As a gamer, I grew up playing games that were mostly focused on the single player experience. These days the gaming community seems so caught up with finding out what situation we can put a bunch of hormonally challenged 11-26 year old people in so they can let the other people know what interesting and disturbingly specific opinions they have about his mother. I enjoy the multiplayer experience from time to time, but nothing makes me happier than playing an action platformer that really enriches my inner gamer.
First off, I want to get this out in the open. Samus is a very attractive virtual woman. As of now, she occupies my favorite nintendo girl slot (sorry Peach and Zelda) due to the amount of buttkicketude she demonstrates in Other M.
Also... she's hot
As a lover of the Metroid Prime series (and beater of two of them) I can say that I am a relatively new fan of the Metroid series. I never played the original games because I preferred the first-person shooter aspects of Metroid Prime, so you can imagine my worry when I heard that Retro wasn't working on the new Metroid game. I knew about Team Ninja but haven't touched any of their games to be honest (I saw my brother play n Ninja Gaiden, and he was psychologically scarred from it), and when I saw footage of the Other M gameplay I thought it was a cut- scene. In short, I wasn't too sure about this game at first glance.
However, I played the game and here's what I can tell you: it's worth it. The game's control sceme and format are unlike anything I've seen in a video game. It's what the side scroller's full potential is, in my opinion. You move with the d-pad, jump with the 1 button and shoot with 2, A makes Samus go into morph ball mode pointing the wiimote at the screen switches to first-person perspective. When you time hitting a directional button before getting hit by an enemy, you jump out of the way. This is a surprisingly simple control sceme that works, and the payoff is, in my opinion, fantastic.
There is no doubt that you are going to find that the controls take a little getting used to, but thats part of the fun in a video game anyway. I have only a few, and frankly ignorable complaints about the movement. Fist, having not played a console video game with the d-pad in so long, my thumb got a little sore after the first few hours, but once I got used to it everything was all good. Secondly, switching to first person in a fast-paced combat situation can be a little choppy at times, and the fact that you remain stationary while in first person doesn't help. Also, you need to make sure Samus is facing towards the thing you want to shoot, because when you go FP you aim where she was last looking. After a while, though, it gets to where going FP is as natural as pushing the jump button.
Though not on par with the Retro FP mode,
this is a gameplay element that was worth
putting in
my last complaint with FP in this game is the auto targeting system. If I'm in a situation where I need to shoot a structure to open a door, I hold down B to look around and it will auto target things I can blow the heck out of. problem is there may be a threatless enemy in a tank to the slight right of whatever I need to shoot, and for some reason it takes precedence over what I actually need to shoot, even though I can't shoot the enemy.
though they exist, the control problems are minimal and easy to ignore. Now to talk about combat. The combat in this game works really well, in my opinion. there is a great auto target in the third person mode that shoots at the nearest enemy, the finishing moves you can perform are entertaining to watch (but can get a little old) and it's very fast paced. A great element in the game's story is the virtual world thing they got going on. It's explained in the story, but the Bottleship Samus is investigating is pretty much farming a bunch of different alien species, so that means you explore deep jungle areas, icy mountains, and even a volcano
No need to limit yourself in a science
fiction game, I always say.
The visuals are high up there with the best looking games on wii, however speaking as a wii and 360 gamer, that's not saying too much. Don't get me wrong, the game looks great and the frame rate runs smoothly, but this is the wii we're talking about here, it's not going to have the greatest graphics ever. Despite all this though, there are very few graphical errors that need to be addressed, and Samus has never looked better. I know Metroid Prime fans will disagree with me, but come on, they were first-person games, we barely even saw her.
Now I want to address my favorite part of the game: the Boss battles. I've always thought that the best bosses are action platforming bosses (excluding mario galaxy, those were just annoying), because it's more than just fighting something that wants to kill you, its a puzzle. you need to find out what the weakness is, how to uncover it, and when to strike. This game does all of this while keeping a fast pace and challenging the player. Though they aren't the hardest bosses of all time, they are intense and fun to play. They also offer you choices in combat, you can continue to hit the boss when he's exposed, but this will leave you open to attack. I love testing my enemy to see when the best time to hit, dodge or blast him away is, and the game allows you to take risks as well. You can down an enemy when he is about to attack just as easily as when he is stunned, but if you miss you reap the consequences. this is the first game in a while that made me see a boss and want to confront it instead of moaning about it, which I'm prone to do sometimes.
Ridly is the best Boss I've fought in
a game since Okami
In a world where final boss battles are balls to be dropped by the developers (teehee), like the audibly groanable boss in Fable 2. (seriously, walk up to the guy and press Y or A, zippidy-do-da) Other M's final boss... I don't want to spoil anything but I will say that THERE IS AN EPILOGUE, PLAY IT OR YOU WILL BE PISSED.
Speaking of elements of story structure, my thoughts on the story, well, I appreciate that the creator of Metroid wanted to make Samus a more relatable character, but did he have to make a JRPG storyline? (thats japanese role-playing game to you casual folk) I mean there's everything a JRPG has: 10 minute cutscenes, dull monologues from the main character, hot Japanese girls wearing labcoats and typing on computers, over exaggerated thumbs up/downs, parental failure, government conspiracies, a wise-cracking black guy, a furry little chicken rabbit, everything.
Even though they tried to make Samus more of a person, I like her anonymity. She didn't talk much, she showed up, did the job, blew up a planet and booked it. Multiple times. In this game she starts off feeling terrible about the Metroid baby from Super Metroid sacrificing itself and moves on to her troubled relationship with Adam Malkovich, her previous commanding officer (I think it would have been hilarious to make it John Malkovich and have him ordering her around), talking about why she quit and other stuff which is interesting, but seems out of place in a Metroid game.
At first glance, this seems more like
Capcom or Square's sort of thing
I love the game and the story is pretty darn good by video game standards, but its pretty easy to forget you're playing a Metroid game while watching one of the many cutscenes.
If I had to choose between renting this game and buying it, I would probably rent it. Its fun for a playthrough and you can unlock hard mode, but its not the longest game to complete, about 6-9 hours or so, there are plenty of items to search for, abilities to unlock and things to blow the heck out of. Considering this is a hardcore game on the wii, it's Metroid, its fun and its big, Its definitely worth our time. I would like to give this particular game 4.5 stars out of 5, Worth having and very few things wrong with it. I may even beat the rest of the Metroid series now.
Comment on which game I should review next, except Reach, I doubt that will need my help
