Metroid: Other M

Metroid is a series people love only with hindsight.

I was a latecomer to the series: the first game I beat was Metroid Fusion, which was followed by Metroid II and Super Metroid in quick succession, and Zero Mission after that. I have never beaten the original Metroid, and this is why I was so late to this party.

The original game is a tough sell to someone who didn’t play it in the mid-80′s. The game itself is very much a product of its time, with a punishing difficulty, little to no indication of where to go, and that awful grind if you die in order to fill your energy bar back up. Today, games will point you in the right direction, but in the mid-80′s you would have to either buy a player’s guide (usually as part of a Nintendo magazine), or plot your own maps. Give the original Metroid to someone who wants to get into the series, and you won’t see them again.

Metroid II did away with the grind, it had better pacing and set save points. The game also did other things differently, like upping the creepy SFX factor by 10, and pushing the anticipation of being scared. You drop down and see an empty Metroid shell. You know there will be a Metroid mutant around here somewhere, but it won’t necessarily be immediately nearby. This really was the evolution of Metroid, bucking the trend of 16-bit games setting the stage for the games to come.

Super Metroid gives the impression that it knew it would be something great and unique. The first game’s exploring was focused with an intuitive map and visual cues, the second game’s creepy sounds were preserved and extended to the graphics and screen-filling, grotesque boss battles. Alien Scum isn’t a foreign concept to videogames, but when you’re on their turf, and they are squealing and croaking and (often) screaming, Super Metroid presents them with something approaching respect.

Metroid Fusion was divisive upon its release. Not a lot of people played it, and many who did complained about it. This was the first Metroid game I played through to completion and I loved it. I had tried Metroid and it didn’t work for me, and this was my first real experience with the mechanics that had been introduced since. It’s Super Metroid in design, and it’s been refined further. The biggest complaint is that it lacks the isolation of the earlier games. The colours are saturated thanks to the GBA screen, removing much of the gloom, and the occasional chats with Adam Malkovich (the computerised personality of Samus’s former General) removed some of the isolation. Luckily, several parts of the game are big deals. The fight against the melting face of Nightmare, hiding from the overpowered Samus-X, the revelation that the Galactic Federation is farming Metroids, and as the space station self-destructs around you, discovering the discarded shells of a Metroid ala. Metroid II… The end-game made up for the whole experience.

By the time Metroid Zero Mission was released, the GBA had been updated with brighter screens, and so this remake of the original game went back to creepy dark caverns. It was a total rebuild of Metroid, from the screen-filling boss battles, to the map screen and being guided around the map, and even throwing in many new areas that tie the game in with Super Metroid (realising the Space Pirate ship you destroy at the end of the game is the same as the Wrecked Ship from Super Metroid is a small treat). This is one of my favourites in the series, and it finally gave me the ability to play the very beginning of the series on the terms of the later games.

Interspersed are the Metroid Prime titles. I don’t get on well with FPS games, and while I tried them all, I certainly didn’t come close to beating any of them. Nevertheless, they tried hard to make me like them. They are more intuitive to control and they certainly borrowed the right elements from the other games in the series, but I have to accept that I will probably never beat these games.

Now we come to the latest title, Metroid: Other M. This is a continuation of the 2D line of games, but influenced in some ways by the 3D Metroid Prime games. I’m not just talking about the ability to switch from side-scrolling to first-person by pointing the camera either. The puzzles and aesthetic seem to have been heavily influenced by the Prime games as well. What we have here is an interquel between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion, but it is truly a melding of every game in the entire series.

The biggest criticisms have been against the cutscenes. Now, as an avid Nintendo player, I may be missing some fantastic stories as told on other systems. Maybe videogame stories are now at some peak of cinematic excellence and this is a massive joke in comparison. I dare you to claim that’s the case. Other M’s cutscenes are too long and they’re not acted out to the best standards, but they’re also infrequent and there as backstory to Samus. The game concerns itself with telling its own story of the Bottle Ship in the same way as the other Metroid games: through exploration and horrifying discovery.

My biggest gripe is the controls. Super Metroid’s controls were fiddly, and this has carried over into Metroid: Other M. Considering it works exclusively with the Wii Remote, it’s a miracle it works as well as it does, but you do get the feeling that a Nunchuk would have ironed out some of the more fiddly moments. Jump on an enemy to charge and execute a powerful attack: Great, except you’re moving with a D-Pad and so precisely landing on an enemy isn’t as easy as that. To interact with a computer terminal, walk up to it with the D-Pad – only you can be walking around in front of it for a while before Samus is lined up enough to trigger the scene of her interacting with it.

Nevertheless, these are small complaints for what has so far been a stellar return to the 2D game style, even though it’s  actually kinda 3D. I suggest you try it at least, as reviews of the game are a very mixed bag, and the most correct reviews barely mention the cutscenes and focus on what is an excellent piece of classic gameplay.

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