What do you really hate about Metroid Other M?
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For me, I think the main thing is that it takes place after Super Metroid, chronologically making Other M the second-to-last game in the series. If this was a prequel, the first game chronologically in the series, somethings would have been easier to explain.
Power-Ups: Simple one. She just doesn't have them.
Adam: This is her first mission away from the Federation, so she has had little time to deal with her emotional issues involving him. Furthermore, she's still in the habit of following a COs orders.
Ridley: Samus' first encounter with the being who caused her so much pain. Honestly, this would have been a great moment if it wasn't for the fact that by this point in the timeline, she's fought Ridley on 5 different occasions.
See how many problems have been cleared up by doing this? If they made this an actual prequel, I (and many others) would have been a lot more forgiving of the obviou gripes.
Other M is wasted potential to me, not because it's bad, but because this could have been so much more.
Power-Ups: Simple one. She just doesn't have them.
Adam: This is her first mission away from the Federation, so she has had little time to deal with her emotional issues involving him. Furthermore, she's still in the habit of following a COs orders.
Ridley: Samus' first encounter with the being who caused her so much pain. Honestly, this would have been a great moment if it wasn't for the fact that by this point in the timeline, she's fought Ridley on 5 different occasions.
See how many problems have been cleared up by doing this? If they made this an actual prequel, I (and many others) would have been a lot more forgiving of the obviou gripes.
Other M is wasted potential to me, not because it's bad, but because this could have been so much more.
Also I find it terribly ironic that MovieBob calls out people using the Straw Man argument about Samus' emotional fragility and then proceeds to accuse said people of wanting Samus to be a polystrene block with no emotion whatsoever.
He does have the best counter-argument I've seen so far though.
He does have the best counter-argument I've seen so far though.
Reach was good but it seemed like the Post-Halo 2 era was a game milking spree. Halo 3 was basically new graphics added to Halo 2 and Halo Wars.....it just shouldn't have exsisted, ODST was a neat experiment but wasn't all that great.AjimboB said:
I don't own a Wii and never played a Metroid game but I feel like Nintendo brought on Team Ninja to shield them from the hate they knew they would get from the fanbase because they decided to give Samus a voice. It won't matter that Team Ninja is not responsible for the characterization as they will be the people that made the game in the minds of players.
I am on Yahtzee's side in the Yahtzee-vs-Moviebob debate over Samus's characterization. I've said this before, but if you're Nintendo, and it's your decision to flesh out one of the most iconic female characters in gaming, a woman who shines as a beacon of the potential for gaming to break out of its "gay space marine" stereotype and really start to explore gender in a rich, well-thought-out way that could elevate the form, then WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU ENTRUST THIS TO TEAM NINJA?! Team Ninja, a developer virtually synonymous with everything that's wrong with characterization of females in gaming, a company proud of its advances in "jiggle physics".
And in predictable fashion, the first thing TN goes out and does is overemphasizes a "girl with daddy issues". Yes, I get Moviebob's response to this critique, that it is not sexist per se for women to be portrayed this way, and we wouldn't complain if this were a book or film.
BUT GAMING IS NOT THERE YET. Gaming does not have enough credibility as an art form, and Team Ninja does not have enough credibility as a developer, for this action to be taken as anything OTHER than a sexist, base misogynistic development. Gaming needs Samus Aran to be what we've built her up to be in our imaginations over the years. We need her to carry that torch. She is not the sacrificial lamb we can use to explore that side of femininity because gaming does not have the chops to reconcile an Electra complex with badass Metroid-shooting (and the whole thing with Ridley is, as Yahtzee has pointed out, enormously incongruous.)
I understand Moviebob's point...but I agree with Yahtzee.
And in predictable fashion, the first thing TN goes out and does is overemphasizes a "girl with daddy issues". Yes, I get Moviebob's response to this critique, that it is not sexist per se for women to be portrayed this way, and we wouldn't complain if this were a book or film.
BUT GAMING IS NOT THERE YET. Gaming does not have enough credibility as an art form, and Team Ninja does not have enough credibility as a developer, for this action to be taken as anything OTHER than a sexist, base misogynistic development. Gaming needs Samus Aran to be what we've built her up to be in our imaginations over the years. We need her to carry that torch. She is not the sacrificial lamb we can use to explore that side of femininity because gaming does not have the chops to reconcile an Electra complex with badass Metroid-shooting (and the whole thing with Ridley is, as Yahtzee has pointed out, enormously incongruous.)
I understand Moviebob's point...but I agree with Yahtzee.
Because they wanted to everyone to blame Team Ninja if this thing failed even though Team Ninja was not responsible for the writing?SimuLord said:
All MovieBob did was argue that there's nothing wrong with taking risks especially with a female protagonist with the effort of making them more feminine.SimuLord said:
But I find it funny that in no where in his argument did he state whether or not he thinks the developers did a good job at it.
Sure he praised the gameplay (hating FPS and loving anything retro explains that), but that's all he praised, that and the sheer fact they took a risk.
I enjoyed playing Metroid: Other M. However, the constant monologuing by Samus in a monotone voice, the anvilicious theme of motherhood and the authorization thing. I mean, going into a volcanic area without a Varia Suit is suicide!
I mean, I was fine with Samus' characterization; I would be depressed, too, if something that I've grown attached to exploded violently before my eyes after saving my life. I would be frozen in fear of the dragon thing that killed my parents, too. And, if the motherhood theme was more subtle, then I would have liked it more. The authorization thing, I can kind of understand; She thought of Adam as a father figure, and possibly desired his approval. However, what I DON'T understand is that his voice overwrites reason.
However, I think that the game had more potential than was explored. Maybe they should make a prequel to the entire series, during the time where Adam was Samus' superior officer?
I mean, I was fine with Samus' characterization; I would be depressed, too, if something that I've grown attached to exploded violently before my eyes after saving my life. I would be frozen in fear of the dragon thing that killed my parents, too. And, if the motherhood theme was more subtle, then I would have liked it more. The authorization thing, I can kind of understand; She thought of Adam as a father figure, and possibly desired his approval. However, what I DON'T understand is that his voice overwrites reason.
However, I think that the game had more potential than was explored. Maybe they should make a prequel to the entire series, during the time where Adam was Samus' superior officer?
Haven't played it due to not owning a Wii, but making Samus emotionally fragile... what the hell?
Actually, that's not really true, there is a Metroid manga that Nintendo's Metroid creator claims as canon, that explains how she meets the chozo, gets the suit, joins the federation squad, then becomes a bounty hunter. She expresses character throughout the entire thing.Ciran said:
Team Ninja (for the last time) had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with character development. This is probably the biggest misconception about this game. All Team Ninja was brought in for was rendering and gameplay. Talk to Nintendo if you got beef with her personality.SimuLord said:
Firstly, haven't played the game, but even so there's a few things that stand out from that video commentary as being a bit off. To begin with, the arguments that contradict the speaker's viewpoint are largely oversimplified. From what I can tell, it's not that Samus is taking orders from a man that the average player is irritated by, it's that she does so to the detriment of her own common sense and at a great personal risk for no better reason than semantics.
The other thing is that grabbed my attention was the assertion that the gamers' perception of Samus' character prior to its definition in Other M was based purely on projection. Rather than blatant selective use of facts I'll put this down to the speaker's ignorance of the Prime games. Repeatedly Samus is introduces as a bounty hunter. We know therefore what line of work the character pursues and this in turn says something about the character. Whether or not it is true that a bounty hunter is someone who prefers to work alone and, most pointedly, eschews a regular chain of command, that is the perception that the average gamer has of the profession. (probably due to the most famous sci-fi bounty hunter, Boba Fett, more or less being the archetypal illustration of the description) Doubtless being aware of this stigma, the developers of the Prime series' decision to mark Samus as a bounty hunter deliberately cultivated these perceptions of the character. Unless I missed something, there was never a formal declaration of the Prime trilogy being non-canon, therefore that characterisation stands.
Now, as any player of the later Legend of Zelda games will tell you, a silent character doesn't have to be two dimensional. I would argue that the same is true of Samus in Metroid Prime 2 Echoes and more noticeably in Prime 3 Corruption. Consider Samus' reaction to finding the dead troopers in Echoes. We know what her visor is capable of, I consider it unlikely she was checking that the commander was dead. Consider also the hidden ending cinematic of Corruption in which Samus is seen on Elysia thinking of the other hunters, now dead. This shows a sensitive side to her character that couldn't even by the most harsh of observers be seen as weakness; unlike her portrayal in Other M, or so I've heard.
Which brings us to the infamous Ridley scene. The main defense by the developers (and the speaker in the video review) is that her reaction is a realistic portrayal of PTSD. The gamer's argument is that realistic or not it's inconsistent with the character. I'm sort've on the fence here as while Samus has never frozen up when confronted with Ridley before she hasn't always acted rationally. The first sighting of Ridley on both Prime games in which he appears prompts a scene in which Samus makes a stupid decision. Firstly, when found on the space pirate frigate, Ridley's appearance causes Samus to momentarily forget that the ship is exploding around her as she instead stops to watch her nemesis make his escape. (I don't recall whether she actually shoots at him as well) Similarly in Corruption at the second power generator Samus, caught off guard and at a disadvantage, attempts to stand her ground against Ridley and consequently is hurled into a pit leading to the planet's molten core which would almost certainly have resulted in her death were it not for Rundas. (odd that there were no cries of 'ruined forever!' on this instance of Samus being saved by a male character despite Rundas' 'now you owe me one' comment practically lampshading it.) Now why the script writers didn't do something similar in Other M I can't say. I agree that the way they chose to handle it had some unfortunate implications, but I don't believe it was as out of character for Samus as some people are suggesting.
The largest problem as I've heard it told is gameplay and story segregation. As far as the character is portrayed in Other M the player is hard pressed to believe that the same character who is showing such emotional insecurity in the cut scenes would be capable of facing down the terrors that stalk the derelict ship, much less have the motivation to be there in the first place. Referring once more to the Prime trilogy, I would question whether the same character portrayed in Other M would be capable of soldiering on after finding herself trapped on a hostile planet with the people she was sent to save lying dead on the ground (Echoes prior to meeting the Luminoth) or after just puking phazon onto the ground (Corruption).
Now it's possible that we're not giving the developers enough credit. Perhaps they were indeed taking a great risk and angling for the line that someone who does not know fear cannot be courageous. If courage is the act of conquering fear then those without fear are incapable of it, or so the theory goes. If the developers were aiming for this though they made a mistake. Such an angle is ambiguous unless clearly stated, and here it's only implied if you're aware of the philosophy and looking for it.
EDIT: 'scuse the wall of text there.
EDIT2: Ah crap, just noticed the comment above about Team Ninja not being responsible for the script writing, gimmie a moment to change where the accusatory finger is pointing. XD
Should all be good now.
The other thing is that grabbed my attention was the assertion that the gamers' perception of Samus' character prior to its definition in Other M was based purely on projection. Rather than blatant selective use of facts I'll put this down to the speaker's ignorance of the Prime games. Repeatedly Samus is introduces as a bounty hunter. We know therefore what line of work the character pursues and this in turn says something about the character. Whether or not it is true that a bounty hunter is someone who prefers to work alone and, most pointedly, eschews a regular chain of command, that is the perception that the average gamer has of the profession. (probably due to the most famous sci-fi bounty hunter, Boba Fett, more or less being the archetypal illustration of the description) Doubtless being aware of this stigma, the developers of the Prime series' decision to mark Samus as a bounty hunter deliberately cultivated these perceptions of the character. Unless I missed something, there was never a formal declaration of the Prime trilogy being non-canon, therefore that characterisation stands.
Now, as any player of the later Legend of Zelda games will tell you, a silent character doesn't have to be two dimensional. I would argue that the same is true of Samus in Metroid Prime 2 Echoes and more noticeably in Prime 3 Corruption. Consider Samus' reaction to finding the dead troopers in Echoes. We know what her visor is capable of, I consider it unlikely she was checking that the commander was dead. Consider also the hidden ending cinematic of Corruption in which Samus is seen on Elysia thinking of the other hunters, now dead. This shows a sensitive side to her character that couldn't even by the most harsh of observers be seen as weakness; unlike her portrayal in Other M, or so I've heard.
Which brings us to the infamous Ridley scene. The main defense by the developers (and the speaker in the video review) is that her reaction is a realistic portrayal of PTSD. The gamer's argument is that realistic or not it's inconsistent with the character. I'm sort've on the fence here as while Samus has never frozen up when confronted with Ridley before she hasn't always acted rationally. The first sighting of Ridley on both Prime games in which he appears prompts a scene in which Samus makes a stupid decision. Firstly, when found on the space pirate frigate, Ridley's appearance causes Samus to momentarily forget that the ship is exploding around her as she instead stops to watch her nemesis make his escape. (I don't recall whether she actually shoots at him as well) Similarly in Corruption at the second power generator Samus, caught off guard and at a disadvantage, attempts to stand her ground against Ridley and consequently is hurled into a pit leading to the planet's molten core which would almost certainly have resulted in her death were it not for Rundas. (odd that there were no cries of 'ruined forever!' on this instance of Samus being saved by a male character despite Rundas' 'now you owe me one' comment practically lampshading it.) Now why the script writers didn't do something similar in Other M I can't say. I agree that the way they chose to handle it had some unfortunate implications, but I don't believe it was as out of character for Samus as some people are suggesting.
The largest problem as I've heard it told is gameplay and story segregation. As far as the character is portrayed in Other M the player is hard pressed to believe that the same character who is showing such emotional insecurity in the cut scenes would be capable of facing down the terrors that stalk the derelict ship, much less have the motivation to be there in the first place. Referring once more to the Prime trilogy, I would question whether the same character portrayed in Other M would be capable of soldiering on after finding herself trapped on a hostile planet with the people she was sent to save lying dead on the ground (Echoes prior to meeting the Luminoth) or after just puking phazon onto the ground (Corruption).
Now it's possible that we're not giving the developers enough credit. Perhaps they were indeed taking a great risk and angling for the line that someone who does not know fear cannot be courageous. If courage is the act of conquering fear then those without fear are incapable of it, or so the theory goes. If the developers were aiming for this though they made a mistake. Such an angle is ambiguous unless clearly stated, and here it's only implied if you're aware of the philosophy and looking for it.
EDIT: 'scuse the wall of text there.
EDIT2: Ah crap, just noticed the comment above about Team Ninja not being responsible for the script writing, gimmie a moment to change where the accusatory finger is pointing. XD
Should all be good now.
why can i use the other half of my bought controller and make the game half functional? and the 'point to fire missiles' idea. seriously, who let that happen? oh and the story. and the characters. The whole game...
there's nothing I could say I really HATE. Most of the complaints I've seen are blown WAY out of proportion. Some of the scanning sections are annoying, the Varia suit section had a narrative brainfart (though that was an interesting section of gameplay, so I'll let it slide), some of the dialogue was weird, and the cut scenes sometimes ran to long. But anything I outright HATED? No, there was nothing I found to be worthy of hate or severe complaints. All in all the game was still good and worthy the money.
Here's why the 1 reason I hate it, it turns Samus Aran, lone-wolf badass bounty hunter, into Bellah from fucking (yes I cursed, that's how much I hate making this comparison) twilight! That's the one thing I hate about it, but they get the one character of ANY IMPORTANCE in the series WRONG, now imagine if they remade say....Indiana Jones, totally messed up the character, I'm not talking a minor screw up, I'm talking the kind of screw up that would make angry internet mobs, the kind of failure that would awaken Anonymous from it's slumber to unleash it's fury upon the world.
- Apr 1, 2009
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the story, I despise the story and dialog, I seriously havent seen story and dialog this bad in a very long time, maybe not ever, its got fantastic game play, I thought the switch between 3rd and first person worked well but maybe Im just a really good player but every time they had dialog or plot it made me want to rip my ears off
who on earth truely hated every mini-movie in halo legends?....even if you hate halo "the package" was damn awsome.Legendary Alucard said: