I was waiting for someone to point this out.

Adam was lying to her when he said it was to protect her from that baby metroid. Did you notice, right after he did that, he made Samus stay and left to go into sector zero by himself? Based on their history together, he knew Samus would reject his heroic idea, and she would insist on going in herself.

But oops, she just so happened to be weakened at the time of the decision-making. Ironic?

I think not! (Adam slightly paralyzed her so she wouldn't be able to resist him when he insisted on going in to sector zero himself).

Once you understand that, I think it makes quite a touching scene, really.

I suppose that does make sense, given that even the mature Metroids were freezable.

I started reading that Malstrom post, and I quickly came along this part (the emailer is talking):

"Mother Brain is turned into AN ANDROID AI. (To control the Metroids) I am not kidding. There was some affectionate moments with MOTHER BRAIN and stuff, it was so awful. The Space Pirates have also been reduced to feral creatures with no concept of culture, pretty much kicking at Metroid Prime’s clever lore. (I love the Space Pirates there, they are cold, heartless and evil and even try to mimic Samus’s Morph Ball, with deadly outcomes) They really softened anything remotely scary and mysterious about the enemies, at least Kraid was able to ditch this stupid game."

Well, now we know he didn't actually play the game. Either that or he seeeriously didn't listen to ANYTHING that was going on. It's no wonder he hated the story so much. But regardless, it felt like he really went into the game wanting to hate it. Actually, it seems like a lot of people have. Oh well.

About the Zelda part, why is Malstrom condemning Zelda so soon? We know almost nothing about the game, yet he's already saying it will prove nothing new to the series besides more precise motion control. How can he possibly know that? I thought Miyamoto said they were changing up the "Zelda flow" with this game. Why is Malstrom so condemning?

He seems so incredibly provocative. I can see why he gets a lot of crazed fans following him, he's extremely attacking and ripping apart games he doesn't even know much about and hasn't even played it.

I don't get it. I really don't. He's on a freakin rampage. Who pissed in his wheaties?

For Metroid, it could be confusion over the story. Perhaps the emailer was actually bored enough to stop being able to follow it.

For Zelda, he's basically stating the warning signs, and in case you hadn't noticed, he's stated other games where the signs can be seen after the fact.

I suppose I see his point, but I don't think it's right to step your foot over something and condemn it to hell without taking the time to truly understand it. We really know nothing about this game. You can draw correlations from other sources, but you can't say for sure it will apply to this game. I just don't like that approach at all. Malstrom could end up being 100% right in his fears/statements/accusations, but the way he goes about it I will always disagree with.

I do think it's important to draw correlations and figure out hypotheses, but I don't think one should assume they're true before they've been proven.

I think he's willing to be proven wrong. He's just writing what looks like the direction of the game from what he's seen. If it turns out to be closer to what was shown at E3, it's likely he will eat his words.

Plus this is not condemning the game alone, but the mindset that he feels is ruining gaming. That's what a lot of those upset about his Metroid comments didn't seem to get. He wasn't calling on just Other M or Sakamoto, but on the entire idea that developer eccentricity makes a great game, particularly when that hurts a franchise that found success without such thoughts.

Now if one wants to bring up Metal Gear Solid to counter that, I would like to see his words on that as well.

After further investigation, I can safely say this game was most certainly not about "maternal instincts".  It appears the characters monologue endlessly about various ideas related to motherhood, but the player is never asked to interact with the game in a way that would reinforce any of those themes.  You never have to protect or defend anything, you never provide care for anything, and you do not have to make decisions of character related to being a role model for what you care for.  It remains a game about shooting and dodging, and never uses these mechanics to say anything meaningful on the topic of motherhood.

No, they did not make a game about maternial instincts.  If you don't tie the themes to game mechanics, you haven't made a cinematic game; you've made a game that ocassionally switches the channel to an unrelated movie.

And this is why I say Chrono Trigger and the Mario RPGs are the best roleplaying games ever, since the themes and the gameplay actually mesh.

Not that I mind other RPGs, just that too often the gameplay has little to do with the story, even good stories (like Nippon Ichi games).

He 100% condemns it to hell because according to Malstrom, Other M is devoid of all the elements which made Metroid the series it is today.

Malstrom is an old school gamer who in his articles on Other M points out how Other M has nothing in common with Metroid, Metroid 2 and even Super Metroid.

Malstrom is looking at Other M from a "How is Other M going to be like the original Metroid and re-start a 1980s phenomenon all over again" point of view. According to Malstrom, all the sales of the Metroid games after Metroid are due solely to Metroid because without Metroid you would have no sequels or Sakamoto doing his wannabe diva rock star thing ruining a beloved series.

He sees nothing alike and does his best in deriding Other M to the point where one of his latest posts has an emailer loving Other M because Malstrom has railed against it so much.

This debate is over older games (age 24 on up as of 2010) vs. new school gamers (younger than 24). The new school, one can safely assume, was not around during the golden age of gaming in the 1980s and 1990s. They have no context except from Metroid Prime, thus Sakamoto has deluded himself into believing he can re-write the Metroid series as if the Prime series never happened, all gamers buying Other M have never played Super Metroid or any of the earlier Metroids, and a misplaced expectation in newer gamers preferring a game which is half cutscene and half rail shooter where you never need to manually aim and you are always told where to go.

This is where Malstrom is coming from. An old school gamer who cannot stand the fact that the new school is being used as a prop for developers to ignore the historical context of the entire series and ruin the series trying to appeal to a fickle crowd, while ignoring the old school crowd who made you what you are today.

Wait, I don't know whether I understood correctly or not, didn't Malstrom actually play the complete version of M:OM before bashing and rejecting it?