Metroid: Other M (2010)

WARNING

This entire review can be considered a big spoiler.

Metroid: Other M is one of those games where you're constantly wondering "What the hell". The characters are bad, the voice acting is bad (at least the English one), the world design is bad, the progression is bad, and the story is bad. If you want to see something good being said about this game, scroll down to the bottom of this review.

Characters

As opposed to most Metroid games, Samus isn't alone in this game. She is joined on her journey by 6 soldiers and their commander. All six of those soldiers have personalities that can be summed up in one word (cool, nice, joker, etc). When you can sum up the personality of a character by a single word, that's bad. However, I can give this one a break, given that the soldiers are minor characters anyway.

Their commander is another story, though. He is not a minor character, and his personality is that of an untuned radio station. It's completely blank. Ironically, this turned out to be mostly fitting, given that a high level of stoicism is expected of a high-ranking military officer.

The one character whose personality really stands out is Samus. This game broke her entire image so far. She is shown as an overly emotional, overbearing, insecure, subservient coward with no confidence or autonomy at all. It contradicts her personality from the previous game, and it doesn't fit with her actions in this game.

World design

The world is split into 5 distinct regions, i.e. sectors, as they're called in the game. All of the rooms in all of them consist mostly of straight hallways and the occasional platform. Now, I don't know if this was a problem only for me, but most of the world is incredibly dark (I've tested it on 2 different TVs). Even when I adjusted the brightness settings, it remained dark. Extra items are shown on the map, but reaching most of them is impossible until you acquire late-game power-ups. The sectors are interconnected by elevators, but the sectors themselves are mostly linear, far from the expected "metroidvania" world design.

Progression

Usually, Metroid games operate like this: Samus shows up somewhere, her suit malfunctions, so she has no power-ups at the start of the game, and discovers new/replacement power-ups throughout the game. Other M doesn't do this. In Other M, Samus keeps her power-ups, but is forbidden by the military commander from using them, except when necessary. This leads to some incredibly stupid situations, like enduring (and taking damage from) extreme heat, until the commander allows the use of the Varia Suit. Even when the commander is MIA, Samus refuses to activate required power-ups until he gives the OK sign.

The game is boring in its linearity. Exploration is nearly impossible and the correct path is always shown on the map.

Story

Where do I begin? Let me begin by saying this: everything I've listed as negative so far can be forgiven. The bad voice acting is expected - it's an old game. The world design isn't that bad, and it's probably fun to go exploring and collecting missed items once all the power-ups have been acquired. Most of the characters are minor and their personality doesn't matter. Samus' personality can be viewed as a (unfortunately) bad attempt to give her character more depth. And finally, let's say they wanted to make this game less metroidvania, more straight-up action, so the linearity can be forgiven, as well. BUT! Even if a very forgiving person accepted all these flaws, the story would STILL be an extremely good reason to hate this game.

But let's go one step further. Let's say all the flaws listed above got fixed. Let's imagine there are no flaws. The story would STILL be an extremely good reason to hate this game.

I won't describe why the story is so bad. Search for "Other M plotholes" and open one of the million results that show up. This image might help explain a big part of it.

Allow me to mention two things that are good about this game. Two things that persuaded me to give it 2 stars instead of 1. Those things are boss fights and part of the combat. Yes, you've read that correctly. "Part of". In this game, you have third person and first person combat. The good part is the third person part. You can shoot, run around, dodge and jump. That's pretty much it. Samus does the aiming for you. And it's fun. However, the first person combat is bad. First of all, it's bad HOW to switch between third person and first person - you have to physically turn the wiimote (which is held sideways for third person) towards the sensor, and grab it with one hand. That's as comfortable as sitting on a nailbed with half of the nails removed. When in first person, you have to hold a button to enable Samus to look around, for some bizarre reason. The screen moves slowly. Samus herself can't move when in first person mode.

All of that aside, I must admit that the boss fights are great. Fun, challenging, great animations, great cutscenes.

Long story short: I would not recommend this game. Watch a let's play, or a story recap, or even better, pray that Nintendo declares it "not canon".