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Metroid: Other M

Metroid: Other M

The team behind Ninja Gaiden has been tasked with bringing back Nintendo's classic Metroid-series and our Swedish editor Petter Hegevall has gone on the hunt together with Samus Aran.

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While Retro Studios' Metrod Prime-series took place before the original Metroid, Metroid: Other M takes place after the events in Super Metroid. Other M starts out with an incredibly beautiful, pre-rendered scene where Samus desperately fights against a slimey Mother Brain. Tecmo gives the fans a really cool animated version of the final moments of Super Metroid, where Samus in the end defeats the Mother Brain and saves the planet Zebes.

Samus then wakes up on one of the federation's battleships, a bit messed up from the fighting on Zebes. Shortly afterwards she joins up with soldiers from her old workplace and together with the Galactic Federation she goes to investigate an emergency signal from a stranded ship.

Metroid: Other M doesn't start out very strong, despite the initial sequence of Samus and the Mother Brain. Samus talks constantly, looks like something out of any Dead or Alive-game you can think of and the mystery surrounding the coolest bounty hunter in the galaxy is shot to pieces. Tecmo works hard and effectively to destroy the bubble that has always protected Samus' real personality from the player.

Metroid: Other M
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I've always loved the fact that I never really new who the person beneath the suit actually was. Samus has always spoken through action, not words, and Nintendo's choice to never let her speak without good reason has been appreciated by me and other fans all around the world. Something that Tecmo has decided to change.

Because of this, Samus and her dorky friends talk all the time. The dialogue smells like cheesy action movies and the cutscenes rendered with the game's own graphics engine feels frivolous. I get tired of the pathetic script quickly and wish I could just turn the game off. Luckily the game starts to pick up pace and I get other things to think about that bad voice acting.

When it comes to gameplay, Metroid: Other M is good. Tecmo has mixed 2D-action with 3D first person shooting and the mix is mostly good. Sadly, you can't move when you look through Samus' eyes, which in the end makes that perspective more or less pointless. To shift between third person and first person during a firefight can result in a quick and pointless death for our long-legged heroine since you can't duck, jump or step aside as the enemies throw their purple tentacles towards her.

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Just like in some of the earlier Metroid-games, Samus starts her adventure with all her abilities and skills available. Soon she's robbed of all of them and as usual she must hunt them down during the course of the game. Metroid: Other M includes a lot of backtracking, just like in the earlier games, something that I had actually not expected.

Despite this, the tempo is constantly high. Compared to Metroid Prime or Metroid Fusion, Other M includes more or less no puzzles, instead it's mostly about intense firefights with the scums of the galaxy. It feels a lot easier than Prime or Super Metroid, and some of the levels feel like they are on rails. Some bosses take a bit of strategy to conquer, but otherwise the focus of the game is on easy-going action suitable for a larger demographic.

Sadly, it's short. Way too short. I played through the whole thing in six hours and 40 minutes, which is about a third of the time it took to get through Metroid Prime. In a way, and with the easy action taken into account, Metroid: Other M feels a bit like an appetizer and not the magnificent Metroid-game I've been waiting for ever since the first Prime-game.

When it comes to the audio and the visuals, Metroid: Other M is one of the prettier Wii-games I've had the pleasure to play, but far from perfect. The design is great when it comes to environments and enemies, but the Galactic Federation-soldiers and Samus' hair are terribly ugly and feel more like parodies of bad sci fi-series from the 80's. The special effects look great though, the frame rate is smooth as silk and the loading screens are more or less non-existent. Texture quality and lighting can feel a bit flat at times, but then the hardware in the Wii is quite old by now. The sound quality is good, not counting the voice acting, and the music is a great mixture of Metroid remixes that are used dynamically throughout the game.

Metroid: Other M

Metroid: Other M is a good action title that takes Samus in a direction that we're not really used to. The action sequences are superfast and the controls are good, but there's a couple of things that bugs me that I can't turn a blind eye to. The story is not good and it's sad that Tecmo has completely ruined the mystery that used to surround both Samus and Metroid in general. Aside from that this is a nice sidetrack while waiting for more adventures together with the coolest chick in the galaxy.

07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
+
Good controls, great environments, nice music and graphics, cool design, fun bosses
-
The camera is a bit clumsy, terrible dialogue, way too short
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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