Zero Punctuation: Metroid Other M

[abyssion1337]

The unfortunate thing about the writing is you can't really blame it on Team Ninja, Yoshio Sakamoto wrote and directed the game, for those of you who don't know Yoshio Sakamoto is the co-creator of the Metroid series and has directed all the games except Metroid 2: Return of Samus

That pisses me off more than anything else, he's profaned his own work

 

[MasterChief892039]

The only fully-clothed female game protagonist that doesn't sit around waiting to be rescued all day, and now they've fucked it up. Thanks Project M, you're really doing a great job of pushing equality in the gaming world.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Funny? Yes. Accurate? No idea. I'm too poor to own a Wii. But I find myself kinda confused by all of the hatred. Maybe it's just me.

If you ever get around to owning one, I'd suggest checking Other M out. The story isn't the hardest to predict, but there are a few moments of absolute characterization that rival that of any protagonist, especially when Ridley shows up, and you see Samus confront something that by rights she should have killed long, long ago, yet still hangs around to terrorize her.

You referenced Bob's bit, and in fairness he did cover most of what caused the untold fervor of anger. How a woman who's openly expressing her motherly instincts is a weak personality I'll never understand, but I suppose in context of the lumbering block of meat that comprises most protagonists, having concern that naturally occurs for something you want to protect is a risible trait. In her reflections Samus sounds like an actual person having gone through a traumatic event, which she clearly has, so it's a bit like crying bullshit that she shouldn't emote when the most recent thing she was emotionally attached gets smeared across the walls.

And you seem quite quick, Yahtzee, to cry out that the whole father-figure complex that Samus has with Adam is character weakening when you yourself, multiple times over your continual fawning over that aloof aristocratic prat of a prince, have said that it was central to the character's development and personality. For a character like Samus, raised by the Chozo, lacking actual familial ties insofar as we know, how is forming a relationship with a man she would admire as if he were a father demeaning to the character? The little we know of Samus from the minutia of expository story we have about her upbringing is mostly that of loneliness, hardship, and struggle. Compared to most of your oft-referenced targets for praise, Samus actually has a reason to be alone, resourceful, and detached from the things around her, yet when she forms an attachment only to watch the object or person of her affections destroy itself for her sake, she's supposed to take it all in stride?

At least stay consistent in your fanboy-panderings, would you mind?

 

[MasterRahl]

So, I watched the MovieBob video and now I have to say that he brings more good points to the discussion so he wins. Basically.

So, now I have a review that says nothing good and I have a review that says nothing bad. >D Common guys, games have good parts and bad parts.

The story: I'm not getting into it, I'll just say MovieBob won.

The gameplay: I personally played it and the switch to FP sucks, but the rest is really really really fun.

I still like this game, but I would of loved it if they used the nunchuck and allowed you to move around in FP view. I say that because it really breaks the flow of the game.

~Rahl

 

[Manicotti]

His special episode comes out the same day as the international release of Civ 5.
What do you guys think?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.234132-Yahtzee-Leaving-the-Escapist-Reviewing

He said "think."

 

[Flamma Man]

Also Bob has a point about his views on the FPS genre. I've seen examples of it myself. Elitist pricks who only think a game matters if it's like Halo or Modern Warfare. (Granted I don't agree with what he says about the Metroid Prime Trilogy and even I admit there are some modern day FPSs I still like but that doesn't change the fact that the industry is littered with too much of them and a good chunk of them don't really try and stand out from one another)

Portal, Half-Life 2, TimeSplitters, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Thief: The Dark Project, Deus Ex, System Shock II, Bioshock and a lot of others would all like a word with you.

I think Bob's completely wrong about the genre. To me it's the best one to experience true immersion in. When an FPS is good with a rich environments, story and characters, like Half-Life 2 and Bioshock, it's REALLY good and to say that's it's the most uncreative genre is a laugh.

The story: I'm not getting into it, I'll just say MovieBob won.
~Rahl

Debates don't work like that, it was the biggest and most glaring problem with the game and everyone knows it.

 

[Theninja'skatana]

Huh? Anybody esle catch that at the end?
Wtf yahtzee don't insult your audience!

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Funny? Yes. Accurate? No idea. I'm too poor to own a Wii. But I find myself kinda confused by all of the hatred. Maybe it's just me.

If you ever get around to owning one, I'd suggest checking Other M out. The story isn't the hardest to predict, but there are a few moments of absolute characterization that rival that of any protagonist, especially when Ridley shows up, and you see Samus confront something that by rights she should have killed long, long ago, yet still hangs around to terrorize her.

You referenced Bob's bit, and in fairness he did cover most of what caused the untold fervor of anger. How a woman who's openly expressing her motherly instincts is a weak personality I'll never understand, but I suppose in context of the lumbering block of meat that comprises most protagonists, having concern that naturally occurs for something you want to protect is a risible trait. In her reflections Samus sounds like an actual person having gone through a traumatic event, which she clearly has, so it's a bit like crying bullshit that she shouldn't emote when the most recent thing she was emotionally attached gets smeared across the walls.

And you seem quite quick, Yahtzee, to cry out that the whole father-figure complex that Samus has with Adam is character weakening when you yourself, multiple times over your continual fawning over that aloof aristocratic prat of a prince, have said that it was central to the character's development and personality. For a character like Samus, raised by the Chozo, lacking actual familial ties insofar as we know, how is forming a relationship with a man she would admire as if he were a father demeaning to the character? The little we know of Samus from the minutia of expository story we have about her upbringing is mostly that of loneliness, hardship, and struggle. Compared to most of your oft-referenced targets for praise, Samus actually has a reason to be alone, resourceful, and detached from the things around her, yet when she forms an attachment only to watch the object or person of her affections destroy itself for her sake, she's supposed to take it all in stride?

At least stay consistent in your fanboy-panderings, would you mind?

I need to find that Citizen Kane gif. Like I said in a previous post, this entire debacle, to me, seems like the equivalent of backing out of a serious relationship just you don't have to commit. Because, y'know, there are things to LOSE at that point. It also says to me that the gaming industry has done a VERY bad job of giving us protagonists that have actual problems, flaws, and insecurities. So when one DOES come around we reject it for no real reason.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

And I'd still love to know what the fuck "Other M" is supposed to mean.

 

[WiwuX]

This review was actually quite cathartic for me, even though I think you only really scratched the surface of how awful this game is. Now as far as I'm concerned, this game doesn't exist.

Seriously, the Swedish xenophobes party was recently allowed into the governing body of Sweden. That didn't disappoint me as much as this game did.

 

[88mph]

Funny? Yes. Accurate? No idea. I'm too poor to own a Wii. But I find myself kinda confused by all of the hatred. Maybe it's just me.

If you ever get around to owning one, I'd suggest checking Other M out. The story isn't the hardest to predict, but there are a few moments of absolute characterization that rival that of any protagonist, especially when Ridley shows up, and you see Samus confront something that by rights she should have killed long, long ago, yet still hangs around to terrorize her.

You referenced Bob's bit, and in fairness he did cover most of what caused the untold fervor of anger. How a woman who's openly expressing her motherly instincts is a weak personality I'll never understand, but I suppose in context of the lumbering block of meat that comprises most protagonists, having concern that naturally occurs for something you want to protect is a risible trait. In her reflections Samus sounds like an actual person having gone through a traumatic event, which she clearly has, so it's a bit like crying bullshit that she shouldn't emote when the most recent thing she was emotionally attached gets smeared across the walls.

And you seem quite quick, Yahtzee, to cry out that the whole father-figure complex that Samus has with Adam is character weakening when you yourself, multiple times over your continual fawning over that aloof aristocratic prat of a prince, have said that it was central to the character's development and personality. For a character like Samus, raised by the Chozo, lacking actual familial ties insofar as we know, how is forming a relationship with a man she would admire as if he were a father demeaning to the character? The little we know of Samus from the minutia of expository story we have about her upbringing is mostly that of loneliness, hardship, and struggle. Compared to most of your oft-referenced targets for praise, Samus actually has a reason to be alone, resourceful, and detached from the things around her, yet when she forms an attachment only to watch the object or person of her affections destroy itself for her sake, she's supposed to take it all in stride?

At least stay consistent in your fanboy-panderings, would you mind?

i can't speak for yahtzee but for me it felt completely out of place

by the end of the game i forgot what the story was about, it was all about Samus and her internal endless monologue, i didn't care about the bottle ship, or MB, or anything to do with why i did anything in the game because the story really revolved around Samus and Adam Malkovich, and to that extent the writing itself was poorly done

the concept itself is fine, but the execution was horrible imo, nobody cares about a female protagonist with motherly feelings - Aliens came out the same year as Metroid 1, nobody's still bitching about that movie... but Metroid Other M rattles on and on, it's like bad fan fiction

plenty of bad movies have been made with good ideas, still doesn't make them good movies tho

 

[Flamma Man]

I need to find that Citizen Kane gif. Like I said in a previous post, this entire debacle, to me, seems like the equivalent of backing out of a serious relationship just you don't have to commit. Because, y'know, there are things to LOSE at that point. It also says to me that the gaming industry has done a VERY bad job of giving us protagonists that have actual problems, flaws, and insecurities. So when one DOES come around we reject it for no real reason.

Most of us would looooove one of those.

What we don't want is a badly voiced, exposition spewing, overbearing annoyance as the protagonist when we the player clearly know what's happening on screen without the help from Samus constantly narrating every little thing, which causes a huge disconnect with the player out of pure annoyance.

It's not that we mind them giving her a personality, we just mind that they gave her a badly written one.

Just because you throw melodrama into a character doesn't make them have much of a personality, it makes them annoying as most people have constantly stated before.

Again, we'd LOVE for them to give her a well developed and written personality, we just didn't want what Yoshio-Sakamoto wrote, which was the equivalent of crayon on paper.

 

[Casual Shinji]

All of a sudden Moviebob has become a little...creepy.

As in Tom-Cruise-talking-about-Scientology creepy.

 

[Flamma Man]

All of a sudden Moviebob has become a little...creepy.

As in Tom-Cruise-talking-about-Scientology creepy.

Yeah, that was one of his worst ones...

 

[Brainst0rm]

Rarely I have agreed so entirely with a ZP review. The writing for this game is bloody atrocious, and NO ONE ELSE SEEMS TO NOTICE. This is the first review I've seen bring it up as a serious detractor.

Seriously. If you haven't played the game, you cannot imagine how poorly this is handled. It sounds like it was written by a game designer.

...a game designer who has never in his life encountered anything besides long strings of code, and has never read a novel, newspaper, or any literary medium which could in any abstraction be described as 'subtle' or cohesive. Or maybe it was a genius monkey.

At least that would explain how poorly it handles explaining the back-story to those who haven't played the predecssor. And by 'poorly', I mean 'not at all'. It doesn't even try.

*sigh*

 

[BehattedWanderer]

i can't speak for yahtzee but for me it felt completely out of place

by the end of the game i forgot what the story was about

I'm sorry you weren't paying attention? The story is fairly regularly brought up, kinda hard to miss. You remember, it was that whole "All the Metroids were supposedly destroyed, but here's the federation doing destructive research into bioweapons without weaknesses, so guess what's been remade" bit? Occasionally hammered home by broken computers showing fixed loops of screens from long ago, or why there are these terrible creatures all over the place next to corpses of what were once people? You remember those bits, right? Remember how they were bookended by Samus' internal soliloquy about not knowing what was going on, and how the eventual conclusion of what was happening was dawning on her a little at a time, as she gathered more information? Might not have been the greatest story, but it was there pretty frequently. That you didn't care about it means you had already disconnected yourself from the game and it's universe, meaning you might have missed that bit about how Metroids have only one weakness as the ultimate killing machine, something that does no universe any good when that one weakness is being genetically removed. As someone who's fought plenty of that particular kind of menace, stopping their revival was Samus' priority. So, you know, good job on paying attention. The business with Adam was central because it highlighted his feelings toward what had to be done, even at great personal cost, something Samus would soon deal with again.

It also says to me that the gaming industry has done a VERY bad job of giving us protagonists that have actual problems, flaws, and insecurities. So when one DOES come around we reject it for no real reason.

I remember the torrent of bullshit that fell on Dom from Gears of War 2 because he actually cared about the welfare of his wife, and that while we all saw it coming, empathizing with him for the revelation of her fate was still a poignant moment.

 

[Typecast]

*ugh* does this beat the post-Brawl thread? >_<
Other M... Samus doesn't need a character. She was happy being the silent alien/pirate massacring armoured woman, and she probably would have been happy doing that for some time to come...
However I'd like to know what's on trial here. Is the silence of the longstanding protagonist? Is the inclusion of the cinematic in a series that has mostly avoided that type of exposition? Is it the reviewer who took issue with the trite story and terrible voice acting? Is it the idea, that a collective fanbase can generate emotional perspectives on who a silent protagonist IS through gameplay, has no value? That the 'fans' who expect their experiences and feelings when playing a game to translate properly into actual expositional characterisation?
Quite frankly I'm on the fan's side. If a game can EVOKE feeling and empathy, shouldn't designers/writers capitalize on this aspect of the franchise? Should they not do that through gameplay?
I *LIKE* what Metroid Other M is doing. As a platforming shooter, I think it looks like a great game, and makes me wish I owned a Wii. I don't particularly care for a bunch of moody cutscenes or a selection of expendable redshirts that don't really play a part in the actual shooty death kill business.
I can understand that as a human being, Samus might regret the extinction of a species, and not as a mother, but as a humanist(speciest?... whatever) or someone with any depth whatsoever. I do find it hard however to marry the slaying of legions of 'bad-guys' with this sort of sentimentality however.

 

[mr_rubino]

I need to find that Citizen Kane gif. Like I said in a previous post, this entire debacle, to me, seems like the equivalent of backing out of a serious relationship just you don't have to commit. Because, y'know, there are things to LOSE at that point. It also says to me that the gaming industry has done a VERY bad job of giving us protagonists that have actual problems, flaws, and insecurities. So when one DOES come around we reject it for no real reason.

Most of us would looooove one of those.

What we don't want is a badly voiced, exposition spewing, overbearing annoyance as the protagonist when we the player clearly know what's happening on screen without the help from Samus constantly narrating every little thing, which causes a huge disconnect with the player out of pure annoyance.

It's not that we mind them giving her a personality, we just mind that they gave her a badly written one.

Just because you throw melodrama into a character doesn't make them have much of a personality, it makes them annoying as most people have constantly stated before.

Again, we'd LOVE for them to give her a well developed and written personality, we just didn't want what Yoshio-Sakamoto wrote, which was the equivalent of crayon on paper.

You realize it's falling on deaf ears, right? The machine that is the Nintendo fandom is drowning out your points as you share them. Again, we're well into the "throwing Samus completely under the bus" phase of fangasming apologetics. She's now a weak little glass princess, and this is good because it's "development" and "drama". Bad storytelling, bad voicing, bad pacing, and insane illogic doesn't matter. If you want something with effort put into it, read a book.

Read some of these posts. They literally are not getting a single word you say. You complain about the raping of her character, and they question why you're against Samus showing emotions or maternal instincts. And sometimes they make a story up wholesale about people complaining because Dom talked about his wife in GoW. (Didn't happen, but it's a convenient story to do what they do best: Try to keep the conversation on anything but the game's failures.)
The delusions are too strong at this point. You're basically marching through an entire field of straw dolls.

 

[88mph]

i can't speak for yahtzee but for me it felt completely out of place

by the end of the game i forgot what the story was about

I'm sorry you weren't paying attention? The story is fairly regularly brought up, kinda hard to miss. You remember, it was that whole "All the Metroids were supposedly destroyed, but here's the federation doing destructive research into bioweapons without weaknesses, so guess what's been remade" bit? Occasionally hammered home by broken computers showing fixed loops of screens from long ago, or why there are these terrible creatures all over the place next to corpses of what were once people? You remember those bits, right? Remember how they were bookended by Samus' internal soliloquy about not knowing what was going on, and how the eventual conclusion of what was happening was dawning on her a little at a time, as she gathered more information? Might not have been the greatest story, but it was there pretty frequently. That you didn't care about it means you had already disconnected yourself from the game and it's universe, meaning you might have missed that bit about how Metroids have only one weakness as the ultimate killing machine, something that does no universe any good when that one weakness is being genetically removed. As someone who's fought plenty of that particular kind of menace, stopping their revival was Samus' priority. So, you know, good job on paying attention. The business with Adam was central because it highlighted his feelings toward what had to be done, even at great personal cost, something Samus would soon deal with again.

It also says to me that the gaming industry has done a VERY bad job of giving us protagonists that have actual problems, flaws, and insecurities. So when one DOES come around we reject it for no real reason.

I remember the torrent of bullshit that fell on Dom from Gears of War 2 because he actually cared about the welfare of his wife, and that while we all saw it coming, empathizing with him for the revelation of her fate was still a poignant moment.

oh no i definitely remember it all

but it was all told with about the same enthusiasm with which you described it - dull and monotonous, obviously to me all the energy was put into the Samus-Adam character arc, which itself wasn't very well written

it's like the entire reason the game's plot and settings existed was simply to tell a personal story that wasn't very well written, maybe next time they should try engaging players

 

[Flamma Man]

You realize it's falling on deaf ears, right? The machine that is the Nintendo fandom is drowning out your points as you share them.

I noticed and just gave up on 'em.

What's still annoying is that people are still blaming the story on Team Ninja when they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I'm just going to watch the flaming now.