Please note that OPINIONS and SPOILERS will be riddled throughout this post.
One main reason Nintendo has always been my favorite developer is because of one little word: nostalgia. I grew up on the Nintendo Entertainment System, you know, that big, gray brick that hooked up to channel four, and you needed to blow on the cartridges to make them work. Ancient, but effective in the entertainment department. I can recall countless hours spent with my brother playing games now considered classics: Super Mario Bros. (and the American sequel), Balloon Fight, The Legend of Zelda (and its sub-par sequel), and of course, Metroid. Even at that early age of six, I still enjoyed running around and shooting aliens, curling up in a ball and rolling aimlessly. I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't care; I just wanted to play games.
Fast-forward to 2003, when I finally got a GameCube. After playing through Super Mario Sunshine countless times, I decided to make my way to Blockbuster (a dead name these days, it seems) and noticed Metroid Prime. Knowing nothing about Metroid beyond trophy descriptions from Super Smash Brothers: Melee, I decided to take a chance and see if this game would bring back any memories of my younger days. Lo and behold, I was flooded with a wave of nostalgia, everything from the music to the downright unsettling environments. I couldn't put the game down.
Come to 2010, when Team Ninja shoveled out Metroid: Other M. It was clear that this was going to take the series in a whole new direction. Knowing this, I powered up the game expecting an exploration-heavy game of finding power-ups and expansions, much like every other game bearing the Metroid name. I was sorely mistaken. Other M is by no means a terrible game, but it certainly isn't the Metroid game I've come to expect.
First, the game is heavy in dialogue, something that has been almost entirely absent in all other games (in fact, I believe Prime 3 was the first to include spoken dialogue). While this isn't a negative addition, the voice acting makes it damn near unbearable. There's next to no vocal inflection, no emotion in the words they speak. Its just the same old speech cutscene after cutscene. It impossible to relate to the characters, which I suppose leads me to the next point: Samus.
Before Other M, players believed Samus to be nothing more than a silent bad ass bounty hunter (a female Boba Fett, if you will). Players could identify with her; they could imagine themselves behind the visor and put their own emotions in the game. Such a device is used in many games (Halo: Reach, Fallout, Pokemon); you're supposed to see yourself in the game, relate to the character and place your own image in as the character.
While its been known for some time that Samus was female, her silence made her "relateable." Other M blew this entirely out of proportion, giving Samus an understandable, but predictable personality. Metroid fans know how Super Metroid ended; the baby Metroid sacrifices itself so Samus can destroy Mother Brain. While Samus has always been portrayed as emotionless, Other M reveals that she felt a strong motherly connection to the baby Metroid, feeling depression and anger at her failure to protect the Metroid. She is later petrified at the sight of Ridley (an understandable reaction after seeing a nemesis once thought dead...twice, and not to mention she suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). However, these insecurities completely destroyed our image of Samus as a character, an image that cannot be easily rebuilt.
Thirdly, we'll look at the gameplay. I thoroughly enjoyed Prime's first-person perspective and was sad to see it go, but there was one absence that made the game saddening to play, exploration. Other M takes exploration almost entirely out of the picture. Outside of optional expansions, every item is automatically acquired. Actually, acquired isn't the right word, more like given. One of the greatest things about Metroid was it forced you to explore; it forced you to go out and wander aimlessly until you found the item you needed to continue. In Other M, Samus only uses her advanced abilities when her superior officer authorizes it (this ties in with her personality as well; she respects her superior officer to the extent that she will follow his every order and use her suits capabilities only when he authorizes it, even if it means burning to death since he didn't authorize her Varia Suit's extreme temperature resistance). When you need the Ice Beam, you'll get it; when you need the Speed Boost, you'll get it, when you need the Power Bombs (which is absolutely never), you'll get it. There is no finding items, there is no unnecessary exploration; it's the most linear Metroid game to date, and it sickened me to see Team Ninja abuse the series in such a way as to strip it of its most valued experience.
Now we get to my most hated part. As I mentioned before, there's one thing that keeps me coming back to Nintendo franchises year after year: nostalgia. I wouldn't have even guessed I was playing a Metroid game if the word itself hadn't been in the title. Sure, there are a few classic enemies, and they attempted to recreate the side-scrolling in some areas, but beyond these little nods, there little to no connection between this game and the others in the series. Most notably, there's rarely any classic music. While the soundtrack is fitting, its all original; there's no remixes of old tracks and the classic appearance fanfare is only played when continuing the game (its completely absent from the game's start, something that angered me to a large extent). Music is perhaps the quickest way to achieve nostalgia, and it appears to me as if Other M threw all the music in the corner and ignored it.
And finally, apart from the visual and audible parts of the game, we find ourselves at control. We once again see Team Ninja attempt a bit of nostalgia by utilizing the Wii Remote on its side like an old school NES controller. While this doesn't impair gameplay to the point of unplayability, I do feel it doesn't do the game any justice since it becomes cumbersome quite fast. Basic movement and attacks can be performed from this position, however, if you ever expect to fire a missile, you'll have to point the remote at the screen to switch to a first person view, aim at what you want to shoot, lock on by holding the B button, and then hold down the A button long enough for the game to know you want to shoot a missile. This wouldn't be much of a problem if you didn't need missiles all the damn time! If it can't be killed with normal beam weapons (and late game, it appears your Plasma Beam can't kill anything), then you need to retreat, re-align, and the switch perspective and fire a missile; by the time the missile fires, you've already taken all the damage you could have avoided if they had simply put in a toggle button (like the classic games did). It wouldn't have been much trouble and you'd probably still have people playing this game in a few years.
The Verdict
Needless to say, I was thoroughly disappointed in Team Ninja's attempt to continue the series. Their story driven take on the franchise has almost effectively ruined my opinion on the bounty hunter. Despite all of these shortcomings, however, I will say that it is at least worth one playthrough for the die hard Metroid fan, because even if the game did neglect its older roots in some places, they did acknowledge them in others, such as enemies (there are a number of familiar bosses to be fought). It just isn't worth the fifty bucks to see Ryu Hayabusa in a Varia Suit complaining about how her father-figure doesn't respect her. When I want a good Metroid game to play, I'll stick with the tried and true Metroid Prime.
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