Metroid Other M

Oh God...

Let me start off right now by saying immediately that I tried to like this game.   I tried so hard.  "Metroid Other M" for the Wii is not an easy sell, but I wanted to buy.  I wanted to be that guy who could say "yeah, there are so many things wrong here, but the game is still mostly fun".  But I can't.  This game is a mess.  The Metroid franchise is one of gaming's sacred cows, a beloved series, and now its suffering and suffering badly.  It wasn't like I rented this game knowing I would hate it like with "Dissidia Final Fantasy" (which I only got for the laughs, but that soon turned into pain), I had some legitimately good expectations for it... but also quite a few bad ones.  I've been hoping to play this game since E3 of 2009.  You've probably heard bad things about this game already, I know I did.  Here's the crazy thing:  I was able to overlook those faults for roughly 99% of this game's running time.  Right up until literary the last minute, I was going to give this game a pass.  Then it screwed me over like no game ever has done before.  This game sucks, that's what I'm left with.

The sad, horrible, tragic fact of the matter is:  the gameplay isn't bad.  I liked it!  After playing this game, I would want to play another game like this.  If the next Metroid is in this game style, I'd be looking forward to it.  But its everything else that isn't the core gameplay that sucks.  The story is abominable - the worst storyline I've seen perhaps ever.  "Dissidia" has run for its money here in plot suckitude.  The game is very short, the cutscenes are long and unskippable, and what minigames (I guess what you'd call them) this game has are broken disasters that never should have made it into the game.

Let's start with some qualifiers here:  I'm not a giant Metroid fan.  I don't have all that much emotional investment in Samus as a character.  I played "Metroid Zero Mission" last year, enjoyed it, but felt it was too short.  I also played a bit of the original when it was remade for the GBA a few years ago.  That and "Smash Bros" is the entirety of my Metroid experience.  But I think I know enough of this series to know where this game hits and where it misses.  Even beyond that, as a game of any franchise, this isn't good enough.

The first thing you'll notice when you load up "Other M" (beyond the stupid title*) is that Samus can talk now.  The second thing you'll notice is that you'll hope that she stops.  I don't know if its the script, I don't know if its the actress, I don't know if it was just the voice director, but Samus gives the most wooden, dead-pan performance I've seen this side of Anakin Skywalker.  At no point does she ever show any emotion in any of lines.  The other voice actors aren't that bad - its only Samus.  And of course there are long, loong cutscenes in this game where Samus does first person narration.  The writing here is beyond terrible.  The whole thing sounds like fanfiction.  Every line is either so cheesy and stupid that you burst out laughing or simply repeats something that you've figured out roughly two minutes before Samus does.  Samus is not Captain Obvious, she's General Obvious.  She's not a very bright person, I've found.  And this first person narration is so annoying that it makes pine for the slightly less annoying first person narration of "Final Fantasy X".

Then there's what they did to Samus herself...  Oh God.  They wrecked this character.  Plain and simple, wrecked her.  For years now, we've all had a perception of who Samus is:  strong silent badass bounty hunter who just so happens to be female.  Does her job of asskicking with surgical cold efficiency.  Well, the creators of "Other M" decided that we were wrong.  Samus isn't quiet, she isn't cold, she isn't hard, she isn't tough:  she's whiny, self-doubting, melodramatic, frightened, and has a slavish perhaps even pathological obsession with her former boss and boyfriend, this guy Adam.  The game goes out of its way to break your ideas of who Samus is.  Of course it fails even here.  Because half the time (cutscenes) Samus is giving her awful stupid narration, babbling about how great Adam is, being dupped easily, and then at one point freezing before her archenemy, Ridley in the most pathetic display** I have ever seen in my life.  But on the other hand, the other half of the time is pure gameplay.  Suddenly Samus is completely silent, killing enemies with the same precision she's had since the NES days, without even a hint of the incredibly feminine weakness she has in the cutscenes.

I have a theory here:  there are actually two Samuses in this game.  There's Old Samus, the one that you actually play as, the one we've known for decades now, and then there's New Samus, the one that pines after Adam and cries and gives those terrible narrations.  These two characters are not one in the same.  They are not brought together in any real way.  Within the metafictional backdrop of "Other M" we have Old and New Samus fighting each other for superiority.  Samus is doing her best to break away from this melodrammic anime crap the creators of "Other M" want her to fit into.  She doesn't want to be what they're making her.  Its like this game has Dissociative Identity Disorder:  its two personalities fighting for control.  Guess which side I'm rooting for?

By the way, the cutscenes are so long that you can easily step out of the room and do something else while they are playing.  I made dinner at one point, ate it, and came back to my Wii about fifteen minutes later, and the cutscene was still playing.  Amazing.

As for the plot itself:  its bad.  The entire thing is so extraneous and pointless that I really do wish there wasn't any story at all.  Usually I'd say "it should have a better storyline" but after this game I'm so stunned that I have to wonder if games need stories at all.  I know this game would have been better without it.  It goes like this:  Samus jumps on a Bottle Ship, a Federation cruiser filled with escaped bioweapons when she hears a distress call.  On board she meets up with her ex-boyfriend, Commander Adam Malcovich and his team of poorly-developed space marines.  Slowly the space marines are getting killed off one by one by some traitor in their midst... who is forgotten entirely roughly 3/4ths of the way through the game.  This is one of many plot holes.  Samus on the other hand is now working for Adam again, despite being a freelance bounty hunter who shouldn't have to take direct orders from anybody.  She's so in love with this Adam guy, there is not a single fault with him that she can see.  All game she's constantly babbling on about how Adam is perfect in every way (you don't get any evidence that Adam is as great as Samus says he is).  Its all tied in with a really creepy surrogate daddy obsession, I don't want to get into that.  And there's also some conspiracy to make Metroids and whatever.  Then there are the flashbacks to when Samus had bad 80s hair and was still in the military***, these are probably the worst of the worst.  The story is dumb and unnecessary half the time.  I wish I could have just skipped it, but I can't can I?  Unskippable cutscenes!

On the other hand, Adam is my greatest enemy.  Adam is the guy who tells Samus that she can't use all her weapons, so he slowly authorizes them during the course of the game.  This is a design decision so incredibly stupid that it goes beyond words.  So Samus won't use her fire-proof suit in the lava land until Adam says so - because Adam is just so incredibly wonderful.  She won't use stronger lasers until Adam says so.  There's so much wrong with this mechanic that I don't know where to begin.  I'm supposed to be Samus in this game.  I'm her, I play as her.  She is the role I am playing in this story.  Yet when I want to use Super Missiles to open a door, I can't use them until Adam says so, or later when Samus herself decides that she can.  If they creators were out to destroy all sense of immersion, they succeeded.  You have all the skills right from the beginning, there's no reason to not use them.  But Adam says "no", and we can't possibly disagree with Adam, since he's so dreamy and smart and perfect and has a great hat.  We, the players have to suffer thanks to Samus's inexplicable unhealthy obsession with this man.  Basically this means that its pretty much the same as every other Metroid game in that you slowly gain your abilities over time, but the way its done is insulting to my intelligence; so artificial that I'm left sputtering in amazement.  Once again, this is just another way to break Samus down - to make her less than what you thought she was.

I don't know exactly why Samus is so in love with this Adam guy to that point that she honestly believes he is without fault of any kind, my only theory is that he must give great head.  Like amazing head.  Or she's simply insane.

So if you're able to get past all that and ignore it all (which you can't since cutscenes are unskippable), the gameplay is actually pretty fun.  Its a third-person shooter that actually feels a lot like a 2D sidescroller.  Samus auto-aims at the enemies without really much input from you.  Just point her in front of the enemy, hit the fire button, and she'll do all the rest.  It works 99% of the time, unless you're actually standing in the opposite direction of the target.  The camera is fixed, but this isn't a problem most of the time since enemies only rarely appear "behind" the camera.  The platforming is difficult at times, the camera does screw you, and the elevator sections are massively confusing.  But still its good enough for me.  It all feels very Metroid I think.  There isn't that much backtracking or exploration, most of the game is a straight line to your next location, but since this game isn't built to be very long, it works.  I only rented this game, so I didn't want to be playing for 30 hours anyway.

The controls are a bit unusual.  Instead of the Nunchuck formation, this game relies entirely upon the Wiimote held horizontally with two hands, like "New Super Mario Bros Wii".  What this means is that you're using the D-pad to move around instead of a joystick.  Again, it works, but it is murder on your poor left thumb.  Things get odd when you go into first-person mode, which requires that you point the Wiimote straight at the screen in an awkward transition.  This is the only way to use missiles or really get to look around the area for secret treasures, but it can screw you over if you don't use it in the right moment.  You can't move in first person, so monsters can chew on your power suit.  There's also those precious seconds where you don't know where your cursor is, and have to spin around for a second to find it.  I have to say that not using the Nunchuck is really to this game's detriment.  The other issue is that in order to recharge missiles you have to hold the Wiimote straight in the air and hold down A.  If you're in critical you can recharge health this way too (the only way to get health back other than Saves I should mention), but whether you'll succeed or get killed depends on fate.  But even so, it works.  The game is fun.

There are times during intense boss battles when my hand was shaking too much for me to target missiles.  That's fun. 

If the whole game was just pure gameplay without any storyline, I would be giving glowing review right now.  There are good boss fights, tricky enemies, challenging platforming, and excellent combat.  The Ridley boss is definitely the high point here, which is ironic since it directly follows the game's lowest low:  Samus cowering like a scared baby.  Even after playing the game, I'm still enraptured by the gameplay.  Its great.  Everything else just sucks.

Its the other game modes that hurt this title.  "Other M" tries to shake things up occasionally by putting you in this over-the-shoulder view behind Samus so you can see her walk around veeeery slooooowly.  This is done to build tension, but it fails at that since while in you're in this view you can't fight.  So logically you know that nothing is going to attack you.  Nothing ever pops out either.  At first its a bit nerve-racking, later its just annoying.  Then there's the Pixel Hunts.  Oh God... the Pixel Hunts.  Every so often Samus will get stuck in her first-person view until you find a particular thing that the game finds interesting so you can progress.  What is it?  You're never told!  Its like playing "Where's Waldo" but without any idea who or what Waldo is.  So you spend ten minutes shaking your Wiimote all over the place never having a clue.  Sometimes you'll even hover over the right thing, but it doesn't register unless you properly lock on.  Unless you have a guide, its hopeless.  At one point you have to look a bridge while a monster is hovering around.  You don't know you're supposed to look there, but helpfully the monster doesn't attack until you've finished the Pixel Hunt.  Another time you're looking at a dead robot and have to find the magic tiny spot where there's a logo on its chest.  Good luck.  Both of these features add nothing to the game, they're just wastes of my time!  WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!??

There's also no real music in this game.  The live action trailer had a very nice musical section, but that's nowhere to be found.  Most of the game has no music at all.  But here's the music in its entirety if you wanted to hear it.  And a remix.  I couldn't find it in the actual game, so I assume it wasn't there.

Even so, despite everything, despite all the things I listed, I still was enjoying this game.  Right up until the very last minute, I was going to give it a pass.  Really.  I was still having fun.  Because in between the stupid cutscenes and the idiotic Pixel Hunts, there are nice long three-hour sections where you just play as a totally silent Samus, run around a spaceship, and kill monsters.  Its pure simple fun, like Nintendo usually makes.  That's what this game should be, that right there.  But then there was the last boss...  Oh God.

The last boss fight is annoying enough, but even after you beat it, you immediately go into a first-person mode.  You shoot its belly twice, doing great damage, but then it starts charging up an attack which instantly kills you.  You're just supposed to guess that you have to grapple hook inside its mouth.  But when you get inside, the game doesn't tell you what to do.  The stomach acid murders you in thirty seconds.  After ten deaths, I looked it up, you have to use a move that the game doesn't tell you've been authorized to use, you haven't used since the tutorial, and you're never given practice on it beforehand.  All this is something you're supposed to "sense" or something.  So after another ten deaths, I gave up.  I was done.  Couldn't get the move to work, and that was it.  I had other things to do, I couldn't spend my entire life fighting this last second of the gameplay before the final cutscenes.  So that was it.  I declared victory, and went home.  This is without a doubt the most bullshit moment of any game I have ever played in my entire life.  Its unacceptable.  Its inexcusable.  Its bullshit.  Screw this game.  I was going to "Other M" a pass, then it fucks me up the ass!  No, fuck you, "Metroid Other M".  Fuck you.

And if Nintendo ever dares pull this shit on "The Legend of Zelda" and turns Link into a whiny little idiot, there will be Hell to pay.  I guarantee it.  This is a warning Nintendo.  You better not even think of doing this to "Zelda".  That's a promise, from me to you.

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* Oh, I bet Nintendo was feeling really clever with this title "Other M", the easiest friggin word scramble ever.  Yeah, "Other M" is obviously "Mother", this took me roughly thirty seconds to figure out.  Then the abbreviation for the game is "MOM".  If you think this is cool symbolism, it isn't.  The spaceship looks like a damn baby bottle.  Samus comes to the spaceship because she hears a baby's cry.  Sounds like this game is going to have an overarching theme of motherhood huh?  Guess what:  NO it doesn't.  Samus never mothers anything. She acts like a teenager after a bad breakup actually.  This plot isn't intelligent enough to handle a theme of any kind.

** "Other M" makes a claim that Samus is shell-shocked from her previous adventures.  I'm not buying that.  I simply won't.  She only freezes once in the battle against Ridley, and she gets her bearings back almost immediately.  So her PTSD is cured in exactly thirty seconds.  The other reason why I'm not buying that claim, is that this game never earns it.  There aren't that many flashbacks, but what I've seen just isn't that scary.  I've fought Ridley before, I wasn't panicking when I saw him.  And if I'm not panicking, Samus shouldn't be panicking.  Video games are an interactive medium, I should feel the same emotions that Samus does.  I don't know how you'd simulate PSTD in a gamer, but unless you can, the character shouldn't be cringing like this.  Maybe if the game actually did spend hours upon hours building up the psychological framework of Samus's mind, maybe it could earn this, but it doesn't.  "Final Fantasy VII" earned its PTSD with Cloud.  "Metroid Other M" does not earn it, not by a long shot.  This scene is added just to make Samus look like a weak little woman, that's it.

*** Samus I notice seems to be a lot shorter than usual here.  In "Brawl" Zero Suit Samus was tall, one of the tallest characters around.  According to the Metroid wiki, she's six foot three.  If that's true in "Other M", that means the other soldiers must be seven to eight feet tall.  Either that or they shortened her to make her look more pathetic and womanly.