"A very controversial entry in an established series."

I remember when Metroid Prime was first revealed. “An FPS? How dare they do this to my precious Metroid!” I exclaimed. I generally don’t like First Person Shooters save for the occasional local multiplayer. Fast forward to today. Metroid Prime is now among my favorite games.

It’s for this reason that I was less skeptical about Metroid: Other M going in. History gave me faith that a drastic change from what’s been established is not necessarily bad. Now that I’ve completed Other M, I can answer the question “Does this new take on Metroid reinvent it as successfully as Prime did?”

The short answer is “no”, but that doesn’t mean you should give the game a pass necessarily. Metroid: Other M does a few things better than Prime, but it makes a lot of missteps as well, resulting in an ambitious, but inferior game.

The most controversial change is the larger focus on story. It’s definitely a low point of the game, but isn’t as intrusive as the first hour or so of Other M would like you to believe. In fact, most of the game’s “2 hours of cutscenes” seemed to be at the beginning and end. The meat of Other M is far less story heavy, giving you plenty of time to actually play the game.

The real problem with the story is that it isn’t good. That isn’t to say it is devoid of neat ideas (there are a few near the end, though they’re borderline absurd), but any merit it would have had is ruined by its execution. Despite the cutscenes visual polish (ignoring the ugly, meat-faced male characters), the voice acting is all dull and the dialogue is absolutely horrible.

Then there’s the combat. When the girl who was previously saying lines like, “It pierced my heart,” puts a giant chameleon in a headlock and shoots him point blank in the face with a charged shot, it becomes hard to believe these two situations involve the same character.

As much as I love Metroid, I’ve never found combat to be its strong point. Other M actually has the potential to change that. It has a few rough edges, but killing enemies in Other M is fast, frantic, and most importantly, really fun.

Switching to first person is fast and works better than you’d think. Time actually slows down for a second when you switch, giving you more time to quickly aim a missile before dodging out of the way again. The auto-aim of your weapon outside of first person view works really well, too. There are often so many enemies at a time and everything moves so quickly that a manual lock-on system would likely have felt too clumsy.

"You pierced my heart. Prepare to die."

Aside from this, there are also some more cinematic moves. You can land on the heads of larger enemies, allowing you to stick your blaster right up to them for massive damage. You can also do a lethal strike on downed enemies. These animations are all different depending on the enemy and are quick enough to add a nice flourish without interrupting the action.

The combat’s biggest downfall is that the “sense dodge” is a bit too useful. Not only does a successful dodge instantly charge your weapon (which is a crucial part of the strategy), it also can be done continuously (given there is contextually something to dodge). If Other M gets a sequel, I’d like to see this ability inhibited a bit; perhaps with a slight delay before you can dodge again.

Enemies range from the familiar to bizarre new creatures and there’s no shortage of them. Even boss battles are plentiful. Besides the new monsters, you’ll fight obvious returning characters like Ridley as well as at least three very surprising returning bosses (one of which is an optional post-game boss) that have never appeared in more than one Metroid game until now. All three of these should put a smile on the face of long-time fans of the series.

"The cinematics, while visually impressive, are audio nightmares."

Rather than have you lose your powers, Samus decides not to use them until authorized by her old C.O., Adam. In the beginning, I didn’t mind too much. Sure, Power Bombs would vaporize everyone around me. I get that. But when you need authorization for the Varia Suit, Grapple Beam, Space Jump, and Gravity Suit, you really have to wonder what possible harm could come from any of these items. It comes off as moronic, not to mention that being told you can use something is not nearly as exciting as finding it for yourself.

Like Metroid Fusion, Other M‘s “Bottle Ship” feels more linear to traverse than the average Metroid. In fact, I’d argue that Other M is the most linear Metroid game to date. That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of items to collect. In fact, I finished the game with a measly 41% completion initially.

The problem is that, while the individual rooms may still be full of secrets, branching pathways are very few and far between. One of the reasons my item collection was so low is that there is very little forced backtracking. Finding yourself in a room from earlier in the game, armed with new powers at your disposal is unfortunately a much rarer occurrence unless you really go out of your way.

The increased linearity combined with the way powers are dished out ruins some of the sense of wonder that exploring previous worlds provided so well. But what took away from the atmosphere the most for me was the music. Anime/Film composer, Kuniaki Haishima, fails to capture the spirit of Metroid in his soundtrack. Instead, we’re left with a combination of silence and forgettable ambiance, occasionally sprinkled with a theme from a previous game.

"Machines generate holograms in some rooms, making it appear like you're on a planet."

Added to the list of negatives are the forced scan sections. Occasionally, the action stops for you to play Where’s Waldo in first person view with the full 360-range of rotation. The problem is, you don’t know what Waldo is. I got stuck on some of these parts for longer than I’d care to admit, and often finding the right object to look at came completely by accident.

But it’s not all bad. Samus feels more mobile than she ever has before. Retro Studio’s take on Samus felt much slower than the classic games. Inversely, Other M makes Samus faster than ever. She can run at incredible speed, perform a hilarious amount of flips in a single jump (as it should be), and do a full 180 degree turn practically instantly.

As much as I love the Prime series, abilities like Space Jump and Screw Attack just didn’t work well in first person. Other M‘s execution of these abilities feels almost as good as the 2D games. Also, long forgotten abilities like the Speed Booster and Shine Spark make their triumphant 3D debut with great success.

Metroid: Other M get’s combat and mobility very, very right. Unfortunately, the story, level design, and a few odd design choices hold it back from being a consistently good game. The end result is uneven, but ripe with potential. If a sequel were to combine Other M‘s fast pace with Prime‘s superb level design and fix a few other issues (story, music, etc), we could have another must-have title on our hands. In the meantime, we have a pretty decent action game.

Tags: 3D Platformer, action, metroid, Metroid: Other M, Nintendo, super metroid, Team Ninja, Wii

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.