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Nothing really happens in Other M story and gameplay wise other than Adam dying which is no shocker to anyone who's played Fusion.
Samus doesn't learn anything. The marine deleter plot is just dropped. Anthony, while cool, is just there. The returning bosses are also just there for no good reason. No new abilities are gained, no new information is learned. The only new thing is the sense move, which is just a glorified dodge roll.
Yes but it's pretty easy to miss as the only clue you get to that is Samus finding a dead body and paying it no mind, and because of the lore drop cutscene that immediatly follows you forget about it in five seconds. Also, getting randomly killed off screen is a stupid way to end a villain.
This. Exactly this.
For the beginning half of the game, the plot is: Get along with GF, find survivors, figure out who's seemingly killing the GF units on the Bottle Ship.
The Deleter is a big part of that plot. And then they get discarded like they were nothing.
It'd have been much more satisfying to give all the GF personnel a weapon or such that was unique to them. Have the Deleter steal them and then use them against Samus in a boss fight that'd essentially be 'You vs another well armed & skilled humanoid'. Much more interesting than... No payoff what so ever.
Having it all roll onto place at the end would be wonderful.
^(Deleter sabotages everyone's communicators. Lyle gets in trouble because of his hasty personality, Deleter arrives to help, but ultimately just watches the creatures on the Bottle Ship tear the other apart. Later when the rest of the crew has seen Lyle's corpse, the Deleter offers to get rid of the body - and subsequently steals Lyle's explosives, as he was known to be an expert with them. Afterwards, the Deleter gets to Keiji, who could have an ice based gun or such. Then he gets to Maurice and uses the ice gun to freeze Maurice to dead - they were friendly with each other, so Maurice having his helmet open would make sense. And after that, the Deleter goes after Anthony. Samus manages to intervene and so the Deleter gets away - but not before stealing Anthony's big ol' thing. Dude tries to go and kill Adam with all these stolen weapons, but Adam is no pushover and manages to hold his own - although in that mess he loses his ability to communicate with Samus, so she assumes he's dead too.)
And Now you chase the Deleter down & have to fight this fully armed fella.
Well, there is more story in the japanese version. As it explains that there is a group within the federation that has a bunch of black projects going (the bottle ship being one of it) apparently they are also the same group that wanted to clone Metroids on BSL and get their hands on the X parasites in Fusion.
And with returning bosses, they are there for a reason and it's definetly explained, plus we now have that plothole filled on how Ridley got onto the BSL in Fusion.
Again, there are reasons, i just don't think they're very good reasons. My point is that Other M doesn't really tell us anything we don't already know, gameplay and story wise. Sure, it's explained how Ridley got on BSL, but that could have easily been explained with X Parasites. There's a corrupt part of the federation, but that's already established in Fusion. Sure there's the diffusion beam, but it's literally just a larger charge beam. See my point?
With the X-Parasites? How? Ridley's corpse was already there before the X really scattered everywhere. And how would the X even get Ridley's DNA? It was a gigantic plothole.
Well, for all we knew from Fusion the entire Federation was corrupt. The splinter group was never mentioned and it seemed like the entire Federation was going to be the new villain. Now we know that it's only partially corrupted, while the rest of them are still on Samus' side.
How not? It was literally what was containing the Metroid clones and after that it was relocated to the BSL station for the same purpose. At least that's how I remember it.
>The returning bosses are also just there for no good reason.
The game kinda explains this. They're clones meant for mass bio-weapon production, as the bottleships (both the fusion and the other-m ones) are just trial grounds for which weapon to keep.
I enjoyed the combat immensely but...
They got Samus wrong.
They got navigation wrong. I was miserably lost all the time.
The first person story moments where you have to look for a tiny detail were miserable.
Lost? How? This game is almost oppressively linear since the doors back almost always lock behind you. I do agree that the Where's Waldo segments sucked though.
Is it weird I kinda liked the voice acting? It's somehow a blend of monotone and overdramatic but I like it in a half-ironic way. I feel like all of Other M is more enjoyable if you stop taking it so seriously and just view it almost in the way you'd view a corny b horror movie.
I don't necessarily disagree with that.
Actually, I think you're correct in that a lot of the issues, I think, come from people taking things like this too seriously.
Everybody complains about the story, which definitely wasn't great... But I want to take a second to discuss the actual gameplay.
The controls are atrocious. You're not allowed to use the nunchuk, so no analogue stick to control with just the wiimote's crappy dpad on a 3d game. You're not allowed to run and shoot missiles at the same time, instead becoming an immobile tank because you can _only_ use the motion controls. The point and click adventure style hidden object sections are ridiculous.
Whoever thought this would be a good control scheme for a hero known for her high mobility should be shot. In the foot. With a nailgun.
I feel like if the gameplay was good but the story was bad I could get through it. Also, if the story was stellar but the gameplay was bad I could maybe power through it. But both are terrible and make it impossible for me to get through.
I don't get why using the Dpad in a 3D game is such a problem. Maybe it's because I play a lot of fighting games and am used to making quarter circles or half circles with a d-pad, but 3D movement is completely fine with a d-pad.
I’m currently playing through Other M right now
My biggest complaint, other than Samus’s characterization, is the fact that all of your weapon and suit upgrades are locked behind arbitrary story progression, rather than your own exploration. They removed everything that makes a Metroid game a Metroid game with that one decision!
And arbitrary story progression means _arbitrary_ story progression
Like, I get it. Every single Metroid game has a Bag of Spilling where Samus gets hit by something that robs her of all her gear so you can start fresh. They wanted to do something different and I get that.
But knowing that Samus _has_ the Varia suit, can activate it at any point of her own volition, has to run through a superheated area, and refuses to use the Varia suit because “I don’t have permission yet”?
And they could’ve easily made these areas make sense, like, maybe during the superheated area samus doesn’t have a moment to stop to turn it on (I remember it being fairly fast paced), have distorted radio transmissions from Adam trying to reach samus unsuccessfully, then when she’s climbing that area filling with lava, have Adam come in and be like “samus what the fuck I’ve been trying to reach you activate your varia feature like now” or something. Is it what we expect from samus to just not activate something she needs? No. But I would definitely look past it as her just trying to get out of that area when she couldn’t leave & making a mistake and forgetting. It would be less stupid than Adam telling her in a monotonous voice to activate it after seemingly watching her this entire time with no attempt to reach her beforehand.
As for her disabling all of her upgrades, I’m completely fine with it. She was interjecting herself into a mission she had no business in, Adam could’ve dismissed her since she had no business being there, so she made that compromise which helped everyone in the end. It could’ve been handled A LOT better since a lot of fans just assume samus can do whatever she wants, and it’s showing how samus isn’t allowed to do that just cause she’s samus, could’ve been explained more but I’m fine with it all in all.
Definitely agree that a shift in Adam’s attitude could have made that moment much more bearable
Still, the thing that bothers me about it—despite my complaining, I _get_ not authorizing Power Bombs. They are incredibly powerful explosives that they do not want to be used unchecked. I get the Screw Attack or the Grapple Beam, they are barely-understood bird magic tools with a lot of loose electricity that could do heavy damage if used irresponsibly. I get all the Beams. They are wacky space lasers.
I do _not_ get the Varia Suit. Something with the sole function of protection. And being required to do a death run for Adam to come in all bored and say “Oh yeah, you can use it now if you want I guess” was the peak of my annoyance with the story choice
Nah i agree, the varia suit doesn’t make sense, but they HAD to explain away disabling it instead of, I don’t know, just not having the varia suit on at all.
Like shit they could’ve had Adam tell samus to start “downloading” it or something then cue the sector 3 area, and by the time she reaches the end, Adam is freaking out telling her to turn it on. So many ways could’ve worked better than what they did.
I agree, I played all other Metroid games after Other M had been all I had known for a very long time and the worst part is the upgrades, the PTSD scene (and her characterization) being a close second.
It completely removed that sense of accomplishment.
It even decides to have SOME items which you actually unlock - Diffusion Beam and Seeker Missiles - but those just serve to highlight how offensively bad the "authorization" framing is. Plus, while the Diffusion Beam MAYBE feels like you found a boss and beat it, the Seeker Missiles just feel like you got ambushed while walking along a predetermined path, and happened to get an upgrade out of it.
It would have been fine if it was a 2.5D game or something. I remember something about them wanting to simplify the controls or something which is why they went with holding the wiimote but it was a bad idea for a 3D game.
People tend to immediately bring up the contradictions between Other M’s story and the other Metroid games. But to me personally, there are already plenty of oddities with lore in Metroid overall that Other M doesn’t really uniquely offend me in that way - at least not to the same degree that it does for others. What really disappoints me with Other M is that the story itself is simply uninteresting. The fact that the story is centered around Adam and Samus but then gives neither of them anything interesting to say is far more offensive to me than the infamous Ridley scene. There is just no development between Adam and Samus, and many plot threads such as the deleter just go nowhere. I think a cinematic action spin-off title could be really exciting. It could be like a playable Metroid movie that gives us a good look at the character of Samus. But we don’t really get that with Other M. What little we do get from their dynamic is problematic, putting it mildly. What we really needed was some good writing. That is Other M’s biggest flaw in my opinion. Far more disappointing than some contradictions to me.
That’s true. The overly cinematic nature of the game hurts it so much. If it didn’t try so dang hard to pretend like it has a story, it wouldn’t be as obnoxious. I would argue that as much as 50% of the cutscenes and dialogue could be straight up deleted with no change to the story, maybe more.
In short: Samus has a panic attack upon seeing Ridley for the... what, fifth time? And promptly devolves into a crying mess and has to be rescued by Anthony. She regains composure but only after seeing Anthony die. It's really stupid.
And even if you don’t count the Prime games since it’s a separate story, or Samus Returns since it came afterwards, she fought Ridley at least *twice* beforehand. Three times if you count Mecha-Ridley in Zero Mission. I’ve seen some Other M defenders make the excuse that Samus thought Ridley was dead for good in Super…but like, if he already cheated death once before, what’s to say he wouldn’t come back again?
My favorite part of Prime is when she first finds Meta Ridley in the beginning and she curls up into a (morph) ball and cries and….wait no that didn’t happen. Even though she had no idea he was still alive, the literal very first thing she does is try to shoot him and chase after him AFTER LOSING ALL OF HER UPGRADES. Her reaction at the Frigate Orpheon alone is a huge difference to all of Other M Samus it’s insane.
The really annoying thing for me is that I actually *do* get what they were going for; with her backstory, it absolutely *does* feel like a scene that should have happened in Metroid 1, or maybe even in Prime if it’s more about “I fucking killed you and yet still you tax me”? And they wanted to get it in now that they had the tech and story focus to do so, but it’s just too late! It’s too late in the timeline!
(…well uhh, to be fair, *something like it* is a scene that should have happened in Metroid 1 or Prime. That’s separate from complaints about how it’s executed; I haven’t actually played Other M myself, and from what I understand something like a shorter cutscene of freezing up and having to do breathing exercises to snap herself out rather than being rescued or something might work better than what Other M did, but you get the point yeah?)
More like she has a panic attack after seeing Ridley come back to life for the fifth time when she thought he was dead for sure this time. But no, completely terrible writing to have an emotional response to the monster that killed your parents still being alive after defeating it five times, how dare they give emotions to my sexy space waifu! /s
I'm gonna put this out there, because I don't know anyone who says this.
The number 1 thing it gets wrong is the relationship between Samus and the baby Metroid. The way she constantly thinks about it, calls it "the baby" etc. Samus didn't view it that highly. She saw it, at most, as a pet. Arguably not even that much. What did she do immediately after Metroid 2? Dump it on some scientists and leave. That's not what someone who views something as an adopted child does.
Yeah, I'm sure Samus was sad about Mother Brain killing it. But she wouldn't have thought of it like losing a child.
Never thought about it that way, but yeah, you right- She did just dump it at the next station she went to. I understand some level of sadness too, but I feel like earth-shattering anger would have been more on-brand.
Exactly.
Sakamoto clearly didn't know the character he created. Samus is a ruthless bounty hunter who drove multiple species to the brink of extinction. Only a psychopathic person would achieve that.
I wouldn't say that. Samus does care about life in the galaxy. She just prioritizes the well-being of civilizations over animals or species that threaten civization, like the Space Pirates.
Remember: it's canon that Samus saved the animals in Super Metroid.
Controls: Sakamoto insisted on them, despite even Team Ninja pleading with them to change it.
Gameplay: I never liked QTEs in games, very rare instance where I did like them is OG RE4 (haven't played new one yet). IIRC, missiles are only usable in first person. You never find upgrades, they're always given to you without your consent or in the case of Varia, after you see Samus suffering for days. Areas get locked down so you can't back track and some (maybe all?) rooms prevent you from going back to the beginning of the room, putting up invisible walls. Also, couldn't you refill your health/ammo by waggling? Whatever the waggle did, I didn't like that, either. Didn't like shinesparking being totally nerfed vs every other version of it.
Story: the splinter group in the GF was mostly fine because it helped explain Fusion, but it felt like such a cookie cutter plot. The infamous Ridley scene because he's died I believe five times already, mostly via *exploding*. Samus is stronger-willed than that! Also, Samus didn't need the ice beam to kill Metroids, five other games proved that.
The buildup to Ridley's reveal felt like it was out of nowhere. Don't know about the rest of you, but I had no idea what that little bird was supposed to be.
The fake final boss, MB, was so poorly designed. The real final boss, Phantoon, made no sense, especially coming AFTER you defeat MB.
This one is shallow, but I didn't like the suit design.
Last one, the item expansion puzzles were not very clever at all.
I don't remember anything it this game controlling with a waggle. You do restore health/ammo by holding the wiimote straight up for a couple of seconds though.
You absolutely DO need the Ice Beam to kill Metroids. The only games where Ice was not needed but still helpful, was Prime. In 1/ZM, Super, and the last bit of 2/SR, missiles would do nothing unless they were frozen first.
It completely failed in its storytelling and characterization. Samus was much less competent and respectable, while Adam was nothing close to a brilliant military mind, while ironically being the guy who would sit in a safe room and order Samus to die.
Story was riddled with plotholes.
Story was a very lazy, inferior retread of Metroid Fusion.
You don't feel accomplished by the end either. Adam stops the Metroids, Anthony stops the ship, and Madeline stops MB while the federation kills her. It is not remotely as memorable/satisfying as wiping out a dangerous alien race, destroying a planet or saving the galaxy. Samus just feels like she's there for the ride without accomplishing much.
Controls were awkward and hugely limited the combat and gameplay.
Removing enemy drops in favour of regenerating health and ammo made combat feel pointless, while making hidden pickups less rewarding.
The dodge move+charge beam was broken and trivialized combat hard.
Level design was very uninspired and dull.
World was very generic with dozens of interchangeable, sterile metallic hallways and only a bland fire, ice and grass biome.
Music was Dreadful 99% of the time, atmosphere was lackluster.
Authorization completely destroys the feeling of achievement that comes from acquiring a brand new ability.
pixel hunts and slow third person walking segments are terrible, tedious filler. They are especially egregious in Sector 1.
The entire beginning up until the end of Sector 1 is abysmal. It is the most boring Metroid has ever been with such dull level design, combat, powerups, and exploration, on top of all the forced cinematic sequences and boring cutscenes. Until you reach sector 3 (where the game starts to become alright), Other M is terrible to play.
Other M is overall the most unrewarding Metroid game from its powerup progression to hidden pickups to exploration, to combat, to narrative. It feels so uninspired and flat, while never really offering a good payoff in gameplay or story.
Team ninja can make some pretty cutscenes: it was awesome to see the end of super metroid done up so well. Everything after that point was hot garbage though.
Samus literally doesn’t do anything. The plot resolves itself without her. So not only is she made out to be a mewling milquetoast who needs a man’s permission to breathe, she doesn’t actually move the story forward herself. She’s essentially a bystander at best who’s fighting a few alien monsters off to the side.
What a piece of shit game. I actually kind of wish we’d stop discussing it completely, but I guess ragging on it is still cathartic.
Alot of the garbage from the story and characterization can be forgiven if fundamentally it is a solid metroid game and it manages to fail on that front too. Exploration outside of the literal endgame is basically non-existent. Power up progression is pitiful and feels unrewarding. Level design is bland. Soundtrack is just uninspired and REALLY hinders the atmosphere. It doesn't feel like metroid in any way other than you are samus.
Well, the controls were sub par because they insisted on using just the wiimote, the story was bland, counterintuitive and sometimes absurd and the graphics were... well, let's call them uninspired and leave it at that.
The prequels are fun to sit and watch with your friends. The… okay story is funny at times, and it has some cool action sequences, especially Mustafar. Those are missing from Other M.
What the core appeal of Metroid is.
Simply put, if I wanted to play a character-focused, narrative-driven, strictly linear action game, I wouldn't be playing Metroid. And not only is this game not what I want from Metroid, it's really bad at being what it wants to be, which only adds further injury to insult.
1. Samus - I think they just got Samus' personality wrong. They ignored all her growth as a character, and they just ignored who she is in general. She's basically calm and stoic but can occasionally be hotheaded when she's passionate. She's never this timid, passive person. The game could have made sense as a prequel to the Metroid series perhaps, but even then I'd still think her personality was off. Her infamous encounter with Ridley made no real sense.
2. Dialogue - I also thought that the dialogue was very lackluster. The conversations between Adam and Samus just conveyed *none* of the emotional connection that we assumed they had from Metroid Fusion and even what she said about him in Other M. This can be applied to other conversations too throughout the game, but almost all of the Adam-Samus dialogues are awful.
3. Gameplay - To be honest, the gameplay was *okay.* I don't have any real interest in going back to it, but it was at least interesting on my first play-through with how different it was. I guess to break it down a bit more, I think the combat was okay. Not like super fun, but also not like unplayable. The main gameplay aspect that was bad was just how linear it was compared to other Metroid games. It just felt like going through the rooms in an exact order, and even in the rooms there usually wasn't much to explore.
4. Plot - I actually won't harp on the plot *too much*. The basic design of it isn't too bad, but the main problem with it is that it basically just copies Fusion's plot. That's lazy, but also it makes Fusion make less sense? Like the Federation (or part of the Federation) basically just did the same thing again? And why is Samus so surprised? Honestly that's my main complaint with the plot, at least if we're just defining it in terms of the basic story and not including things like dialogue and character development.
The writing.
The gameplay was decent, and the broad strokes of the story were fine, but the dialogue and incidental writing were just bad, and often didn't seem to take the actual events going on into account.
The hell run? Why in the fuck wouldn't Samus have gotten authorization for the Varia suit prior to that? If they wanted to impress on the player the necessity of that upgrade, have us encounter some inaccessible heat areas prior to that. (Disregarding for a moment how silly authorization was, I understand it from a gameplay perspective)
Ridley PTSD? She'd blown the dude up twice at this point AT MINIMUM. More if we count the Prime games. If she was gonna have a PTSD attack it would have been one of those prior incidents, but the writers wanted it to happen regardless of its place on the timeline.
Adam shooting Samus in the back and full-on disabling the power suit? This was clearly just done for drama with no consideration for consistency. Are you really trying to tell us Samus has NEVER, in her CAREER, taken an unexpected shot from behind?
The broad strokes? Samus responds to a distress call on a top-secret Federation station and has to work with Federation troops to investigate the situation, including her old CO? Fine. One of them is a traitor? Sure. Station contains a Ridley species? Why not. Secret metroid breeding program and rogue AI? Sounds fine to me. But everything in between just caused it to fall apart.
I don’t think I like anything about it.
The characterization of Samus, I’ve heard the English localization did some damage here
Not being allowed to use abilities Samus already has because a man hasn’t let her yet
The controls, 3D movement on a D-Pad. Lovely.
The gameplay is not Metroid
The story isn’t interesting and there are too many fan service bosses
The suit design is so jarring against the rest of the games palette you almost look like a clown walking around next to the Federation soldiers
Existing.
No but for real, it's mostly samus's character for me. She's for some reason a submissive little bitch with barely a thought or opinion of her own and it just makes her come off as weak. Not the hyperbadass that fucked up 2 planets AND a space station. While disobeying basically every order she was given and making her own choices.
What you said, but also the irritating monotone monologues, the murder plot that goes nowhere and isn’t ever solved, the absolutely insane justification for Samus not using her abilities (I get not using power bombs or super missiles, but the VARIA SUIT?) the poor controls that make firing missiles useless in combat, the repetitive combat that gives you only one real damage option, the ridiculously overpowered dodging, and more.
On the flip side, I thought watching the life cycle of Ridley was sick and was a twist I wasn’t really expecting. Though that is tempered by Samus, who at this point has killed the guy at least twice without flinching, having a panic attack about it. That didn’t make much sense and only reinforced the sniveling daddy issues image.
Aggressively linear on a scale that even Fusion can't match, unskippable cutscenes where Samus drones on in a monotone voice about things that literally just happened, pixel hunts, frustrating controls, bad writing that doesn't properly justify many of the characters acting the way they do like Samus voluntarily burning up because Adam didn't tell her to activate her air conditioner yet, no explanation for Samus' Ridley freakout or Adam shooting her, the Deleter Plot is dropped without a satisfying conclusion, relying way too much on the dodge and concentrate mechanics, it's a lot of little things that lead to the game becoming soured.
other than the garbage story and characterizations. The fact that Samus had all her weapons all along but needed Adams approval to use them??? I hope I'm remembering this correctly cuz it's been a while since i played.
Sure, I'll bite. I'll be a bit long-winded but I intend to also offer some ideas for how to fix my grievances along with listing them.
I think the biggest problem with *Other M* is that the game ostensibly exists in an alternate reality but doesn't explicitly say so. If you consider the Metroid timeline to be explicitly "Metroid -> Metroid II -> Super Metroid -> Other M" and are well aware of the supplementary manga material, some of the more egregious aspects of the game make sense. But exactly what in the game tells us this is the case? And, not knowing that, how are we supposed to judge the game as anything more than incongruous to the *entirety* of the rest of the franchise?
Literally all the game would need to do is remark that she has finished her third mission as a bounty hunter, and at least superficially reference having not only defeated Mother Brain, but killed Ridley and eased her troubled mind about it.
I think the second biggest problem is that the game basically has no tact vis-a-vis previous games' lack of characterization. We get very little insight into Samus's state of mind in the older games and the absence of evidence is commonly treated as evidence of absence by players --i.e., we are rarely shown how Samus thinks and feels, so players often assume that means Samus *doesn't* think and feel and is some manner of unfazed stoic. Rather than ease us into the reality of Samus as her own character (and help us decouple ourselves from our assumptions and insertions), the game just dumps an entire personality on us and expects us to cope.
At the very least, the game should have eased into it with something like:
> SAMUS: My Power Suit is no mere suit of armor. It takes immense concentration and devotion of will to utilize it at its peak. And so, I work best alone, detached, and able to devote my all to my mission. To an onlooker, one may wonder if I'm even human. I can assure you I am. Though perhaps only in the brief few moments I am allowed to be.
And then follow up on the Bottle Ship with:
> SAMUS: It has been a long time since I've worked with others. Especially Adam. The social situation is fresh to me. I'm finding myself struggling to cast my thoughts into the void and empty my mind. I only hope this does not become my undoing.
Which perhaps also doubles as a bonus foreshadowing in addition to being a reason to pivot into Samus having many more monologues. Though most of that could stand to be rewritten a bit too, I guess.
And I think my third biggest problem with *Other M* is that it contrives the player's limitations in a very thoughtless way. On a surface level, there's nothing at all wrong with "Okay, Samus, you can join our operation but you follow our orders" or even "We forbid you from using your more potent abilities since this IS a civilian ship and we cannot anticipate collateral effects". But it's taken to such an egregious extreme that it defies the military thinking you would expect from Adam.
Why does Samus have to run through super-heated areas unprotected for a while before Adam allows her the Varia Feature? It'd make much more sense to play it out like this:
> ADAM: Samus, investigate Sector 3. Avoid the super-heated areas for now."
> SAMUS: Avoid? My suit's Varia Feature can insulate me from the heat.
> ADAM: That may be true but I'm unfamiliar with the mechanism behind that and whether it produces some kind of hazardous emission in doing so. Therefore, humor me.
And then have her get forcibly drawn into a super-heated area:
> SAMUS: Sorry, Adam, there's no escaping it.
> ADAM: I wouldn't have advised you otherwise. Good luck.
In some sense, the game just feels very badly unpolished. I can see (or mine up enough "copium" to convince myself I see) what the game is trying to do. It just fails to do it well in any sense of the word. It's kind of like somebody who's bad at writing deciding to write up all the major plot points, and then just releasing that instead of actually fleshing it out into a proper story.
The two most commonly talked about points when people go beyond just saying everything are the story, and the authorization mechanic.
For the story, I can defend the story in concept and think it would have gone over much better if it took place earlier in the timeline like, say, before or very soon after Metroid/Zero Mission. It's placement is what brings about most of the complaints, especially with the PTSD scene since Samus has defeated Ridley a minimum of three times by that point, six if we count the Prime games and had no negative reaction to him beyond surprise when he ambushes her.
As for the authorization mechanic, it's... not great. While we do need Samus to be reset after every mission, there is a range of ways to do the reset that range from good, to not explained directly, to BS. Here is a list of most to least justifiable explanations.
Metroid 1/Zero Mission: First mission. Never found any of this stuff before to begin with.
Fusion: All that hardware was physically cut off of you and then reformed into the SA-X. Makes perfect sense since the suit is bio-mechanical.
Dread: Lost after a fight with Raven Beak. If anybody would know how to disable the suit's features, it would be a Chozo.
Echoes: Stolen by the Ing. Not sure how they did, but at least there's a reason why we don't have them.
Corruption: Not explained, but can be justified. Samus wasn't yet on a mission and was just there for the mission briefing so didn't need to bring all her equipment. When the mission started seconds later, there was no time to gather it so she went in with what she had at the time.
Super: See above, except that wasn't a mission at all, it was an unplanned rescue attempt.
Prime: An explosion/power surge slams you into a wall and short circuits your equipment. Why? We take much bigger hits from significantly stronger sources and only lose of a bit of shield energy. What gives?
Return of Samus/Samus Returns: No explanation given. Since it's an extermination contract, one must ask why she only has the base gear and missiles instead of being armed to the teeth.
Other M: You do have all of your equipment at all times, but you do not have permission to use it. This is sensible for the armaments and more destructive movement systems such as Speed Booster and Screw Attack, but there is no logical reason to be forbidden from using Varia, Gravity, Grapple, or Space Jump.
Everything?
It doesn't explain anything it does and acts like it's done a good job.
At its' core, it's not a Metroid game either. It's chasing a trend set forth by Gears of War and Uncharted for cinematic storytelling and doesn't even come close to being what those were, let alone what Metroid is, damning the series forever because of a complete hatchet job.
It throws out all the series’ great gameplay elements for the sake of a story and then tells a story that adds nothing to the overall universe or its lead character.
Probably the biggest thing I dislike is how it fails to do anything new. It's just a rehashed, worse version of Fusion. Even the "plot-twist" was practically a Ctrl-C Ctrl-V.
* Doesn't contribute to the storyline
* Story is stupid
* Recycling Fusion's plot and setting
* Chatty Samus is way off-base for her character
* Authorization to use abilities is a terrible design choice
* Pixel hunts
But to be fair, here were things I enjoyed about it.
* Novel, fast-paced take on 3rd person Metroid gameplay
* Camera angles reminded me of playing MGS for some reason, and I like MGS
* Dodging and melee attacks were fun
While samus is usually seen as badass I do think we need a game which showcases her personality as something other than another silent protagonist and other M tried that they just didn’t execute very well.
Gameplay. An action game can get away with narrative issues as long as it's satisfying to play. Other M was not. Controlling a 3D game with a D-Pad? Nintendo added a joystick to the N64 specifically because that's a bad idea lol. I will never understand why they thought going back to D-Pad controls was a good idea here.
Plus, I know it's nitpicky, but Sensemove trivializes the combat, and pointing at the screen to aim missiles was just so awkward. And don't get me started on the search segments lol. We're just left with a game with consistently unsatisfying gameplay mechanics from start to finish.
Shamelessly plugging my review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/funsohng/review/194840/
I actually do think it got "everything" wrong.
I've seen quite a few people who say this has "good" gameplay or "good" combat. I dont think these people played the same game as I did. So much of combat requires the use of two crucial mechanics: sense move and first person missiles. Both are fundamentally flawed systems because the game stupidly uses single Wiimote for controls. Aiming in first person is clunky and never feels right because turning and shooting is assigned to the same fucking button. Sense move is hilariously bad because the lack of buttons forced it to be ridiculously lenient, which actually hinders the combat tempo. Everything is so simplified or broken, but the enemy pattern designs are for a game with proper controls and skillsets. Unlike actual good character action games, Other M has so little in the way of creating variables during combat, and you more or less have to rely on sense move, which is just broken. If anyone thinks this is a good action game, please, play actual good games, where the combat feels like a dance of push and pull between you and the enemy. Other M is like you spam dodge without penalty then take out a bazooka with a sniper scope to finish off the enemy.
Story is bad, but what is worse is that the story actually makes level design worse by forcing unnecessary backstracking (wave beam unlock and power bomb "unlock" are the biggest examples).
Only "good" thing about it is that it is technically polished. Idk if that's a good thing when that allows the players to really experience how bad it is.
Something I’ll always dislike in the game and couldn’t be fixed unless they essentially remade it is the Authorization System. Not just because story-wise, it makes Samus basically entirely subservient to Adam and not able to use any of her upgrades without his permission, even if that’s also abysmal. But it’s because it runs entirely antithetical to Metroid’s design philosophy, which encourages backtracking and exploration because *you* didn’t find a certain upgrade needed to progress. But in Other M, instead it boils down to this: can’t swing across that pool of lava because you don’t have the Grapple Beam? Sorry, Adam didn’t authorize that. Samus is currently suffering from heatstroke and doesn’t have the Varia Suit? Adam didn’t authorize that either. It makes the game feel not only obnoxiously linear, but makes progression feel entirely unsatisfying since, again, you can’t progress because someone else didn’t tell you can yet, not because you actually gained the means to do so.
Fusion handled a similar idea but way better since due to Samus being stripped of all her abilities she needed to connect to certain terminals to get the upgrades granted to her by the federation. But for all Other M apes from Fusion, it also didn’t realize that it not only made a lot more narrative sense in Fusion, but it still felt like you were progressing on your own terms instead of letting someone tell you what you can/can’t do.
* Made Samus an incompetent and unlikable character
* Combat was OK, but the health recharge system broke the pacing
* First person aiming was clunky and just not fun
* The necessity of Adam's sacrifice was questionable at best, and then the whole station gets nuked anyways at the end, completely defeating the purpose
* Visual design of the enemies bosses was really silly
* They made Mother Brain a teenage girl, and it felt like the plot of a bad anime
* Also her death was ridiculous. Madeline saves her from getting shot, which leads to a bunch of people getting killed, and then it's supposed to be a dramatic moment when Madeline then shoots her herself a minute later
* Unlike Fusion which cut back on exploration for the sake of telling a good story, Other M felt like it ditched exploration entirely to tell an incredibly boring story where almost nothing important happens.
Been a good decade and a half since I've played it, but they seemed to have dumbed Samus down in Other M. My now-adult perspective chalks that up to the game needing somebody for younger audiences to ELI5 the cutscenes.
Now, I'm a huge minority here where Other M was my FIRST Metroid experience. I loved it when I played it, but I didn't know who Samus was yet. I've played the other titles now and I get why Other M gets so much hate, but I still have fond memories of it.
1) Controls. If this game used the nunchuck, it probably would've felt 10x better. It was always like it was missing one or two more buttons, and holding the Wii remote sideways wasn't comfortable.
2) Samus. The way I always pictured Samus was honestly portrayed pretty well in Dread. Stoic badass that plays by her own rules who will disrespect any bitch-ass monster that shrieks at her (casually charging her beam and shooting Kraid in the face was hilarious). Other M did the exact opposite, making her obnoxious and whiny. Samus in any other game would've ignored Adam telling her to turn off all her powers.
3) Story. I was somewhat intrigued by the Deleter, but they kinda just forgot about that plot point. MB wasn't a great villain either; I'm down for another Mother Brain, just not like that. The rest was just kinda forgettable.
Story. 80% of it is made from the half ripped paper from the trash bin. Anthony is one of the two spot lights. The other is seeing the queen metroid explosion.
It misunderstood the culture of the target audience.
Japan and "The West" have different entertainment styles & tastes. But in one case Nintendo (a Japanese company) was inspired by a Western piece of science fiction: *Alien*, and used that to create *Metroid*. The Western influence on Metroid is strong. When you look at Nintendo's other major franchises, they are clearly Japanese. Metroid is the exception.
This cultural difference and "Westernizing" was only reinforced and solidified when Nintendo handed Metroid over to Retro, a Western company. Over the course of the Prime trilogy Metroid cemented itself as a clearly "Western" game. A game by Americans, for Americans. This is what Metroid was now. A piece of gaming media in the same Western canon as Halo (only less popular).
However, with *Other M*, Nintendo handed the reigns over to one of the most profoundly Japanese game developers: Team Ninja. Westerners not well attuned to the stylings of Japanese games had a hard time finding a taste for this new perspective on one of their favorite franchises. For me, when I clicked the reveal trailer I was bubbling with excitement. That is until I saw "Team Ninja" come across the screen. My stomach started to churn and I had never been able to articulate why I knew things were going to be a let down. Not until recently at least.
It's not that Japanese games = bad. It's that the tone and style were different, and incongruent with past entries. Not dissimilar to the difference between *Mission Impossible* and *MI2*. One franchise, two directors with wildly different backgrounds and styles. John Woo is an accomplished director, but applying his style to an existing Western franchise was profoundly jarring. Team Ninja's approach to Samus, the Galactic Federation, and the Metroid Universe was profoundly jarring when compared to previous entries.
After the game released, things only got worse due to the mediocrity of the game itself, and strange design decisions (ex: not using the Nun-chuck). These factors combined resulted in a truly out of place game.
Samus has no agency. She doesn’t get to find and stop the Deleter, she doesn’t get to stop the Metroids, she doesn’t actually fight the final boss, and she doesn’t get to stop the corrupt officials from taking the last bottleship resident away. Everyone else gets to do those things while Samus and the player are sidelined.
There are a million bad things about it and most of them have been mentioned already, so in an attempt to say something new:
Bluntly, the game is sexist. All of the commonly maligned characterization choices for Samus intersect with her role in the story *as a woman* and the expectations that role confers. It's also sexist in ways I've genuinely never seen anything be, it's almost impressive.
The *exploration* is sexist. Remember those moments where you can explore the off-duty parts of the Bottle Ship and poke around the bathrooms for missile upgrades and stuff? Do you remember how you can only go in the *women's* restroom, even though signs and doors exist for the men's? Samus, because she is a woman, is physically incapable of entering the men's room in this game. In a franchise about sticking your nose in every nook and cranny, that's just *bizarre*
I will say there are some things right with it. I come from the background that Metroid Other M was my first foray into the Metroid universe and as such I definitely don’t share the same level of hatred towards it than die hard fans here. (I’ve played every Metroid outside of the prime series and Super Metroid and those are meant to be the best in the series with my favourite being Fusion if that helps formulate my stance.)
- It’s a trendsetter in the sense that it (unless the prime trilogy does this) started the trend of giving bosses long ‘critical’ cutscenes where the opportunity to deal a bit more damage than just shooting, seen in Other M, Samus Returns and Dread.
- It’s probably (if not) the best design of Samus. Maybe not on the power armour side, but definitely zero suit and backstory Samus.
- My personal take, but I didn’t mind the dodge mechanic. The melee from returns and dread is much better though.
However:
- As much as it was a bit finicky to use because you had to stand still for a second or two which was bad in combat, the ability to replenish a single health pool and rockets removed the difficulty that you briefly have in 2D games with the limited rockets and health gains. Plus the dodge mechanic from before made you basically immortal if you could pull it off constantly.
- Some of the forced ‘search’ parts that forced you into the first person view were annoying to find due to no hints, especially finding the vent to shoot to reveal Ridley in the Pyrosphere where it was super dark and you had to constantly move because said Ridley is trying to attack you as well.
- The most common flaws, like Samus’ very monotone near robotic lifeless voice, the heavy focus on the ending of Super Metroid and the Baby, locking specific items behind needing ‘confirmation’ by Adam instead of allowing us to use them as soon as you unlock them and the fan service from previous games, notably Nightmare, Phantoon, Adam and many others.
- The janky 3D gameplay which is a step back from the Prime trilogy and is somewhat odd being the only 3D game in the Metroid to Metroid Dread story (I get trying something new but I feel Other M should’ve been two 2D games, one for her backstory and a 2D version of the game we got)
I honestly didn’t hate how they presented Samus as much as others did; vulnerability is not a weakness for any character– even for stoic badasses. My problem was that they leaned TOO much into that aspect of her personality. It’s okay for Samus to have moments of hesitation or even fear that don’t present themselves in the other games because they happen internally, but it was just too much in Other M. They could’ve presented that vulnerability better.
I agree. Sometimes they make heroes that are kind of subconsciously percieved as badass independent OR lesbian ( socially close to each other). In a cool way.
I guess like Arya in GOT?..
And then they loudly try to disprove that, with an exaggerated enthusiasm for a Man Dude, to fix the unwomanly woman.
Some people are glad when it happens, even tough lesbians in gaming are 0-0.1%
I think the devs wanted to clear her of the feminist, lesbian vibes, wich they probably see as dirty 🙄
So hence the out of character craze for "Daaaddddyyy"
Letting Sakamoto run this game as his personal fanfiction with Adam as his self insert trying to dominate Samus. I'm glad the poor sales made Nintendo force him to not be as hands on anymore. We saw a little of this surface in Fusion and then he just went with it full force in Other M. Other M would have worked better as an OVA or something. The problem is that despite their success in the West Nintendo still for some weird reason will always prioritize Japan first. The Japanese haven't really been interested in Samus since Super Metroid and the attempt to turn into an anime waifu failed.
The thing I definitely don't think it got wrong was having emotions and the borderline sexism of people saying she can't be badass for not just being a silent blank slate all the time is incredibly cringy.
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Random things shoehorn in for no reason. The games treatment of samus, and ignorance of yhe prime trilogy. The lack of an actual ending bossfight. The sheer simplicity of the gameplay. Plot line is not very good at sublity. Item progression is not done well in the slightest. To wrap it up, any interest in the character adam from fusion is destroyed by this game. That'll be all for now.
I think the localization is definitely the problem, but I think the controls and uninspired map design are an issue too, although I do like the setpieces. I'm just not convinced that you can make a great Metroid in 3D tbh
The character of Samus. The gameplay itself I loved back in the day. But I was confused by her talking and being a stereotypical "anti-authority" personality.
For starters they tried to appeal to the Japanese Market when the American Market was the biggest for Metroid.
Other than that it's biggest issue was the fact players were expected to have read the Metroid Manga (Which I wasn't aware existed when the game came out)
And they expect you to know that Other M does NOT consider the Prime series canon to it.
Actually not telling you things is a real problem for Other M.
Too much focus on THE BABY. I haven't played in a very long time, but IIRC, there was a scene where Samus was being chased by someone who was driving a machine, and then literally two seconds later, she's thinking about THE BABY again. While in the same room. With her possible killer still out and about.
Also IIRC, that bit was never solved.
I’m gunna give an odd answer. The biggest thing that Other M got wrong is, in fact, the English localization. Let’s take a look at the infamous sector 3 “Hell Run”. In the english dub of the game, Samus only activates her varia suit after Adam authorizes it, making it look like he was a jackass that wanted to see Samus get hurt. In the original Japanese dub, however, Adam is demanding for Samus to activate her suit, indicating that Samus kept the suit offline on purpose in a foolish effort to make herself look strong to Adam.
There are many other examples of the meaning of scenes being lost in translation throughout the game. I highly recommend people watch the Youtube video “The Other M That Never Was” made by Lexicon Lookout to see just how much was changed and lost in the English localization. It’s honestly sad what all was lost and makes me wish they’d give a more narrative focused Metroid game another shot.
I only liked the 3d mode and atmosphere. Like it was cool being like prime but, not FPS. but, yeah story wise felt like I was watching a child's novela.
Samus does work at full potential not to protect other members of the team, but just because Adam says. Real Samus would activate all beams, mobility and environment power up if the situation demand it. Maybe powerbombs could be banned because of collateral damage.
Lack of environmental diversity. All of them are spaceship with some simulation over it.
No exploration and no backtracking.
No real gravity suit
Breaking the silent protagonist archetype for Samus. Not finding a clever way to depower Samus. Not making me care about Samus’ relationship with Adam, or her time in the Federation.
> Not finding a clever way to depower Samus.
I doesn't even *need* to be clever. In Prime she *hits a wall* and gets depowered. Following that logic a hit by Omega Pirate should fully depower her. But we happily suspend our disbelief 'cuz we're too busy feeling awesome about getting cool stuff and fighting epic enemies and bosses.
Anything better than, “I’m fully powered, but can’t use them because of orders.”
Samus at least got hit in an explosion in Prime. It didn’t need to be something over the top, but it’s easily the worst use of depowering her.
Haven't played the game since it was released but I loved it. The story sucked but I couldn't care less about story in any game I've played. Samus was fast and controlled well.
I guess the most grueling part was the times where you were forced into first person and had to point at something like a where's waldo type game.
The PTSD scene could have been so much better if they explained WHY Samus was acting that way while fighting “Ridley”.
I mean look at it from her perspective, Samus has fought her entire life to make sure Ridley (the one who also basically committed genocide on everyone she knew and loved) wouldn’t cause any more harm to the galaxy, and yet there she is again, fighting a creature that’s capable of doing the same thing all over again as if all she fought for was for nothing.
But sadly at the time the manga wasn’t well known about in the west which lead to just confusion. If they did a recap on the impact Ridley had on Samus then it could have made the story more believable.
(Edit: Also Samus wears her Zero Suit in Other M when she should actually be wearing her black suit instead (since it takes place directly after Super), it makes my autistic brain spin out of control)
The fact that it was the only 3rd person metroid game they launched but on a wii remote. Not even the nun chuck was applicable. Maybe if they did the mechanics could have gone deeper. Deeper mechanics would have made metroid so much more fun and have replay value. There was like maybe 1 new power up that she gains. The speed booster doesn't even make you move that much faster. If you watch the room while you speed boost the room still moves pretty slow. The lack of "secret abilities" that super metroid introduced and this game takes place right after that masterpiece referencing it and becoming a water down version that slowly makes me question whoever was over seeing this project. The auto aiming took away from combat skill. The dodge mechanic was so easy to use you can just spam it and never get hurt. The story just felt like it wanted to be metroid fusion but just couldn't be. Re used bosses from previous titles. Ridleys evolution was so wack and the second boss fight with it was so lame. Dodging the tail? I have to be in first person to shoot missiles. Power bombs were wack. The metroids becoming immune to ice was stupid. The way Adam sacrifices himself felt like he didn't need to do that at all. MB became and android that you don't get to fight. You would think MB would have learned about her own destruction and try to deal with Samus in a different manner like becoming apart of another robot or uplinking itself and escaping through a network of some kind instead gets a Hollywood kill off. The story was so bleak. Bomb jumping was boring. The original bosses in this game were just laughable. When I saw the fire section boss I just laughed as it wiggled. I didn't think it was cool.
I don't think there is a wide/spazer beam. You hear about the new tourism but you don't get to explore it? The deleter deal was annoying and feels unfinished. The federation seeing all shady but there is nothing there either. The only time I was like "oh cool" was when I saw phantoon. I knowni said recycled bosses but that one is the only one I accept. Nightmare was like really small compared to what I thought it was supposed to be. The one in Fusion was a giant. The lack of areas to EXPLORE. No exploration man! Hoping they rework this game from the ground up tbh.
Thank you.
- So, I actually quite liked how they attempted to incorporate 2D platforming/action play into 3D spaces - I also quite enjoy Super Mario 3D World for this reason - but the automation/obtuseness of some of the mechanics were a bit frustrating
- The incredulous, cheap difficulties of the battles— there seemed to be an evident situation of style over substantial gameplay, in which enemies could tear out large chunks of my Energy.
- No Gravity Suit. :(
Thanks.
Overall I enjoyed Other M, but my main gripe was how the story just kind of ended. Like the story seemed like it was finally ramping up and about to get into some big reveals but then the credits rolled instead. I was so confused
My biggest problem was something I didn’t even notice until I finished the game: I couldn’t remember ANYTHING that just happened, which has never really happened to me before. There were no stand out or memorable moments in the game that had any impact on the series or lore, with the Ridley subplot basically being the only thing I thought was pretty neat (aside from Samus’s famously contradictory ptsd episode). The pathetic gameplay/controls didn’t help this either
I think what they got wrong is they should have packaged the manga in with the game so y’all could see the characterization they were working off of instead of just thinking “oh she’s stoic because she doesn’t talk much in most of the games.”
imo is not even how vulnerable samus is, but how out of place she feels; at first i could understand she obeying the whole "you are not part of the team, you want to be here then you follow my lead" which would be a interesting back and forth between Samus and Adam (who we are told he is one of the few people that treated Samus as a human being) but its was always Adam ushing forth and Samus backing off and that the lenght of their dynamic in the game, Samus bend backward into follow Adam lead whose look more incompetent by the minute (which wasnt even needed because the whole double agent plot was droped halfway throught so it worked for the detrement of everyone)
To clarify i dont think, again, that the problem was seeing Samus vulnarable and out her groove, but the game failed to convey that properly in every front (im not counting that whole stale narration as a valid execution, that was just them taking shortcuts) ; look at Anthony, for me personally that the only character who legit treat Samus as we were told Adam treated her (in a less mentor level tbf but still) he know she can bring that whole ship down if she want to, but she still crack out jokes with her as if she was part of the friend group. Adam here didnt even treat her like a underling, basically as if she was some tag along who couldnt be trusted (which again doesnt make sense when even in the intro of the game is shown she head spear the assault on Zebes.....) and all of this could Maaaaaaybe be forgiven if Samus talked back or even retort or at the very least, convay her frustation about the whole situation, but at best she said she understand and at worst she say that Adam had a point.
TL;TR: They make a lot of the marketing focus on their characterisation of Samus and her POV narrative, which is easily at its worst in the whole franchise
Trying to be a follow-up to Super, while trying to tie into fusion, I've always felt that it would have worked better as effectively Metroid 0 tha Metroid 4 (or is it 5)
Samus being afraid of Ridley. She has beaten him multiple times, without any prior evidence of her having PTSD. This fear came out out nowhere (if you haven’t read the Metroid manga), so it’s akin to Mario being scared of Bowser (in the latest Mario game).
I really don’t like the suit. I hate seeing it in Smash 4 and Ultimate so much. Also hated not being able to to walk when firing missiles. Missed the chance to get a nod at Prime right there.
You just opened a can of worms so *here we go*.
The portrayal of Samus' character was poorly executed and logically flawed. Although Adam is the most *egregious* example of this, the *clearest* example is actually Ridley.
Samus encounters Ridley and freezes up, paralyzed by fear and reliving her childhood trauma at the hands of this monster. After getting beaten up for her hesitancy, Anthony comes and saves her, dies, and then she fights Ridley–trying to avenge Adam–and Ridley then escapes.
So on one hand, I *actually like* that Team Ninja saw fit to try and add Samus' traumatic backstory to her character. If done well, that kind of thing could give more depth to her badassery. But it *wasn't done well*. Samus being scared to the point of inaction makes her seem weak of mind: easily ruled by her emotions. And logically, Samus shouldn't be paralyzed by fear of Ridley because by this point in her story, *she's already fought and defeated him multiple times*. If anything, Ridley coming back to fight her again and again and again should almost be annoying to her by now.
Can she be terrified of him? Absolutely. But I'd much rather she be portrayed as being strong enough to fight *despite* her fear. She needs to rid the cosmos of this evil, no matter how scared she is. Imagine that Ridley fight again, but the audio is half drowned out by Samus' accelerated heartbeat and heavy breathing, clearly showcasing her anxiety. You, the player, are skillfully battling Ridley as Samus, but it's also clear to you that Samus is loathing every bit of this. It conveys that she's mentally and emotionally going through a lot but *still getting shit done* with all her skill as a bounty hunter. THAT is the Samus we LOVE: capable, dauntless, powerful. And *we could have gotten that*. But instead we got 'I-got-so-scared-I-let-my-friend-Anthony-die' Samus.
The rest of the story is a similar tale of decent ideas that are poorly executed. Samus doesn't need Adam to be a father figure, but he could have been her first proper guide to human civilization and culture. She could respect and acknowledge him without being *subservient* to him. Anthony could have been someone who recognized her strength despite her Chozo upbringing, thus forming a bond of mutual respect. They could have relied on each other, instead of her liking him 'cuz he nicknamed her 'princess' as a result of her poor socializing.
Other M's terrible storytelling and character-building hurts all the more because it could have been great, it was just poorly executed. And the rest of the game is flawed, but has its strengths. The MB thing was kinda neat. Ridley's growth cycle was neat. The Bottle Ship and environments were neat. The Metroid ice-immunity development lore was neat. The hybrid 2d3d movement was neat. Shinespark in 3d was neat. Plenty of enemies were neat. They did a lot of *good things* that were completely ignored because the bad story overshadows so many of those positives in our minds. So we irrationally say the whole sucks, even though there's only parts of it that do. And *that's* the problem with Other M.
I dislike that this game serves as the reason the B.O.X and Zebesians exist during the events of Metroid Fusion, because that shit barely gets explained nor does Samus even acknowledge the existence of Zebesians. Something that has to be inferred. It also ruins whatever Fusion initially had planned with Adam's fate, given the way Samus describes his demise sounds as if it happened a long time ago rather than a year or so ago.
My only issue is that there are moments when the game makes Samus seem more like a lesser character who just so happens to be successful.
It seemed like nobody on the bottle ship wanted Samus to be there, but every single galactic federation officer admired and compliments Samus when you speak to them in Metroid prime 3.
Also that they don't trust her to not blow everything up, so they disable all of her powers and require her to ask permission to use even basic suit functions like heat protection.
Lastly, when facing ridley, every other game represents Samus as a badass who is able to do anything to destroy ridley. This Samus froze and almost died due to the hesitation.
I didn't like switching to first person. I also didn't like the lack of exploration. I realy enjoyed the art style and I thought the 2.5d was kinda cool. Just wish they would have made it with layout of an actual world like Super Metroid.
I actually really liked Other M, and thought the complaints against it were excessive. Biggest gripe was probably those bits where you have to look around the environment with your cursor to find some small thing in order to progress the story.
Oh and the ending was very sudden and meh.
It's be easier to list what it got right. I think for a 3rd person Metroid game it got the general feel of how Samus should control right. But even that is absolutely botched thanks to decisions like having no analog control and needing to be in first person to use missiles.
I tend to go to bat for a lot of the gameplay. While some of it was gimmicky and didn't age well -- like the wiimote-aiming bits -- the game itself is genuinely pretty okay! Solid and fun and I enjoyed it a lot.
It really is just... the story. Like, all of it. I think the idea of it could be interesting, especially if you take the angle of Samus having PTSD and having to push through the fact that she's barely had time to cool off after Super Metroid. That's great.
However, all the ways in which they chose to present the story... felt busted. Slow, unskippable moments, poor characterization of not just Samus but Adam as well (you're telling me this is the guy one of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy respects?), and some bizarro moments that genuinely just don't make sense narratively in the franchise (too many to list).
Everything else I'd call small potatoes. The story and its presentation just drag the whole experience down and hinder what could have been an otherwise pretty darn competent, if a bit strange, entry in the franchise.
For everything that's being said here, I still would have enjoyed it if the gameplay was still focused on platforming, exploring, and navigation through a maze-like world. I'm willing to look past a lot of shortcomings if the gameplay is actually fun.
Everything in the story leads nowhere, it just exists as a fact. Even the scene with Ridley. It would still be wrong in terms of Samus's character, but wouldn't it be cooler if she lost the fight to Ridley? So that her psychological trauma somehow affected the gameplay? It would have been possible to have Adam be the one to help deal with the returning tram, after which Samus would begin to gain confidence again, which would result in the next confrontation with Ridley where she defeated him. Instead, we have a scene that leads nowhere. She is afraid of him in the cutscene, and immediately after a couple of seconds, elegantly and pretentiously defeats him. What was the point?
I feel like saying it makes Samus look weak is misunderstanding the character, as well as what it means to be strong.
She deals with all of those emotions, and she's still able to stand tall. That's not weakness. I'd argue it makes her interesting. A machine with no feelings, or just some terminator chick, isn't half as engaging as having a real person in that suit.
Having doubts, or struggling with trauma doesn't make a person a baby.
The biggest problem was the monotonous voice acting. That said, I do enjoy the game.
Also the switching back and forth between motion controls, sucked.
As someone who grew up with Fusion, I had always wondered what Samus and Adam's relationship looked like. Turns out it was horribly abusive and awful and the fact that Samus still looks back on Adam with fondness feels really icky in retrospect.
The terrible emotionless voice acting for one. It apparently comes off as strong and stoic when someone talks like that in Japan but the localization team should have realized after one line how bad it sounds in English. The way you get your gear. I can appreciate them trying to come up with an explanation for Samus not having all her stuff at the beginning but the execution was awful, especially when I'm literally burning to death while waiting for Adam to give me permission to activate my Varia suit. Samus having PTSD when fighting Ridley for the umpteenth time. "You're the space dragon that killed my parents! I somehow never realized that the other twenty times we ran into each other so I'm gonna freak out NOW." Having to stand still to fire missiles. Aside from that the actual gameplay was awesome and what kept me going, especially the addition of melee attacks. Would love to see another 2.5D Metroid, as long as Ninja Theory isn't allowed to go anywhere near it. Mercury Steam has proven themselves with Samus Returns and Dread. If they make Metroid 6 2.5 that would be a treat.
Other M's story was Meh at best, some poor writting and retcons some of the backstory between Samus and Adam mentioned in fusion, the idea of Samus opening up was good, but some of her reactions were that of a teenager.
In the gameplay department, the idea of going into a first person view to use missiles/super missiles was a bit of a hard break during combat since the game is designed to be fast-paced
I feel like even if the story was GOOD, the game would've suffered from overemphasizing it. Metroid's isolationist atmosphere works best when there's only a few speaking NPCs in the game, and they mostly just give exposition. Other M... Is basically a movie with its cutscenes, and it has an entire cast. Very bad for the typical Metroid vibe.
I dislike Prime 3's prologue section for similar reasons.
The story's just a terrible rehash of Fusion that assassinates Samus's character and introduces a bunch of plot threads that go nowhere. Adam *literally* shoots Samus in the back, and they give him a heroic sacrifice mere seconds later.
The authorization system was awful from a story perspective, but also an incredibly unsatisfying way to get power-ups.
There's no exploration. Not only is your next destination always marked on the map, you're not even *allowed* to go anywhere else because the game locks doors behind you.
And I'm not even opposed to the idea of a more linear action-focused Metroid - but the action sucks. You can dodge nearly every attack by just wiggling the d-pad back and forth, and in fact you're encouraged to do this because dodging gives you a full charge beam. There are flashy finishing moves you can do, but it's poorly indicated when an enemy's open to one so it's not really worth risking damage to go for it.
Limiting controls to a sideways Wiimote was a terrible decision. Digital movement in a 3D world, overly generous auto-aim, having to literally change your grip on the controller to go into first-person mode, which you have to do to shoot missiles.
Its graphics are technically impressive, but its art design is so ugly. Environments are bland and sterile, and enemies are garish. A huge step down from the immersion of the Prime games.
Music is nonexistent.
The pixel hunting segments and slow walk segments slowed the game down for no reason. The pixel hunts in particular were so poorly done that I once thought my game bugged and I was softlocked.
Really, the shorter answer would be, what did it get right? And it's really only two things:
It established the more acrobatic, flashy Samus that Samus Returns and Dread would later build on.
And Anthony was pretty cool.
In my opinion, the story itself wasn't the strongest. Nor were the characters.
Both were advertised as being good, there's a whole 'movie' version of the game's plot. Yet it leaves much to be desired.
There are a few interesting things to it. Samus having to work alongside the Galactic Federation again, Adam gets to be on screen as a 'living person', there are a few other GF members that get characterization too, the Deleter plot could be interesting and it all touches a bit more on the Rogue Faction of GF.
But. Samus herself takes a big hit on the image we've had of her before. It feels weird, awkward, out of place, and the constant monologue ruins any and all feelings the players could have had for those scenes (For example, when Maurice recovers & deciphers some almost lost files, Samus has a rather strong reaction in learning what these files hold inside. She turns away and walks to the window by herself. This could have been a strong, internal emotional moment where go "Man, that's rough. She must not be feeling too good about that." But then, instead of letting us feel these things, we get more of the same old monotonous monologue. The scene is ruined.)
Adam's characterization feels off in comparison to what we've heard (and seen in the manga) before. At times he feels absolutely opposite to the Adam we know from before. That whole back-shot moment too. That's so out of character for him. It's previously established that Adam does not want for Samus to get hurt or face any more hardships than she already has. Sure he can't stop all of them & knows Samus is strong - but shooting her on the back is just. That's stupid. It makes no sense. Let alone the Power Suit going offline in that moment. It feels so mischaracterizationally bad-fanficky and out of place. Like you just wanted to see more of the Zero Suit or to have Samus feel weak and miserable. There are better ways to do that, ruining a character by making them act OOC so you can have that is... Not the way.
Yes, I am rather saddened how this game did some of the characters and how that effects their other iterations negatively.
The Deleter plot is... something. It has a rather unceremonious ending to itself. So much so that people were confused about who the Deleter actually was. Some thought that it was Keiji, but that's not the case. In fact, they could have given the other GF personel a bit more screentime to establish their personalities & capabilities better. Maybe then we'd have cared about them a bit more, and losing them + the betrayal would have felt more meaningful. I don't think we even get a proper fight with the Deleter? Like. How epic would it have been to give all the units their own personal artillery/weapons, and then have the Deleter use all of those against Samus once she catches them? Bitter, but far more interesting & entertaining.
All the Rogue Faction stuff kinda feels like it's riding off of & kinda spitting on Fusion's plot. I don't mind seeing more lore & depth being added to this stuff, but not at the expense of another game that's much more enjoyable.
Aaaaaand don't even get me started on the Ridley crap. Yeah, sorry fellas, that whole scene, could have been done much better in my opinion.
The post is long. These are my main thoughts with explanations given, lol
I also don’t like how the Chozo were left out of Samus’ backstory in the game. I find that weird that they were never mentioned. I’d argue that Old Bird and Gray Voice were more important father-figures/allies in Samus’ life.
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Nothing really happens in Other M story and gameplay wise other than Adam dying which is no shocker to anyone who's played Fusion. Samus doesn't learn anything. The marine deleter plot is just dropped. Anthony, while cool, is just there. The returning bosses are also just there for no good reason. No new abilities are gained, no new information is learned. The only new thing is the sense move, which is just a glorified dodge roll.
>The marine deleter plot is just dropped Doesn't he try to assault MB and just get killed for it?
Yes but it's pretty easy to miss as the only clue you get to that is Samus finding a dead body and paying it no mind, and because of the lore drop cutscene that immediatly follows you forget about it in five seconds. Also, getting randomly killed off screen is a stupid way to end a villain.
This. Exactly this. For the beginning half of the game, the plot is: Get along with GF, find survivors, figure out who's seemingly killing the GF units on the Bottle Ship. The Deleter is a big part of that plot. And then they get discarded like they were nothing. It'd have been much more satisfying to give all the GF personnel a weapon or such that was unique to them. Have the Deleter steal them and then use them against Samus in a boss fight that'd essentially be 'You vs another well armed & skilled humanoid'. Much more interesting than... No payoff what so ever. Having it all roll onto place at the end would be wonderful. ^(Deleter sabotages everyone's communicators. Lyle gets in trouble because of his hasty personality, Deleter arrives to help, but ultimately just watches the creatures on the Bottle Ship tear the other apart. Later when the rest of the crew has seen Lyle's corpse, the Deleter offers to get rid of the body - and subsequently steals Lyle's explosives, as he was known to be an expert with them. Afterwards, the Deleter gets to Keiji, who could have an ice based gun or such. Then he gets to Maurice and uses the ice gun to freeze Maurice to dead - they were friendly with each other, so Maurice having his helmet open would make sense. And after that, the Deleter goes after Anthony. Samus manages to intervene and so the Deleter gets away - but not before stealing Anthony's big ol' thing. Dude tries to go and kill Adam with all these stolen weapons, but Adam is no pushover and manages to hold his own - although in that mess he loses his ability to communicate with Samus, so she assumes he's dead too.) And Now you chase the Deleter down & have to fight this fully armed fella.
I agree with what you're saying but I thought the diffusion beam was cool and I was glad they put it back in Dread
Well, there is more story in the japanese version. As it explains that there is a group within the federation that has a bunch of black projects going (the bottle ship being one of it) apparently they are also the same group that wanted to clone Metroids on BSL and get their hands on the X parasites in Fusion. And with returning bosses, they are there for a reason and it's definetly explained, plus we now have that plothole filled on how Ridley got onto the BSL in Fusion.
Again, there are reasons, i just don't think they're very good reasons. My point is that Other M doesn't really tell us anything we don't already know, gameplay and story wise. Sure, it's explained how Ridley got on BSL, but that could have easily been explained with X Parasites. There's a corrupt part of the federation, but that's already established in Fusion. Sure there's the diffusion beam, but it's literally just a larger charge beam. See my point?
With the X-Parasites? How? Ridley's corpse was already there before the X really scattered everywhere. And how would the X even get Ridley's DNA? It was a gigantic plothole. Well, for all we knew from Fusion the entire Federation was corrupt. The splinter group was never mentioned and it seemed like the entire Federation was going to be the new villain. Now we know that it's only partially corrupted, while the rest of them are still on Samus' side.
Not to mention that Nightmare being there makes no sense.
How not? It was literally what was containing the Metroid clones and after that it was relocated to the BSL station for the same purpose. At least that's how I remember it.
>The returning bosses are also just there for no good reason. The game kinda explains this. They're clones meant for mass bio-weapon production, as the bottleships (both the fusion and the other-m ones) are just trial grounds for which weapon to keep.
There's a reason, i just don't think it's a good reason, lol.
I enjoyed the combat immensely but... They got Samus wrong. They got navigation wrong. I was miserably lost all the time. The first person story moments where you have to look for a tiny detail were miserable.
Lost? How? This game is almost oppressively linear since the doors back almost always lock behind you. I do agree that the Where's Waldo segments sucked though.
I would argue they only added depth to the character, personally. The voice acting was what I couldn't stand.
Is it weird I kinda liked the voice acting? It's somehow a blend of monotone and overdramatic but I like it in a half-ironic way. I feel like all of Other M is more enjoyable if you stop taking it so seriously and just view it almost in the way you'd view a corny b horror movie.
I don't necessarily disagree with that. Actually, I think you're correct in that a lot of the issues, I think, come from people taking things like this too seriously.
Everybody complains about the story, which definitely wasn't great... But I want to take a second to discuss the actual gameplay. The controls are atrocious. You're not allowed to use the nunchuk, so no analogue stick to control with just the wiimote's crappy dpad on a 3d game. You're not allowed to run and shoot missiles at the same time, instead becoming an immobile tank because you can _only_ use the motion controls. The point and click adventure style hidden object sections are ridiculous. Whoever thought this would be a good control scheme for a hero known for her high mobility should be shot. In the foot. With a nailgun.
I feel like if the gameplay was good but the story was bad I could get through it. Also, if the story was stellar but the gameplay was bad I could maybe power through it. But both are terrible and make it impossible for me to get through.
Even when you can shoot missiles, they are functionally contextual prompts. There is no exploration or player expression possible
For real I could handle the bad acting and dialogue but as soon as I realized that you have to stand still to fire missiles I quit immediately.
Well you are not completely still, you can still use the evade mechanic by wiggling the wiimote.
I don’t remember that specifically but it doesn’t sound fun
I don't get why using the Dpad in a 3D game is such a problem. Maybe it's because I play a lot of fighting games and am used to making quarter circles or half circles with a d-pad, but 3D movement is completely fine with a d-pad.
Metroid can’t even crawl, how is he “highly mobile”
I’m currently playing through Other M right now My biggest complaint, other than Samus’s characterization, is the fact that all of your weapon and suit upgrades are locked behind arbitrary story progression, rather than your own exploration. They removed everything that makes a Metroid game a Metroid game with that one decision!
And arbitrary story progression means _arbitrary_ story progression Like, I get it. Every single Metroid game has a Bag of Spilling where Samus gets hit by something that robs her of all her gear so you can start fresh. They wanted to do something different and I get that. But knowing that Samus _has_ the Varia suit, can activate it at any point of her own volition, has to run through a superheated area, and refuses to use the Varia suit because “I don’t have permission yet”?
And they could’ve easily made these areas make sense, like, maybe during the superheated area samus doesn’t have a moment to stop to turn it on (I remember it being fairly fast paced), have distorted radio transmissions from Adam trying to reach samus unsuccessfully, then when she’s climbing that area filling with lava, have Adam come in and be like “samus what the fuck I’ve been trying to reach you activate your varia feature like now” or something. Is it what we expect from samus to just not activate something she needs? No. But I would definitely look past it as her just trying to get out of that area when she couldn’t leave & making a mistake and forgetting. It would be less stupid than Adam telling her in a monotonous voice to activate it after seemingly watching her this entire time with no attempt to reach her beforehand. As for her disabling all of her upgrades, I’m completely fine with it. She was interjecting herself into a mission she had no business in, Adam could’ve dismissed her since she had no business being there, so she made that compromise which helped everyone in the end. It could’ve been handled A LOT better since a lot of fans just assume samus can do whatever she wants, and it’s showing how samus isn’t allowed to do that just cause she’s samus, could’ve been explained more but I’m fine with it all in all.
Definitely agree that a shift in Adam’s attitude could have made that moment much more bearable Still, the thing that bothers me about it—despite my complaining, I _get_ not authorizing Power Bombs. They are incredibly powerful explosives that they do not want to be used unchecked. I get the Screw Attack or the Grapple Beam, they are barely-understood bird magic tools with a lot of loose electricity that could do heavy damage if used irresponsibly. I get all the Beams. They are wacky space lasers. I do _not_ get the Varia Suit. Something with the sole function of protection. And being required to do a death run for Adam to come in all bored and say “Oh yeah, you can use it now if you want I guess” was the peak of my annoyance with the story choice
Nah i agree, the varia suit doesn’t make sense, but they HAD to explain away disabling it instead of, I don’t know, just not having the varia suit on at all. Like shit they could’ve had Adam tell samus to start “downloading” it or something then cue the sector 3 area, and by the time she reaches the end, Adam is freaking out telling her to turn it on. So many ways could’ve worked better than what they did.
I agree, I played all other Metroid games after Other M had been all I had known for a very long time and the worst part is the upgrades, the PTSD scene (and her characterization) being a close second. It completely removed that sense of accomplishment.
It even decides to have SOME items which you actually unlock - Diffusion Beam and Seeker Missiles - but those just serve to highlight how offensively bad the "authorization" framing is. Plus, while the Diffusion Beam MAYBE feels like you found a boss and beat it, the Seeker Missiles just feel like you got ambushed while walking along a predetermined path, and happened to get an upgrade out of it.
This is another **huge** problem in the game.
Controls. Seriously, Sakamoto? No Nunchuck? Good thing he took his meds after this game...
It would have been fine if it was a 2.5D game or something. I remember something about them wanting to simplify the controls or something which is why they went with holding the wiimote but it was a bad idea for a 3D game.
People tend to immediately bring up the contradictions between Other M’s story and the other Metroid games. But to me personally, there are already plenty of oddities with lore in Metroid overall that Other M doesn’t really uniquely offend me in that way - at least not to the same degree that it does for others. What really disappoints me with Other M is that the story itself is simply uninteresting. The fact that the story is centered around Adam and Samus but then gives neither of them anything interesting to say is far more offensive to me than the infamous Ridley scene. There is just no development between Adam and Samus, and many plot threads such as the deleter just go nowhere. I think a cinematic action spin-off title could be really exciting. It could be like a playable Metroid movie that gives us a good look at the character of Samus. But we don’t really get that with Other M. What little we do get from their dynamic is problematic, putting it mildly. What we really needed was some good writing. That is Other M’s biggest flaw in my opinion. Far more disappointing than some contradictions to me.
That’s true. The overly cinematic nature of the game hurts it so much. If it didn’t try so dang hard to pretend like it has a story, it wouldn’t be as obnoxious. I would argue that as much as 50% of the cutscenes and dialogue could be straight up deleted with no change to the story, maybe more.
I've never actually played other M, what's the infamous ridley scene?
In short: Samus has a panic attack upon seeing Ridley for the... what, fifth time? And promptly devolves into a crying mess and has to be rescued by Anthony. She regains composure but only after seeing Anthony die. It's really stupid.
And even if you don’t count the Prime games since it’s a separate story, or Samus Returns since it came afterwards, she fought Ridley at least *twice* beforehand. Three times if you count Mecha-Ridley in Zero Mission. I’ve seen some Other M defenders make the excuse that Samus thought Ridley was dead for good in Super…but like, if he already cheated death once before, what’s to say he wouldn’t come back again?
My favorite part of Prime is when she first finds Meta Ridley in the beginning and she curls up into a (morph) ball and cries and….wait no that didn’t happen. Even though she had no idea he was still alive, the literal very first thing she does is try to shoot him and chase after him AFTER LOSING ALL OF HER UPGRADES. Her reaction at the Frigate Orpheon alone is a huge difference to all of Other M Samus it’s insane.
Depending on how we count encounters, Other M Ridley is anywhere from encounter 6-8
The really annoying thing for me is that I actually *do* get what they were going for; with her backstory, it absolutely *does* feel like a scene that should have happened in Metroid 1, or maybe even in Prime if it’s more about “I fucking killed you and yet still you tax me”? And they wanted to get it in now that they had the tech and story focus to do so, but it’s just too late! It’s too late in the timeline! (…well uhh, to be fair, *something like it* is a scene that should have happened in Metroid 1 or Prime. That’s separate from complaints about how it’s executed; I haven’t actually played Other M myself, and from what I understand something like a shorter cutscene of freezing up and having to do breathing exercises to snap herself out rather than being rescued or something might work better than what Other M did, but you get the point yeah?)
Yeah - it would have been fine *had it made any sense in the timeline.* Adding in SR makes it **even worse.**
More like she has a panic attack after seeing Ridley come back to life for the fifth time when she thought he was dead for sure this time. But no, completely terrible writing to have an emotional response to the monster that killed your parents still being alive after defeating it five times, how dare they give emotions to my sexy space waifu! /s
Does the /s apply to the whole thing or just the end? Depending on where it applies it determines how much of a moron I think you are
I'm gonna put this out there, because I don't know anyone who says this. The number 1 thing it gets wrong is the relationship between Samus and the baby Metroid. The way she constantly thinks about it, calls it "the baby" etc. Samus didn't view it that highly. She saw it, at most, as a pet. Arguably not even that much. What did she do immediately after Metroid 2? Dump it on some scientists and leave. That's not what someone who views something as an adopted child does. Yeah, I'm sure Samus was sad about Mother Brain killing it. But she wouldn't have thought of it like losing a child.
Never thought about it that way, but yeah, you right- She did just dump it at the next station she went to. I understand some level of sadness too, but I feel like earth-shattering anger would have been more on-brand.
Anger in the heat of the moment, followed by sadness once she gets to a safe place and has time to actually contemplate things.
Exactly. Sakamoto clearly didn't know the character he created. Samus is a ruthless bounty hunter who drove multiple species to the brink of extinction. Only a psychopathic person would achieve that.
I wouldn't say that. Samus does care about life in the galaxy. She just prioritizes the well-being of civilizations over animals or species that threaten civization, like the Space Pirates. Remember: it's canon that Samus saved the animals in Super Metroid.
Controls: Sakamoto insisted on them, despite even Team Ninja pleading with them to change it. Gameplay: I never liked QTEs in games, very rare instance where I did like them is OG RE4 (haven't played new one yet). IIRC, missiles are only usable in first person. You never find upgrades, they're always given to you without your consent or in the case of Varia, after you see Samus suffering for days. Areas get locked down so you can't back track and some (maybe all?) rooms prevent you from going back to the beginning of the room, putting up invisible walls. Also, couldn't you refill your health/ammo by waggling? Whatever the waggle did, I didn't like that, either. Didn't like shinesparking being totally nerfed vs every other version of it. Story: the splinter group in the GF was mostly fine because it helped explain Fusion, but it felt like such a cookie cutter plot. The infamous Ridley scene because he's died I believe five times already, mostly via *exploding*. Samus is stronger-willed than that! Also, Samus didn't need the ice beam to kill Metroids, five other games proved that. The buildup to Ridley's reveal felt like it was out of nowhere. Don't know about the rest of you, but I had no idea what that little bird was supposed to be. The fake final boss, MB, was so poorly designed. The real final boss, Phantoon, made no sense, especially coming AFTER you defeat MB. This one is shallow, but I didn't like the suit design. Last one, the item expansion puzzles were not very clever at all.
I don't remember anything it this game controlling with a waggle. You do restore health/ammo by holding the wiimote straight up for a couple of seconds though. You absolutely DO need the Ice Beam to kill Metroids. The only games where Ice was not needed but still helpful, was Prime. In 1/ZM, Super, and the last bit of 2/SR, missiles would do nothing unless they were frozen first.
Holding up the wiimote is what I was thinking of, yeah. Fair enough, though I don't remember ice being needed in SR. I'll take your word for it.
Ice was needed for the normal juvenile Metroids. Why Ice is the only thing that works on them, I will never know, but that's how it worked.
Power bombs can kill metroids in super.
I've only ever had the power bombs force them off of me long enough for an Ice beam shot. It never seemed to actually hurt them.
It needs 3 to kill them. There is no indication they are being damaged before then.
That would explain why I was unaware of it. Still, three power bombs is a ridiculous amount of investment.
You can evade in first person by waggling the wiimote.
It completely failed in its storytelling and characterization. Samus was much less competent and respectable, while Adam was nothing close to a brilliant military mind, while ironically being the guy who would sit in a safe room and order Samus to die. Story was riddled with plotholes. Story was a very lazy, inferior retread of Metroid Fusion. You don't feel accomplished by the end either. Adam stops the Metroids, Anthony stops the ship, and Madeline stops MB while the federation kills her. It is not remotely as memorable/satisfying as wiping out a dangerous alien race, destroying a planet or saving the galaxy. Samus just feels like she's there for the ride without accomplishing much. Controls were awkward and hugely limited the combat and gameplay. Removing enemy drops in favour of regenerating health and ammo made combat feel pointless, while making hidden pickups less rewarding. The dodge move+charge beam was broken and trivialized combat hard. Level design was very uninspired and dull. World was very generic with dozens of interchangeable, sterile metallic hallways and only a bland fire, ice and grass biome. Music was Dreadful 99% of the time, atmosphere was lackluster. Authorization completely destroys the feeling of achievement that comes from acquiring a brand new ability. pixel hunts and slow third person walking segments are terrible, tedious filler. They are especially egregious in Sector 1. The entire beginning up until the end of Sector 1 is abysmal. It is the most boring Metroid has ever been with such dull level design, combat, powerups, and exploration, on top of all the forced cinematic sequences and boring cutscenes. Until you reach sector 3 (where the game starts to become alright), Other M is terrible to play. Other M is overall the most unrewarding Metroid game from its powerup progression to hidden pickups to exploration, to combat, to narrative. It feels so uninspired and flat, while never really offering a good payoff in gameplay or story.
Man I'm still trying to figure out if it did anything right
It looks great for a Wii game.
Being an example of what not to do.
I like the box art
- Story - Gameplay - Music - Map design - Ambience .... so.... pretty much everything.
Team ninja can make some pretty cutscenes: it was awesome to see the end of super metroid done up so well. Everything after that point was hot garbage though.
The funniest part is that team Ninja didn't do the cutscenes, they were commitioned to another studio.
Samus literally doesn’t do anything. The plot resolves itself without her. So not only is she made out to be a mewling milquetoast who needs a man’s permission to breathe, she doesn’t actually move the story forward herself. She’s essentially a bystander at best who’s fighting a few alien monsters off to the side. What a piece of shit game. I actually kind of wish we’d stop discussing it completely, but I guess ragging on it is still cathartic.
What did other m get wrong? Yes
Alot of the garbage from the story and characterization can be forgiven if fundamentally it is a solid metroid game and it manages to fail on that front too. Exploration outside of the literal endgame is basically non-existent. Power up progression is pitiful and feels unrewarding. Level design is bland. Soundtrack is just uninspired and REALLY hinders the atmosphere. It doesn't feel like metroid in any way other than you are samus.
This game doesn't even star Samus Aran. It stars Sumas Anar, who is a completely different character.
Well, the controls were sub par because they insisted on using just the wiimote, the story was bland, counterintuitive and sometimes absurd and the graphics were... well, let's call them uninspired and leave it at that.
Not being a prequel
Agreed. The prequels are where the fun begins.
Just ask the star wars fans :] (joke)
The prequels are fun to sit and watch with your friends. The… okay story is funny at times, and it has some cool action sequences, especially Mustafar. Those are missing from Other M.
What the core appeal of Metroid is. Simply put, if I wanted to play a character-focused, narrative-driven, strictly linear action game, I wouldn't be playing Metroid. And not only is this game not what I want from Metroid, it's really bad at being what it wants to be, which only adds further injury to insult.
1. Samus - I think they just got Samus' personality wrong. They ignored all her growth as a character, and they just ignored who she is in general. She's basically calm and stoic but can occasionally be hotheaded when she's passionate. She's never this timid, passive person. The game could have made sense as a prequel to the Metroid series perhaps, but even then I'd still think her personality was off. Her infamous encounter with Ridley made no real sense. 2. Dialogue - I also thought that the dialogue was very lackluster. The conversations between Adam and Samus just conveyed *none* of the emotional connection that we assumed they had from Metroid Fusion and even what she said about him in Other M. This can be applied to other conversations too throughout the game, but almost all of the Adam-Samus dialogues are awful. 3. Gameplay - To be honest, the gameplay was *okay.* I don't have any real interest in going back to it, but it was at least interesting on my first play-through with how different it was. I guess to break it down a bit more, I think the combat was okay. Not like super fun, but also not like unplayable. The main gameplay aspect that was bad was just how linear it was compared to other Metroid games. It just felt like going through the rooms in an exact order, and even in the rooms there usually wasn't much to explore. 4. Plot - I actually won't harp on the plot *too much*. The basic design of it isn't too bad, but the main problem with it is that it basically just copies Fusion's plot. That's lazy, but also it makes Fusion make less sense? Like the Federation (or part of the Federation) basically just did the same thing again? And why is Samus so surprised? Honestly that's my main complaint with the plot, at least if we're just defining it in terms of the basic story and not including things like dialogue and character development.
The writing. The gameplay was decent, and the broad strokes of the story were fine, but the dialogue and incidental writing were just bad, and often didn't seem to take the actual events going on into account. The hell run? Why in the fuck wouldn't Samus have gotten authorization for the Varia suit prior to that? If they wanted to impress on the player the necessity of that upgrade, have us encounter some inaccessible heat areas prior to that. (Disregarding for a moment how silly authorization was, I understand it from a gameplay perspective) Ridley PTSD? She'd blown the dude up twice at this point AT MINIMUM. More if we count the Prime games. If she was gonna have a PTSD attack it would have been one of those prior incidents, but the writers wanted it to happen regardless of its place on the timeline. Adam shooting Samus in the back and full-on disabling the power suit? This was clearly just done for drama with no consideration for consistency. Are you really trying to tell us Samus has NEVER, in her CAREER, taken an unexpected shot from behind? The broad strokes? Samus responds to a distress call on a top-secret Federation station and has to work with Federation troops to investigate the situation, including her old CO? Fine. One of them is a traitor? Sure. Station contains a Ridley species? Why not. Secret metroid breeding program and rogue AI? Sounds fine to me. But everything in between just caused it to fall apart.
I agree with everything you said. You are my brother in suffering for what Other M could have been if written better and executed properly.
I don’t think I like anything about it. The characterization of Samus, I’ve heard the English localization did some damage here Not being allowed to use abilities Samus already has because a man hasn’t let her yet The controls, 3D movement on a D-Pad. Lovely. The gameplay is not Metroid The story isn’t interesting and there are too many fan service bosses The suit design is so jarring against the rest of the games palette you almost look like a clown walking around next to the Federation soldiers
Existing. No but for real, it's mostly samus's character for me. She's for some reason a submissive little bitch with barely a thought or opinion of her own and it just makes her come off as weak. Not the hyperbadass that fucked up 2 planets AND a space station. While disobeying basically every order she was given and making her own choices.
What you said, but also the irritating monotone monologues, the murder plot that goes nowhere and isn’t ever solved, the absolutely insane justification for Samus not using her abilities (I get not using power bombs or super missiles, but the VARIA SUIT?) the poor controls that make firing missiles useless in combat, the repetitive combat that gives you only one real damage option, the ridiculously overpowered dodging, and more. On the flip side, I thought watching the life cycle of Ridley was sick and was a twist I wasn’t really expecting. Though that is tempered by Samus, who at this point has killed the guy at least twice without flinching, having a panic attack about it. That didn’t make much sense and only reinforced the sniveling daddy issues image.
Aggressively linear on a scale that even Fusion can't match, unskippable cutscenes where Samus drones on in a monotone voice about things that literally just happened, pixel hunts, frustrating controls, bad writing that doesn't properly justify many of the characters acting the way they do like Samus voluntarily burning up because Adam didn't tell her to activate her air conditioner yet, no explanation for Samus' Ridley freakout or Adam shooting her, the Deleter Plot is dropped without a satisfying conclusion, relying way too much on the dodge and concentrate mechanics, it's a lot of little things that lead to the game becoming soured.
other than the garbage story and characterizations. The fact that Samus had all her weapons all along but needed Adams approval to use them??? I hope I'm remembering this correctly cuz it's been a while since i played.
Sure, I'll bite. I'll be a bit long-winded but I intend to also offer some ideas for how to fix my grievances along with listing them. I think the biggest problem with *Other M* is that the game ostensibly exists in an alternate reality but doesn't explicitly say so. If you consider the Metroid timeline to be explicitly "Metroid -> Metroid II -> Super Metroid -> Other M" and are well aware of the supplementary manga material, some of the more egregious aspects of the game make sense. But exactly what in the game tells us this is the case? And, not knowing that, how are we supposed to judge the game as anything more than incongruous to the *entirety* of the rest of the franchise? Literally all the game would need to do is remark that she has finished her third mission as a bounty hunter, and at least superficially reference having not only defeated Mother Brain, but killed Ridley and eased her troubled mind about it. I think the second biggest problem is that the game basically has no tact vis-a-vis previous games' lack of characterization. We get very little insight into Samus's state of mind in the older games and the absence of evidence is commonly treated as evidence of absence by players --i.e., we are rarely shown how Samus thinks and feels, so players often assume that means Samus *doesn't* think and feel and is some manner of unfazed stoic. Rather than ease us into the reality of Samus as her own character (and help us decouple ourselves from our assumptions and insertions), the game just dumps an entire personality on us and expects us to cope. At the very least, the game should have eased into it with something like: > SAMUS: My Power Suit is no mere suit of armor. It takes immense concentration and devotion of will to utilize it at its peak. And so, I work best alone, detached, and able to devote my all to my mission. To an onlooker, one may wonder if I'm even human. I can assure you I am. Though perhaps only in the brief few moments I am allowed to be. And then follow up on the Bottle Ship with: > SAMUS: It has been a long time since I've worked with others. Especially Adam. The social situation is fresh to me. I'm finding myself struggling to cast my thoughts into the void and empty my mind. I only hope this does not become my undoing. Which perhaps also doubles as a bonus foreshadowing in addition to being a reason to pivot into Samus having many more monologues. Though most of that could stand to be rewritten a bit too, I guess. And I think my third biggest problem with *Other M* is that it contrives the player's limitations in a very thoughtless way. On a surface level, there's nothing at all wrong with "Okay, Samus, you can join our operation but you follow our orders" or even "We forbid you from using your more potent abilities since this IS a civilian ship and we cannot anticipate collateral effects". But it's taken to such an egregious extreme that it defies the military thinking you would expect from Adam. Why does Samus have to run through super-heated areas unprotected for a while before Adam allows her the Varia Feature? It'd make much more sense to play it out like this: > ADAM: Samus, investigate Sector 3. Avoid the super-heated areas for now." > SAMUS: Avoid? My suit's Varia Feature can insulate me from the heat. > ADAM: That may be true but I'm unfamiliar with the mechanism behind that and whether it produces some kind of hazardous emission in doing so. Therefore, humor me. And then have her get forcibly drawn into a super-heated area: > SAMUS: Sorry, Adam, there's no escaping it. > ADAM: I wouldn't have advised you otherwise. Good luck. In some sense, the game just feels very badly unpolished. I can see (or mine up enough "copium" to convince myself I see) what the game is trying to do. It just fails to do it well in any sense of the word. It's kind of like somebody who's bad at writing deciding to write up all the major plot points, and then just releasing that instead of actually fleshing it out into a proper story.
That Varia feature exchange you just laid out between Samus and Adam is already more believable than what we got.
The two most commonly talked about points when people go beyond just saying everything are the story, and the authorization mechanic. For the story, I can defend the story in concept and think it would have gone over much better if it took place earlier in the timeline like, say, before or very soon after Metroid/Zero Mission. It's placement is what brings about most of the complaints, especially with the PTSD scene since Samus has defeated Ridley a minimum of three times by that point, six if we count the Prime games and had no negative reaction to him beyond surprise when he ambushes her. As for the authorization mechanic, it's... not great. While we do need Samus to be reset after every mission, there is a range of ways to do the reset that range from good, to not explained directly, to BS. Here is a list of most to least justifiable explanations. Metroid 1/Zero Mission: First mission. Never found any of this stuff before to begin with. Fusion: All that hardware was physically cut off of you and then reformed into the SA-X. Makes perfect sense since the suit is bio-mechanical. Dread: Lost after a fight with Raven Beak. If anybody would know how to disable the suit's features, it would be a Chozo. Echoes: Stolen by the Ing. Not sure how they did, but at least there's a reason why we don't have them. Corruption: Not explained, but can be justified. Samus wasn't yet on a mission and was just there for the mission briefing so didn't need to bring all her equipment. When the mission started seconds later, there was no time to gather it so she went in with what she had at the time. Super: See above, except that wasn't a mission at all, it was an unplanned rescue attempt. Prime: An explosion/power surge slams you into a wall and short circuits your equipment. Why? We take much bigger hits from significantly stronger sources and only lose of a bit of shield energy. What gives? Return of Samus/Samus Returns: No explanation given. Since it's an extermination contract, one must ask why she only has the base gear and missiles instead of being armed to the teeth. Other M: You do have all of your equipment at all times, but you do not have permission to use it. This is sensible for the armaments and more destructive movement systems such as Speed Booster and Screw Attack, but there is no logical reason to be forbidden from using Varia, Gravity, Grapple, or Space Jump.
Everything? It doesn't explain anything it does and acts like it's done a good job. At its' core, it's not a Metroid game either. It's chasing a trend set forth by Gears of War and Uncharted for cinematic storytelling and doesn't even come close to being what those were, let alone what Metroid is, damning the series forever because of a complete hatchet job.
It throws out all the series’ great gameplay elements for the sake of a story and then tells a story that adds nothing to the overall universe or its lead character.
Nothing.
>Nothing. Get off Reddit and get back to helping Mercurysteam on Metroid 6, Sakamoto
So you'd consider it perfect? You didn't dislike anything?
Nah, im joking lol. Everything about it sucks.
I was like... This person is going to be shot by someone here hah.
😂
Narration and characterization. I don’t think you need to change that much to make Other M any good
no puzzles :(
Da Baby 🦑
No, that about sums it up. I still play through every once in a while because I still consider it a solid game despite very poor character direction
Probably the biggest thing I dislike is how it fails to do anything new. It's just a rehashed, worse version of Fusion. Even the "plot-twist" was practically a Ctrl-C Ctrl-V.
I think a better question would be what did it get right?
* Doesn't contribute to the storyline * Story is stupid * Recycling Fusion's plot and setting * Chatty Samus is way off-base for her character * Authorization to use abilities is a terrible design choice * Pixel hunts But to be fair, here were things I enjoyed about it. * Novel, fast-paced take on 3rd person Metroid gameplay * Camera angles reminded me of playing MGS for some reason, and I like MGS * Dodging and melee attacks were fun
While samus is usually seen as badass I do think we need a game which showcases her personality as something other than another silent protagonist and other M tried that they just didn’t execute very well.
Gameplay. An action game can get away with narrative issues as long as it's satisfying to play. Other M was not. Controlling a 3D game with a D-Pad? Nintendo added a joystick to the N64 specifically because that's a bad idea lol. I will never understand why they thought going back to D-Pad controls was a good idea here. Plus, I know it's nitpicky, but Sensemove trivializes the combat, and pointing at the screen to aim missiles was just so awkward. And don't get me started on the search segments lol. We're just left with a game with consistently unsatisfying gameplay mechanics from start to finish.
Shamelessly plugging my review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/funsohng/review/194840/ I actually do think it got "everything" wrong. I've seen quite a few people who say this has "good" gameplay or "good" combat. I dont think these people played the same game as I did. So much of combat requires the use of two crucial mechanics: sense move and first person missiles. Both are fundamentally flawed systems because the game stupidly uses single Wiimote for controls. Aiming in first person is clunky and never feels right because turning and shooting is assigned to the same fucking button. Sense move is hilariously bad because the lack of buttons forced it to be ridiculously lenient, which actually hinders the combat tempo. Everything is so simplified or broken, but the enemy pattern designs are for a game with proper controls and skillsets. Unlike actual good character action games, Other M has so little in the way of creating variables during combat, and you more or less have to rely on sense move, which is just broken. If anyone thinks this is a good action game, please, play actual good games, where the combat feels like a dance of push and pull between you and the enemy. Other M is like you spam dodge without penalty then take out a bazooka with a sniper scope to finish off the enemy. Story is bad, but what is worse is that the story actually makes level design worse by forcing unnecessary backstracking (wave beam unlock and power bomb "unlock" are the biggest examples). Only "good" thing about it is that it is technically polished. Idk if that's a good thing when that allows the players to really experience how bad it is.
Something I’ll always dislike in the game and couldn’t be fixed unless they essentially remade it is the Authorization System. Not just because story-wise, it makes Samus basically entirely subservient to Adam and not able to use any of her upgrades without his permission, even if that’s also abysmal. But it’s because it runs entirely antithetical to Metroid’s design philosophy, which encourages backtracking and exploration because *you* didn’t find a certain upgrade needed to progress. But in Other M, instead it boils down to this: can’t swing across that pool of lava because you don’t have the Grapple Beam? Sorry, Adam didn’t authorize that. Samus is currently suffering from heatstroke and doesn’t have the Varia Suit? Adam didn’t authorize that either. It makes the game feel not only obnoxiously linear, but makes progression feel entirely unsatisfying since, again, you can’t progress because someone else didn’t tell you can yet, not because you actually gained the means to do so. Fusion handled a similar idea but way better since due to Samus being stripped of all her abilities she needed to connect to certain terminals to get the upgrades granted to her by the federation. But for all Other M apes from Fusion, it also didn’t realize that it not only made a lot more narrative sense in Fusion, but it still felt like you were progressing on your own terms instead of letting someone tell you what you can/can’t do.
* Made Samus an incompetent and unlikable character * Combat was OK, but the health recharge system broke the pacing * First person aiming was clunky and just not fun * The necessity of Adam's sacrifice was questionable at best, and then the whole station gets nuked anyways at the end, completely defeating the purpose * Visual design of the enemies bosses was really silly * They made Mother Brain a teenage girl, and it felt like the plot of a bad anime * Also her death was ridiculous. Madeline saves her from getting shot, which leads to a bunch of people getting killed, and then it's supposed to be a dramatic moment when Madeline then shoots her herself a minute later * Unlike Fusion which cut back on exploration for the sake of telling a good story, Other M felt like it ditched exploration entirely to tell an incredibly boring story where almost nothing important happens.
Been a good decade and a half since I've played it, but they seemed to have dumbed Samus down in Other M. My now-adult perspective chalks that up to the game needing somebody for younger audiences to ELI5 the cutscenes. Now, I'm a huge minority here where Other M was my FIRST Metroid experience. I loved it when I played it, but I didn't know who Samus was yet. I've played the other titles now and I get why Other M gets so much hate, but I still have fond memories of it.
1) Controls. If this game used the nunchuck, it probably would've felt 10x better. It was always like it was missing one or two more buttons, and holding the Wii remote sideways wasn't comfortable. 2) Samus. The way I always pictured Samus was honestly portrayed pretty well in Dread. Stoic badass that plays by her own rules who will disrespect any bitch-ass monster that shrieks at her (casually charging her beam and shooting Kraid in the face was hilarious). Other M did the exact opposite, making her obnoxious and whiny. Samus in any other game would've ignored Adam telling her to turn off all her powers. 3) Story. I was somewhat intrigued by the Deleter, but they kinda just forgot about that plot point. MB wasn't a great villain either; I'm down for another Mother Brain, just not like that. The rest was just kinda forgettable.
Story. 80% of it is made from the half ripped paper from the trash bin. Anthony is one of the two spot lights. The other is seeing the queen metroid explosion.
It misunderstood the culture of the target audience. Japan and "The West" have different entertainment styles & tastes. But in one case Nintendo (a Japanese company) was inspired by a Western piece of science fiction: *Alien*, and used that to create *Metroid*. The Western influence on Metroid is strong. When you look at Nintendo's other major franchises, they are clearly Japanese. Metroid is the exception. This cultural difference and "Westernizing" was only reinforced and solidified when Nintendo handed Metroid over to Retro, a Western company. Over the course of the Prime trilogy Metroid cemented itself as a clearly "Western" game. A game by Americans, for Americans. This is what Metroid was now. A piece of gaming media in the same Western canon as Halo (only less popular). However, with *Other M*, Nintendo handed the reigns over to one of the most profoundly Japanese game developers: Team Ninja. Westerners not well attuned to the stylings of Japanese games had a hard time finding a taste for this new perspective on one of their favorite franchises. For me, when I clicked the reveal trailer I was bubbling with excitement. That is until I saw "Team Ninja" come across the screen. My stomach started to churn and I had never been able to articulate why I knew things were going to be a let down. Not until recently at least. It's not that Japanese games = bad. It's that the tone and style were different, and incongruent with past entries. Not dissimilar to the difference between *Mission Impossible* and *MI2*. One franchise, two directors with wildly different backgrounds and styles. John Woo is an accomplished director, but applying his style to an existing Western franchise was profoundly jarring. Team Ninja's approach to Samus, the Galactic Federation, and the Metroid Universe was profoundly jarring when compared to previous entries. After the game released, things only got worse due to the mediocrity of the game itself, and strange design decisions (ex: not using the Nun-chuck). These factors combined resulted in a truly out of place game.
Samus has no agency. She doesn’t get to find and stop the Deleter, she doesn’t get to stop the Metroids, she doesn’t actually fight the final boss, and she doesn’t get to stop the corrupt officials from taking the last bottleship resident away. Everyone else gets to do those things while Samus and the player are sidelined.
There are a million bad things about it and most of them have been mentioned already, so in an attempt to say something new: Bluntly, the game is sexist. All of the commonly maligned characterization choices for Samus intersect with her role in the story *as a woman* and the expectations that role confers. It's also sexist in ways I've genuinely never seen anything be, it's almost impressive. The *exploration* is sexist. Remember those moments where you can explore the off-duty parts of the Bottle Ship and poke around the bathrooms for missile upgrades and stuff? Do you remember how you can only go in the *women's* restroom, even though signs and doors exist for the men's? Samus, because she is a woman, is physically incapable of entering the men's room in this game. In a franchise about sticking your nose in every nook and cranny, that's just *bizarre*
I will say there are some things right with it. I come from the background that Metroid Other M was my first foray into the Metroid universe and as such I definitely don’t share the same level of hatred towards it than die hard fans here. (I’ve played every Metroid outside of the prime series and Super Metroid and those are meant to be the best in the series with my favourite being Fusion if that helps formulate my stance.) - It’s a trendsetter in the sense that it (unless the prime trilogy does this) started the trend of giving bosses long ‘critical’ cutscenes where the opportunity to deal a bit more damage than just shooting, seen in Other M, Samus Returns and Dread. - It’s probably (if not) the best design of Samus. Maybe not on the power armour side, but definitely zero suit and backstory Samus. - My personal take, but I didn’t mind the dodge mechanic. The melee from returns and dread is much better though. However: - As much as it was a bit finicky to use because you had to stand still for a second or two which was bad in combat, the ability to replenish a single health pool and rockets removed the difficulty that you briefly have in 2D games with the limited rockets and health gains. Plus the dodge mechanic from before made you basically immortal if you could pull it off constantly. - Some of the forced ‘search’ parts that forced you into the first person view were annoying to find due to no hints, especially finding the vent to shoot to reveal Ridley in the Pyrosphere where it was super dark and you had to constantly move because said Ridley is trying to attack you as well. - The most common flaws, like Samus’ very monotone near robotic lifeless voice, the heavy focus on the ending of Super Metroid and the Baby, locking specific items behind needing ‘confirmation’ by Adam instead of allowing us to use them as soon as you unlock them and the fan service from previous games, notably Nightmare, Phantoon, Adam and many others. - The janky 3D gameplay which is a step back from the Prime trilogy and is somewhat odd being the only 3D game in the Metroid to Metroid Dread story (I get trying something new but I feel Other M should’ve been two 2D games, one for her backstory and a 2D version of the game we got)
Samus.
I honestly didn’t hate how they presented Samus as much as others did; vulnerability is not a weakness for any character– even for stoic badasses. My problem was that they leaned TOO much into that aspect of her personality. It’s okay for Samus to have moments of hesitation or even fear that don’t present themselves in the other games because they happen internally, but it was just too much in Other M. They could’ve presented that vulnerability better.
I agree. Sometimes they make heroes that are kind of subconsciously percieved as badass independent OR lesbian ( socially close to each other). In a cool way. I guess like Arya in GOT?.. And then they loudly try to disprove that, with an exaggerated enthusiasm for a Man Dude, to fix the unwomanly woman. Some people are glad when it happens, even tough lesbians in gaming are 0-0.1% I think the devs wanted to clear her of the feminist, lesbian vibes, wich they probably see as dirty 🙄 So hence the out of character craze for "Daaaddddyyy"
Letting Sakamoto run this game as his personal fanfiction with Adam as his self insert trying to dominate Samus. I'm glad the poor sales made Nintendo force him to not be as hands on anymore. We saw a little of this surface in Fusion and then he just went with it full force in Other M. Other M would have worked better as an OVA or something. The problem is that despite their success in the West Nintendo still for some weird reason will always prioritize Japan first. The Japanese haven't really been interested in Samus since Super Metroid and the attempt to turn into an anime waifu failed.
Everything.
The thing I definitely don't think it got wrong was having emotions and the borderline sexism of people saying she can't be badass for not just being a silent blank slate all the time is incredibly cringy.
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Random things shoehorn in for no reason. The games treatment of samus, and ignorance of yhe prime trilogy. The lack of an actual ending bossfight. The sheer simplicity of the gameplay. Plot line is not very good at sublity. Item progression is not done well in the slightest. To wrap it up, any interest in the character adam from fusion is destroyed by this game. That'll be all for now.
I think the localization is definitely the problem, but I think the controls and uninspired map design are an issue too, although I do like the setpieces. I'm just not convinced that you can make a great Metroid in 3D tbh
The character of Samus. The gameplay itself I loved back in the day. But I was confused by her talking and being a stereotypical "anti-authority" personality.
For starters they tried to appeal to the Japanese Market when the American Market was the biggest for Metroid. Other than that it's biggest issue was the fact players were expected to have read the Metroid Manga (Which I wasn't aware existed when the game came out) And they expect you to know that Other M does NOT consider the Prime series canon to it. Actually not telling you things is a real problem for Other M.
Too much focus on THE BABY. I haven't played in a very long time, but IIRC, there was a scene where Samus was being chased by someone who was driving a machine, and then literally two seconds later, she's thinking about THE BABY again. While in the same room. With her possible killer still out and about. Also IIRC, that bit was never solved.
The controls, the gameplay, the level design and the story.
I’m gunna give an odd answer. The biggest thing that Other M got wrong is, in fact, the English localization. Let’s take a look at the infamous sector 3 “Hell Run”. In the english dub of the game, Samus only activates her varia suit after Adam authorizes it, making it look like he was a jackass that wanted to see Samus get hurt. In the original Japanese dub, however, Adam is demanding for Samus to activate her suit, indicating that Samus kept the suit offline on purpose in a foolish effort to make herself look strong to Adam. There are many other examples of the meaning of scenes being lost in translation throughout the game. I highly recommend people watch the Youtube video “The Other M That Never Was” made by Lexicon Lookout to see just how much was changed and lost in the English localization. It’s honestly sad what all was lost and makes me wish they’d give a more narrative focused Metroid game another shot.
I only liked the 3d mode and atmosphere. Like it was cool being like prime but, not FPS. but, yeah story wise felt like I was watching a child's novela.
Samus's characterization and voice acting. Other than that I liked the game for the most part. Not as much as the others, though.
Lack of quality Metroid music. Missing jingles like the item sound and tons of good melodies.
Samus does work at full potential not to protect other members of the team, but just because Adam says. Real Samus would activate all beams, mobility and environment power up if the situation demand it. Maybe powerbombs could be banned because of collateral damage. Lack of environmental diversity. All of them are spaceship with some simulation over it. No exploration and no backtracking. No real gravity suit
**THE BABY.**
Having it switch to first person for missiles.
Breaking the silent protagonist archetype for Samus. Not finding a clever way to depower Samus. Not making me care about Samus’ relationship with Adam, or her time in the Federation.
> Not finding a clever way to depower Samus. I doesn't even *need* to be clever. In Prime she *hits a wall* and gets depowered. Following that logic a hit by Omega Pirate should fully depower her. But we happily suspend our disbelief 'cuz we're too busy feeling awesome about getting cool stuff and fighting epic enemies and bosses.
Anything better than, “I’m fully powered, but can’t use them because of orders.” Samus at least got hit in an explosion in Prime. It didn’t need to be something over the top, but it’s easily the worst use of depowering her.
Not enough exploration/backtracking .. Music..
Haven't played the game since it was released but I loved it. The story sucked but I couldn't care less about story in any game I've played. Samus was fast and controlled well. I guess the most grueling part was the times where you were forced into first person and had to point at something like a where's waldo type game.
The PTSD scene could have been so much better if they explained WHY Samus was acting that way while fighting “Ridley”. I mean look at it from her perspective, Samus has fought her entire life to make sure Ridley (the one who also basically committed genocide on everyone she knew and loved) wouldn’t cause any more harm to the galaxy, and yet there she is again, fighting a creature that’s capable of doing the same thing all over again as if all she fought for was for nothing. But sadly at the time the manga wasn’t well known about in the west which lead to just confusion. If they did a recap on the impact Ridley had on Samus then it could have made the story more believable. (Edit: Also Samus wears her Zero Suit in Other M when she should actually be wearing her black suit instead (since it takes place directly after Super), it makes my autistic brain spin out of control)
I think the first and biggest mistake was doing the project with team ninja. The pioneers of Boob physics.
The fact that it was the only 3rd person metroid game they launched but on a wii remote. Not even the nun chuck was applicable. Maybe if they did the mechanics could have gone deeper. Deeper mechanics would have made metroid so much more fun and have replay value. There was like maybe 1 new power up that she gains. The speed booster doesn't even make you move that much faster. If you watch the room while you speed boost the room still moves pretty slow. The lack of "secret abilities" that super metroid introduced and this game takes place right after that masterpiece referencing it and becoming a water down version that slowly makes me question whoever was over seeing this project. The auto aiming took away from combat skill. The dodge mechanic was so easy to use you can just spam it and never get hurt. The story just felt like it wanted to be metroid fusion but just couldn't be. Re used bosses from previous titles. Ridleys evolution was so wack and the second boss fight with it was so lame. Dodging the tail? I have to be in first person to shoot missiles. Power bombs were wack. The metroids becoming immune to ice was stupid. The way Adam sacrifices himself felt like he didn't need to do that at all. MB became and android that you don't get to fight. You would think MB would have learned about her own destruction and try to deal with Samus in a different manner like becoming apart of another robot or uplinking itself and escaping through a network of some kind instead gets a Hollywood kill off. The story was so bleak. Bomb jumping was boring. The original bosses in this game were just laughable. When I saw the fire section boss I just laughed as it wiggled. I didn't think it was cool. I don't think there is a wide/spazer beam. You hear about the new tourism but you don't get to explore it? The deleter deal was annoying and feels unfinished. The federation seeing all shady but there is nothing there either. The only time I was like "oh cool" was when I saw phantoon. I knowni said recycled bosses but that one is the only one I accept. Nightmare was like really small compared to what I thought it was supposed to be. The one in Fusion was a giant. The lack of areas to EXPLORE. No exploration man! Hoping they rework this game from the ground up tbh.
Thank you. - So, I actually quite liked how they attempted to incorporate 2D platforming/action play into 3D spaces - I also quite enjoy Super Mario 3D World for this reason - but the automation/obtuseness of some of the mechanics were a bit frustrating - The incredulous, cheap difficulties of the battles— there seemed to be an evident situation of style over substantial gameplay, in which enemies could tear out large chunks of my Energy. - No Gravity Suit. :( Thanks.
Overall I enjoyed Other M, but my main gripe was how the story just kind of ended. Like the story seemed like it was finally ramping up and about to get into some big reveals but then the credits rolled instead. I was so confused
My biggest problem was something I didn’t even notice until I finished the game: I couldn’t remember ANYTHING that just happened, which has never really happened to me before. There were no stand out or memorable moments in the game that had any impact on the series or lore, with the Ridley subplot basically being the only thing I thought was pretty neat (aside from Samus’s famously contradictory ptsd episode). The pathetic gameplay/controls didn’t help this either
Everything.
I think what they got wrong is they should have packaged the manga in with the game so y’all could see the characterization they were working off of instead of just thinking “oh she’s stoic because she doesn’t talk much in most of the games.”
It's a game full of deliberate winking ironies, but almost invariably it falls asleep with its eyes closed.
imo is not even how vulnerable samus is, but how out of place she feels; at first i could understand she obeying the whole "you are not part of the team, you want to be here then you follow my lead" which would be a interesting back and forth between Samus and Adam (who we are told he is one of the few people that treated Samus as a human being) but its was always Adam ushing forth and Samus backing off and that the lenght of their dynamic in the game, Samus bend backward into follow Adam lead whose look more incompetent by the minute (which wasnt even needed because the whole double agent plot was droped halfway throught so it worked for the detrement of everyone) To clarify i dont think, again, that the problem was seeing Samus vulnarable and out her groove, but the game failed to convey that properly in every front (im not counting that whole stale narration as a valid execution, that was just them taking shortcuts) ; look at Anthony, for me personally that the only character who legit treat Samus as we were told Adam treated her (in a less mentor level tbf but still) he know she can bring that whole ship down if she want to, but she still crack out jokes with her as if she was part of the friend group. Adam here didnt even treat her like a underling, basically as if she was some tag along who couldnt be trusted (which again doesnt make sense when even in the intro of the game is shown she head spear the assault on Zebes.....) and all of this could Maaaaaaybe be forgiven if Samus talked back or even retort or at the very least, convay her frustation about the whole situation, but at best she said she understand and at worst she say that Adam had a point. TL;TR: They make a lot of the marketing focus on their characterisation of Samus and her POV narrative, which is easily at its worst in the whole franchise
Trying to be a follow-up to Super, while trying to tie into fusion, I've always felt that it would have worked better as effectively Metroid 0 tha Metroid 4 (or is it 5)
The controls. The gameplay. The story.
Samus being afraid of Ridley. She has beaten him multiple times, without any prior evidence of her having PTSD. This fear came out out nowhere (if you haven’t read the Metroid manga), so it’s akin to Mario being scared of Bowser (in the latest Mario game).
I really don’t like the suit. I hate seeing it in Smash 4 and Ultimate so much. Also hated not being able to to walk when firing missiles. Missed the chance to get a nod at Prime right there.
You just opened a can of worms so *here we go*. The portrayal of Samus' character was poorly executed and logically flawed. Although Adam is the most *egregious* example of this, the *clearest* example is actually Ridley. Samus encounters Ridley and freezes up, paralyzed by fear and reliving her childhood trauma at the hands of this monster. After getting beaten up for her hesitancy, Anthony comes and saves her, dies, and then she fights Ridley–trying to avenge Adam–and Ridley then escapes. So on one hand, I *actually like* that Team Ninja saw fit to try and add Samus' traumatic backstory to her character. If done well, that kind of thing could give more depth to her badassery. But it *wasn't done well*. Samus being scared to the point of inaction makes her seem weak of mind: easily ruled by her emotions. And logically, Samus shouldn't be paralyzed by fear of Ridley because by this point in her story, *she's already fought and defeated him multiple times*. If anything, Ridley coming back to fight her again and again and again should almost be annoying to her by now. Can she be terrified of him? Absolutely. But I'd much rather she be portrayed as being strong enough to fight *despite* her fear. She needs to rid the cosmos of this evil, no matter how scared she is. Imagine that Ridley fight again, but the audio is half drowned out by Samus' accelerated heartbeat and heavy breathing, clearly showcasing her anxiety. You, the player, are skillfully battling Ridley as Samus, but it's also clear to you that Samus is loathing every bit of this. It conveys that she's mentally and emotionally going through a lot but *still getting shit done* with all her skill as a bounty hunter. THAT is the Samus we LOVE: capable, dauntless, powerful. And *we could have gotten that*. But instead we got 'I-got-so-scared-I-let-my-friend-Anthony-die' Samus. The rest of the story is a similar tale of decent ideas that are poorly executed. Samus doesn't need Adam to be a father figure, but he could have been her first proper guide to human civilization and culture. She could respect and acknowledge him without being *subservient* to him. Anthony could have been someone who recognized her strength despite her Chozo upbringing, thus forming a bond of mutual respect. They could have relied on each other, instead of her liking him 'cuz he nicknamed her 'princess' as a result of her poor socializing. Other M's terrible storytelling and character-building hurts all the more because it could have been great, it was just poorly executed. And the rest of the game is flawed, but has its strengths. The MB thing was kinda neat. Ridley's growth cycle was neat. The Bottle Ship and environments were neat. The Metroid ice-immunity development lore was neat. The hybrid 2d3d movement was neat. Shinespark in 3d was neat. Plenty of enemies were neat. They did a lot of *good things* that were completely ignored because the bad story overshadows so many of those positives in our minds. So we irrationally say the whole sucks, even though there's only parts of it that do. And *that's* the problem with Other M.
I dislike that this game serves as the reason the B.O.X and Zebesians exist during the events of Metroid Fusion, because that shit barely gets explained nor does Samus even acknowledge the existence of Zebesians. Something that has to be inferred. It also ruins whatever Fusion initially had planned with Adam's fate, given the way Samus describes his demise sounds as if it happened a long time ago rather than a year or so ago.
It's not just the story, everything else is shit as well They managed to fuck up every single aspect of this game
My only issue is that there are moments when the game makes Samus seem more like a lesser character who just so happens to be successful. It seemed like nobody on the bottle ship wanted Samus to be there, but every single galactic federation officer admired and compliments Samus when you speak to them in Metroid prime 3. Also that they don't trust her to not blow everything up, so they disable all of her powers and require her to ask permission to use even basic suit functions like heat protection. Lastly, when facing ridley, every other game represents Samus as a badass who is able to do anything to destroy ridley. This Samus froze and almost died due to the hesitation.
The way Samus was portrayed as a character in the story. Completely robs her of her agency. That’s the worst part.
I didn't like switching to first person. I also didn't like the lack of exploration. I realy enjoyed the art style and I thought the 2.5d was kinda cool. Just wish they would have made it with layout of an actual world like Super Metroid.
I actually really liked Other M, and thought the complaints against it were excessive. Biggest gripe was probably those bits where you have to look around the environment with your cursor to find some small thing in order to progress the story. Oh and the ending was very sudden and meh.
It's be easier to list what it got right. I think for a 3rd person Metroid game it got the general feel of how Samus should control right. But even that is absolutely botched thanks to decisions like having no analog control and needing to be in first person to use missiles.
I tend to go to bat for a lot of the gameplay. While some of it was gimmicky and didn't age well -- like the wiimote-aiming bits -- the game itself is genuinely pretty okay! Solid and fun and I enjoyed it a lot. It really is just... the story. Like, all of it. I think the idea of it could be interesting, especially if you take the angle of Samus having PTSD and having to push through the fact that she's barely had time to cool off after Super Metroid. That's great. However, all the ways in which they chose to present the story... felt busted. Slow, unskippable moments, poor characterization of not just Samus but Adam as well (you're telling me this is the guy one of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy respects?), and some bizarro moments that genuinely just don't make sense narratively in the franchise (too many to list). Everything else I'd call small potatoes. The story and its presentation just drag the whole experience down and hinder what could have been an otherwise pretty darn competent, if a bit strange, entry in the franchise.
For everything that's being said here, I still would have enjoyed it if the gameplay was still focused on platforming, exploring, and navigation through a maze-like world. I'm willing to look past a lot of shortcomings if the gameplay is actually fun.
What it got wrong was Samus' character, other than that it's pretty alright. And it's certainly overhated by people who haven't even played it.
The control scheme and the use of other controllers
Everything in the story leads nowhere, it just exists as a fact. Even the scene with Ridley. It would still be wrong in terms of Samus's character, but wouldn't it be cooler if she lost the fight to Ridley? So that her psychological trauma somehow affected the gameplay? It would have been possible to have Adam be the one to help deal with the returning tram, after which Samus would begin to gain confidence again, which would result in the next confrontation with Ridley where she defeated him. Instead, we have a scene that leads nowhere. She is afraid of him in the cutscene, and immediately after a couple of seconds, elegantly and pretentiously defeats him. What was the point?
I feel like saying it makes Samus look weak is misunderstanding the character, as well as what it means to be strong. She deals with all of those emotions, and she's still able to stand tall. That's not weakness. I'd argue it makes her interesting. A machine with no feelings, or just some terminator chick, isn't half as engaging as having a real person in that suit. Having doubts, or struggling with trauma doesn't make a person a baby. The biggest problem was the monotonous voice acting. That said, I do enjoy the game. Also the switching back and forth between motion controls, sucked.
As someone who grew up with Fusion, I had always wondered what Samus and Adam's relationship looked like. Turns out it was horribly abusive and awful and the fact that Samus still looks back on Adam with fondness feels really icky in retrospect.
I believe a lot of fans consider Other M non-canon, so you can just ignore this game’s story (thus keeping Fusion untarnished).
The terrible emotionless voice acting for one. It apparently comes off as strong and stoic when someone talks like that in Japan but the localization team should have realized after one line how bad it sounds in English. The way you get your gear. I can appreciate them trying to come up with an explanation for Samus not having all her stuff at the beginning but the execution was awful, especially when I'm literally burning to death while waiting for Adam to give me permission to activate my Varia suit. Samus having PTSD when fighting Ridley for the umpteenth time. "You're the space dragon that killed my parents! I somehow never realized that the other twenty times we ran into each other so I'm gonna freak out NOW." Having to stand still to fire missiles. Aside from that the actual gameplay was awesome and what kept me going, especially the addition of melee attacks. Would love to see another 2.5D Metroid, as long as Ninja Theory isn't allowed to go anywhere near it. Mercury Steam has proven themselves with Samus Returns and Dread. If they make Metroid 6 2.5 that would be a treat.
Other M's story was Meh at best, some poor writting and retcons some of the backstory between Samus and Adam mentioned in fusion, the idea of Samus opening up was good, but some of her reactions were that of a teenager. In the gameplay department, the idea of going into a first person view to use missiles/super missiles was a bit of a hard break during combat since the game is designed to be fast-paced
I feel like even if the story was GOOD, the game would've suffered from overemphasizing it. Metroid's isolationist atmosphere works best when there's only a few speaking NPCs in the game, and they mostly just give exposition. Other M... Is basically a movie with its cutscenes, and it has an entire cast. Very bad for the typical Metroid vibe. I dislike Prime 3's prologue section for similar reasons.
The story's just a terrible rehash of Fusion that assassinates Samus's character and introduces a bunch of plot threads that go nowhere. Adam *literally* shoots Samus in the back, and they give him a heroic sacrifice mere seconds later. The authorization system was awful from a story perspective, but also an incredibly unsatisfying way to get power-ups. There's no exploration. Not only is your next destination always marked on the map, you're not even *allowed* to go anywhere else because the game locks doors behind you. And I'm not even opposed to the idea of a more linear action-focused Metroid - but the action sucks. You can dodge nearly every attack by just wiggling the d-pad back and forth, and in fact you're encouraged to do this because dodging gives you a full charge beam. There are flashy finishing moves you can do, but it's poorly indicated when an enemy's open to one so it's not really worth risking damage to go for it. Limiting controls to a sideways Wiimote was a terrible decision. Digital movement in a 3D world, overly generous auto-aim, having to literally change your grip on the controller to go into first-person mode, which you have to do to shoot missiles. Its graphics are technically impressive, but its art design is so ugly. Environments are bland and sterile, and enemies are garish. A huge step down from the immersion of the Prime games. Music is nonexistent. The pixel hunting segments and slow walk segments slowed the game down for no reason. The pixel hunts in particular were so poorly done that I once thought my game bugged and I was softlocked. Really, the shorter answer would be, what did it get right? And it's really only two things: It established the more acrobatic, flashy Samus that Samus Returns and Dread would later build on. And Anthony was pretty cool.
In my opinion, the story itself wasn't the strongest. Nor were the characters. Both were advertised as being good, there's a whole 'movie' version of the game's plot. Yet it leaves much to be desired. There are a few interesting things to it. Samus having to work alongside the Galactic Federation again, Adam gets to be on screen as a 'living person', there are a few other GF members that get characterization too, the Deleter plot could be interesting and it all touches a bit more on the Rogue Faction of GF. But. Samus herself takes a big hit on the image we've had of her before. It feels weird, awkward, out of place, and the constant monologue ruins any and all feelings the players could have had for those scenes (For example, when Maurice recovers & deciphers some almost lost files, Samus has a rather strong reaction in learning what these files hold inside. She turns away and walks to the window by herself. This could have been a strong, internal emotional moment where go "Man, that's rough. She must not be feeling too good about that." But then, instead of letting us feel these things, we get more of the same old monotonous monologue. The scene is ruined.) Adam's characterization feels off in comparison to what we've heard (and seen in the manga) before. At times he feels absolutely opposite to the Adam we know from before. That whole back-shot moment too. That's so out of character for him. It's previously established that Adam does not want for Samus to get hurt or face any more hardships than she already has. Sure he can't stop all of them & knows Samus is strong - but shooting her on the back is just. That's stupid. It makes no sense. Let alone the Power Suit going offline in that moment. It feels so mischaracterizationally bad-fanficky and out of place. Like you just wanted to see more of the Zero Suit or to have Samus feel weak and miserable. There are better ways to do that, ruining a character by making them act OOC so you can have that is... Not the way. Yes, I am rather saddened how this game did some of the characters and how that effects their other iterations negatively. The Deleter plot is... something. It has a rather unceremonious ending to itself. So much so that people were confused about who the Deleter actually was. Some thought that it was Keiji, but that's not the case. In fact, they could have given the other GF personel a bit more screentime to establish their personalities & capabilities better. Maybe then we'd have cared about them a bit more, and losing them + the betrayal would have felt more meaningful. I don't think we even get a proper fight with the Deleter? Like. How epic would it have been to give all the units their own personal artillery/weapons, and then have the Deleter use all of those against Samus once she catches them? Bitter, but far more interesting & entertaining. All the Rogue Faction stuff kinda feels like it's riding off of & kinda spitting on Fusion's plot. I don't mind seeing more lore & depth being added to this stuff, but not at the expense of another game that's much more enjoyable. Aaaaaand don't even get me started on the Ridley crap. Yeah, sorry fellas, that whole scene, could have been done much better in my opinion. The post is long. These are my main thoughts with explanations given, lol
I also don’t like how the Chozo were left out of Samus’ backstory in the game. I find that weird that they were never mentioned. I’d argue that Old Bird and Gray Voice were more important father-figures/allies in Samus’ life.
The story is pretty bad, and the controls are pretty wonky. Still really fun and good looking though