid game before Other M (including brainlessly linear Fusion) and then go back to Other M.  Every other game has solid, sharp, often fluid control.  Nothing is disorienting, nothing is broken.  There is no pixel-hunting.  You can still move in any form, view, or situation.  The gameplay was never brainless button-mash shooting.

Essentially, while even standing on it's own, the controls in Other M are bad enough, but the fact that they're crammed into a Metroid game and feel and operate absolutely nothing like the way a regular Metroid game feels is partially what really gets on my nerves.  

I think Team Ninja was making a Ninja Gaiden game for the Wii and Nintendo stepped in and said, "Hey, why dontcha just take out all those swords, and put in mindless shooting with Samus in this engine?"  Because when you get right down to it, the last thing Other M is, is a Metroid game.