METROID OTHER M: The End of the Prime Era | GEEK CRITIQUE

the last metroid is on clearance the price is $5 i first critiqued metroid one year ago before that time i had for the most part only seen the series through the fandom of others though i had never been able to count it among my own favorites and yet spurred on by the incredible passion surrounding a fan-made remake my interest grew suddenly I found myself up in the middle of the night utterly enthralled and adventures which I hadn't given enough of a chance to in years past this raised the question wouldn't metroid be a good series to cover for the he critique a show that despite my best efforts was still lost in relative obscurity still I hesitated to commit to a franchise I wasn't sure I would have a lot to say about it would take a catalyst to push me over the edge and that catalyst would come in the year 2016 of the history of the cosmos on the 13th of September was it a coincidence that I found myself there in that Walmart on that day the newest metroid was a relic even then yet there it was wedged between two shovelware titles and far less expensive than both of them the opportunity to purchase what I knew was such a contentious game for such a pittance I took its presence as a sign that I should take the leap that I should critique Metroid and so I did I played eight legendary titles spanning the course of two decades I charted the history of the Metroid franchise and every title I play it only gave me a deeper appreciation a deeper admiration for a series I had spent my whole life only hearing great things about and where I was once worried about running out of things to say something I didn't expect habit I became a fan of Metroid at last I have reached the plateau this is the culmination of a year's journey it's finally time to peel away this plastic critique this catalyst and see what has been wrought by Metroid other in [Music] a year and a half after Prime 3 came out it was revealed that Nintendo had been working on a secret project via a partnership with another developer now as I've recounted countless times I wasn't much of a Metroid fan back then but if I had been I expect it we've gone a little something like this oh crap you guys team game you know those guys who made that tough-as-nails in check I didn't game that I never got to play cuz I didn't have an Xbox but whatever oh man look at this it looks like old-school Metroid but in 3d no seriously my fellow 2009 beeps Metroid Prime 2 & 3 were great but I have been dying for Metroid to bring some more of that 2d style into the third dimension the sharp kinetic combat the focus on action over adventure the booster Oh 2010 cannot get here soon enough that hypothetical version of me the one that played fusion in 2002 and got to call himself the Metroid fan from then on ah he would have been so hiked to see this so hopeful so optimistic you would have made forum posts defending the game hall it was in development anyone accounted the naysayers by saying hey this is exactly what you guys wanted that can they reveal cry and it was a first-person adventure give it a chance of course that's not who I actually was in 2010 when other end came out I you know what this is another one of those things I've said so many times but this is the last time I'm ever gonna get to say it so sing along with me I rented the new Metroid played it for a while and came to realize it wasn't my style just another game that was not for me and so I found it odd the way fanboys screamed to me this was kind of just another Metroid but if hypothetically I had staked such a claim on other in being successful I'd have died on that hill and I'm pretty sure most of you know that other M is not a case where I'm capable of going in blindly other n is a game whose reputation precedes it other n is one of those infamously bad games and I've only encountered more of bitterness since getting involved with the fandom the majority of the Metroid fans I know seem to have a visceral negative reaction to any elements of this game even being referenced they would much rather Nintendo just act like it never happened as a result and going into other end with an unusual amount of baggage knowing way more than I'd really even want to it's safe to say that without even playing it I know more about this game's flaws than I knew going into any other Metroid game it has parallels with something like Sonic oh six in that regard or even if you don't know anything else about this series you know about this one but I'm not expecting other end to be anywhere near as dire as that one odd aspect that kind of muddy is the waters is how well the game reviewed on release but we're professional reviewers seem to enjoy it at the time a majority of the fandom almost immediately rejected it Metro is a series that lives or dies by the support of its core and without that other m was a bomb Nintendo forecasts that it would sell at least a million copies of other M by the end of 2010 but the game didn't even make it halfway there despite all that other end does have its share of defenders I've seen a lot of takes claiming that it's really not that bad so I'll try to keep that in mind to balance my perspective and I'll do my best to come at other in with an open mind because I do want to let the game rise or fall on its own merits with all that in mind let's get critiquing oh my bad I loaded up a Windows 95 screen saver there we go to a baby in the womb okay the baby is Samus seeing it remove like this is awesome and Wow the cinematic is gorgeous like how much budget went into this time Samus did you inhale a bottle of ambien before fighting Mother Brain but it turns out maybe she did because this was all just a mystery mning about the fight with Mother Brain which seems like an odd way to get out of a flashback was she dreaming about herself as a fetus to it make a little more sense of some time and past since Super Metroid but this opening scene is taking place directly afterward with Samus having been picked up and tended to on a federation ship I don't know shoehorning it in here is a non-interactive dream sequence the opening seems a little too conveniently designed to play on nostalgia and I'm gonna have a lot more to say about that but this is just stuff I'm ruminating on now in the moment I first fired up other M there was one single problem that was overwhelming any other criticism that I might have had a dream I had been reliving the tragic moments of my recent past thanks to the hyper beam which was given to me somehow by the baby I laid mother brain to waste okay I don't usually care to get into the details of the individuals who create these games it's one thing for me to try to sort out what a development team was trying to accomplish but it's usually a bridge too far to pin the blame for anything on any one person especially when I can't source any first-hand accounts the rare exception to this is when a game is the result of one person's vision Smash Brothers has Masahiro Sakurai and in the same vein there's really no way to discuss other M without also discussing the man who has carried the burden of fault among fans and critics alike since its release this is Yoshio Sakamoto the man who directed produced and wrote the plot for Metroid Other M and while I do intend to judge the game on its own merits those merits ultimately come down to his decisions Sakamoto is one of the co-creators of this franchise and he played a pivotal role in every Japan develop Metroid game aside from this one he served as both the scenario writer and the game director on both Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion at the time other M was greenlit for development Sakamoto had spent several years leading Nintendo SPD 1 in the production of the Wario Ware series and it was this group that would work alongside Team Ninja with Sakamoto at the helm Sakamoto was given free rein to make this game what he wanted it to be and you know what given that he played such a key role in making this series the legend that it was if Sakamoto wanted to take the reins to such an unprecedented degree I think he had more than earned the opportunity after all who would have more history and more familiarity with this series than one of the people who created it in the first place with all that in mind it seems a little strange that he seems to have forgotten the tiny minor detail where Samus is not a robot besides their extent the baby was the last of its kind other m at one time was meant to take 2d metroids usual narrative approach it might have had a little dialogue in the intro and ending but the overall story would be told mostly through environmental cues and subtext but while the game was still in the planning stages and Tendo came to the realization that partnering with team ninja would give them a direct line to a studio called D Rockets which could produce cinematic CG cutscenes for Dead or Alive and ninja gaiden and cinematic really is the operative word there D Rockets work was on par with what you'd find in a blockbuster movie with that the entire scope of the project was changed the Rockets doesn't seem to get enough credit one way or the other in just how much their presents changed the face of other end the problem though is that Sakamoto wasn't just in charge of the overall plot he also had final say on the way cutscenes played out he dictated every line of dialogue and he even cast and directed the voice actors and this is where the cracks formed because for as gorgeous as these cutscenes are the way they're written and the way they're performed comes across with the uncanny awkwardness of high school theater and a bounty hunter I know that something is after noon it's almost like the person in charge of the production has no real experience because Sakamoto was just that he was someone with no real experience for all his accomplishments Yoshio Sakamoto is not a movie director he's a game designer and that's not meant to disparage anything he's done but writing the scenario and dialogue for something like Metroid Fusion takes a whole different skill set from writing and directing for a movie and I think that's why these scenes play out so stiltedly of course what compounds the problem was the Sakamoto who doesn't speak English was also directing the English voice cast when they dubbed the game in kappa DS culture a character who is dry and unemotional in a dire situation will be seen as stoic and unflappable but to the western world delivering lines with so little emotion make someone seem robotic and inauthentic and sama stands out even more when most of the other characters have perfectly looks like this might take some time out possible delivery it's only samus's VA that was directed to be so wooden it's a difference in cultural perception that happens all the time but these are the kind of things that could have and should have been addressed in localization as it is it's the first thing anybody notices about other am and that in turn is only compounded by the script clunky awkward poorly translated dialogue and old-school games could often hide behind the fact that it was all text-based if you're just reading something and not hearing it it's not as jarring but in other end this kind of thing is laid bare as the game relies on an excessively literal English translation but sometimes makes the NES games manual look good in comparison becoming small and round was a certain maneuver I'd that enough that it felt natural but doing it knowing that Adam was watching that certain maneuver became thrilling oh yeah I guess that brings us to every Metroid fans favorite character adam malkovich adam was first introduced in a sense back in fusion or has that forward and fusion a fusion the game came up first but the story happens later in the timeline fair okay but in fusion Adam was the nickname Samus private Lee gave to the Federation's AI taking direct orders was such an aberration that reminded her of her former commanding officer a man named adam malkovich that adam wasn't just her commander he was also a mentor in her more formative years at one point in the game Samus reveals that Adam died saving her life this was a critical piece of samus's backstory and although it would have been sensible to assume that Adams death might have been the catalyst for Samus Lee in the military and forging her own paths his presence here reveals that wasn't the case still other it was meant to fill in the details of that story given how reverential and respectful Samus would be of a mentor figure I don't mind the concept of her volunteering to take orders are even limiting her Arsenal where it falls apart is the execution fusion portrayed Adam as a mentor figure to Samus in other in she describes him like this the closest thing to a father I had except you know remember like your other father who actually raised you your bird dad her birthday the crops of bird dad you know to be a parity of Samba what are you doing you remember grey voice yeah yeah two of those actually the manga couple the father figures uh who raised you to be a powerful bird warrior okay so you could use not a shaping suit they gave you all this awesome power that you have but no I guess they just mean nothing to you are you done guys I'd like to apologize for oh you see what I mean about that visceral negative reaction seriously samus's line delivery is not the only reason she comes across so poorly samus's actions her explanations her decisions and her characterization are all viewed through the prism of her relationship with Adam and what's kind of skeevy about it is just how much of that is focused around samus's role as a woman and that's not me projecting anything the game says it it touched me on some level that Adam would acknowledge that past by calling me something delicate like lady this aspect of samus's character has been treated as an almost incidental part of the metroid universe and only one point before had any character whether in dialogue or in the manual stories ever called attention to Samus being a woman not even in one of those Defiant ways for like Rhonda says he's pretty good for a girl and ends up having to put his giant ice puing foot in his mouth when she saves his life or something it's just sort of thing anybody seem to care about the lone exception to this was the atom AI infusion who upon realizing that Samus was seeing it's the same way that he had seen Adam asked her this line it seemed innocuous at the time but I think it was meant to raise some questions and kind of hint at who exactly Adam was to Samus now I do want to know that there's nothing at all wrong with a person or a character being stereotypically masculine or feminine whether they're comfortable with who they are are struggling with the expectations my point is that despite how significant it was here in the real world to have this ironclad heroine in 1986 Samus derived none of her in universe significance from us even as the recent games became a little more plot focused samus's enemies don't lock her for it her allies aren't surprised by it in the confines of the series lor samus's gender has absolutely no bearing on her character her heroism her role as this legendary bounty hunter hidden till now that is until the character herself has called attention to it even if other em had pulled it off with a nuanced story that kept Samus is this strong character that would still have been a risky controversial road to go down but nuance is lost here Samus is emotionally compromised by the loss of the infant Metroid which manifests in her droning on and on and on early in the game about the baby when she receives a distress call she describes it as a baby's cry and then she meets up with Adam Samus is not just respectful of her former CEO in a professional sense she seems at once frightened and thrilled by the very idea of seeing him again Adam in contrast is in no way a reverential of Samus or her accomplishments he's biting and direct and seems frustrated and dismissive of her mere presence only tolerating her to the degree that he can further his goals and its best this character dynamic comes across pretty toxic at worst well having received mission orders from Adam I felt confused and strangely exhilarated at the unexpected turn of events ah alright I'm not particularly interested or honestly well versed enough to delve into it any more than this as a rule I don't see any reason to make statements on such contentious real-world problems on this channel but the circumstances of other end more or less to man that I at least bend that rule but I'm also willing to bend it here because contrary to what you always hear about the horrors of YouTube the comment sections on this channel tend to be unusually civil and respectful as a group you guys have never let me down before and I know you won't here either if you're going to debate this aspect of the game especially please approach it with that kind of nuance and make sure you're attacking the argument instead of the person what I'm way more interested in though is how this narrative decision filters down into the gameplay there are always going to be aspects of games that we accept because they're games in this series it's stuff like how come every place in the galaxy is t me with magic icons now let someone wearing chozo armor upgrade their suit how does samus's arm cannon hold our manufacturer physical objects did I just download missiles and really why is it that Samus regularly sets out for dangerous missions without bothering to equip any of her upgrades from the previous game how many times is she gonna rediscover the various suit it can be fun to come up with in universe explanations for this stuff but really a Metroid game wouldn't be much of a Metroid game if you could just obliterate everything with your best stuff from the outset but if this really is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night then I've got good news Samus has decided this time to keep almost all of her upgrades from Super Metroid but also as soon as Samus meets up with Adam and his crew TFS soldiers she decides that despite not being in the military herself despite being someone who has saved the galaxy multiple times by this point she's just not gonna use any of that stuff until Adam says it's okay even the prompting tells you this seems designed to be as irritating as possible to be fair to the game though this opening area does serve as a nice natural tutorial section for learning samus's core abilities it's just it's just a little undermined by the literal tutorial second that the game just made you play where the most condescending character in the entire franchise so very helpfully goes to the trouble of teaching you how to use abilities that you might not have access to for hours seriously I'm up for a debate on just how problematic out of Malkovich is but this tutorial dude is the worst heaven forbid you don't follow his instructions or have trouble with something and even when you do get it other my do you think it's a good idea to start the game by talking down to the player we're past Metroid games have featured some kind of roughly equal balance of action and exploration other in is much more decisively an acting game and it has the opportunity as an action game to take on the strengths of a more linear design where most games in the series take a naturalistic sci-fi setting on an alien planet in other in which this game so totally is Samus is gonna have to make her way through a series of numbered artificial sectors which are aimed around a different bio which he will access via a structured series of elevators the entire game takes place on a federation ship the BSL station wait now I can't be right hang on oh it takes place on a craft called the bottle ship you see how it'd be easy to get that confused forget about being linked to metroid fusion from a story perspective other amines on its structure the way that Star Fox zero leans on 64 even the title theme sounds similar this does all seem pretty derivative but you know if it ain't broke don't fix it I guess given that it's the first attempt at a 3d game in this style leaning on the structure that had already been built for a linear action focus Metroid game yeah I can give it a pass let's just keep an eye on what its gonna do differently Samus meets up with the crew again and it's only now that Adam expressly informs her but if she's going to help out on the mission she's going to follow his orders you don't move unless I say so you don't fire until I say so what actually happens is a lot worse this small crew was ambushed by a mysterious twisted entity from an aesthetic standpoint other M is a real mixed bag the character models are raked in detailed and although I'm gonna get raked over the coals for saying this I definitely prefer this brighter shinier Samus to her more realistically metallic appearance in prime because she does stick out terribly next to the DFS Marines though in prime 3 Samus also had allies but the designs of those characters still felt contingent with her design in other M the soldiers sleek military efficiency stands in sharp contrast to this giant yellow and red Japanese mech suit from the 80s and I suppose that contrast was intentional but there is one thing I really take issue with when it comes to samus's armor late in the game when the gravity suit comes online yeah you know what let's compare here it is in Super Metroid so here it is infusion it's a little ugly but that was kind of the point now here it is another end it's it's just this purple glow how in the world did someone with Sakamoto's experience think this was preferable to this for the more minor characters and one-off mini-bosses graphics don't always hold up this first boss for instance just doesn't fit at all with what metroid creatures are kind of supposed to look like it's an amalgamation of these little purple parasites and I know that we wasn't a powerhouse or anything and put this text here just looks like it's made out of denim in combat the animations of Samus and her foes are fluid and impressive helped immensely by other m's commitment to a 60fps frame rate actually moving Samus around is a lot more stiff and awkward but we'll get to that and the entire metal graphics are like the swings and roundabouts core of these mixed bag aesthetics their artificial environments hold up okay incorporating the duress that ships under and doing some cool lighting effects but the more realistic the environment tries to be the more the facade falls apart fusions BSL station embraced the artificiality of its environments as part of its theme and was way more cohesive for it the bottle ship projects these Holograms to simulate other worlds and I swear sometimes I think it's got to be running on the Dreamcast GPU what makes these simplistic kind of generic environments stand out even more is that this was done on the same hardware that makes it so much worse really just shows what a difference can be made by having strong inspired art direction other m's environmental design does not even remotely compare to the careful and realistic attention to detail of any room in the prime trilogy by the way do you notice anything missing Metroid is a series that's known for wonderful music the music that helps you carry a stand with distinction in other in well what's here is as good as ever but so much of it is just this ambient noise I'm having to pad out this video with music from other soundtracks of remixes the lack of musical variety is all the more confounding when you consider the other end is far and away the most navel-gazing and servicing entry in the entire series no not that kind of fanservice what I'm talking about is how many enemies and bosses and flat-out references there are two other games in the franchise and look I'm a Sonic fan I really don't have a choice but to love nostalgic pandering at this point and I do but Metroid's approach to it has always been so careful to make sure that these allusions came with a reason but it made sense within a story it wasn't heavy-handed it didn't feel like pandering and I'm saying that as somebody who doesn't mind pandering but it is yet another aspect of other M that fails to feel like a Metroid game still if you're gonna do it go all in this sequence where you're running through a tunnel getting flanked by enemies from the series past we've hit home so much more if this remix was playing but no it's just dandy and ship noise Lee with best Jean is defeated at last the dumb heavy handed story gets out of the way for a while and we can finally just play our Metroid game and look I know the story is what everybody always makes a fuss about but other M really does have plenty of points like this where samus's well she's a loner she can be with Adam watching her every move as much as I've said about the story and its implications the truth of it is that it doesn't really make much of an impact one way or the other on my enjoyment of a videogame which is not to say that I don't appreciate a story but it's never gonna be why I play a game nah my true love in this medium has always been gameplay so let's get into it and you know maybe this is gonna be the best part of other animals like you never hear anything about this so it can't be that bad right right I have quite frankly spent more time that I ever intended or wanted to just trying to write this script I have a ton of notes but until now it's like every attempt I've made to try to form them into something more cohesive has just been this overwhelming task but I think I finally hammered down the reason metroid other m is a game with this heavy-handed approach to storytelling but it's a game where that narrative for all of its faults is the point that's one reason these pre hundred cutscenes flow seamlessly in and out of the game engine it's why the game has a theater mode where instead of playing a game you can just watch a movie I didn't add that it really does call it so for the movie but the reason I've had so much trouble trying to figure out how I wanted to structure this is that all of that story focus seems to come at the expense of the game part of the game let's start with one of the series defining elements one of those things that you absolutely must get right if you want a good Metroid game map design the map is linear and not linear like in echoes or fusion where the area you needed to be in was clear but your path through it wasn't in other n it's very rare that a room will even feature more than just an entrance and an exit you come in you press through you move on with only a few exceptions it's just a straight series of rooms and hallways that eventually loop back on themselves but hey I guess that makes sense right it's not like we're exploring a real planet or anything we're on a man-made ship of course it's gonna be a little more artificial I mean Fusion might as well have been set in the same place for all intents and purposes and they'd still manage to make the map resemble a Metroid game there but whatever I think there's a reason it's like this other m's focus is not supposed to be on that stuff it's aimed squarely on action and storytelling and look I'm not inherently opposed to a more cinematic take on the franchise one of my all-time favorite video game series is the stereotypical example for insanely long overwritten cutscenes but I enjoy that series I come back to it because the gameplay at the core is so solid being so much more linear gives other in the opportunity for more memorable set-piece moments to force these obstacles that you can't just find your way around some of them especially the puzzle rooms are actually pulled off pretty well and catch some potential of the benefits of this approach the more action-oriented stuff that makes up the bulk of the game on the other hand well in the entire series to this point I can only think of two death traps there's the acid pit in Metroid 1 and 20 years later there's the Imps to death thing in prime 3 yeah I still don't get how retro thought that was okay but these are isolated examples from a series that spanned decades so it's all the more egregious because other n is teaming with instant game overs the worst offender comes in the cryosphere this I section and in fact this serves as a microcosm of everything wrong with other m's progression I come to one of the relatively few rooms in the game with more than one exit I take the north door but I can't make it up this to your cliff so I try going left at this point in the game I've just recently gotten no I'm sorry I've been authorized to use the speed booster and yes I was very happy to see it back and among everything else I love the way they implemented it anyway I use it to shine spark up to these rafters above the room then make my way through a more fall maze to find a room with a switch that I can see but I can't find a way to shoot huh at a loss I backtrack to the room with three doors where I get assaulted by space pirates they activate a field that they can fire through but I cannot and they just wail on me for a while it looks like they've got samus right where they want her win Adam after 30 seconds he actually noticed I was in trouble and authorized the use of the wave beam I guess I could have just stood there and died if she hadn't given me permission Adam really does care about me with that guess what I have to do now repeat the exact same sequence I just went through give back to the switch behind the door and use my newly earned privilege called the wave beam to raise platforms so I can move on doing this for some reason triggers an avalanche outside and now Samus has to be cool be wild and be groovy this power suit has stood up to undersea depths the vacuum of space massive explosions and even plumber uppercuts but gee I guess being buried in snow is just something the chozo never accounted for I'm not opposed to giving Samus 'voice in the character and I'm definitely not opposed to a take on Metroid that's more action-oriented I mean I'd never want this to be all the series was but just like 2d Mario and 3d Mario can coexist something like this could stand alongside the more adventure 3 d Metroid games and the truth is I could have overlooked all of this from the map design to the progression to even adam malkovich himself if the game's focus on that was pulled off with any sort of aplomb on the surface level like I said earlier combat looks nice characters move well animations are crisp and clear samus's weapons have their usual nice pop on that note I've got to admire the way that taking a hit carries real consequences the amount of damage here is comparable to fusion but that game incentivized combat the same way every Metroid game has enemies would drop items or sometimes parasitic clouds and that would restore samus's health and supplies other end does away with this and instead forces combat by frequently and arbitrarily locking doors to keep you from moving on until you defeat enemies killing everything in a room will also mark the spot of an upgrade on your map which is great because I don't like looking for things and games should really just cater to my preferences giving players an option with so three years ago with no enemy drops the only way to get Samms to full health is to hit a safe station but if you're taking such heavy hits with no way to restore your health when did that make the game a little extreme well to keep this designed from completely toppling over other end graphs to new mechanics into the mix at any time you can point the Wii Remote into the sky and hold the a button to redownload missiles when you're low on health the same movement will also restore at least one energy tank but this significantly diminishes the triumphs you'd always feel like coming across an energy tank because you get hit so hard and can restore so little that they don't really carry much consequence and honestly the same thing also applies to missiles the series has always had an abundance of missile upgrades as rewards for keeping your eyes open and solving puzzles that another end there's little incentive to even bother the amount of damage that I was taking and my lack of familiarity with the game meant that early on other it was kind of exciting it can be really tense to try to stay away from an enemy long enough that you can restore your energy and rewarding when you do but as soon as I started to get a little more powerful or to be more accurate a little bit better at other M what made the difference was when I started leaning on one of other ends most significant game fingers an ability called since move tap the d-pad just before Sheamus takes a hit and feel dogged out of the way hold the fire button while you do this and till instantly have a charged shot when she lands the dodge has a nice rhythm the sound effect is distinct and it just looks cool but I said I learned to lean on it and that's the problem because while the sense mu feels great in isolation in actual combat it becomes a crutch there's absolutely no timing required to activate it while dodging Samus is completely invulnerable and there's no cooldown on it your Direction doesn't even matter you can sense move directly into enemy fire and come out unscathed so instead of skillfully dodging enemy attacks and encountering them you end up just hammering the d-pad until you get an opening and doing so is the best most efficient strategy also as good as it looks it's not like you're gonna be staring at Samus while fighting enemies and the way that she flips around in either situation sometimes means it's hard to discern whether you have dodged a hit or took a hit a good dodge or parry in a game like this should feel like a turning point it should be that crunchy moment when your skill turns the tables on an enemy in this game since move is so broken that it makes every encounter effortless and unvarying and thus it's a tremendous contributor to why the combat which in as much as the gameplay is gonna be the focus is supposed to be the point here is so freakin dull charger beam release release oh here comes an actual attack what am I gonna do I know I'll just hammer the d-pad a few times until it stops happening video games for the uninitiated you might have noticed that Samus keeps twitching in place between dodges and that's because the d-pad also controls her movement you might wonder why something as critical as a Dodge is on the same set of controls that moves the character shouldn't something like this have its own dedicated button of course it should but it can't Metroid Other M is played exclusively with the Wii Remote Sakamoto was absolutely positively insistent that it needed to be this way he cited how back in the NES era the limitations of that controller inspired developers to come up with more creative more intuitive solutions and he's right there is a lot of appeal and simplicity but apparently at no point did he ever stop to consider that the NES didn't have a whole lot of 3d action games oh but if only the we had come packaged with some kind of controller add-on that was specifically designed to give it functionality for more complex more modern genres alas tis but a fool's dream in a Nevada asks interview Sakamoto said instead of forcing the player to use complex button controls we'd enable them to accomplish many things just using the Wii Remote by automating various actions in the game not that this will surprise anyone but this sort of thing is one of my least favorite trends in the modern gaming industry and this is where other end really falls apart the most damning result of this is in the core of your combat when you fire the Power Beam Samus automatically aims in the direction of whatever it needs these closest to this speaks more than just about anything else to how little respect and Trust other in is able to give its players which is often because respecting the player's ability and intelligence is integral to the appeal of the Metroid franchise sure the prime games didn't require precise aiming either but player action was at least the catalyst for what Samus was locked onto and the focus was moved to deftly maneuvering her around her opponents in 3d space and to knowing how to beat them the important thing is that you weren't just spamming the dodge and fire buttons they might have been presented differently but skill and dexterity still played an important role just as they always had in any other Metroid game when you made that tricky wall jump when you dodged enemy fire and retaliated when you broke that sequence you broke that sequence when you automate to this degree the players input doesn't have nearly the same impact on what actions their character is taking so no matter how could it might look there's not gonna be any real crunch behind it this tricky death-defying leap looks really impressive but this one feels so much better it's the difference between spectacle for its own sake versus a spectacle that the game gives the player the power to create one way they tried to spice this up was by including these little cinematic QTE sequences well I say qze but all it really entails is just mashing the one button sometimes you'll be able to stun an enemy and then for glory kill sometimes you just have to realize that you can leap onto a foe to initiate that let's compare that to a later Metroid game that like other in wanted to prioritize action in combat but actually managed to get it right in Samus Returns counter opportunities are communicated via distinct consistent visual and auditory cues and the cinematics that sometimes are sold from them still give you access to your full range of weapons other in doesn't have anything like that so cinematic counters are instead communicated via this immersion breaking hint text that has to come up in every encounter that requires them but what about missiles you whale missiles those iconic Metroid upgrades that always brought a little variety to enemy encounters you babbled earlier that you could restore them so they must still be present to spice things up yeah yeah they're still here but that opens up a whole nother can of worms this is the point where other M's control scheme crosses the line from being overly simplistic and does some things that are tangibly clunky point the Wii Remote toward the screen and you'll snap into first-person view here and only here you can control what enemy Samus locks onto Samus will only fire missiles when you're locked on from this perspective you know it actually isn't all that bad of an idea in theory you'd make missile use that much more distinct unfortunately like pretty much every idea other em has it falls apart and execution for starters of course while you're in this first-person view there aren't enough buttons left for you to be able to move the character you can however still since move and your interface will even change color when this is an option though I guess such a concept was just too complicated to teach you in that tutorial this is just something you have to notice yourself even when you do the camera has to zoom out so we can see that fancy dodge only to snap back into first person when Samus is done being a luchador aiming in the prime trilogy worked so well because the Wii Remote is a fantastic pointing device prime was a first-person game and so you've had no problem keeping yourself oriented even when you come out of the morph ball there's this little delay as Samus brings her cannon back up to give you a small window to figure out where the pointer is and of course you could actually move your character if you needed a little more time in they're in when you snap the first person view there's no way to tell before you get there we're exactly the center of the screen is and so you can't reliably tell where your reticle is going to land this isn't much of a problem when you're just using missiles to open doors but in combat that's so fast-paced those extra couple of moments of not being able to move can mean the difference between firing off a successful attack and taking a hit it means that missiles in combat are way more of a liability and so the outside of the instances where I needed to have them I just ignored them they were too clunky the first-person perspective is also used when the game forces you into search view where you have to move samus's vision around to notice something oh this feels so unfair but look at how it was handled in the prime game's scannable objects are clearly highlighted in other in there is nothing to indicate what you're supposed to be focusing on and while most of the time these sections are obvious enough that it's not a big deal occasionally you're just stuck in first person view and expected to sleuth your way out with no indication of what to look at I spent upwards of 10 minutes standing right here just spinning in circles do you see anything distinct or unusual about what I'm looking at it's not the soldiers in front of me it's not the truck behind me okay here it is yes you were expected to turn completely around and notice the green blood blending into the green grass behind you and I'm sure this was even more of a nightmare in 480p on the original Wii Hardware other M is a game that is forced to graph so many incredibly generous conceits in order to make a 3d action game function at all on a Wii Remote that the best case scenario the team ninja could turn out with is exactly what this is bland repetitive combat that's all style and no substance even just running around being locked to eight directions in 3d space reminds me of those early PlayStation and Saturn games before analog sticks became standard it's just awkward to move sometimes and it gets even worse in these strange forced over-the-shoulder moments on more than one occasion Samus is supposed to be trying to catch someone who's running away from her and instead of chasing them down she instead opts to awkwardly hobble after them it doesn't take long for the game to get physically uncomfortable spin tiny d-pad around a move a character in 3d just wasn't something that we remote was economically designed for now of course I could have mitigated the whole issue to a degree by using the dolphin emulator to play other M with a more traditional controller I could have activated first-person view by holding the trigger and moving the right stick the game warned it in so uncomfortable if I'd done that but I choose not to this time I decided been dealing directly with the limitations brought on by the Wii Remote was inherent to understanding Sakamoto's intentions with this game I had trouble finding my voice with other N because I kept trying to approach it with the expectation that if I could just find the right angle I would be able to come to terms with what Sakamoto was trying to do I'd find a way to dive deep into some appreciation or at least an understanding about why the game is the way it is but looking for depth here is like diving into a kiddie pool all you're gonna do is hurt yourself still there are occasional sections where I actually felt a little glimmer of the potential the other M might have had as an action game like let's say three three sections and they were all boss fights Ridley nightmare and the Metroid Queen all managed to seem like legitimate threats they all make you feel like your skills and wits are coming together to overcome them and they'll all take you down hard if you don't stay engaged that the team was still capable of crafting enjoyable bosses even through all these restrictions shows better than anything the squandered potential that other m had mind you they're hardly perfect they're hardly as good as they could have been I'm not saying this is some epic sequence you must experience I'm just saying that they're the lone exceptions where I actually find some fun in other m's combat also even amid all the other core to disband service isn't it bizarre that one of the bosses is nightmare I mean he originally came from fusion a game that's in the future of the timeline during another M what are we supposed to assume that every Galactic Federation ship just comes standard with a gravity control AI that will inevitably develop sentence and try to kill everyone because that really makes a lot of sense these three bosses are the lonely islands and a sea of mediocre gameplay most of the time other m's combat feels more than anything like a art phone game like if some heaps spin-off of the Metroid series tap the screen to shoot swiped at odd move your finger around and find stuff in first person earn Galactic Federation tokens or buy them with real money so Adam will authorize more upgrades even with all of this riding against it I still don't think other n would have quite the awful reputation it does if it weren't for the spectacular mess it makes trying to wrap itself up sector zero is a place that's set up through the back half of the game as kind of a Torian equivalent the climactic area or a bunch of Metroid encounters and the final boss will need to be taken care of after a lengthy trek to get there Samus encounters a small Metroid just outside the entrance same as the Lord of it did back on sr388 it hovers before her causing her to hesitate fortunately for her Adam fills up to shoot that varmint down and proceed selector us all about how these Metroid's were kinetically engineered to be unfeasible and vicious well that's nice of him it's just too bad that he only bothered to save Samus after he did this [Music] never mind what I said about Prime one's dinky explosion knocking out samus's upgrades the idea that one shot from an ice beam would be enough to knock out samus's well it's preposterous it's not just that she has withstood much worse she does withstand much worse in this same game of course that's just me whining about the war the more pressing matter is why in the world did Adam shoots and us in the first place even Samus herself has the gumption to demand an answer so why did you shoot me you can't destroy these Metroid's what yes he can she was just about to shoot it with the same ice beam you did even with in Adams own flimsy characterization it makes no sense the only reasonable answer and I think the real answer is one that can't be explained narrative Lee for this scene Sakamoto wanted Samus in a position of weakness in comparison to Adam he did this to put over how heroic and self-sacrificing Adams being to emphasize how much he meant to Samus because after saving her life he sacrifices his Adam takes what would be in any other Metroid game samus's place he heads down into sector zero it checks it from the rest of the bottle ship and initiates a self-destruct killing himself along with the Metroid's this plot beat might have sounded like a good idea on paper and it might have even worked in a game whose story was built on subtext but how many times can I say this it fails in execution as a player I was only half paying attention during what's supposed to be this big emotional scene because I just kept waiting for the game to justify why Adam would fire on Samus and when it was over I was irrationally frustrated at this character for not only failing to explain himself but for taking away my agency for taking my spot in the finale and for not letting me go into sector zero and blast apart those Metroid's because of all this I was happy to see him go and I do not think that was the effect Sakamoto was going for or was it given how much praise I heaped on fusion for corrupting super metroids formula for weaving the loss of samus's agency into its gameplay and coming all the more memorable for it isn't it they were to consider other in from the same angle let's get meta was the player meant to feel frustrated at how poorly the game handled its own protagonist maybe something like that could have worked if Samus redeemed herself at some point and to be fair there are hints of this there's one earlier scene that got this huge smile out of me at a point in the story where Samus thinks Adam has abandoned his post and may even be working against her he comes to a chasm she can't jump over and then and then she just activates her space jump herself oh man that almost makes it worth it even or delivery there just nails the contempt I feel the contempt that she should feel oh and you remember that condescending jackass from the tutorial yeah turns out he also took samples of Metroid DNA off of it and that's why the federation was able to clone Metroid's in the first place i think it's safe to say that he was supposed to rub you the wrong way no stop smiling at me like that so fair enough maybe some part of this was meant to make the player feel resentful about the game they were playing maybe they were supposed to relate to Samus in that way nonetheless I can't at all say that other M is some kind of subversive misunderstood Kim Fusion intentionally corrupted Super Metroid as a means to stand on its own outside the shadow of that masterpiece other M on the other hand bumbles every good idea it has and so it's corruption of the Metroid series as a whole comes out as a pure negative the scene where Adam dies is the worst example but the narrative and gameplay alike are absolutely full of moments that don't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny if the Metroid's were genetically modified to be unfeasible how did Adam know you could freeze that one why does the bottle FIPS Development Director look like a 14 years old girl why do we bother focusing so much on the Marines early on if only one of them is ever gonna have anything resembling a personality most infamously why does Samus have a panic attack at the mere sight of Ridley a rival that she had fought and defeated so many before I said I prefer to focus on gameplay so how did this moment get through playtesting it's a metroid queen which yes nostalgia pandering but like I said earlier it's also one of those few moments where the gameplay actually gets a little fun for a while but when you have her on the ropes she swallows Samus whole and I guarantee that you didn't know what to do if someone hadn't told you beforehand you would die here and you'd probably do it more than once nothing you do seems to make a difference so what do you do you have to magically know that as of this moment Samus has decided to use power bombs there's no cut to the inventory like there has been for every single other authorization there's no on-screen prompt telling you what's going on you just have to know and even if you do you have to remember that the awful tutorial sequence from the very beginning of the game taught you how to use them I figured out after just dying once but I feel like the only reason it wasn't a roadblock was because I'd beaten the Metroid Queen quite a few times recently and the time other end came out unless you had seen the end of the most obscure entry in the mainline series and you happen to beat her this way I have no idea how you were meant to put it together today with that done it's time for the finale no surprise it's a nonsensical 20-minute cutscene that reveals that this woman isn't who she claims she was no she's an Android and she was stealing the identity of this woman and and get this this Android basically is mother brain accidentally recreated by the ever inept to Galactic Federation okay I'm not gonna detail it cuz I don't really care but I will say that it's a surprisingly satisfying twist compared to all the other crap going on on the plot well it's not just that I don't care but also because by the time the twist is revealed it's too late for it to have any ramifications I figured that metroid queen fight was just a build up and that the real final battle would be against this reborn mother brain I mean that makes sense ah yeah there she is see summons vicious creatures to wait war on those that brought her into this world and here we go the very last bit of gameplay is a narrative segment that walks you in first-person where all you have to do is lock on to Mother Brain at which point you're stopped before you can even fire that's it that's what you overcome same as Adams stole your Torian run the Marines just kill mother brain for you because that's a satisfying way to conclude a video game despite their similar reputations I'm not going to pretend that other end is anywhere near as bad as something like Sonic oh six it's not a broken glitch fest most of the time and given the constraints of the Wii Remote it accomplishes what it sets out to do a pretty much as well as it could have it's just that as a game critic and even as a player I'd much prefer an awful but interesting game to one that's so mind-numbing which sucks because it's nonsensical as the story progression is I could have laughed it off if the game was fun and I would have accepted it being fun in either direction if there was some combination of a genuine Metroid game and a competent team ninja style action game propping up all this cinematic BS and I could excuse the narrative faults as some kind of failed experiment and there's a lot of fun to be had in that kind of unintentionally awful storytelling I love Shenmue and it suffered from a lot of the same faults a director who wasn't a native English speaker awkward wooden acting and an excessively literal translation but it can be part of the charm on the flipside if other m's gameplay was a buggy broken offensive mess that tried way too many ambitious ideas and failed to execute any of them that it could have stood alongside the story as part of a total package and at least in my tastes other end could have been a fascinating hilarious trainwreck of a game but the story winds up coalesce with the gameplay in a way that's a little more personal to me neither one really makes much of an impact on me I care about the way that they impacted the Metroid franchise I care about the implications of the story and find them interesting to discuss but I just said how I'd have no issue laughing and how stupid it is either there's just nothing here that makes me care as much as I wish I did and knowing how I am and particularly why I do this that alone speaks volumes about this game if you can believe this I am NOT the most began eclis articulate person on YouTube there are so many critics out there with a better eye for design and storytelling there are people with real experience in the industry who can give you genuine insight into things that I would never notice there are certainly people who can make videos more consistently but what makes this show least I hope worth waiting for is that I always manage to find a way to be passionate about whatever uncovering and I present that with sincerity while I was playing other em it gave me no shortage of things to think about the notes I took along the way dwarfed any game I've played before but the reason it's taken so long to put those thoughts together is because the experience didn't make me want to say anything about it and I had no core Drive to wrap my thoughts around I didn't feel any particular way about this game and I only got over that block and found my voice when I embraced that fact this time I had to get passionate about nothing finding that righteous indignation would have probably been easier if I was reviewing the game in 2010 or if I was retrospective at any time before this happened other am might have sittin Metroid into hibernation for way too long but at least we know that it didn't in the series forever at the same time I was dragging myself through the bottle ship I was also playing a return to form for Metroid a game that excels in some of the ways that other in failed and knowing that Metroid Prime 4 is over the horizon there's no reason to be anything but optimistic about the series future and so there's no reason I feel to be quite so vengeful toward other end I don't think there's any way that Nintendo would ever make this kind of mistake again and you know that's kind of sad I got comments on prime that claimed that people like me were the reason other and exists as if this is what I was asking for is if this was meant to cater to me I got much nicer comments hoping I would just go easy on other in hopeful that I would find something to love about it and yeah despite what a slog this was I could still adore a more action focused 3d Metroid game a third-person adventure that's more evocative of the tenacity of the 2d series so I can see why a few people were either afraid or hopeful that I would love this game but I do not love this game I love a few of the things that it tries to be but it undermines itself at every turn that just doesn't mean that I wouldn't love to see those concepts get another chance but I don't think Nintendo will ever go there again I think as soon as they showed something with even a surface level resemblance to other in fans would tear the game to pieces and so to someone with my preferences that makes other in even more of a resounding frustrating failure its kind of are the same fanbase that once raged about a first-person 3d Metroid game would probably never be receptive now to anything but if I ever decide to play it again I'm gonna do kind of the same thing I did for the original Metroid and use a fan-made hack to make it a little more palatable other in maximum edition attempts to fix the storyline as best it can most of Samus is wooden monologuing is gone a lot of a stupid wadis cuts although the edits are fairly obviously fan-made the scenes don't always flow well and they do still come across a little hokey though the fact that there's a lot less of it is still an improvement but what's much better is that Samus can now fire missiles from third person giving combat a little bit more variety the concentration mechanic has been rebalanced and can be used as a crutch during combat the mod also shows up some of those ugly low-res textures and restores samus's more realistic armor if you're into that sort of thing I'm not but I'll take the trade-off since they also made the gravity suit actually look like the gravity suit best of all the mod does exactly what I wish other image done and implements remixed music throughout the entire game yeah if you're inclined to give other in a try get it on dolphin set up your favorite controller get this mod and play it this way anyway I'm glad I could find some way to approach this I hope you've enjoyed the result and until next time you keep geeking I'll keep oh my god it's still going it's a video game with interactive post credits scene over okay so Samus gets authorization to go back to the bottle ship to retrieve some kind of important artifact you know I guess since the game was so linear this was the only justifiable way you could go for a hundred percent completion you know me I'm never gonna do that but if I did I'd unlock hard mode yeah because you want to walk a higher difficulty behind a mind-numbing fetch quest that requires you to meticulously comb the entire bland map you know if the games just not gonna bother ending I guess I can throw in a coda - as I played I figured out a few things that could have made other em so much more palatable here's how they could have fixed it for the gameplay it's a gimme don't tie the development teams hands behind their backs by forcing them to cram a reaction game around the Wii Remote I would have loved to have seen what T ninja could do with a more robust control scheme or if you absolutely refused to do that if you just have to restrict yourself to the Wii Remote just have game play happen on a 2d plane you can still have 3d environments in the first-person view in cinematic camera angles you can still take advantage of the hardware but locking the actual gameplay at a 2d would have allowed the combat to work within these constraints fixing the story is not so easy the whole thing would need to be rewritten from the ground up but if Sakamoto really wanted to tell a story like this then the change I'd start with is easy make it a prequel set it before every other Metroid game and tell the story the fusion pointed to the story of samus's time in the Federation and the incident that caused her to leave it if samus is still a part of the Galactic Federation and actually is under Adams command then the whole authorization gimmick becomes so much more palatable and that's hardly the only thing a prequel would have fixed if this had been the first time that Samus had seen the monster who killed her parents since that traumatic events that of course she might experience a bit of a breakdown to say nothing of the way that throughout the game she's so much more unsure of herself and the degree to which she looks up to and respects Adam I mean the one time that samus's voice actress actually gets to show off what you can do is in this scene which is taking place as a flashback let me go you have to trust me and I think there's evidence the other M might have just been a prequel early in development let's look again at that reveal trailer the cinematics are almost all showcasing samus's time in the Federation is if that was all that was finished the only reason I can think of to change course was because they wanted to pander to nostalgia and needed Super Metroid to have already happened but of course that didn't stop him from throwing in nightmare and if you wanted to do nostalgia pandering in a more Metroid way than Adams sacrifice would have been the perfect opportunity the turmoil of this moment could have been used to drive Samus forward to give greater context and meaning to all those times that we as the audience know that she's going to stand alone against the Metroid's in the future maybe we could have entered the game with a montage of that future seeing her taking out Mother Brain for the first time watched as she faces Ridley with unwavering confidence and even seen her using techniques and abilities that Adam taught her as a subtle sort of echo of how he helped her grow as a warrior yeah other M really could have been something but back in the game that we actually got I broke through to the break of the bottle clip oh look it's phantoon you guys love phantoon right remember him from super metroids look he's here on the bottle ship even though that makes no sense at all but who needs boring things like war and consistency in quality when we have nostalgia to pander to yes yes there he is he's uh he's busting through the windows and destroying the bridge he's using familiar attacks and flashy new ways that could have been done in previous generations oh and now he's whaling on me with attacks oh it's a tense struggle to recover he's whittling away at me and I'm doing the same back to him in a hallway crappy kelpy this boss is awesome phantoon might not excuse the way other m's set up a mother brain fight and failed to deliver but at least there is a satisfying fight at the end no matter how little sense it makes after that Samus makes it through to the command deck where she finds Adams helmet look other end it's far in a way a lost cause can you please stop trying to make me care that's like the game heard me it's time to drag this momento out of the bottle ship and we'll be doing it via an epic escape scene taunting explosions gripping music holding the directional pad in one direction yeah this whole sequence is kind of a summation of the game as a whole and how it holds up in comparison to the rest of the series it is an epic escape scene but this time it's only epic because it will look something other in is at its best when it's embracing the only thing it does well being a brainless overly accessible but very flashy action game even now if you apply any scrutiny it all falls apart why does the Federation start blowing up the bottle ship when they should know Samus is still on it why can't say us hold a helmet and activate her armor at the same time how do I get past these doors oh of course you just shoot them with your pistol why not but I understand why this game has its defenders the awfulness of the gameplay probably does get overstated by fans who holed up in detta against it for a well justified but also unrelated reasons but if you're willing to turn your brain off and ignore the story I can't see the appeal in smashing a few buttons to guide Samus do some visually satisfying combat I can even see it being a fun game to unwind with in small doses other in in the best case scenario is video game junk food it's just I get that it was meant to appeal to more casual players and that we had plenty of those but Samus Aran just doesn't have the recognition among the mainstream of a character like Mario or Donkey Kong if somebody relatively unfamiliar with videogames solve this on store shelves I don't think they know what it was other em was never going to win over that crowd and a game that tried to was never going to be anything but alienating to Metroid fans video game junk food might be enjoyable in small doses but it's completely antithetical to what people love about this franchise other M fails as a satisfying action game it fails harder as a narrative but above all it fails to even remotely live up to the series itself other n is a failure at even being a Metroid game and this failure did cataclysmic damage to the series reputation among its own fans in the wider gaming community and within Nintendo itself Metroid's first Dark Age was preceded by a masterpiece but its second was by a catastrophe Samus Aran would spend seven years in exile thank you all for watching this ridiculous bonanza of an episode thank you to my patrons for making it happen thanks to Chad for providing the opening narration to Kovar for the brilliant musical interlude and thank you to my lovely girlfriend Alicia for taking the starring role of Samus Aran this is the worst thing that ever happened to me despite this cataclysm of a game I have had a lot of fun this past year and I really do have all of you to thank for that I'll be back with a new season in 2018 so I hope you guys enjoy your holidays and until then you keep geeking I'll keep it really is over critiquing

Channel: The Geek Critique

Views: 781,734

Keywords: The Geek Critique, TGC, Geek Critique, Josh Wallen, metroid, other m, samus, samus aran, nintendo, wii, 2010, metroid other m, metroid: other m, adam and samus, samus and adam, adam malkovich, mb, madeline bergman, nintendo wii, wii games, review, analysis, critique, ridley, nightmare, zero suit samus

Id: Fkj1AbDt95I

Length: 63min 43sec (3823 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2017