Rated CBAM!: 09.2010

Review 96

Metroid: Other M (Nintendo Wii)

Rated "T" For "Teen"

The one of few non-Princesses in Nintendo's lead female stable is off on another adventure in space. After being primed and ready from her last trilogy, could a team of ninjas redirect her spaceship to something new and glorious?

=====Story=====

After the events of Super Metroid, Samus awakens after her latest battle with Mother Brain and losing the baby Metroid. She continues on with her space bounty hunter ways, but is interrupted by a distress signal. Changing her route, she meets Galactic Federation troops already investigating the Bottle Ship. Meeting her former captain, Adam Malkovich, stirs her emotions. Samus once again falls in line and takes orders from Malkovich and helps the Galactic Federation in finding out the reason for the distress signal. Twists and turns occur and Samus meets more of her past as Other M's tale unravels.

=====Gameplay=====

Team Ninja gives us 2 modes of play to use. The main mode of play is the 3rd person perspective with a 2-3D feel. Samus will run, gun, jump, and roll her way through the bottle ship. Dodging and stylish kills are new and show Team Ninja's influence on this female favorite. It is satisfying seeing Samus take out foreign aliens with some flair.

The other mode is the 1st person view ala Metroid Prime. Switching from a horizontal controller position to pointing the Wiimote at the screen, you see what Samus sees. Using her eyes, you can examine your surroundings and go for accurate plasma blasts. More importantly, this is your missile view. Lock on to enemies or breakaway walls and blow them away with Samus' trademark missiles.

=====Difficulty=====

Samus' linear adventure is also one of her easier times taking out bad guys. Seasoned bounty hunters will have little to no troubles navigating the Bottle Ship and getting to the bottom of the problems. Plenty of save stations also softens the blow for when Samus is in need of a recharge.

=====Content=====

The Bottle Ship provides 4 different areas to explore. Each area is filled with extras to help power up Samus' suit. You can spend time trying to max out your missile tank, get more energy tanks to make sure Samus can survive this mission, or you can find parts to make plasma shot charging faster.

=====Final Thoughts=====

If you haven't noticed, I was very short with explaining the usual key points I go through. That's because I'm saving the meat of it for now as I go through certain aspects of the game that has been widely discussed by many, if not all, reviews of Other M. I may go off on a few other tangents and throw in more personal opinions into this, but they relate in some way. Some spoilers are included.

WHAT WAS MISSING - No more blasting doors to open them. Other than doors that are sealed and need a missile or bomb to open, all doors just open for you.

Killing enemies to replenish health and missiles is no longer necessary. No enemy drops anything (unless story driven) so there is no health and missile icons to collect. I mentioned it before, there are plenty of save stations scattered throughout the Bottle Ship. That's the easiest way to replenish health and missiles.

If you are low on missiles or are on your last line of health, Samus can now recharge herself by...concentrating. Hold the Wiimote up and hold A to replenish Samus. Your 50+ missiles will be back in a few seconds. At least with the health it will only replenish to one full energy tank and nothing more. That would be too easy. It might not be easy to do this in the heat of battle, but it is doable.

CONTROLS - Playing the 3rd person mode is simple and fun enough to do, but it may feel too simple for some. The auto targeting system works, but not 100%. Eventually Samus will shoot at the next available target, but if there's a swarm of them, she might not always blast the one you want her to.

Being able to take out aliens with flair is nice and satisfying, but it is a bit too simple to do. Weaken the foe enough and then walk run up to it or jump on and MAYBE you'll kill with style. It's cool to see it the first few times on new enemies, but once Samus is strong enough, the thrill might not last. And speaking of once Samus is strong enough, once you get the classic Screw Attack, that's all you need to do. Have Samus bounce around through every most enemies and they're space dust.

To add to the easiness, the dodge...effective...too effective. When you successfully dodge, you get an instant charged plasma blast. So you really could relegate your battle to just tapping on the d-pad waiting for an enemy attack for Samus to dodge and then just shoot your charged shot.

The 1st person view...it's not Metroid Prime so get that out of your head. That's the only time you can use missiles and usually that's during tough boss fights. It might not flow easy for everyone to switch from one view to another, but you will do that a lot. I had no issues with switching back and forth. For any Wii game, I always find it better to immerse yourself into what you're doing. Samus holds her arm cannon a certain way to shoot and that's what I did.

Sometimes the 1st person view is forced upon Samus and she must "investigate" her surroundings. Samus MUST find the one thing on screen to progress the story. I honestly thought I got the game stuck because I looked at everything and nothing happened. Turns out that I didn't look at the right part/pixel that I NEEDED to look at to acknowledge that Samus is looking at THAT thing.

EXPLORATION - As mentioned earlier, Other M is very linear. This isn't a large planet Samus is exploring, it's a monster infested ship. While Samus is able to backtrack to find things, story devices also prevent her from fully backtracking. Most of it is because you couldn't blast open a door because you were unable to use the properly needed weapon. The best feeling of exploration is after the credits roll and you can continue with what you had already collected plus get an extra ending. This also means that it is impossible to get 100% the when you initially beat the game.

POWER UPS - With pretty much all Metroid adventures, Samus starts off with all her powers and equipment. Something will cause her to lose them and she has to reclaim them. Well, the "something" that causes her to lose her items is her former captain, Adam Malkovich. Since she's once again taking part in a mission with the Galactic Federation, Samus decides to follow his orders...no questions asked (other than yourself thinking "what the F?). That's right; she has everything at her disposal from start to finish, but doesn't want to disobey orders.

What? The door Samus can blow open, she can. The thing that can save us or help us advance further, she can't use even though she has it? She just wants to be a good girl and obey her former captain. And this brings us to the matter of...

SAMUS - Samus Aran...the once voiceless female protagonist now has a voice. THIS is probably the biggest negative of Other M. After 10+ years of never hearing Samus utter a word, being fearless in the face of many adversities, and surviving every single time...most would picture Samus differently (I know I did). Samus has many inner monologues throughout Other M. While the story isn't the best (the second half of the story being the better part), it doesn't help that the voice over for Samus is very dull. Almost every other person with a speaking part sounds fine except Samus and that's probably due to THIS being the first time we really hear her speak.

This kind of speaks volumes to other heroes/heroines that are voiceless. Could you imagine Link voicing himself after all these years? Would Crono seem more of a hero if he didn't just nod and gesture? But it's the fact that we play these silent protagonists that helps us immerse ourselves as being that character (male or female). You're the one doing everything and making the decisions that you think in your head and execute on screen. Putting someone else's voice easily reminds you that you are just playing a game and that you're guiding a character through an adventure. That sense of immersion is lost.

It doesn't help that the script/translation for the story is bad. Hearing the heroic icon of that travels through space say "Confession time..." makes her sound like a young girl writing on her space blog. It definitely shows a different side of Samus that probably none of us thought was there, but it also crushes a lot of what made her a popular, strong, female character. It makes sense when she flashes back to when she was younger and being stubborn to Malkovich, but the scars of war don't show on her as she has grown as much as you'd think.

The way she talks, being submissive to Malkovich, not doing what she does best...it paints Samus to seem weaker than she actually is. Does the Varia Suit and Zero Suit just cover up a lonely girl? I find it hard to believe. Others would believe that this is a very sexist game in the way Samus is handled. Hard to argue against that, but I don't believe it was blatantly done. Although seeing her in her Zero Suit and being very shapely is definitely the work of Team Ninja.

OTHER M - I've always wondered what the title meant. Playing through the game, I came up with a couple of answers.

1. Other M - means that there is anOther Metroid or anOther Mother Brain. This is what most people seem to think to be true as both of those actually come true.

2. Other M - MOther. At one point I remember just thinking that it was weird to see the choice of words for the title. "Other M." But thinking back on some of the things Samus said like always referring to the last Metroid she found (Metroid II) as "baby," the references of Mother Brain, the mother-daughter bond of two other characters, Metroids imprinting the first image they see as a mother...those and a few other things led me to believe that Other M really stands for MOther. I could be wrong, but that was the way I went with it and thought it was an interesting theme to use.

WHAT THEY DID RIGHT - The cut scenes are gorgeous. They did an absolutely fantastic job with each one making everything look great. There were lots of nostalgia bits to find (classic Metroid theme when starting from save spot, attacking O beams coming from walls, classic weapons such as the Screw Attack and Grapple, classic enemies, etc.). The 3rd person gameplay is actually pretty good. Had it been balanced out a bit more it would've been great, but it's definitely one of the better parts of the game.

=====True Final Thoughts=====

While I found that there was a lot not to like about this game, I did still enjoy it. Control issues and a few other minor gripes I didn't really mind personally. The bigger issues of the story and the surprising portrayal of Samus was definitely a disappointment for me.

Scoring this was very difficult for me. While writing this, I was thinking whether I should lower my score or not. All I can say is that this is definitely a memorable title and probably for a bunch of different reasons. I see it as more of a disappointment to long time Metroid fans, but newcomers with no history of Samus can just take it as is and enjoy the adventure. It's not the worst thing in the universe, but Samus Aran certainly has seen better days.