Metroid: Other M Review

[Zera]

Greetings, folks. Today I'm here to review Metroid: Other M, a game developed by "Project M", consisting of members from Nintendo, Team Ninja, and D-Rockets. This game was released in 2010, and met mostly positive reviews from critics, while fan reception was notably negative. Other M is hands-down the most polarizing game in the Metroid series... but is it good?

Gameplay: Other M attempts to combine the gameplay styles of Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, while adding new ideas and increasing the focus on action-packed combat. Despite this inherent complexity, the entire game is played with just a Wii Remote as if it were a NES controller.

Movement: Although using a D-Pad for 3D movement is a terrible idea, Other M pulls it off with surprising grace since the areas are designed so you're usually moving in one of the four basic directions. In this sense Other M plays almost like a 2D Metroid, or the Metroid equivalent of Super Mario 3D Land. Every once in a while you'll want to move diagonally though, and when this happens you'll wish you had a control stick.

Combat: Instead of aiming your shots manually, Other M has an auto-aim. While I'm usually not a fan of auto-aim since it reduces the depth of combat, it works well for the most part. If you tap any direction on the D-Pad before an enemy attack makes contact, you'll perform an invincible dodge maneuver called SenseMove. If you hold the Fire Button during SenseMove, your beam will charge up instantly. As a result, stronger enemies are usually defeated the same way. Dodge-blast-dodge-blast-dodge-blast. Boss battles usually require more specific tactics, so they can be fun. The huge emphasis on chaining dodges and charge shots for most enemies makes Other M's combat a bit shallower than that of other Metroid games, but still enjoyable for what it is.

Combat Incentives: In most Metroid games enemies usually drop energy and sometimes missiles, giving you an incentive to fight them. Despite Other M's increased focus on combat, this mechanic was dropped for an alternative called Concentration. By holding the Wii Remote vertically and pressing the A Button for a few seconds, Samus will recharge her missile supply (and some energy, if it's critically low). Destroying all the enemies in a room will reveal the locations of nearby collectibles on the map. While these newer mechanics work, I don't see them as an improvement.

First Person Mode: By pointing the Wii Remote at the screen you'll enter first-person mode, but it isn't nearly as functional or fun as playing Metroid Prime Trilogy in first-person. You can use SenseMove, but you can't move normally - this alone ensures you won't be using first-person often. The lock-on is weaker since you have to keep the cursor on the enemy, and you have to hold the lock-on button to pan the camera, which was automatic in Trilogy. The only reasons to use this mode, other than searching for collectibles, are firing missiles and using the grapple beam, which are not available in third-person mode like in Super Metroid. Occasionally Samus will involuntarily enter first-person mode, and you'll have to play "search and find" to trigger a cutscene, which is not very fun.

Over-The-Shoulder Mode: Occasionally Samus will involuntarily lose all her abilties for no reason, including the ability to walk faster than an injured soldier. The camera shifts to an over-the-shoulder view and the controls become infinitely clunkier. These sections can die in a fire. No, wait - I want to kill them myself!

Linearity: Other M is the most linear Metroid game to date, with a fair portion of the game involving hallways with no exploration whatsoever. Meanwhile, doors lock behind you as you are continually pushed toward your next objective. Even in more open areas, there's very little to find in terms of secrets or branching paths. This linearity not only reduces the feeling of discovery associated with the Metroid series, but it also reduces Other M's replay value. At a certain point the world fully opens up for exploration, but by then you'll have already seen all the areas.

Instant Deaths: One thing I do not like about Other M is the abundance of cheap instant deaths. Here are a few scenarios from my playing...

Spoiler

 

I was climbing an elevator shaft when a large monster started chasing after me. In a frenzy, I used Missiles to un-jam the elevator above and kill the enemy below. But it killed me as well, because I wasn't standing in one of the elevator doorways. I had a feeling that might happen, but I thought it would leave me with 1 point of energy left. Game Over.

I was walking along a bridge surrounded by lava when a giant monster leaped after me. It ate me, since I didn't use SenseMove. I then realized it was a quicktime event and a not a cutscene. Apparently the developers couldn't be bothered to indicate that. Game Over.

Anthony Higgs was grasped by a large monster and I had to rescue him. Unable to reach him, I entered first-person mode and looked around the room. Upon discovering a Grapple Point, Adam conveniently authorized the Grapple Beam. When I used the Grapple Beam, the monster instantly impaled Anthony with a laser. Apparently, it was a 10 second rescue mission despite the lack of a clear objective. Game Over.

During an intense battle with a giant monster, Samus used the Grapple Beam and Morph Ball to enter the monster's stomach. My health drained rapidly and I died, unaware that Power Bombs had suddenly became available for no reason, with no indication whatsoever. Game Over.

 

What do all these Game Overs have in common? They either had nothing to do with my skill with the core mechanics, or ignored my energy meter entirely.

Classic Abilities: One thing I like about Other M is how it handles classic Metroid abilities. The Morph Ball, Speed Booster, Shinespark, and Screw Attack all work well in 3D, and using them to find hidden Missile Tanks and other collectibles is about as fun as it is in any other Metroid game. This is the game's strongest point in my opinion.

Presentation:

Music and Sound: Other M has a unique way with music in that there usually is none, only subtle background ambiance that you can hear clearly by doubling the volume. Outside of the generic blaring orchestra that plays during fight scenes, the only "music" is recreated melodies from older Metroid games. The Metroid series is known for good music, so it's a shame that Other M has little of its own. The sound quality, however, is inarguably sharp.

Graphics and Visuals: The graphics are very good, even if they lack the sweeping vistas of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. There are four main area themes: space station, tropical, ice, and lava, while individual rooms may contain water, sand, or even super-gravity. Character and enemy models are detailed, animations are fluid, and special effects are excellent. Other M features over two hours of cutscenes and high quality cinematics, but these cannot be skipped until the game is cleared.

Metroid Motifs: In most Metroid games, Missile Tanks are red or orange, while Energy Tanks are blue. In Other M, however, Missile Tanks are blue and Energy Tanks are Red. The Gravity suit doesn't make the Power Suit purple, but instead glows purple when used. I wish I could say there was a good reason to change these series traditions, but there wasn't.

Story: The story ranges from average to mediocre, but depending on your taste your mileage may vary. Much criticism has been thrown at the authorization system and the portrayal of Samus, which I mostly agree with, but there were a few things that made no sense at all, in any context.

Spoiler

 

I was traveling through Sector 3 (the lava world), taking continuous damage as I slowly burned alive. After exploring about 75% of this area, a boss appeared and Adam finally told Samus to activate the Varia feature on her suit to reduce heat damage. This brought up several questions for me:

1. Why didn't Adam authorize the Varia Suit earlier?

2. For that matter, why wasn't it authorized to begin with, since it has no offensive use?

3. And for THAT matter, what about the Space Jump and Grapple Beam?

4. And why didn't Samus ask Adam to authorize the Varia Suit upon entering Sector 3?

There's also a tense subplot involving an assassin among Adam's platoon, nicknamed "the Deleter" by Samus. If you don't pay attention, you might not know who he is by the end, because the subplot seemingly disappears at some point for no reason. Whoops.

There's also a scene where Samus gets shot at by Adam for no apparent reason. What's weird is that a single shot from a freeze gun somehow knocks out the entire Power Suit and nearly renders Samus unconscious. When exactly did the Power Suit become a piece of cardboard? It's really off-putting after essentially being a walking tank in Super Metroid and Metroid Prime.

 

Finally, while the cutscenes look nice, they can be quite long and don't mesh well with the fast paced action. Other M has an extreme reliance on exposition for storytelling, and frequently interrupts gameplay with Samus's sometimes unnecessary monologues. This can make the game flow feel choppy and slower overall than most other Metroid games.

Conclusion: Neither Super Metroid or Metroid Prime can be played with a NES controller, and yet Metroid: Other M attempts to make it happen. What results is a control scheme that is not simple, but subpar. I'm surprised that the controls work as well as they do. But even if Other M played as good as Metroid Prime Trilogy, the reduced exploration and pace-killing cutscenes would still drag it down. As a linear action game Other M is quite decent, and the Metroid elements that work make it even better. Metroid: Other M is the weakest Metroid game yet, but I do not regret playing it, and think it's at least worth a playthrough for most Metroid fans. Which is why my final rating is...

7/10 Good!

Summary:
+Shooting aliens.
+Boss battles are pretty good.
+High sound quality and ambient sounds.
+Slick graphics.
+Hidden missile tanks and such.
+Morph Ball.
+The Speed Booster's first appearance in 3D.
+The Screw Attack finally works well in 3D.
+The late game opens up more exploration.
-Slightly shallow combat.
-Several instant death scenarios.
-Music is not memorable.
-Initially unskippable cutscenes, slow pacing.
-Inferior controls.
-Most linear Metroid game to date.
-The story is not great.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Zera

[Knight]

Pretty good review, you identified most of the things I liked and disliked about the game, though I would have given it a five personally. One thing I'd like to note,I don't think the use of the Morph Ball is that good in this game when the Morph Ball puzzles and labrynths were much more fun and creative in previous games.

[Zera]

Pretty much every time the Morph Ball was used here, it was "break a grate, go through a short tunnel, here's your Missile Tank". It's still fun to roll around though, especially since at full speed it's faster than running.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Zera

[Fire Emblem Fan]

The story is fine, overall. It is literally Fusion's story with a few things changed. If Other M's story is only mediocre, so is Fusion's. Same with Samus' personality (another complaint I always hear), her personality here is in line with how she was portrayed in Fusion (with the exception of the Ridley fight).

I will give you the stuff about Sector 3.That made no sense to me. And I will say Samus's "reactions" in the Ridley fight were rubbish, but otherwise the story was fine.

You do find out who the Deleter is. Samus may not officially find out, but you the player do find out.

It isn't Adam, the Deleter attacks Adam and shoots his earpiece off, this is seen in the cutscene where Samus is freaking out over Ridley.

It isn't Anthony, he's with Samus when the Deleter attacks Adam.

It isn't Lyle, he's the first one found dead.

It isn't Maurice, he was frozen and killed by the Deleter.

It isn't K.G., he's killed and his body thrown into the lava, although his face is not seen so you don't know it's him being incinerated at first.

The only other team member left is James. He wasn't the one thrown into the lava, you find his body at the end of the game [because he tried to kill MB but she killed him], meaning it was indeed K.G. who was incinerated.

The Deleter is James.

Adam shooting Samus? He was trying to stop her from going to kill all the un-freezable Metroids so she wouldn't die. I'd also suspect that the reason his freeze gun worked so well on her was because of the leftover Metroid fragments on her suit from the baby Metroid. Metroids can't handle cold temperatures, and they did say they used them to create all those modified Metroids. So it stands to reason that there were fragments leftover. As for cutscenes, what's wrong with unskippable cutscenes? Lots of games do that, and with longer cutscenes!

As for the instant deaths, I'll give you the third and fourth, but the first two? Those were fine. I could easily tell what to do, and I could easily tell they weren't cutscenes. Those two are just on you.

I liked the overall gameplay, it was fun. The only things I did not like was the way you got back health and ammo, that was an unnecessary change, and I did not like any of the first-person stuff. I wish they had found some better way to shoot missiles. The first-person junk was just frustrating. The over-the-shoulder parts I'm completely neutral on, I could take 'em or leave 'em. Otherwise, it controlled well and it was fun, that's a success in my book.

The music wasn't the best Metroid has to offer, but it wasn't bad. Nothing I'd give any bad marks for. I did really like the title music at the menu once you beat the game, though.

[Elieson]

Ridley's OST is fucking beautiful though.

[Zera]

@Fire Emblem Fan

I think the story in Fusion was presented much better. Perhaps it was the limited amount of characters that fit into a text box, but the storytelling felt very concise in that game. In Other M, Samus monologues you to death with observations that are often obvious or have no direct bearing on the plot. Her speaking is also too monotone and slow.

I know who the Deleter is, but I wanted to avoid spoilers while pointing out that the game dropped the subplot it spent significant time building.

Since metroid fragments won't change the composition of the Power Suit, it is extremely unlikely that they would make the suit weak to cold.

Skippable cutscenes are considered a common feature of games nowadays. There are people who only want the gameplay, and there's no reason not to provide them convenience.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Zera

[Knight]

Pretty much every time the Morph Ball was used, it was "break a grate, go through a short tunnel, here's your Missile Tank". It's still fun to roll around though, especially since at full speed it's faster than running.

Except for the numerous times where it wasn't, there were several instances in the Prime games where you had to navigate a maze, time morphball bombs right or defeat enemies using the booster, spider and bombs. Metroid Other M lacks two of those gadgets. The only reason you say the Morph Ball is better here is because it's faster than walking, which wouldn't be a problem if the speed booster worked like it's supposed to.

Other M's story is basically an Aliens rip-off where they took out the fun dialogue and replaced it with a writing and acting team of 9th graders. I could go on and on about how much I hate the story, but I will refrain.

The story is fine, overall. It is literally Fusion's story with a few things changed. If Other M's story is only mediocre, so is Fusion's. Same with Samus' personality (another complaint I always hear), her personality here is in line with how she was portrayed in Fusion (with the exception of the Ridley fight).

I will give you the stuff about Sector 3.That made no sense to me. And I will say Samus's "reactions" in the Ridley fight were rubbish, but otherwise the story was fine.

You do find out who the Deleter is. Samus may not officially find out, but you the player do find out.

It isn't Adam, the Deleter attacks Adam and shoots his earpiece off, this is seen in the cutscene where Samus is freaking out over Ridley.

It isn't Anthony, he's with Samus when the Deleter attacks Adam.

It isn't Lyle, he's the first one found dead.

It isn't Maurice, he was frozen and killed by the Deleter.

It isn't K.G., he's killed and his body thrown into the lava, although his face is not seen so you don't know it's him being incinerated at first.

The only other team member left is James. He wasn't the one thrown into the lava, you find his body at the end of the game [because he tried to kill MB but she killed him], meaning it was indeed K.G. who was incinerated.

The Deleter is James.

Adam shooting Samus? He was trying to stop her from going to kill all the un-freezable Metroids so she wouldn't die. I'd also suspect that the reason his freeze gun worked so well on her was because of the leftover Metroid fragments on her suit from the baby Metroid. Metroids can't handle cold temperatures, and they did say they used them to create all those modified Metroids. So it stands to reason that there were fragments leftover. As for cutscenes, what's wrong with unskippable cutscenes? Lots of games do that, and with longer cutscenes!

Although I will address these.

1. Samus's personality here is awful. Fusion's Samus had little personality, she showed she had respect for Adam,who we've been informed through exposition was a great leader, and she saved some critters. Other M Samus feels the constant need to narrate the obvious, she has respect for Adam, a person who demonstrates in this installment that he is a complete and utter moron, and she is constantly acting incompetently within cutscenes. Oh, and she fails to save anyone.

2. Even if the player deduces who the deleter is, it accomplishes nothing. If Adam was the deleter though, the whole game would make sense, since he seems to be actively trying to screw everything up.

3. This is only based on an assumption that there might be unkillable Metroids, and why can't a spaceship section be detached and destroyed from the exterior? It's not necessarily a plot-hole, but it's incredibly lazy writing.

4. Unskippable cutscenes are pointless, just because other games do them does not justify their existence. Movies don't stop you from touching the fast-forward button, why should games?

Edited July 7, 2015 by Knight

[BrightBow]

There is no way, I could give the game a 7/10. It can not be understated how terrible the controls are. And if the controls are bad, then the game doesn't feel good. And if the game doesn't feel good, then there simply is no fun to be had with it.

According to the Iwata Asks, they used the Remote like an NES controller to make the controls simple.. And this just blows my mind because of course this is not really how simplicity works. Saying that having less buttons makes things automatically less complicated makes probably about as much sense as saying that the binary numeral system is easier then the decimal one because the former has only 0s and 1s. You still have to perform the same moves as in past Metroids, it's just that you now do it with less buttons. And that makes things more complicated.

Edited July 7, 2015 by BrightBow

[Refa]

I glanced at the positives and negatives and am absolutely baffled at how said positives outweigh the negatives enough to warrant a 7/10.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Refa

[Zera]

I glanced at the positives and negatives and am absolutely baffled at how said positives outweigh the negatives enough to warrant a 7/10.

It was a generous 7/10, I'll admit. If I give something a 6/10, that usually means I regret playing it. But if it makes you feel any better...

6/10 Inferior!

The summary is merely an outline I built while playing the game; I only left it in as a convenient "at a glance" view. I still recommend you read the rest.

[Integrity]

a 60% is a game you regret playing? goddamn, what's a 4?

[Lord Raven]

He uses the disc as a rag

That kind of rag

[Zera]

On 7/7/2015 at 3:43 PM, Integrity said:

a 60% is a game you regret playing? goddamn, what's a 4?

My scale is as follows:

10: Glorious! Fun incarnate.
9: Awesome! Would recommend to anyone.
8: Great! Would recommend to most.
7: Good! Would recommend to some.
6: Inferior! Would recommend to few.
5: Mediocre! Would recommend to no one.
4: Bad! Would actively NOT recommend.
3: Terrible! Would write the snarkiest review ever.
2: Broken! Basically unplayable.
1: Does not classify as a game.

Games are expensive (retail in particular), so anything I wouldn't give a 7-10 is not worth my time or money. Gotta have high standards, you know?

Edited June 14, 2017 by Zera

[Integrity]

Games are expensive (retail in particular),

gaming is a stupid cheap hobby if you don't get super into microtransactions lol

[Original Alear]

Adam shooting Samus? He was trying to stop her from going to kill all the un-freezable Metroids so she wouldn't die. I'd also suspect that the reason his freeze gun worked so well on her was because of the leftover Metroid fragments on her suit from the baby Metroid. Metroids can't handle cold temperatures, and they did say they used them to create all those modified Metroids. So it stands to reason that there were fragments leftover.

Some metroid fusion spoilers:

If metroid fragments were enough to weaken her suit's response to the freeze gun, then why didn't the suit, you know, freeze, as opposed to deactivating (which is what happened)? It's not like the SA-X's ice beams knocked samus into her zero suit (except maybe if she dies?). Those beams, which were probably more powerful in any case, were capable of freezing her for a portion of the game. And if this theory is true, why did Samus need to get metroid dna injected to fight the virus in fusion when she already had metroid material in her suit that was active enough to increase weakness to cold?

Metroid Other M was pretty awful, but I like the metroid series enough that it was inevitable that I would play it.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Severian