I don’t expect this thread to get a lot of responses, but that’s okay… I’m really just ranting.
I bought Metroid: Other M yesterday. It was my reward to myself for completing the semester. After playing it for a few hours, I can say as a huge Metroid fan: I’m quite disappointed.
Team Ninja should’ve stuck to what made the Metroid series great in the first place. Samus Aran has generally been a lone silent protagonist in a dangerous alien environment with no one to depend upon but herself. Players have always been left to make up most of her character and her background themselves. She’s been the strongest, most nonsexualized female character of any video game franchise in history, and Metroid: Other M completely undid that, forcing her to take direction from a man. She responds to a distress signal and runs into her former commanding officer who essentially infantilizes her: “I’ll let you stay and help my team, but you need to take my orders and only use weapons I authorize.” There’s no reason for the strong, independent Samus Aran to accept that, yet she does. Samus is one of the galaxies deadliest weapons. She has more experience than the rest of the team combined, yet she’s reduced to being permitted to tag along like a kid sister. Team Ninja should have just put Samus on the bottle ship alone and left the rest up to our imaginations.
The other major issue I have are the graphics. The cutscene graphics are okay, though they borrowed a little too heavily from Final Fantasy. The big gripe is that most of the game is just too damn dark. I appreciate the ominous tone the designers were trying to set, but much of the game is near pitch black. I have read elsewhere on the net that others have had to readjust their TV’s brightness and contrast settings just to be able to see.
There are other more minor complaints (like the convoluted controls), but they can be dealt with. I’ll give this game another few hours, but I may end up returning it and writing it off. Let’s hope the next installment gets back to basics.
You know, my girlfriend said the same thing last night. I didn’t look up the reviews because a.) I try to avoid spoilers as much as humanly possible, and b.) I’ve had pretty much a perfect record of getting great games when I stick to my favorite franchises (God of War, Assassin’s Creed, Metal Gear Solid, Xenosaga, and Final Fantasy, to name a few).
As a female Metroid fan, I don’t rage too too much about the decision to make Samus more “vulnerable” (though obviously I do agree that they went too far in the other direction and turned her into an needy emotional cripple always running to Daddy Figure for affirmation). Nobody complained when Samus “suddenly” gained maternal instincts in Super Metroid. And I totally understand Samus “inexplicably” flipping out over seeing Ripley come back yet again after the umpteeth time after feeding eleventy billion missiles up his ass–though, again, they could have handled it a lot better, perhaps do some serious research Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or just ask the actress to do a more indignant “WHY WON’T YOU FUCKING DIE” reaction.
Where is Other M in the Metroid continuity though? Is it a reboot? Are the Adam segments in flashback?
Change is terrifying. (I play Team Fortress 2. Every update somebody rages about things being different and lamer and “not the TF2 I signed up for”.) We don’t have to embrace it, but we don’t have to get all indignant, either.
I don’t think a 79 metacritic counts as “universally considered a real steamer” The game clearly has its faults, and some of those are made clear in some reviews, but I think it’s a bit unfair to consider it universally reviled. Not everyone is bothered by the stuff that bothers you to the degree that you are bothered by it. And apparently most people found the game to be fundamentally sound, if characterwise annoying. Indeed, this is the first time I’ve heard of the “dark” complaint and I’ve read a bunch of reviews.
All that said, the character issues surrounding this game have been a subject of great furor and debate in the “gaming circles” of the internet, with heavily debated articles on Gamasutra and various blogs. And a fairly involved post on these very forums. So it does take a certain amount of ignorance to be getting “suckered” by this at this point. Just not that “well, you shoulda read some reviews” kind.
As far as I can recall, said “maternal instincts” never made her do anything to give us reason to complain. I don’t recall her emotions making her a liability, or her needing permission to do things necessary to do her job and not die.
I like tomboys that are awesome. I like feminine women who are awesome. I don’t like doormats. From all I’ve heard, the Samus of Metroid: Other M is a doormat.
I’m pretty obsessive about Super Metroid and have played through it oh… probably about 40 times and feel it is probably the single most well executed game I’ve played. And yet I’ve not seen any maternal instinct from Samus there. The metroid followed her “like a confused child” but nothing to imply she felt anything for it. I doubt maternal instincts would prompt her to personally deliver it to a research facility. Or to leave to “seek a new bounty to hunt” as soon as the research was under way. But then that she didn’t kill it and that she delivered it to the Ceres research station is about all we know of her character in that game. The why of it could be anything. Which is half the reason the game is so great. I miss the days of a brief intro(if that!) and then into the awesome gameplay without needing a half hour opening cinematic and a new cutscene for every 5 minutes of gameplay. Damned games industry.
This. Like I said before, Metroid: Other M could’ve completely cut out the cinematics and it would’ve been a far better game.
I played for a few more hours last night, turning up the brightness on my TV to make it playable. The gameplay got better after that, but the cutscene in the Exam Room building was painful to watch. Terrible voice acting aside, there was Samus Aran, renowned bounty hunter of the galaxy, destroyer of worlds, standing there with her thumb up her ass while the grown-up men do the Important Work. I simply cannot accept this game as canon.
I’m in Sector 3 now and just got the ice beam. I hope to hell I didn’t trigger the game-breaking bug by dying to the Desgeega (spiky two-legged leapers).
It’s a damn video game. If you don’t care about cutscenes, why do you care if Samus Aran suddenly wants to put on nail polish and go tanning? She’s still got a big fucking gun and big fucking bombs and a cool exosuit and lots of aliens to kill…
You completely missed my point. It’s not that I don’t care about cutscenes (I do in other games), it’s just that the entire Metroid series has done a fantastic job of telling a story with only one protagonist, no co-tagonists (yeah, I made that up just now), and very minimal storylines/cutscenes. All I was saying was that Metroid: Other M would’ve been a much better game if Samus had received a distress signal and investigated alone. No team led by Adam Malkovich, no friends or allies, no one to depend upon but herself. That is what the Metroid theme has mainly been since 1986, and they should’ve kept it that way.
The game clearly has its faults, and some of those are made clear in some reviews, but I think it’s a bit unfair to consider it universally reviled. Not everyone is bothered by the stuff that bothers you to the degree that you are bothered by it. And apparently most people found the game to be fundamentally sound, if characterwise annoying. Indeed, this is the first time I’ve heard of the “dark” complaint and I’ve read a bunch of reviews.