It’s been eight years since the release of Metroid Fusion, the last 2D title in the series produced by Nintendo, save for the excellent re-make of the original - renamed Zero Mission – which itself was released six years ago. While I have enjoyed the four Prime titles to be released over the last decade, my true love lies in the 2D titles – Super Metroid, Fusion, and Zero Mission being my favourites, Metroid II: Return of Samus being a fond childhood memory also. When Metroid: Other M was announced, I was unsure what to think. A third person 3D title with first person elements sounded like a clever fusion of past and present games, and it promised to be more storyline based than previous titles, too. Loving the 2D titles, but enjoying Prime also, I still felt that Nintendo would come up with something equally enjoyable - and it ranks as one of my most anticipated Wii titles ever. Well, I finally got hold of the game – and it’s time to get to the review.

Other M takes place between the events of Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion, which are at the end of the series chronology. With Zebes destroyed, the Metroids, Mother Brain and the Space Pirates along with it, Samus is given a “Mission Complete”. However, she soon enough picks up a distress call, and out of instinct she plots the ‘Bottle Ship’ as her next destination to see what’s going on – and that’s where Other M begins. I wont delve into the plot too far for the sake of spoilers, but I will say that the game is the most cinematic title to date, with plenty of cut scenes, FMV’s, and Samus has even been voiced for the first time. Don’t worry though – she’s not been voiced badly. On her mission, she finds herself working alongside old friends, comrades from her past (including former CEO Adam Malkovich, a character mentioned in Fusion but so far unseen. A lot of old memories are dug up, and we find out more of her mysterious past - which makes a nice change.

Of course, one of the most important points of Other M is the new gameplay system, the game co-produced by Team Ninja, makers of Ninja Gaiden. I personally felt that they did an excellent job of translating Metroid into a full 3D third-person experience. The game combines classic gameplay elements and ideas from the 2D titles, while incorporating the 3D elements of Prime.

Controlled using the Wiimote sideways like a NES controller, the game plays very much like any other classic Metroid game, but in a 3D environment. You still have the basic run, jump, shoot scenario, and platforming hasn’t been made overly awkward with the move to 3D movement. Some areas are played with a camera angle that makes the game appear as a sort of 2.5D view, and although you can still move in all directions, these parts play almost exactly like 2D Metroid games, and it works well.

The biggest difference in the game is it’s combat. While you are still able to use basic beam and charge-beam attacks, the game incorporates an auto-aim system – luckily this works well as it doesn’t tend to aim at things you don’t want it to, and it also makes the shooting a lot more fluid and fast paced. New to Samus however, are “Overkill” and “Lethal Blow” techniques, which involve having a beam charging, and either jumping on top of an enemy, or running into close quarters with a wounded opponent. Each one will launch Samus into a cinematic-close quarters attack, where she will wrestle with the opponent, and you have to release your shot once she’s got her gun lined up for the creature’s mouth or weak point. Doing so will unload a powerful shot that does a lot of damage, and looks cool too. It’s a first for Metroid, but it mixes in well with the 3rd person shooting.

We then have the first-person view. By pointing the Wiimote at the screen, the camera shifts to Samus’ own view, yet you are anchored to the ground and cannot move. This allows you to fire precise shots – and is also the only mode that allows you to use missiles, which do a lot of damage. While this works in some situations (often when bosses have a moment of vulnerability), it does feel a little awkward at times, having to switch controller position on the fly, and can be frustrating when you’re trying to fire a rocket when there’s a lot going on. Of course, they are powerful, but it does feel as though the missiles don’t quite mix into Samus’ other attacks as well as usual. However, it’s an interesting feature, and for the most part doesn’t cause too many problems.

Aside from that, there are a few other abilities Samus can now dodge attacks by tapping the d-pad just before the attack hits, although for the majority of the time you can tap the d-pad repeatedly to avoid a lot of attacks. While in most Metroid games, Samus can restore health and missiles by picking up items dropped by enemies, she now uses a “Concentration” ability. You can reload missiles at any time by holding the remote vertically, and holding A. This leaves you vulnerable for a few seconds – but it’s worth it. In a similar manner, once she gets close to death, you can do the same action to charge your last bar of health back to the top. However, you’re vulnerable while charging HP, and if you get hit before it’s complete, you’ll lose your charge (and likely die if you are that low on HP). The new concentration system works quite well, and it can be improved to replenish more HP bars by picking up special items found throughout the game. To be honest, the combination of the dodge and Concentration HP replenish abilities can make the game a little too easy at times, but it didn’t spoil the experience for me personally.

While exploring the Bottle Ship, there are four main areas you explore – some of the main ship, which has the cold, spaceport feel to it, and Sectors 1-3, each with its own holographic biosphere – a jungle, volcanic area, and glacial sector. Somewhat like Fusion, this means that each area within the ship has its own style and unique enemies. However, with the use of holograms, some of the areas appear as though they aren’t even on a ship – with outdoor environments complete with open skies. This can be quite cool when in some puzzles you can turn the projectors off and on, to see what the rooms really look like and discover where you need to go.

Many of the enemies are taken from other Metroid titles, with classic enemies converted very well into the 3D design – even their attack patterns haven’t changed, and for the most part have been designed to look as much like the original designs as possible. It’s great to see them in the current gen, and always good to see that Nintendo haven’t forgotten Metroid’s roots. Even a couple of the bosses are returning enemies from previous games – and they all look great. Of course, there are some new enemies also, but they all mix in together and none of them look out-of-place.

The bosses are actually one of the games best parts - they generally look great, and are very fun to fight. In a similar way to Zelda, most of the bosses are more than just shooting away – they often have parts you have to destroy, or places where you need to perform a specific action, such as grappling onto a body part. In a few cases, it’s possible to freeze body parts, and then use a rocket to smash it. One of my favourite scenes involved freezing a bosses arm to the floor, in order to charge up a shot and jump on it’s frozen appendage – causing Samus to run up it’s body and fire a blast right into it’s head. Almost God of War-like, which was cool.

Of course, no Metroid game would be complete without suit upgrades. Usually (especially with Prime), Samus finds herself being very clumsy at the start of the game and damaging her suit, losing all of her upgrades. While I personally don’t mind this, almost seeing it as a kind of tradition, Nintendo have obviously thought it’s overdone and decided to tackle the issue in a different way. Operating under the command of her former CEO, Adam, for this mission, she has been told she can’t use certain equipment until authorised by him personally. It’s an interesting take, and it makes sense in the case of bombs (since they don’t know how stable the ship is), but it’s a little far-fetched that Samus wouldn’t be able to keep her fully upgraded suit (heat protection, gravity stabilizers) and non-weapons such as the grapple beam. The resulting scenario is that at certain points in the game, Adam will “authorise” a piece of equipment and it will be added to your range of abilities. This system, while more or less having the same outcome as other Metroid titles, does feel a little underwhelming and nonsensical at times – while older Metroids would often grant you a new skill after beating a boss, Other M simply seems to randomly open up skills when it feels like it, offering little sense of achievement. And I really can’t see why the heat-protection upgrade couldn’t have been authorised upon entering the lava area, rather than half way through. Anyway, regardless of this, you’ll find yourself eventually having access to most of the classic abilities, such as the morph ball, speed booster and grapple beam.

Although there are other people on board the Bottle Ship, it does maintain the eerie loneliness of traditional Metroid titles – aside from a few cut scenes and a battle or two, you’ll find yourself solo for the majority of the game – which means the new characters don’t cheapen the experience. There are one or two genuinely eerie moments, walking down cold metal corridors in the dark, which I enjoyed. Sometimes this is aided by the fact that there is little music, although at times it felt as though the game lacked a good soundtrack – often being absent or quiet. Also, the classic jingles that play when you pick up items is no longer there – perhaps they were trying to make the game feel a bit more realistic, but as a Metroid fan I was a little disappointed not to hear the traditional victory tune.

As well as the normal gameplay, there are one or two sections where you are forced into first person. Sometimes these are “scan” scenarios, where you are meant to point the cursor at a specific element on-screen for Samus to ‘notice’ and progress the cut scene. While I don’t dislike the idea, I must admit they weren’t dealt with particularly well – sometimes the object you are meant to point it isn’t obvious – or you need to be so precise that you can’t tell what you are supposed to point at. At one point, I was genuinely stuck because when I tried to highlight what I thought was the right thing, the cursor didn’t change as it should – and after a good ten minutes of waving the cursor around I find out that I was looking at the right thing in the first place, only I hadn’t positioned the cursor exactly in the right place, which was frustrating. Some of these “forced first person” sections are battle oriented, with Samus pinned to the ground, and you must fend off attacks. These were quite cinematic and exciting, so they were much more enjoyable. However, there was one combat section where it wasn’t obvious what I was meant to do, and I kept dying until I finally did it by accident – another flaw in the design, perhaps.

Now, as you may be able to tell, there were good and bad points to the game. Let me reinstate that I really enjoyed the game despite these flaws, because mostly they were minor, or only occurred once or twice – the actual gameplay and style of the game far outweighed its flaws. However, there was one major issue that put a dampener on the whole experience for me – it’s length.

A fair way into the game, I’m aware of a region of the ship I have not yet explored, a boss that I still haven’t killed, and potentially a fair amount of gameplay left. Up until that point, I was immensely happy with the game, and really looking forward to the rest of it. However, I then found myself in fact not having any more regions of the ship to explore, and not getting to fight the boss as expected. Instead, I found myself playing a little more, fighting a semi-decent boss, and then suddenly realising I’d reached the game’s ending. While the game was great up until that point, I felt as though Other M had had so much potential for a few more hours of gameplay, but instead ended somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s hard to explain without revealing important plot points – but suffice it to say the game took only ten hours (one of the shortest Metroid games, including the GBA ones), and I felt as though it had a lot more potential than how it actually tied up the end of the game. This did cheapen the experience for me, and what felt like potentially the best Metroid game ever, dropped to only a decent Metroid game, perhaps not as good as Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, or Metroid Prime 3.

It’s hard to judge a game when you are left with a sense of disappointment at the very end. While I don’t regret buying the game, and I certainly did enjoy it a lot until it finished, the fact that the game had so much more potential left the experience feeling a little hollow and incomplete. Other M has a brilliant engine, it just falls short of expectations, especially considering it’s a full-home console title.

If you are a Metroid fan – the game’s worth getting for the excellent style, some back story on Samus and some really incredible moments – but if you’ve never played it, I’d warn you that the game won’t keep you busy for very long. It’s a shame, Nintendo are capable of making much larger games - Zelda, Mario Galaxy, etc – but Other M didn’t recieve the same amount of depth. Although I think the game was a step in the right direction for a more classic Metroid title for the modern day, you could easily buy Metroid Prime Trilogy for the same cost, and get a lot more bang for your buck.

- Leon

September looks to be an excellent month for games, with titles such as Dead Rising 2, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, and the long awaited release of Halo: Reach. However, even with such titles on the horizon, Metroid: Other M is amongst the most exciting. While I’m looking forward to seeing continuations of my favourite series’, a lot has changed in the world of Samus Aran since Prime 3: Corruption and it’s certainly going to be a refreshing experience.

While it’s been known for a while that Ninja Gaiden’s developers Team Ninja have been working with Nintendo on the new Metroid title, and that it would comprise of a mixture of gameplay elements from both 2D and 3D styles, it’s not until more recently that we’ve been given a more detailed idea of exactly how the game will work. But as the game’s release draws closer, I can now give a clearer idea of exactly what you can expect with the new sci-fi adventure.

Set between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion, Other M picks up right after Samus leaves planet Zebes after her encounter with Mother Brain. Following a distress call from a dormant ship, she finds herself exploring the enormous Galactic Federation Bottle Ship, a ship similar to the environment of Fusion, containing multiple environments in an enclosed space station – rainforests, a sub-zero region, a volcanic region and more.

While the game looks to reprise it’s 2D roots, the game is actually all played in a 3rd-person 3D environment. In this way, the game allows for the classic platforming elements that are traditional in Metroid such as exploration, wall-jumping and the morph ball ability – often giving a side view which gives the game a 2.5D look somewhat like Shadow Complex, although Samus can move in all directions rather than on a 2D plane. At other times, however, the game plays with a more top-down view, or even an over-the-shoulder view in the more tense, claustrophobic areas. The space station looks great, giving a mix of different environments while maintaining the classic eerie dankness of the cold metallic interiors.

The combat is perhaps the most interesting aspect to the new title – incorporating a mix of all of the Metroid titles and having its own unique twist. Whilst exploring, the game is controlled with the Wiimote held sideways (in NES controller fashion), and Samus has access to her various beam weapons hearkening to the 2D style of combat. However, if the player points the Wiimote at the screen in the remote style, the game switches to first-person view. While Samus is anchored to the ground in this mode, she can then fire her weapons in first person in a style akin to Metroid Prime. This will allow her to fire in a more precise way, for more accurate shooting such as target points – and also for locating hidden items such as energy tanks. It’s possible to switch between these two modes on the fly, so after a while you should be constantly flicking between fast paced acrobatic gunplay and precision attacks when appropriate.

Alongside this interesting amalgamation of the 2D and 3D realms of Metroid gunplay, Team Ninja have added their own element to the game – for the first time ever, Samus has a selection of melee abilities. With the new “Sense” ability, Samus is able to dodge enemy attacks with well timed taps of the D-pad, and use counter attacks, and she also has access to “Lethal Strike”, and “Overblast” techniques for finishing wounded opponents – involving ramming her gun down an enemy’s throat or leaping upon it’s shoulders to fire an executing shot to the head. While these new moves are a tad more barbaric than anything we’ve seen her do before – it certainly looks cool. It seems as though there will be a decent amount of upgrades to obtain, including suit upgrades (the Varia suit, as always, allows travel through heat), and abilities such as “Concentration” to replenish health.

It seems like quite a mighty task, combining such a mixture of different gameplay styles, but it really looks as though Other M combines the best aspects of all of the Metroid world. With a fleshed out story and a bit more of Samus’ history to uncover, it’s definitely a reason to break out the Wii once more for one of Nintendo’s best series.

Leon

I’ve previously looked at Metroid’s 2D roots, and it’s latest saga, Metroid Prime. With four 2D titles (plus remakes) and four titles in the Prime series, it’s been a couple of years since Nintendo have had any news on the series’ future – and personally I was wondering – will the next title tip the majority of the series’ titles towards the 2D style, or the first-person style of Prime? However, along with the release of Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii, Nintendo have released some interesting news on the next step for the series.

In an unexpected revelation, Nintendo announced at E3 2009 that they would be teaming up with Team Ninja, creators of Ninja Gaiden, for the next installment of the series. This was perhaps the most unlikely pairing I could think of – with Nintendo’s family-friendly style, and the all-out maturity of Team Ninja’s work. Regardless, I eagerly took note of the information released about the next title in the works: Metroid: Other M.

In an interesting twist, it turns out that the latest Metroid title will feature a mix of both the 2D and first-person style gameplay, and even incorporate some third person action as well – no doubt the influence of the Ninja Gaiden team.

Most Metroid titles so far have fairly minimal storyline, with lonely situations that are mainly built up through various bits of information Samus finds throughout the game, generally focusing on Samus and generally nothing but aliens and Space Pirates, leaving little room for dialogue. However, as Metroid Prime has progressed, the series has slowly incorporated more storyline events and characters – with scenes of various humans in flashbacks of Metroid Prime 2, and the inclusion of other english-speaking characters in Metroid Prime 3, it seems Metroid: Other M will focus a lot more on Samus’ character.

Set between Metroids 3 & 4 (Super Metroid and Fusion), Other M shows scenes of a large cast, including Samus’ commander, Adam Malkovich, who was referenced in Metroid Fusion, with a degree of affection for Samus – his trademark line “Any objections, Lady?” quoted previously in Fusion. Although perhaps not a love story in the works, Samus has yet to show any signs of family or friends to date, save for brief information on her upbringing with the alien race, the Chozo, - so this could be quite a revealing change. Also shown is a fairly generic looking marine-type character, although he uses the words “Remember me?” – I can’t think of anyone this could be, but perhaps this suggests that this character is someone we’ve seen at some point in the series before.

So far, the game’s looking quite impressive – with a visual style not unlike Metroid Prime 3, the trailer shows snippets of the various types of gameplay. Firstly, we see snippets of what looks like a reworked 2D engine – although set on a 2D plane, the game is in the same 3D graphics and features Samus looking fairly fast, boasting a roll manoever which hasn’t been seen before in Metroid. The trailer then moves onto the new third-person gameplay, with Samus getting unusually up close and personal with what looks like an almost God of War style of attack, taking up a strangely close-proximity combat style – performing grabs and cinematic attacks which could possibly be linked with some kind of Quicktime Event. Samus can even be seen jumping and grabbing the neck of an alien and shooting it in the face as it struggles to release itself. 

Mixed into the trailer are some shots of gameplay in a very Metroid Prime style first-person viewpoint. Samus is shown using various attacks in this mode, including an Ice Beam that she uses to actually freeze up an enemy, encasing it in ice. It’s not clear however if the first-person will be used in sections played the same way as Prime, with full exploration and visors, or perhaps just a first person mode that can be used for precision attacks by holding an “aim button” whilst playing the game’s third-person sections.

There seem to be a range of enemies in the game, from new aliens, Space Pirates and what looks like the return of Ridley – shown in some cinematic scenes of Samus in some brutal looking cinematics. It wouldn’t be right if we don’t see a Metroid or two – but what place they’ll take in the game is yet to be known.

There are also a few shots of Samus doing various platforming and running in third person mode – according to Nintendo the game will include regular exploration – so worry not, I’m sure the classic Morph ball mode, upgrades and Metroidvania gameplay will still be there – and assuming that they’ve continued to use the open-world format it should still manage what both the original and Prime game’s managed in those areas.

The trailer does lend itself to some questions though – there are three characters that bear a resemblance to Samus, although it’s not certain who they are. Firstly, we have a shorter-haired blonde girl who is seen in military gear, and has a fair bit of focus in the earlier stages of the trailer, and she does have a Samus look to her. It’s unsure whether this is or isn’t Samus, but personally I believe this could be shots of her younger years, perhaps for the purpose of flashbacks and history to be told in the story. Next we have Samus in her Zero Suit, who is shown with her Power Suit forming around her. This is almost certainly Samus, but does raise some questions if the previous character isn’t simply Samus from flashbacks. Lastly, we see Samus meeting a character who looks almost exactly like Samus, wearing a lab coat. Now, Nintendo have stated that this lady is NOT Samus, but she is an important character. Now, I assume the similarity between the two ladies is much more than coincidence, so it’ll be interesting to find out what’s going on there.

Graphically, the game’s looking good for a Wii title. The graphics are very reminiscent of Metroid Prime 3, and the enemies and animations look smooth and fluid. The music seems to be keeping to the series’ style with a mix of eerie tones and fast paced-music, so I think the game’s style is going to feel like a Metroid game at heart.

Metroid: Other M is shaping up to look quite interesting. It’s really unknown how the three gameplay styles will all mesh together, but hopefully the switching between 2D and 3D gameplay won’t break up the gameplay leaving the player confused and disoriented with the controls. As long as Nintendo manage to pull it off, we could find ourselves with a game that combines the best features of all the series’ titles. It will certainly be interesting to see the direction the plot takes, and hopefully we’ll see something quite special. Nintendo have done well with the series so far, so I’m hoping to see something fantastic.

Metroid: Other M is due sometime in 2010, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more toward the end of the year. We’ll keep you updated if we get any more info in the future. Check out the full E3 trailer below.

-Leon