Let's try a fun exercise.
Highlight this sentence with your mouse cursor. Hold the control key and then hit C on your keyboard. Now open a new document in Microsoft Word. Hold the control key once again, but this time hit V.
If the text you highlighted is now in the Word document, congratulations! You've just shown the same level of effort Team Ninja applied to developing "Metroid: Other M."
This is copy and paste gaming at its worst -- bland environments, repetitive combat, mandatory backtracking and the same boss battles recycled ad nauseum. It literally feels like two hours of gameplay stretched into 12.
To make matters worse, the game simply isn't much fun to play.
Following the events of "Super Metroid," Samus Aran awakens on a Galactic Federation ship. Soon after departing the vessel, she answers a distress call on an abandoned ship. Upon arrival, she's reunited with her former Federation Army unit, lead by Commander Adam Malkovich. Samus then agrees to follow Malkovich's orders and help look for survivors.
Though the set up is pretty basic, "Other M" goes over the top with the plot and bombards you with melodramatic cutscenes. Not only are the voice acting and dialogue brutal, but these story chunks cannot be skipped. After listening to five minutes of this drivel, gamers can't be faulted for thinking about gouging their eyes out with toothpicks.
Gameplay in "Metroid: Other M" is split up between third-person platforming and first-person shooting sections. Players hold the Wiimote sideways to move, dodge and shoot. You can then enter first-person shooter mode by aiming at your TV screen.
Though this feature sounds cool on paper, it's poorly implemented in "Other M."
Switching perspectives often leaves Samus aiming nowhere near her target, leaving you open to attack and scrambling with the Wiimote. On more than one occasion, Samus would immediately look straight up at the ceiling and spin around in circles even though I was aiming at the centre of my screen.
The whole thing feels clunky at best and broken at worst.
The side-scrolling and platform elements work well enough, but Samus has a tendency to ignore ledges from time to time, forcing you to jump up and down until she figures out what you want.
Creature design is boring and uninspired. Not only does most of the game consist of traversing a series of corridors and battling the same dull enemies, "Other M" actually forces you to battle the same bosses multiple times.
I swear I fought this stupid creature with tusks and tentacles at least four times. Worse yet, nothing really changed from battle to battle. Each time I used the same strategy to avoid the same attacks.
In fact, almost all the boss fights involve nothing more than dodging their shots, while picking your moments to use charged blasts before switching to first-person mode to hit them with missiles. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Unlike previous "Metroid" titles, Samus doesn't lose all her weapons at the start in "Other M." In a lame gameplay decision, you simply wait for Malkovich to authorize the use of certain equipment instead of exploring the game to improve your arsenal.
The stupidest example of this occurs when Samus enters a level inside a volcano. Though her suit has a feature that protects against heat damage, she doesn't activate it until later on when Malkovich gives the thumbs up.
"Other M" feels like someone threw a bunch of elements from previous entries into a blender. However, instead of a title that encorporates the best elements of the series, we're left with a disjointed and sloppy offering that even "Metroid" fans will shake their heads at.
WHAM! Rating: |
5 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen) |
Official Web Site: |
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