Serious Talk: Was Metroid Other M truly that awful?
It's a common opinion to be shared that "Metroid: Other M" sucks complete and utter everything in the world. It's just not a good game, from all accounts. If you were to believe the more radical of the Metroid fanbase, you would even believe that it played terrible and that it ruined everything we hold dear about Samus Aran and that it is the single thing that may well have killed the entire Metroid franchise. But, is it really all that bad?
Before you start bringing out your DDoS guns on me, hear me out on this. I don't like Metroid: Other M. As a matter of fact, I think that there are far better games to be playing other than that game. It's something I enjoyed portions of, but the rest of it marred my experienced as a whole. Let me talk about what those are and maybe we can figure out whether Metroid: Other M is really as awful as everyone is claiming it is.
I'm not going to defend the story. I am willing to say, here and now, that nothing about the story is good. It's cool that there's voice acting, or would be if it were any good...it's nice to see Adam Malkovich come back, if he were a real human being...it'd be real nice to see Samus being herself as a character if she weren't, in the end, a pansy. As a good friend of mine continually points out, her character development makes sense as an origin story. This character progression she has does not make sense for a battle hardened warrior who has seen multiple planets die, who has killed however many space pirates, who has seen and killed her nemesis, Ridley, time and time again...it just doesn't. Her PTSD suddenly striking and putting her in a frightening state, the way her Power Suit works, her "comrades"; everything about the story just sucks. Nothing about it works out.
However, I am going to defend the gameplay...in some part. I will agree that there are portions of the gameplay that simply don't work. However, as a game, it at least still runs well. Say what you will about the D-pad moving Samus around a 3D space, the fact is that the game was well designed for the D-pad movement. Samus moves well, the jumping controls work well outside of spacial recognition, which is to say that certain jumps just don't have a good camera angle to be platforming at, which kind of makes some of that platforming just "not good". The combat works well, though I have to say I'm not a fan enemies not giving energy drops or ammunition drops. The main point that it suffers on is the exploration. There's not a lot of exploration, and where there is, it feels put down to "be there", because it's a Metroid game and needs exploration to be a Metroid title. None of the pick-ups feel all that satisfying to obtain and there's next to no point to doing the exploration, seeing as all of the main story is on one path all of the time anyway. There's only one point where exploration comes into play and that's at the end game...and all that the exploration is there, is opening up power bomb doors. Oh, and before I forget, I hate the missile system. I will concur that the way that one has to fire missiles by aiming the Wiimote at the screen, cancelling ALL MOVEMENT to aim and shoot a single missile, is idiotic. It opens Samus up to attack and really doesn't help as much as it should. With as few as the missiles are, one might expect them to be far more powerful than they are...
Graphics aside, I can't defend much more. There's music, but what little there is isn't enough to make me happy, and just..."eh". I would say that there's still some fun to be gleaned from Metroid: Other M, just not enough to take it above more than a 5 out of 10 in terms of a game. Which, for a Metroid title, that may as well be a 2/10, thanks to the quality of almost every single other Metroid game that has ever been released, but as far as games go, there are definitely worse games...
Before you start bringing out your DDoS guns on me, hear me out on this. I don't like Metroid: Other M. As a matter of fact, I think that there are far better games to be playing other than that game. It's something I enjoyed portions of, but the rest of it marred my experienced as a whole. Let me talk about what those are and maybe we can figure out whether Metroid: Other M is really as awful as everyone is claiming it is.
I'm not going to defend the story. I am willing to say, here and now, that nothing about the story is good. It's cool that there's voice acting, or would be if it were any good...it's nice to see Adam Malkovich come back, if he were a real human being...it'd be real nice to see Samus being herself as a character if she weren't, in the end, a pansy. As a good friend of mine continually points out, her character development makes sense as an origin story. This character progression she has does not make sense for a battle hardened warrior who has seen multiple planets die, who has killed however many space pirates, who has seen and killed her nemesis, Ridley, time and time again...it just doesn't. Her PTSD suddenly striking and putting her in a frightening state, the way her Power Suit works, her "comrades"; everything about the story just sucks. Nothing about it works out.
However, I am going to defend the gameplay...in some part. I will agree that there are portions of the gameplay that simply don't work. However, as a game, it at least still runs well. Say what you will about the D-pad moving Samus around a 3D space, the fact is that the game was well designed for the D-pad movement. Samus moves well, the jumping controls work well outside of spacial recognition, which is to say that certain jumps just don't have a good camera angle to be platforming at, which kind of makes some of that platforming just "not good". The combat works well, though I have to say I'm not a fan enemies not giving energy drops or ammunition drops. The main point that it suffers on is the exploration. There's not a lot of exploration, and where there is, it feels put down to "be there", because it's a Metroid game and needs exploration to be a Metroid title. None of the pick-ups feel all that satisfying to obtain and there's next to no point to doing the exploration, seeing as all of the main story is on one path all of the time anyway. There's only one point where exploration comes into play and that's at the end game...and all that the exploration is there, is opening up power bomb doors. Oh, and before I forget, I hate the missile system. I will concur that the way that one has to fire missiles by aiming the Wiimote at the screen, cancelling ALL MOVEMENT to aim and shoot a single missile, is idiotic. It opens Samus up to attack and really doesn't help as much as it should. With as few as the missiles are, one might expect them to be far more powerful than they are...
Graphics aside, I can't defend much more. There's music, but what little there is isn't enough to make me happy, and just..."eh". I would say that there's still some fun to be gleaned from Metroid: Other M, just not enough to take it above more than a 5 out of 10 in terms of a game. Which, for a Metroid title, that may as well be a 2/10, thanks to the quality of almost every single other Metroid game that has ever been released, but as far as games go, there are definitely worse games...
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