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Metroid: Other M (Nintendo Wii) discussion [game]
 
Metroid: Other M on the Wii
8.16/10 from 55 user ratings

Welcome to the official discussion thread for Metroid: Other M on the Wii!

To start, please add this game to your log, add it to your collection (if applicable), and (when you are ready) rate it using the link above!
...seeing as you're the group of gamers whose opinions I trust the most.

Picking up Other M today was a bit of a strange experience--the guy at Play-N-Trade revealed that one of his coworkers mistakenly told everyone that the game released today, so the store had preorder folks coming in all day to try to get it. However, this particular employee was pretty upset about the whole ordeal and decided to sell it to me anyway...then promptly called his manager and quit. I told him I didn't want to cause a fuss and would come back Tuesday for it, but he took a devil-may-care attitude and let me buy the game regardless (he was actually quite friendly to me, just upset about the mistake the coworker made).

So that interesting story of acquisition aside, I now have the game and have played roughly 40 minutes or so (just beat the first boss). It's quite early so my previews aren't going to be very in-depth, so I'll make this quick for now:

-Controls are better than expected, feels fun and pleasantly quick like Samus should
-Voice acting better than expected; the ancillary soldiers and such sound pretty good
-Samus herself seems to be directed to sound fairly cold and emotionless, which usually works, but sometimes her delivery is stilted (so far)
-I'm kind of missing Retro's attention to environmental detail, but the areas still look decent enough
-Killing classic Metroid enemies like Geemers and Rios in 3rd-person is somewhat cathartic. They made a 3rd-person Metroid feel work rather well, and I like the Wiimote so far
-You can't seem to wall-jump off every wall, just select surfaces
-Not sure what to make of the story yet, I kinda like a lot of it and some of it is sort of overbearing; we'll see. The direction and transitions are pretty nice though
-Pretty cool first boss
-Casper's right, it needs more music during gameplay

That's all for now. I mainly made this thread for everyone else to post their impressions too, but I wanted to give a few of my own first.

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08/30/10, 01:20    Edited: 08/30/10, 01:31
 
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It's a weird game, and it definitely breaks some things I like about Metroid. But I always said I was going into this knowing that... So you know what? I'm enjoying it so far.

Of course there are also nitpicks that aren't related to the previous entries in the series. It's not a perfect game by any means.
09/11/10, 02:09   
Luther said:
I really liked when Samus follow the suspicious Marine to the Metroid Labs, when she realize that she'll have to activate two powers, she says "Any objection, Adam ?" in a way I love.

BTW : the spoiler tag is the best thing that happened to the forums.

Which two powers? Oh. Gotcha. I kinda consider that one power.
09/11/10, 03:18   
End game and 100% spoilers:

I just beat Metroid Queen on hard and it didn't register as if I beat it for some reason. It just restarts me before the battle and I can't get to Phantoon :(
09/11/10, 03:26   
@VofEscaflowne
Is it true you don't get any missle/health upgrades on hard? How the hell are you possibly supposed to beat the game? Especially with tougher enemies? I'm up to the challenge though!!
09/11/10, 05:10   
Edited: 09/11/10, 05:14
@carlosrox

Yup, even at Queen Metroid, I only had 99 energy and 10 missiles. I was up to the challenge either way though but didn't expect the game to not give you any power ups at all. It definitely gets hard later on as many boss attacks will kill you in one shot. Ridley was quite tough, as was Nightmare.
09/11/10, 05:12   
Edited: 09/11/10, 05:12
@VofEscaflowne
Holy crap. I absolutely must do this.
09/11/10, 05:14   
Ya think dat's bad? Try playing Metroid Fusion on the 1% challenge! You can only get one Missile upgrade (since it's in the path you take) through the whole game. EXTREMELY difficult...but pretty fun. I did it this week.
09/11/10, 05:18   
I'm probably going to start playing Fusion again after. I never even got 100% in that game... some items are pretty damn hard to find. I'll have to try a 1% run in it after. I did try a low % run in Zero Mission but the last boss was incredibly hard, not to mention those black Space Pirates during the escape
09/11/10, 05:22   
I've only been vaguely scanning parts of this thread as I am worried about spoiling things for myself, but I did read about the return of a certain someone... Phantoon to be precise which makes me very happy. One of the (very few) things I did not like about Retro's Metroid games is besides Ridley they didn't really bring back many of the classic bosses.

But I also see that he is a hidden boss? How do I unlock him?!

PS. When are they going to bring back Crocomire?!

09/11/10, 06:16   
@Zero
Why do you wanna spoil it for yourself? Don't worry about it, you're not close to it and it's not really "hidden". Just keep playing and you'll be fine.
09/11/10, 06:43   
@Zero Or better yet, how about Kraid?
09/11/10, 06:52   
@carlosrox Oh, well I was trying to NOT spoil it by not reading too much but it seemed like people were inferring that it required doing something special. So I don't want to get to the end of the game and realize I didn't collect the 10 knicknacks I was supposed to or something.

@Alaska_Gamer Kraid isn't as adorable as Crocomire. Honestly, I can't think of Crocomire as a bad guy. I think of him as some innocent creature the Space Pirates captured and abused and turned violent.
09/11/10, 07:14   
Other M got me in the Metroid mood. I played through Zero Mission (got 100% items for the first time) and have started up Prime 3 on veteran. It seems I can handle cinematics in my Metroid and scanning in my Metroid....but not both intermingling. This first portion of the game on the Olympus and Norion feels very slow because there are all these dialogue bits but I also have OCD and have to scan everything.
09/11/10, 07:17   
WAIT WAIT WAIT

I was planning on trying Hard Mode this weekend, but now you guys are telling me that there are NO MISSILE AND HEALTH EXPANSION AT ALL in Hard Mode? FUCK. Dying in one hit doesn't sound fun at all. But I guess they had to do it since this is a Team Ninja game and it has to be brain-meltingly hard at some point..... dammit. I guess I'll pass this time and just replay the game on normal.


@Zero

You kept saying earlier that you couldn't think of any reason why analog control wouldn't be better than the D-pad, well I have one:

Speed Booster.

How would you use it? You have to hold one direction and run for a period of time to activate it. But if you're using analog then chances are you'll serve a bit and it will be impossible to activate. With the D-pad though, you can run in a straight line forever without swerving or turning, making it much easier/possible to use in a 3D environment.

Of course, they could make it so swerving doesn't disrupt the charge, but that would require more redesign of levels, as then you'd be able to activate the booster(and thus the shinespark jumps) in places where you're not supposed to - by simply swerving out the way of the level obstructions purposely put there so you can't speed boost. Also you'd have to be able to turn while speed boosting, and thats another whole can of worms and a redesign of the item.

I think this is why the booster was never in the Prime games, and I think Sakamoto may have wanted to use the D-pad for the sole purpose of putting the item in the game (and it worked perfectly).

Zero said:


@Alaska_Gamer Kraid isn't as adorable as Crocomire. Honestly, I can't think of Crocomire as a bad guy. I think of him as some innocent creature the Space Pirates captured and abused and turned violent.




Poor guy.
09/11/10, 07:23   
Edited: 09/11/10, 11:52
It's pretty easy to keep an analog stick moving in one direction. Especially on the nunchuk, which has an octagon rail. They could allow for like ten degrees of freedom to move in either direction without interrupting the charge and it would provide plenty of room for error while still restricting you to not turning.
09/11/10, 07:31   
Edited: 09/11/10, 07:32
Ah, well I guess I just have jittery fingers or bad memories from playing so much SA2 on the Dreamcast and trying to run in a straight line. I guess it could work.
09/11/10, 07:34   
Yeah as Nate said I don't think that is a killer issue really. They could have worked something out.
09/11/10, 17:46   
So, now that I've beat the game (working on 100% now) and gotten a chance to let it really sink in, here's what I liked and didn't like.


Liked:

+ Combat System - It wasn't totally perfect, but the overall design worked well enough, and transitioning the WiiMote from its side to pointer position was surprisingly easy. There were a few times I got screwed over in the FP mode because of slower reaction times than with the 'sense move' in 3rd-person, but several times I knew it was my fault. It was certainly challenging trying to find times to get an energy restore during some boss fights, but even when I died, I knew it was my fault for being sloppy. Of course, there were also instances where fighting multiple enemies had me dodging into another attack, and for now those farking bugs that you have to defeat once you rouse them with a Power Bomb are extremely nasty and borderline cheap, but OVERALL, I liked the combat, even the auto-aiming.

+ Samus's voice - Yes, I really liked her voice in this game and I think it fits her quite well. To go along with this, I also liked how this game revealed more of her past and showed her flaws, weaknesses, and that even though she might be a 'galactic savior' she still has a human side. That and she didn't get where she is now without some help from others around her (Adam and Anthony included here).

+ Samus in 3-D - I have to admit, Team Ninja and Nintendo really worked hard and made Samus feel like her acrobatic, maneuverable self from Super Metroid. The implementation of her abilities such as the Speed Booster/Shinespark and the Space Jump/Screw Attack were done very well, and I'll say it again, this game trumps the Prime series on these abilities hands down. Plus, even in boss fights I didn't have to always use the 'sense dodge' and could get out of the way of attacks with just simple jumps or running away (did that with the Nightmare fight when he'd go rampaging around the platform and use his painful laser fire even when his gravity field was active), which was nice and I'm glad the devs didn't lock you into having to use the 'sense move' only.

+ Item Acquisition - What I mean by this, is that even though you 'knew' where items could be relative to the flashing dots on your map when you cleared out certain rooms, you still had to GET TO THEM. Many of the items were hidden well, requiring you to wait for more abilities, and some teased you oh-so-well and I tried some fancy ways to get them anyway, but...didn't work. There were also a lot of items found in alcoves and hidden pathways that didn't show up on your map, even added sections from the nav-rooms, and that was nice since you knew the data you got was 'incomplete' and promoted careful looking around.

+ Boss Fights - Lots of familiar faces at some points for some of the fights (Especially Nightmare, the Metroid Queen, and even Ridley...never guessed that little fuzzy birdie was him. and the new bosses were also fun to fight as well. I really liked the lava 'fish' fight where you had to use the Grapple Beam to 'fish' it out of the lava and take shots at it, and even the first easy boss gave me a run for my money as I got used to the controls. Combat was fast and furious and bosses HURT YOU...I did like that you didn't instantly die, even if an attack should have done enough damage to kill you, and gave you a chance to recover, but even then if you screwed up you were down for the count. The only little gripe I have were some 'scripted parts' of boss fights where you were in FP mode and then had to either shoot specific parts of a boss, or even target something and it's not super-obvious...like with Anthony and me letting him die 5 times before I realized I had to look up and target a Grapple Beam Node.

There were a few others, but now let me tell you about what I didn't like in this game.


Disliked:

- Lack of Music - Now, there were certainly bits of music and when they played they were quite nice. HOWEVER, for the rest of the game when you're exploring the Bottle Ship you only have ambient, looping tracks or no music at all. I did like some of the ambient stuff, but the lack of music really, really hurts this game. Plus, me being a person that looks for good music in games and judges them harder on this category than some...this is something I am very disappointed in. The older Metroid games had good soundtracks, the Prime games had awesome soundtracks, and even Fusion's soundtack was decent, but at least it had music all over. Sadly, Other M really failed in this category and there should have been more focus on music.

- Ability Acquisition - I think you all know what I mean...Adam 'authorizing' when you are allowed to use MOST of your abilities. Now, yes, there are several that you activate/get on your own, but for the most part you're stuck waiting for your commanding officer to allow you to use them. Now, don't get me wrong, I have no qualms with Samus taking orders from Adam given their past relationship, and I completely get why it was done for story purposes. However, it felt like Adam had too much control over when you could 'get back' your stuff...too scripted for my tastes. I would've liked to have seen some instances where Samus went against Adam's command and basically told him "Hey, it's my life here and whether you 'authorize' it or not, I'm going to use this now!", though it would've still been scripted, but at least it would've still spiced things up. It felt too much like Fusion with the Data Center Downloads for your abilities, but at least in that game you reacquired a decent amount of abilities from the X-Parasites and what not...Other M...too much 'authorization' for my tastes.

- Final Boss Fight - No, I'm not talking about Phantoon, I am talking about the 'fight' with Melissa Bergam, or whatever her name was. I liked the whole background story with her and all of that, but it really, really sucked after I died 7 times because I didn't realize that all I had to do was 'scan' Melissa and BOOM...cutscene death. I won't say it spoiled the game, but it was a really weak ending and so anti-climatic, though it was nice to see Anthony come back...glad he wasn't dead. Would've been cool if I had to fight her and maybe she had some of those 'enhanced' Metroids that you had to deal with in some other way while trying to take her down.

There are a few others, but those are my main dislikes of the game, but overall...I liked it and will probably play through it again, and maybe even tackle Hard Mode.
09/11/10, 18:11   
@ CB

We both seem to have most of the same likes/dislikes for this game. What's interesting is that you were still able to enjoy the game, while I was not (but that may have to do with something else). One thing though, aside from those things, for me, was the mediocre gameplay in general. The platforming got very tedious at times, to the point of boredom, and many times I thought to myself, "why the hell should I have to do this just to advance"? Sector 2 is especially guilty of this.

Though, like you, I enjoyed the combat. But the real gem of the game for me is the theater mode. I liked the story, so I get a Metroid movie out of the deal and never have to play the game again.
09/11/10, 21:06   
@CB200
Great mini-review and I agree with almost everything you said. I find it curious you pointed out "I would've liked to have seen some instances where Samus went against Adam's command and basically told him "Hey, it's my life here and whether you 'authorize' it or not, I'm going to use this now!", though it would've still been scripted, but at least it would've still spiced things up." when this exact thing happens in the game and you mentioned it just above that. Sure, it's only once (or twice if you count the Powerbomb) but I still felt it went a long way.

I agree with the "Final Boss Fight" thing. I also died there several times assuming I had to fight off those damn things, as did my brother. I think it was poorly communicated and my brother complained about the Power Bomb unlock since...they don't really tell you it's unlocked but I found it rather obvious and well directed imo.

I can also give you lack of music though it doesn't bother me as much as most people. I agree though it could have used variety, so I totally understand the complaints. A lot of the tracks were incredible though, they were very tense and foreboding. My favorite tracks were some of the boss tracks and more sci-fi sounding tracks in the game. It sounded just like Aliens and I appreciate the obvious nod.

I also thought the story was great and it was basically Alien Resurrection/Terminator I think, which was great. Huge fan of those two movies.

About the boss fights and familiar faces....some people are claiming that Worm boss that pops in and out of holes is the same creature in Super Metroid that you fight in Maridia. I think they're very similar but I don't think it's the same enemy. I think the one in Other M has a more human face and hell, there's two of them!

I couldn't agree more with "Samus in 3D". It feels great getting full control of Samus and feeling how powerful and acrobatic she can be.
09/12/10, 03:33   
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