So...Other M wasn't a terrible game.

[remnant_phoenix]

Please hear me out. This isn't meant to be a troll thread.

Full disclosure before we begin: I?m a big Metroid fan, and I have been since playing the original on NES as a kid. I liked Metroid II: Return of Samus on Game Boy. My mind was blown by Super Metroid. I loved the Prime series, especially the first one. I really dug Metroid Fusion. When I heard that there was going to be a new third-person Metroid game on the Wii, I was stoked. I preordered. Then I found out I was going backpacking out of the country for a while and I would miss the launch window, so I canceled my preorder. Then I watched the whole sewage-storm surrounding the game?s release from afar. Wow. Put off by the negativity, I avoided the game for all this time. Then, this year, I saw a stack of pristine new copies in a thrift store for $8 each. After all this time, my curiosity was piqued. I had to know for myself, and $8 was not a huge loss if I ended up hating it. Would I have felt differently if I'd paid the full $50 on release day? Probably. Would the flaws be harder to put up with if I'd experienced them raw, rather than years after hearing about them, processing them second-hand, and expecting them going in? Most likely. But I can't tell you what would've been, I can only tell you what is and was. And what was is that the things I liked about the game severely outweighed what I didn't like. I very much enjoyed it.

Now, I?m not going to gloss over or deny the flaws. The voice-acting is terrible. The writing is beyond terrible, demonstrating an astounding lack of narrative structure and pacing while presenting the theme of ?motherhood? with a ham-fisted lack of tact.

But as a game? I actually had a lot of fun with it. The controls felt like a perfect hybrid of 2D Metroid and 3D action and I didn't have issues with the third-to-first-person perspective switching. The overall feel of dodging and blasting and solving puzzles was great; many of the boss and mini-boss fights were amazing to play. Maybe the controls are "they work for some; they don't work for others" because I've heard everything from "this game controls beautifully!" to "this game is unplayable!"

As for the linear structure? It felt a lot like Metroid Fusion, which, in my mind, was a good game. If one didn't like Fusion, I can understand why they didn't like Other M.

"But the story was terrible!" Okay, yes, the storytelling was terrible, but the broad strokes of the story were fine. The scripted words and presentation of said story was a mess (see above about the writing). The authorization thing and the Ridley "freak out" are examples of that terrible writing/direction, but they really didn't come across to me as the irredeemable mortal sins against the Most High that they were lambasted as.

I'm hoping that, after all this time, we can have a rational discussion about this game. I'm not here to specifically bury the game or to praise it. I want to know, for those who have played it, what exactly, didn't work for you, and why? I want to understand how the game could illicit such a powerful negative reaction back in 2010, because the game I experienced doesn't seem worthy of that.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I played it. And honestly, I can't think of a single nice thing to say about it, besides 'it looks nice.'

In any case, good luck. I think you may find defending The Other M to be a hard job.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Maybe I've been listening to the wrong people all this time, but I thought most people agreed the game was at least fun. It just couldn't redeem the story, which went against the generally established character of Samus, removed the Prime trilogy from the canon, and was presented horribly. Which, I guess if that doesn't turn you off, then yeah, Other M was probably a decent (perhaps good) game.

But for how gameplay-focused the Metroid series is, many people got attached to Samus as a character and the story of the series, which included the Prime trilogy. When your game rewrites everything people have come to expect, it's no wonder they respond with anger, going so far as to create fan theories that either remove Other M from the canon or drastically change the importance of Other M in the canon.

So, if I were to take a guess, this discussion will go about as well as a Mass Effect 3 ending discussion, because the outrage against Other M comes from a similar place the ME3 outrage did - going completely against the expectations of the audience without offering something better than their expectations. Sure, there will probably be some people that think the whole work was awful and others than think the point of contention wasn't even bad. But for the most part, the whole debate will come down to whether or not you think the flaw(s) made the whole thing irredeemable.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I actually have just bought the game for 2 pounds this morning.

I am not a Metroid fan I definitely dont hate the series or anything but its fair to say it has not appealed to me as much as many other I did not like the Nes version hated the Snes version thought Prime was amazing (but never bothered to finish it despite getting quite far. Think I gave up when the invisible guys showed up it just felt a chore then) hated Prime 2 and have only really played about 5 min of Prime 3 (intend to go back but havent got there yet). As for the other games I have never touched any of them.

I am about 1 and a half hours into Other M so far and first thing that hit me was damn this voice acting is terrible but the more I listened I was not sure if it was terrible because it was poorly done or terrible because of the direction. Due to the way its set up I would not be surprised if they said give it this disconnected feel like you are reading words off a page to show emotional trauma or something. Its still terrible though as for the story obviously I have not got very far into it but one thing I am getting is that Samus is a strong and capable character in comparison to the others.

Gameplay wise it reminds me a bit of the Nes with the controller on its side (which I dont like much but I will live with) and more like prime with it upright (which is great). Overall though from an initial first impression of it I find it a fairly nice little scheme and the first boss was pretty cool if not amazing due to it.

So initial first impressions for me is a solid its good but not amazing probably the second best Metroid I have played after Prime though. I can sort of sympathise with fans however with Samus and her character in this as I feel its a bit like with Street Fighter characters is that once you start diving headlong into their stories the characters somehow become less interesting.

One thing I did just notice is that Samus`s ship looks a bit like a Metroid. I seriously never noticed that before so thought that was cool. It also made me feel stupid but I am used to that .

 

[Shoggoth2588]

When I got my copy, it was in a clearance bin for $5 but unlike other games that I got for that price-point, I wouldn't have minded getting Other M for $20. The unskippable cutscenes were lame, the voice-acting was awful and the story just...was awful but everybody knows that. When I'm actually playing the game, it was probably one of my favorite Nintendo games that didn't involve Mario or Mii Sports. I hated first-person aiming but otherwise I had a pretty great time playing Other M! It was like Bizarro Skyward Sword...with that game, I liked the story and hated the game.

You know what Wii game I straight-up can't play? The Metroid Prime trilogy. Using the Wiimote to aim at the screen just wears out my arm after a few minutes and then there's the constant need to re-calibrate my Wiimote just to keep Samus from staring at the top-right of the screen for no good reason. I don't have that problem with Other M. Sure, the story tried to kill Samus as a character and turn Ridley into a Pokemon but it was a fun journey.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I bought that sucker full-price day one.
You could say I was a little burned.

Mm, that was a long time ago, and I'm mostly with you for my honest opinion of the game.

The story itself (until the ending), the gameplay (minus that I can't fire missiles in third-person), not bad, not great, but not bad. Seriously, the third-person action is a neat idea, it's not as cool as it could be but it's a valiant effort; the unraveling of a conspiracy aboard the station, like I said, until the ending, it's actually somewhat engaging.

Now for the bad
But the writing, characterization, character relationships, that stuff is terrible.

I can *almost* buy that Samus won't activate certain functions of her suit out of respect for Adam even if he has no real jurisdiction over her, the "no Power-Bombs" thing, totally get it; what I can't buy is her willingness to walk through a volcano without her Varia suits temperature-proof effects, especially with the idea that Adam can see all that. He's just watching her walk through dangerously high temperatures which will kill her after long enough exposure but will not tell her to activate her Varia suit until... he realizes she's not gonna do it on her own. I don't know there's no part of that that makes sense.

I'd rather not rant about the Deletor, I'm just gonna say I'm not exactly please that it's a plot detail that went nowhere.

Samus freaking out when she sees Ridley wasn't great. The Metroid timeline places Other M I think second to last, near the latest to be sure. She's kicked Ridley's ass up and down several different planets but *now* it freaks her out.

And hey, how about those I Spy min-games, huh? Well, to be fair, most of them weren't that bad.
Except the one where you need to find Ridley's blood which is just green muck on the floor which could easily be mistaken for grass, that was bullshit.

Deep breaths, I'm freaking out too much.

TL'DR: Gameplay's okay, plot sucks, and the stuff that's bad outweighs the stuff that's good.

 

[Worgen]

I liked the game, but the story and character was just horrible.

 

[Souplex]

*Reads title*
...
*Prepares angry rant*
...
*Reads OP*
...I am inclined to disagree with you.
The gameplay felt tedious to me. Enemies were bullet sponges whose repetitive attack patterns got old fast, and the health recharging gimmick quickly become obnoxious and expoloitable.

 

[Super Cyborg]

My anger over the game has left over the years, but it's still not a good "Metroid" game. Fusion was linear to an extent, but there's a few reasons that I consider it good compared to Other M. The big part is that the atmosphere was there. There's a lot of creepiness and it really felt like you were in a dangerous situation the whole way through. Other M lacked that atmosphere of most Metroid games, which felt like just going through hallways with obstacles. There was really no music to speak of, and it overall just felt barren.

Another big problem is that while both Linear, Fusion opened up over time, As you went on you could explore more areas with the weapons you got and despite being told where to go, many times you had to take a roundabout way to get to places. Other M was completely linear. The bigger problem was it wasn't till beating the main story that you could go back to explore old areas with the new weapons.

As far as other problems with Other M besides story stuff, the only interesting boss was Ridley. The Queen Metroid infuriated me, because how was I supposed to know I can now go to pause screen and unlock the power bomb to win the fight. Speaking of bosses, to win the final boss fight of the story requires you to just aim your reticle at the person, and cutscene happens then credits.

Finally, the gameplay didn't feel like Metroid to me. It wasn't bad, but it didn't give me that Metroid feel.

 

[meiam]

How can you even tolerate the control? You have to play a 3D game with a D-pad for absolutely no reason, you can go in only 8 direction when you need to be able to go in infinite number. And those damn missile control, why do I have to become immobile when I want to shoot missile?(something which would not be problem if the game control with a analogue stick, seriously why no analogue stick?!) And just switching between 1st and 3rd is uselessly complicated since you have to orient the wii mote.

Beyond the control there's also the complete and utter lack of any innovation whatsoever. Well not quite, there's 2 new mechanic:
1- You can dodge, sorta nice, pointlessly complicated with the awfull control obviously, couldn't be simple
2- You can lock on and shoot multiple missile, wepeee...

They changed from 1D to 3D and couldn't even think of a few new mechanic to include? Imagine if Mario 64 control exactly the same as super Mario bros. (with the D-pad) and had no new power/move that took advantage of the 3D aspect.

So yeah its a bad game even if you don't touch on the story (which is awful in every aspect) and no its not just the writing and voice acting (which are both awful), remember the guy who betray the team and start killing people? Well the game doesn't remember.

 

[shrekfan246]

Why have there been so many threads trying to defend Other M lately?

Anyway, yeah, generally speaking people aren't too upset about the gameplay of Other M. What was upsetting was that a character who was by and large previously characterized as a stolid lone wolf who could handle any situation suddenly had been turned into a blubbering baby who couldn't use her missiles or power armor before someone she literally had no reason to listen to gave her permission.

You say that the story itself wasn't abjectly terrible, OP, but the problem with making an assertion like that is that it has no practical meaning. There are a lot of stories that sound amazing on paper, but then their execution completely ruins any chance of them actually being enjoyable. A story is made by its writing, and I honestly don't believe that any game has ever had writing that offended me both as a writer and as a player of video games as much as Other M did. Beyond: Two Souls got pretty close.

The thing about Other M's story is that it manages to not only insult the character it's supposed to be starring, but it also manages to insult the player at every turn. I do believe that it's the only game I've ever seen where a friendly NPC literally comes out of nowhere and stuns you so that he can run off with one of the final levels of the game, and then

Spoiler: does anyone really care?

another friendly NPC steals the killshot on the final boss; this being after the whole big Ridley/Samus rivalry is resolved in a massive anti-climax by Ridley running away from your boss fight and then being killed off-screen by something else entirely.

Some people don't care as much about what a narrative does as others do, and hey, that's fine. You do you, there are plenty of games that have stories I don't really care about one way or the other. Other M happens to be a particular thorn because it was the first game (with maybe the exception of Fusion? I dunno, I never played it) in quite a long and established franchise that tried to shake up the story presentation. It implemented actual characters and dialog rather than just having everything transmitted to the player through environmental storytelling or scan logs. It tried to give a hard, defined personality to the central character, and have said character directly interact with other characters through more than just their actions. Those aren't inherently bad things. The bad part is that none of it was done well, and, well, Other M is what we got from it. A game in which a hardened space bounty hunter became a submissive bootlicker with an inexplicable mommy complex who had a panic attack at the sight of something she's beaten down many, many times in the past.

 

[Yoshi178]

people shit on Other M too much. Hunters was the real turd of the Metroid series.

 

[Hawki]

people shit on Other M too much. Hunters was the real turd of the Metroid series.

You, my green dinosaur friend, deserve a cookie. Or whatever it is that Yoshi eats.

But, yeah. I haven't played Other M, so I won't rush to its defence here, but to me, I have a very hard time believing it could be worse than Hunters. Hunters actually caused me physical pain (hand cramps) to play because of the control scheme. Hunters has two types of bosses throughout its entire run, flat enemies, and a generally uninteresting world (or set of worlds). Hunters may not commit any character assassination on Samus, so perhaps Other M falls flat there, but that aside, for those who've played both games, where does Other M fall short compared to its DS counterpart?

 

[CaitSeith]

You can try to turn a blind eye to the story. But Other M's plot interfered with the gameplay in a pretty negative way (giving us one of the most unsatisfactory final boss battles that I have ever played). Yeah, all the things that the gameplay did right was thrown to the garbage in that point, just for the story. So even as a game (let alone a Metroid game), it falls flat at several points ( specially the very end)

 

[Hair Jordan]

people shit on Other M too much. Hunters was the real turd of the Metroid series.

Ok...but come on dude, that was a handheld spinoff. That's like saying that "Mario is Missing" was the worst Mario game.

Other M was a direct Metroid game on their flagship console. As such, it's held to a much higher standard.

They decided to hand it to a team that immediately infantilized and emasculated the protagonist, because...you know..."woman emotions". It was insulting, to say the least. A panic attack? Seriously? How often do other mainstream, male, protagonists have acute anxiety when facing their primary antagonist...for the third or fourth time?

You can't simply justify a bifurcation of a game into it's gameplay and "everything else" elements, particularly for a game series so heavily dependent on atmosphere and environment. The storyline and characterization are so unbelievably bad, they suck everything else about the game, like a black hole, into an infinitely dense turd singularity.

 

[Cold Shiny]

Other M wasn't a terrible GAME, it was a terrible METROID GAME. The thing is, if it can't get the METROID part of METROID GAME right, then to me, its a terrible GAME. Other M took one of the strongest female video game characters ever to be designed, and destroyed her.
DESTROYED. HER. To the point where the franchise as far as I can tell, IS DEAD. As in, not coming back. ever. So no, Other M may not have been a terrible game, but it will be treated as such, because it deserves it. SCREW TEAM NINJA.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Why have there been so many threads trying to defend Other M lately?

Because apparently Nintendo just "Other M'd" Star Fox, as far as worthless sequels go.

 

[rcs619]

"But the story was terrible!" Okay, yes, the storytelling was terrible, but the broad strokes of the story were fine. The scripted words and presentation of said story was a mess (see above about the writing). The authorization thing and the Ridley "freak out" are examples of that terrible writing/direction, but they really didn't come across to me as the irredeemable mortal sins against the Most High that they were lambasted as.

The biggest, most broadest strokes possible. Evil aliens on space station. Samus turns up and shoots evil aliens. That's about the only way that the story broadly works. Everything else ranges from incompetent to just terrible. I have never seen a game partake in character-assassination to the degree that Other M does.

Samus is a space bounty hunter. She lives on the fringes of civilized space, hunting down and capturing some of the most dangerous people around, and she typically does it all by herself. She should be badass, self-sufficient, confident, and maybe slightly awkward around other people after so much time doing things on her own. Her being ex-military makes sense, and there's a lot of angles to play with concerning why she got fed up being an enlisted grunt, and decided to go off doing this kind of dangerous work on her own.

The Samus we get in Other M though is a dull, droning, whining, hilariously insecure woman. She walks through most of the game like she's bored to be there, and she can't seem to actually do anything without disappearing up her own ass in internal monologue beforehand. She's every single "stoic-serious-but-insecure" anime protagonist stereotype rolled into one. From a narrative standpoint, I can't see how this woman even made it into the military, much less had the confidence and personal drive to strike out on her own and become a bounty hunter.

The worst part about all of that though, is that it's completely, 100% canon. The script was written by the guy who made the freaking character in the first place. This is how he always envisioned her. What a hack.

They decided to hand it to a team that immediately infantilized and emasculated the protagonist, because...you know..."woman emotions". It was insulting, to say the least. A panic attack? Seriously? How often do other mainstream, male, protagonists have acute anxiety when facing their primary antagonist...for the third or fourth time?

You can't simply justify a bifurcation of a game into it's gameplay and "everything else" elements, particularly for a game series so heavily dependent on atmosphere and environment. The storyline and characterization are so unbelievably bad, they suck everything else about the game, like a black hole, into an infinitely dense turd singularity.

To be fair, you can't saddle Team Ninja for all of that. Team Ninja has some... interesting ideas about how women and the female anatomy work, but the script to Other M was actually written by the guy who created Samus in the first place. It was a completely, 100% canon depiction of her according to the dude who made her to begin with.

All your criticisms about it are totally valid though. Hmm... is there actually a female equivalent of emasculated? I've never actually thought about that before, lol.

 

[shrekfan246]

SCREW TEAM NINJA.

In fairness, Yoshio Sakamoto (co-creator of Metroid in the first place) was still one of the directors on the game and is credited as the writer.

Why have there been so many threads trying to defend Other M lately?

Because apparently Nintendo just "Other M'd" Star Fox, as far as worthless sequels go.

I mean, sure, I've seen some of the defensiveness over Star Fox, but why come back to Other M now? At least wait until Federation Force comes out.