Jealousy is an ugly human emotion. I can recognize that. Nevertheless, I am pounding a nail through my plush Dedede doll.

That's a pretty crazy story. I don't quite understand that dude's motivations, though. If he gets that pissed due to incompetence in the service industry, then he is going to have a hard road through life.

Anyway, good to hear that you like the controls. How's the platforming?

Yeah, prepare for the hate for having it early. I will wait to read any impressions until I can make my own.

anandxxx said:

Jealousy is an ugly human emotion. I can recognize that. Nevertheless, I am pounding a nail through my plush Dedede doll.

That's a pretty crazy story. I don't quite understand that dude's motivations, though. If he gets that pissed due to incompetence in the service industry, then he is going to have a hard road through life.

Anyway, good to hear that you like the controls. How's the platforming?

Noooo, poor Dededoll!

The platforming has promise. Due to the (rather smart) zoomed-out camera, I think the platforming itself will be more involved than in the Prime trilogy. A few of the 3-D elements are kind of tricky to land, but I'm assuming this is part of the learning curve.

Back to play s'more. Oh look, there's Casper! He's had the game for days! *runs*

noun

Resentful or painful desire for another's advantages

YOU FUCKER!!!! I WANT THIS GAME NOW!!!!!!!!

I'm a different person than I used to be. Or maybe it's just this particular title. But I don't feel that "f-u" attitude, despite being lighthearted, because people have this already. It's shipping from Amazon and it'll arrive when it does but I'll be fine until then.

Come to think of it, I was giddy as a school girl over SMG2, so perhaps it's the title in question.

Anyway, nice impressions Triforce. From your impressions, I'm not going to have a problem with the game. The music might be a problem if it's missing but I'll chock it up to an artistic choice and re-judge at the end of the game.

Platforming is tedious and boring to me, sorry. But I do like the camera work. It makes the controls functional. Also, I have to say that the camera transitions between the cinematics and gameplay are perfectly seamless. That's pretty neat how they accomplished that.

Anyway, general impressions:
-Story's awesome
-Gameplay music (or lack thereof) is abysmal
-Cinematic music is marvelous
-Gameplay is just boring besides the combat
-Atmosphere is generic
-Level design is uninspired
-The puzzles feel like they were designed by a 10-year old
-Upgrades are cool, but aren't fun to use because of the rudimentary level design
-You can explore, but why would you want to?

Yeah...

casper884 said:

Platforming is tedious and boring to me, sorry. But I do like the camera work. It makes the controls functional. Also, I have to say that the camera transitions between the cinematics and gameplay are perfectly seamless. That's pretty neat how they accomplished that.

Anyway, general impressions:
-Story's awesome
-Gameplay music (or lack thereof) is abysmal
-Cinematic music is marvelous
-Gameplay is just boring besides the combat
-Atmosphere is generic
-Level design is uninspired
-The puzzles feel like they were designed by a 10-year old
-Upgrades are cool, but aren't fun to use because of the rudimentary level design
-You can explore, but why would you want to?

Yeah...

Nice! You're really selling the game to me

lol

LOL, sorry. Believe me, I wanted this to be the Metroid that we all hoped for. I really didn't think it would end up being the worst. I'll reserve final judgment for when I finish it. I'll also go into great detail then.

I know you wanted to like the game. Also looking forward to that great detail.

Maybe the gameplay music is abysmal to people who don't enjoy atmospheric music cuz nothing I've heard from the many videos is close to bad. I love atmospheric music, not everything needs a catchy beat.

@Simbabbad
That's what I mean. Music can be great of course but I'm fine with atmospheric music/no music. Not everything needs a beat. Some of my favorite tracks in Super Metroid, Prime (and other games) are barely music. Chozo Ruins Depths anyone?

Believe me, I have nothing against ambient music. It is something I prefer in many games.

Most of Corruption's music was was ambient. But that ambience was wonderful and still felt like Metroid to a degree.

The ambience in Other M is completely generic. Classic tension with dissonance, atonal music, squishes, creeks, clashes, bass thumps, etc. If feels like I'm running through corridors of any number of dark movie settings. And that's when there is actual music. Otherwise you'll be running in silence. I just can't stand it. I'm very disappointed about that.

And overall, the game just doesn't feel like Metroid. But I'll get into that later.

For some reason, your negative comments, Casper, are making me want it more.

Metroid II especially has really crazy "music", it's like post-punk art noise or something. It's AWESOME.

perhaps my Other M budget can go to the Prime collection...if i can still find it :(

Played 2 more hours.

I feel that Metroid II's music was more in the foreground than Other M's (so far). There were some weird, otherworldly sounds in Metroid II that were only enhanced by the GB's primitive sound chip (same reason I feel the original Metroid has a wonderfully cold and sterile soundtrack that greatly adds to the atmosphere--any of the item room themes, for instance). In Other M, I actually find myself whistling Metroid songs while playing the game, since it has very little music of its own...not a great sign. Where's my item room/elevator music? Even Fusion had a fair amount of solid tunes, and it was a similar type of game.

Updated impressions! I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum, but any sensitive info will also be blacked out. I've gone through Sector 1 by this point and just entered Sector 3. Sector 1 was a pretty decent Metroid area, bigger than I expected and introduced a pretty fair number of mini-boss fights. My favorite so far is probably a tussle against a large Kihunter Nest, which had me on the edge of my seat. I've actually died a couple of times as well, so the challenge seems to be pretty decent. The combat remains fun and rather fresh, although I still find myself doing the "dodge" and "melee" moves accidentally more than purposefully.

I can't believe "Zebes" is pronounced "Zeh-behs" and not "Zeebs"! That'll take some getting used to.

The sound effects are crisp and give everything a nice bit of extra punch. I love the Charge Beam's in particular!

The major item upgrades seem a little spaced out, more than usual. So far, I've technically only gotten two or three of them, and mostly in the very beginning.

I also need to slightly amend my wall-jump complaint. Apparently, you can wall-jump off several different surfaces in the game, but many of them are weirdly-shaped walls that don't let you kick off...or invisible walls.

Which I guess brings me to the complaints. Too many invisible walls! Sakamoto and his design team have put in too many of these dumb barriers in several of the rooms, and it really detracts from the Metroid feel, for me. I like how in the 2-D games, you can have numerous ways of getting through rooms depending on your arsenal. But wall-kicking is arbitrarily disabled in several spots, and there seems to always be just a single way to do anything (outside of combat). At least bomb-jumping is in, to some degree. There are some other weird decisions as well, such as the forced over-the-shoulder perspective for when you're around the other GF soldiers. Samus just moves crazy slow in this mode, and there's an extended sequence early on where you have to plod through numerous hallways moving like a slug for no real reason--then right after that, you do it again! The cutscenes are still pretty enjoyable, though, and there haven't been too many of them at all.

One final thing about the game's setting, and this one might be considered a moderate SPOILER. Some of you were wondering earlier if the various environments we've seen in trailers are in fact just "holograms" on the Bottle Ship. I can't say for certain yet, but I've definitely seen several rooms where this is the case; you "turn off" the hologram to proceed through the room, and the wide, lush jungle in the bright sun disappears, leaving you in an overgrown, dingy area in the ship. If I had to guess, I'd assume the entire game does indeed take place on this ship, which is disappointing, IMO. There's an inherent excitement about exploring planetary ruins; it feels like you can do a lot more with that concept, and the biology and history involved. Besides, we already did the ship with Fusion's BSL.

A few things have been disappointing so far; the gameplay is still fun and engaging, but the design's not quite the impeccable structure I've come to expect from the series. In fact, I'm tempted to say that Fusion itself had a slightly stronger design structure.

jon-e3 said:

For some reason, your negative comments, Casper, are making me want it more.

In a way I agree. I really want to see what the hell Casper's talking about. From what I've seen, the atmosphere's fantastic and very dark.

The atmosphere is dark. It's just generic. Like the same exact atmosphere found in a hundred alien films.

Anyway, I'M TRYING SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

Since I've come to the conclusion (after 7 hours) that Metroid Other M is not a very good Metroid game, I'm going to just play it for what it is.

There are two things that stick out to me about the gameplay. First, the combat in this game is exceptionally good. It's the best combat of any Metroid game and it's quite challenging at times. Second, the combination of the holodeck environments and the 2D perspectives in a 3D space makes the game feel like a series of obstacle courses strung together. It feels like a virtual reality theme park of Metroid instead of a real authentic Metroid universe.

So what I have decided to do was treat the game like a Metroid virtual reality theme park with a heavy focus on combat. It's working. I have a different perspective of the game now. The combat itself is what's keeping me engaged, but that's ok.

Now back for more

@casper884
We probably differ on the term 'generic'.

Wait how could the gameplay suck if a huge part of it like the combat is "exceptionally good and the best combat of any metroid with challenges"?. Shouldn't you have been playing the game for what it was from the very start? Anyone expecting Super Mario 3 from NSMB Wii would be VERY disappointed. I know I would.

Do you really have a copy of the game? Your impressions are what I find very generic