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Metroid: Other M (Nintendo Wii) discussion [game]
 
  Matthew T  
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.

URL to share (right click and copy)
08/30/10, 01:20    Edited: 08/30/10, 01:31
 
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  carlosrox  
@Zero
See Alien Resurrection. They stole the story of that movie for Other M quite a bit.
09/28/10, 03:07   
  Brick  
@carlosrox
Strange, I thought they borrowed from Alien Resurrection for Fusion That's why we haven't seen Metroid 5 yet; they're waiting for Alien 5!

Anyways I just beat the game, and overall I liked it, but I'm still a bit mixed on it. This is going to take a while to wrap my head around about how I really feel about the game. If you asked me now what I'd score it, I wouldn't be able to tell you. There are some parts I liked, some I disliked, some I hated, some I loved. I still think the Primes are better though. Also, something I found very stupid was when Samus first sees baby Ridley, and doesn't kill it! I mean come on! That thing was creepy looking, and it's not like she was having any trouble killing anything else, even if it wasn't attacking her. I also didn't like the part where she froze in shock at Ridley, I mean she's faced him so many times before so why would she freeze now? It would have been better to do something like that in Zero Mission, or Hell, even in Other M why not flash back to when Ridley was attacking K-2L and killing her parents? People who haven't read the manga would be confused by that part, esp. since she's briefly shown as a child during that scene. That would have been cool to see, and instead of Samus going all PTSD, we could have seen the flashback, then when we come back she's got tears in her eyes, angry, and ready to attack, but Anthony steps in before she does anything because he thinks she could use some help, fires at Ridley, and the scene just plays out from there the same way basically. Nintendo and Sakamoto still have some things to learn in terms of proper storytelling IMHO.
09/28/10, 03:27   
  Anand  
Is it out in Europe now?

I agree that jumping on enemies is a bit finicky. But you can finish them off by just moving towards them while you're charged.
10/15/10, 22:45   
  jon-e3  
I wouldnt have the controls any other way. I hope we get a sequel with the exact same controls, but with more exploration and more subtle story. Give me a maze Nintendo. Let me figure it out.
10/15/10, 23:02   
  Anand  
I do really enjoy the D-Pad for the Orthogonal bits. Nothing's snappier than the D-Pad for limited axis movement. It's only in the bigger areas that it's a real flaw. I'm still kind of wondering whether Other M would have been better on 'rails' (but still allowing 'railed' Z-Axis corridors for a straight 3D conversion of a 2D formula (with a cool cubic map)).

@Simbabbad
No, it's not the same move. Unless I'm remembering something wrong. It's a finishing move. The jumping thing you can do whenever, I believe.
10/15/10, 23:18   
  Zero  
@Simbabbad I felt the same at first, and still kind of felt the same at the end, but the game is pretty much set up so that, for the most part, you rarely have a need to go in any direction besides the cardinals. So I got used to it.
10/16/10, 02:23   
  Pandareus  
@Simbabbad

Delay beating the game as much as you can, because all those unmarked power-ups will be marked when you go back into the game after the credits.
10/22/10, 19:15   
Edited: 10/22/10, 19:15
  Anand  
@Simbabbad
Yeah, I found the 'puzzle design' in this game very interesting and fresh. The whole game is pretty fascinating (and bold), from a design perspective. After playing gobs and gobs of GoW and CoD clones in different skins, I truly appreciated that Other M was so unique and idiosyncratic, even though it was ostensibly an entry in such a long-running franchise. I wish people would give it a chance, instead of being scared off by the handful of poor reviews and the aura of skepticism around the game.

At one point, I bombed a random wall and it actually cracked open and let to a new area. I got all excited until I realized that I was supposed to have hit a switch to reveal that weakness.
10/22/10, 19:43   
  Pandareus  
@Simbabbad

I'mmm not gonna say anything.
10/22/10, 20:16   
  Zero  
Maybe you can beat her. Maybe you can't. That is up to YOU.

But if what you're asking is, is it ok to take her on right now? Yes.
10/22/10, 20:45   
  TriforceBun  
I like that part. You have to rely more on guts and intuition than gameplay-related thinking.
10/22/10, 20:53   
  Pandareus  
Just know that once you beat her, all the items will be revealed on the map.

Also, I guess it could be a spoiler but you're asking about it, you can't go looking for power bombs before facing her.

You cannot get 100% of the items before beating the game.
10/22/10, 20:56   
Edited: 10/22/10, 20:56
  CB200  
Simbabbad said:
Yeah, it's the same stupid thing as Fusion: the item hunt is designed to really be done AFTER you've beaten the game. Erk. Oh, well.

I'll go into more details later about the game, but every single problem with Other M is exactly the same problems as in Fusion. The rest, the new, bold stuff, is outstanding IMO and could be amazing with some refinement.

Well, technically in Fusion the item hunt isn't designed that way. It's designed to be completed after you get the Screw Attack power up since that's the last thing you need to get to some items. Other than that, so long as you want to do some exploring and use a lot of P-Bombs to help out, you can get 100% in a single play through.

As for the P-Bombs in Other M...let's just say this...you'll get them when you absolutely need them the most, but you might not realize it at first. BUT, Panda is right...you can't get 100% without at least 'beating' the game once and go back with the P-Bombs to get what you missed.
10/23/10, 17:10   
Edited: 10/23/10, 17:11
  Zero  
Yeah but doesn't Fusion sort of encourage not using the doors at one point? The elevator stops and you have to go through the wall? I vaguely remembered kind of finding all of these shortcuts near the end without too much effort.
10/23/10, 19:42   
  Zero  
I'm not really disagreeing, my memories of that game are pretty vague anyway.
10/23/10, 22:39   
  carlosrox  
So surprised people had trouble with the Power Bomb.... It was just painfully obvious to me and I instantly thought "YES!! THIS IS IT!!". I thought it was very well directed.
10/24/10, 02:22   
Edited: 10/24/10, 02:23
  Zero  
I think it would have been more obvious to a lot of people if it gave you more than like... 3 seconds to figure it out.
10/24/10, 02:29   
  Shadowlink  
@carlosrox

Yes but you had memories of Metroid II to fall back on as well. Not everyone played that. And like Zero said, there was the time issue. Of course anyone who has played a Metroid game before might have figured it out but those who hadn't would have had no clue. What, you're supposed to remember something that was taught to you right at the start of the game and you've never used since? Without any prompting whatsoever? How is that in any way good game design?

I did manage to figure it out myself of course after about the 3rd death, but even then the first time I tried it, it didn't work. I don't know what happened, maybe I didn't hold the button down enough or something. Whatever the case the power gage filled, bugger all happened, so I figured I was barking up the wrong tree. Died after a few more times of futile normal bombing, and got annoyed enough to go online to figure out I was right the first time.
10/24/10, 03:41   
  carlosrox  
@Simbabbad
I didn't actually say you did in my post but I did kinda think you did considering you asked about the Power Bombs and mentioned you were on The Metroid Queen.

@Shadowlink
I actually never played Metroid 2. Fighting the boss I knew something about bombs once inside the Queen (didn't know if it was Power or Regular) but I thought it was obvious anyway. It was vaguely in my memory but I wouldn't consider that the reason I knew. It was pretty instinctual. I mean, I payed attention to the game warning you about Power Bombs multiple times and it only made sense to use it at such an important time. By that point you assume it's the last boss (and it more or less was) so it's pretty obvious you're gonna use the final unlocked ability right there, especially since it's the only missing one. Also, several other bosses already used a charge attack for a final kill, the overblast, and the powerbomb is essentially the overblast in bomb form.
10/24/10, 10:48   
  Brick  
@Simbabbad

Yeah I don't get why lately there seems to have to be some sort of explanation as to why Samus doesn't have all her abilities from the last game, and so she'll have to somehow lose them. In Echoes it worked fine, great even since the enemies stole your abilities and used them against you, but whenever it's mentioned that there needed to be an explanation I can't help but wonder why not give an explanation, and just have her start with nothing? I mean it's a freaking game people! Sure it doesn't make sense story wise, but gameplay wise it wouldn't be as fun if you started with everything and never had to find anything; fuck most of the fun in Metroid is finding power ups! There doesn't need to be some sequence of Samus losing her stuff, or some other baffling explanation of why she's not at full power. I can understand what they were trying to do with M:OM and pretty much have Samus follow the Rules of Engagement, and some of it would make sense, like no using Power Bombs, Super Missiles, etc. because it might kill a survivor, but so much of it doesn't make any sense at all, like the Grapple Beam, the Adam reminding Samus to activate the Varia Suit, why the troopers get to use their Freeze Guns but Samus isn't allowed to use her Ice Beam yet, etc.
10/24/10, 12:11   
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