Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[D]

I don't care if the game sucks.  This is such a BADASS advertisement, that they get points. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CZqO5Z5uxU

[Denn]

Don't forget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPSq4Rb9DlU

Went down to GS and paid off my reserve today =D

[Dr. Steed]

Confirming that the game is indeed freakin' sweet. I think the characterization of Samus is a little off in that she spends a touch too much time mooning over Adam (and no, that's not a spoiler; that's like the first five minutes of the game ). But, as D points out, this is supposed to be the worst point in her life, right after losing her 'Baby' (Super Metroid), so being a bit emo is understandable.

The control system takes some getting used to, but this is the first game I've played beyond Wii Sports in which the Wiimote interface actually makes sense over a standard controller. Also, props to the developers for leaving off the nunchuk (some games benefit from it; most don't, and I wish they'd stop shoehorning it in inappropriately). It's also the first (as Yahtzee terms it) 'stick-waggling game' in which waggling the stick doesn't break immersion. Control responsiveness is the best I've seen for a wireless game that relies in any way on IR over RF.

Graphics are insanely great for a Wii game (which is to say, roughly par for a middle-of-the-field Xbox or PS3 title, which the Wii can't even come close to handling). Voice acting is crisp, if a little cliche. Story is pretty solid, and fills in some of the very large gap between Super Metroid and Metroid: Fusion. Pacing is good, but it suffers a bit from the same linearity problem Fusion had; lacks the exploratory feel of the original or SM.

But it's a Metroid game, in 3D, in third person. I've been waiting for this since the mid-90s. It didn't disappoint. The Prime series was cool, but it didn't really do much to expand on the Metroid continuity and it didn't have the 'feel' of a true Metroid game. To be fair, neither did Metroid II, but I digress. It's not perfect - it could have *really* benefited from being on a console with a decent GPU - but it feels like a Metroid game in the same way Mega Man 9 and 10 feel like classic Mega Man games and how New SMB Wii feels like a Mario Bros. platformer.

Sorry this post is a week late; I've been too busy playing the first Metroid title to blow me away since 1994. ^_^

[Dr. Steed]

Update: Yahtzee's review is at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2015-Metroid-Other-M

I disagree with him a bit on the control system - it takes getting used to, but as I said last time it's a lot better than how Wii games usually shoehorn in Wiimote functions. As always I can't think of a better control system than the DualShock form-factor - Sony nailed it and I wish hardware devs would stop trying to re-invent the wheel without something actually innovative to offer (like functional VR or something more tactile than rumble) - but I don't think it's as bad as Yahtzee makes it out to be. Then again, it's a matter of opinion.

The more I think about it, though, I do dislike Samus' characterization. I think having her grimly coping with the death of the Baby from Super Metroid and slowly deteriorating until she finally goes batshit near the end of the game (thus potentially explaining how she managed to fail enough at her job to get infected with the X Parasite at the beginning of Fusion) would have been more effective than emasculating (so to speak) one of the most bad-ass video game characters ever. Yes, it's good to see that there was some consideration given to making her more a person and less a pin-up; this is good for a game to attempt, but I think it could have been done much better.

The mechanism by which her suit is limited is also totally crap. She for all intents and purposes has the suit she was wearing at the end of Super Metroid (minus the Hyper Beam) and decides that she's going to limit use of her systems based on Adam's orders. OK, maybe; this could have made sense, but the game presents this limitation as something Samus decides on her own before a cutscene shows Adam ordering her to do this. If it had been presented as Adam taking the position of "Your gear is way overpowered for this environment, we don't know how intact the hull is, so we'll take weapons deployment as we go along and stick with standard beam and bombs only for now; if you're not down with that, you can get in your gunship and be on your way" then it would have felt a lot less contrived. In many fictional and real-life situations in which civilians are brought in to assist military personnel, they generally fall under the command of the military personnel; this sensible bit of reality is both narratively reasonable and characterizationally plausible for this situation. This is not, however, how it comes off - the game actually pops up a text-box several minutes before the cutscene saying flat-out 'Samus decides not to use the various good bits of her armor until Adam says its OK'.

Also, I have a major problem with one specific scene - the first entrance into the pyroclastic environment. It's hot enough that the very air damages Samus, same as parts of Magmoor and Norfair. Now, according to the storyline, her armor actually has the Varia module installed and operational. You have to run through a superheated environment, taking heavy damage to get to the other side, before the game's script has Adam radio Samus and let her turn on the Varia unit. Sorry, no, don't buy it. Samus is the original smart/tough video game heroine; she would not do something as dumb as run through a lava chamber without Varia on just because she wasn't specifically told it was OK to use it. And it doesn't add anything to the atmosphere of the game to limit her here; she's in the lava chamber without Varia just long enough to pose a brief challenge to the player's timing and reflexes - there's no influence on the story. I understand that it's getting harder with each release to explain how she starts off the game less powerful than when she ended the last one, but still; script writer fail.

This is not to say that it's a bad game or I've changed my opinion; it's actually a very good game despite being on an underpowered console with gimicky controls - I think it would have been a proud addition to any console's library. But I do think it could have been better had they stuck to Samus' established characterization.