Awesome Metroid game acquired. One hour in, loving it.

Will write more later, gotta continue playing.

EDIT: But, gotta admit, the music does suck so far.

@Pandareus
I know it's not either of those items. The game at that point is pretty linear so you should reach some room that you need to get through to proceed. Can you describe the "farthest" room you've reached? If it's the water area, check for a wall-jump spot close to the above-water switch on the east side.

@TriforceBun

The "farthest" room has a super missile door at the other end, it's revealed after you shoot a missile at some block blocking a morph ball passage leading to a hologram station.

The last cinematic "pseudo-bosses" (they're probably normal enemies, but are intoduced cinematically like the chameleon enemies) I fought were some worms coming out of the wall and ceiling.

Not sure what you mean by "water area". The room in which there is a morph ball passage behind a waterfall? And some big biped dino-thing with a glowy underbelly? There is one wall-jump spot there, I'm a bit farther than that...

Almost 7 hours in. Just saw the cutscene where Adam let his little brother die.

I really am loving the game so far. Sure I've got my little nitpicks, but overall I'd say it was an excellent conversion of the franchise to a third person 3D game. I have room in my heart to love both this and the prime games.

Story is pretty decent so far as well...but what's really enjoyable is the combat...I think I've mastered it too well...now the game feels a bit too easy.

@Pandareus
Hmm, I can't remember exactly what to do next, but IGN's guide can probably help ya.

You'll know the water area when you get there...I was stuck for awhile...

I bought mine today, around 6 PM.

It's now 12:43 AM, and I'm going to bed.

I got past the water, and the first tree monster, then called it a night.

David V

Oh, cool, pretty much where I was stuck. Thanks!

Played just over an hour today, and the start is solid but not spectacular.

The cut scenes and VA are good; the problems come with the script which can get wordy and unnatural.

But otherwise I'm digging the combat and Samus's movement in general. Retro's Samus now seems ponderous in comparison. It's both strange and exciting to be so intimately aware of Samus's thoughts. She's always been so unknowable.

Very much looking forward to playing more.

Inside her head, she is very much how I imagined her to be.

I'm about 5 hours in. It's a very nice looking game. Many folks have said that it doesn't look as good as Metroid Prime, but I think that's more a matter of the art direction than their technical prowess. The cut scenes look very good, even though they're 30 fps and the game is 60 fps. The voice work is very good. I love Samus's voice. Between that and the short hair she sports in the flashbacks reminds me a bit (but not too much) of Rebecca Chambers, in a good way. I didn't find the whole "not using weapons until Adam clears it" to be odd after she formally joins up, but before then it did seem peculiar. Adam didn't authorize her joining, but she did anyway. That's more a plot hole than really a flaw in the game. I've found the script to be just fine....perhaps I imagine Samus to be more erudite, what with growing up the only human on Zebes and all and having not much to do but study. Ya know, not being distracted by boys and stuff.

There are more graphical glitches, like invisible walls and even some clipping -- one time, Samus died and fell halfway through a wall. Meh. The inside scenes look very very good, but the "outdoor" (i.e. holographic) scenes seemed a little off, like Samus was floating over the top of it and not a part of it.

I must say that my absolute least favorite part is the d-pad controls. Very imprecise and limited, in my opinion. Annoying in those few moments of over-the-shoulder third-person, and still difficult in the panned out 3D parts. The Wii remote's D-pad has never been a strength. On the other hand, I handled the transition to first person with the remote very easily. It works exactly like the pointing function in Super Paper Mario. And it does matter what direction you're pointing when you do it. The last-gasp charging is interesting and made a couple boss battle quicker, but I could have easily done without it. Same with the auto-load missiles too.

And I miss not having any motion controls at all. I find myself shaking the Wii remote when an enemy jumps on me, hoping it will do something. Now that I think about it, the controls overall remind me quite a bit of Super Paper Mario.

Overall, I must say that I like Metroid: Other M a whole bunch. I like the Metroid Prime series better, but I still like it a lot. When I do my formal review, it's looking like a borderline B+/A score, I'm thinking.


David V

@porphyrous

Weird, I thought the D pad controls were fine for the way the game works. It's very 2D in nature, despite being in 3D. The camera always rotates to allow easy movement which I thought was awesome and really well done. It is a bit more wonky in the behind the shoulder views but those never really require precise movements anyway.

As for the motion controls, there is one and it's very helpful and it seems a lot of people missed it too. When you're in first person mode and you're about to get attacked, just flick the Wiimote to preform the same evasive move as when you're not pointing at the screen. It is in the manual but the game makes no mention of it in the intro.

@VofEscaflowne Yeah, I completely didn't know about the first person dodge until I read it online. I really wish it were mentioned in-game, but in any case it's a big help. Everyone should know about it!

@porphyrous I think that the D-pad controls were my favorite part of the game. I agree with what Vof said, it is very 2D in nature. Like the way you can hold up, and run straight through a curved hallway, as opposed to running into the wall. Yeah, the over-the-shoulder views are a little awkward, but fortunately that doesn't happen too often in the game (although it does get annoying at one point, when you're stuck in that view for a while). For the most part though, I feel like you can tell the game was built around this control scheme, and for that reason it works.

I would tend to agree with you guys. My main problem with the D-pad was in the 3D portions, especially the security drone mini-boss and the worms boss. I would have given anything to have an analog stick for those....


David V

This is seriously one hell of a game. Team Ninja did not fuck it up. I am happy

Minor spoilers I guess for 100%

I started the game on hard and wow, it's tough in parts Although I'm curious to see how certain boss battles will work out. I wanted to do a low % run eventually but apparently this is taking care of it for me because I am finding ZERO power ups. I just beat the worm mini boss and I still have 10 missiles and 99 energy Plus enemies do a lot more damage I think...

@VofEscaflowne

you are teasing me to 100% this game.

oh and I watched 2 hour theatre mode: here is the spoiler if you were confused about an important story element.

James Pierce was the deleter. The game does not directly tell you, but you see that he is the last of the GF force alive when you find him dead. The game shows a cut scene where a GF member is going to murder MB; however your find james dead at the scene of that place. He was the deleter who went to kill MB but she killed him instead.

I like how the game leaves that aspect up to players to figure out.

Just got 100% on Metroid Other M. Been playing since I got the game from Gamefly Thursday, and I do like it alot, even with what flaws it has.

I got fairly used to the controls. They did an overall good job with the camera work to allow for smooth traversal. The one thing I had trouble with though was the dodge mechanic. I'm gonna say it's mostly user error on my part, because when you use a d-pad or something for movement and dodging, I'm always used to just double tapping. Since you only have to press once in any direction dodge, kinda threw me off. It's simple sounding and in practice it works, just that I always instinctively double tap.

Story and character wise, I do have one thing to say about Samus. Regarding or voice, it's what I expected. There's the difference in tone between her monologues and when she is actually speaking, much like in Fusion. But the flat tone in her voice when she monologues isn't so much that got me, but rather when she would go too long on one of her explanations or whatever. Thankfully, it didn't become as frequent later in the game, but in the first hour of setting up the current situation with Samus, Adam's squad, and the Bottle Ship, I almost felt like I might've fallen asleep. It'd be like if Evangelion focused primarly on Rei Ayanami and she talked more. The tone is part of her character, but it's not something I could stand to listen to for very long.

And the story itself got better after the first hour, once you start to learn more about what happened on the ship and what not. There were some interesting twists, but the interesting thing about this all was how it felt similar to Metroid Fusion.

This game is like the 3D version of Fusion, much like Prime was to Super Metroid. Both games have you on some ship/station that is holds simulated environments for different creatures, there's Adam Malkovich telling you where to go, and of course, a corrupt part of the Galactic Federation using the facitility to harness bioweapons. Not to mention Nightmare, the gravity boss from Fusion, who's appearance certainly had me surprised. As soon as I saw his face I was like "oh dude, it's THAT boss!"

Not even just the similarities in characters and setting, but also the overall structure. It's a Metroid game, in the same way that Fusion was a Metroid game. You still had nooks and crannies to explore, but you were always being told clearly where to go, and when there's a key part of the story happening, the exploration bits come to halt, and force your attention on the immediate danger at hand.

As for the invisible walls things mentioned earlier in the thread, it didn't actually cross my mind until you guys mentioned it. I was so used to navigating the map so quick and efficiently I didn't notice. But then again, I started to notice it as I was looking for the last few item pick ups (which is when I saw you guys mention it). Well, it does come down to how the controls are set up. You only have digital movement and 8 directions to move in, so you wouldn't necessarily want to get caught on a small snag or something, but yeah, it's kinda odd when you're trying to find that secret and you get stopped by an invisible force constantly.

If there's one thing I wished this game had though was special endings based on not just item completion but also overall time. Just like the old games. I probably wouldn't make the required limits though, but it would be fun to see other people do it.

Great game. Infact, great game from all sides of development. Nintendo, Team Ninja, D-Rockets (well, it was the cinematics they did, but it played a part in it). They made a very fun and enjoyable game, even with what flaws there are in the limited controls, and a sort of "meh" start at the beginning of the story.

I just got the game today, but I need some help... I'm kinda stuck:

I just finished the scene where the GF guys are fighting a big purple hairy lizard outside and samus comes out to help, but ends up getting pinned under the lizard. Now they're standing around the Lyle guy who's injured and I'm supposed to find something to scan, but I can't find anything, I seem to only be able to scan the 4 other guys.

@Paleo_OrcaTurn 180 degrees from the soldiers.