Metroid Other M

[njiska]

The only thing I have a beef with is the lack of Super Metroid-style wall jumping. You can't climb a single wall anymore, can you? It was the very point of wall jumping in Super Metroid and it was fun to perform. The only (!) other game I know where you can do something along those lines is Ninja Five-O/Ninja Cop for the GBA.

Is this a troll attempt? Wall jumping has been with us at least since the NES mega man games. It was a constantly-used mechanic in Batman for the NES. The SNES' big thing was grappling hooks.

There's no wall jumping in the NES MM games, only in the X series and newer. That said, it is a very old mechanic (Ninja Gaiden comes to mind and probably way older stuff). More to the point Super Metroid Wall-jumping was supper annoying. Metroid Fusion was way more enjoyable to do.

[Obiwanshinobi]

This does indeed look similar to the Super Metroid wall jumping, but way more difficult to perform.
Other M certainly didn't offer me this kind of wall jumping yet.
Come to think of it, maye Shinobi for the PS2 was like that too, but I'm not sure if it was doable without killing the enemies.

[Mischief Maker]

There's no wall jumping in the NES MM games, only in the X series and newer.

My bad, I could have sword there was a primitive off-the-wall jump added to megaman 3.

But the NES version of Batman, c'mon! That game was all ABOUT wall jumping.

[njiska]

This does indeed look similar to the Super Metroid wall jumping, but way more difficult to perform.

I hope to god you have that backwards.

SM Walljump = Careful timing. Must be in spin jump. Bane of my existence.
MMX Walljump = Hold arrow towards wall and press jump. No timing or anything.

There's no wall jumping in the NES MM games, only in the X series and newer.

My bad, I could have sword there was a primitive off-the-wall jump added to megaman 3.

But the NES version of Batman, c'mon! That game was all ABOUT wall jumping.

Well yeah.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Wall jumping in Super Metroid is trivial once you get the hang of it. I had my share of problems with it, but the following advice helped me:

It's all in the timing. Just remember to clutch the wall before jumping from it. Make sure the sprite is actually spinning next to the wall before pointing away from it. Pull away, then jump.

Can't give you much more then that... it's quite easy once you get the hang of it. The only bit I had trouble was escaping the bit with the hovering turtles. That took all day to get out of because you need to grab the ledge to get up, the timing is really tight.

Source.

I played through it with a DualShock 2, which makes me think that now, since Nintendo finally emulated it (four triggers being where it's at), a 2D Metroid game designed with Classic Controller Pro in mind would be something I'd pay good money for.

[BIL]

Come to think of it, maye Shinobi for the PS2 was like that too, but I'm not sure if it was doable without killing the enemies.

How do you mean? I don't remember Shinobi having any advanced wall jumping at all, just the ability to stick to, run along and jump off of smooth surfaces. (the US manual warns that you'll slip off eventually, but I've never seen it happen. Curious, I left Hotsuma clinging to a wall prior to getting the life-draining sword and came back ten minutes later to find him still there, so that's either beta info or just incorrect).

The chained air-dashes do require you to kill the enemies, pretty sure. I don't think the lockon reticle will move on to the next enemy in the chain until you've killed the current target. Such a cool mechanic. Reviewers bitched about the later levels having no floors, gahahahaha. No floors, move about by killing scads of flying enemies = NINJA AS FUCK

[Obiwanshinobi]

I mean cilimbing a single wall, which I think, technically, would be only doable (if possible at all) in that secret-lab-off-limits/factory area. There are two (or so) vertical shafts/wells deep enough there.
Of course the game is about horizontal (rather than vertical) exploration, even along the walls, and fast killing (unless you speed-run like hell) - things Metroid games aren't quite about. Shinobi is just the only 3D game I can think of that just might (if I don't remember wrong) give you the possibility of climbing a single wall up to the ceiling.

[BIL]

Oh right. Yeah, you can gain vertical height on a wall MMX-style no problem (provided it's a smooth surface). Usually no reason to though, as you suggest. It's just that one area of 8-B where the architecture goes all surreal that you do some vertical navigation.

I want to try out Kunoichi / Nightshade now. Stylistically it looks dumb as hell compared to Shinobi, but it seems people screamed even more about its platforming than the first game's, which makes me wonder if it did some neat things with the engine.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Spot on review. No one Else's opinion on this game matters anymore.

[Skykid]

Spot on review. No one Else's opinion on this game matters anymore.

Good in-depth review, although it only takes fifteen minutes of playing the game to realise you're in for all the shit he spends thirty minutes outlining.

[EmperorIng]

Other M is not terrible - but it's not especially good.

The final moments of the game were when I was pissed off the most. The story becomes so intensely fuck-tarded that no amount of fan-service boss-fights can make up for it. Especially with the game's "final boss," aka, the Other M. What a load of crap.

About the only silver lining is that with pre-ordering Other M, I was able to get half-off on another wii game from Amazon. I purchased Sin and Punishment 2 and lemme tell you that is one of THE best games on the system, hands-down.

I've been a big Metroid fan since Metroid Prime, and have since played and beaten all the games in the series, and while Prime 3 kind of disappointed me, that was nowhere near the amount of disappointment I feel with Other M. It's not even because the game is terrible or anything. It's because it should have been much, much better than what it was.

Oh well - there's always Super Metroid, aka, The Perfect Video-Game!

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Good in-depth review, although it only takes fifteen minutes of playing the game to realise you're in for all the shit he spends thirty minutes outlining.

Yeah, I'm sure I wasted a lot of time watching this instead of actually paying for that blunder. Next time I'll think ahead before saying anything!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Them cutscenes again. I realise that the criticism aimed at Other M doesn't boil down to that issue, but I'm still baffled by the amount of venom people who didn't even bother playing the game spill upon it.
I for one can name quite a few games considered good by me (as playable as ever before) sporting way worse cutscenes, S&P2 and Silent Bomber to boot.
I mean really, the cutscenes in Other M aren't even Onimusha-bad (and I'm rather fond of the Onimusha series; even its narratives had hit some sweet points for me).
It is not, rather obviously, developed with "retro-gamers" in mind... and all the better for it in my book. I can't help but wonder how good action-adventure games, developed in this century, for modern platforms, the whiners play on a regular basis. Personally I think Blood Will Tell did pretty much everything better, but it's just one game, eight years old now.

[EmperorIng]

The cutscenes in SnP2 are hilarious; they make next-to-no-sense, things happen without any sort of rhyme and reason, and the characters are so drop-dead stupid that it becomes almost some bizarre parody of Japanese story-telling, because all the tropes are in place but without any sort of coherence to tie it all together.

Especially when you are going through the last stage and the final boss continuously orders his subordinates to their deaths, oblivious to how effortlessly you kill them, time and time again.

KILL HIM
-you kill the boss-
BRING ME HIS HEAD
-you kill another-
MAKE HIM SUFFER
-another boss dead-

like he just doesn't seem to notice that his top, top guys are all being slaughtered. In a row. It's hilarious.

Other M is similar in that things happen for no reason and nothing makes sense, but that story takes itself far more seriously, and is worse off because of it. The narrative goes nowhere, and Samus accomplishes nothing throughout the course of the game, story-wise. Everything important is achieved by other characters. Who destroys S0? Not you. Who prevents MB from crashing the ship into GFED HQ? Not you. Who fucking finishes off Ridley? Not you, bitch. Shut up and watch a cutscene for TWENTY MINUTES INSTEAD.

This is to say nothing about the game. For all your acrobatics and finishing moves, you are so underpowered and helpless in the cutscenes it's not even funny. Or rather it's funny in the way that crashing your car on your birthday which had already been pretty shitty is funny. It's so ludicrous and awful that you can't help but laugh.

[Skykid]

^ What he said. S&P2 is self aware, Other M is totally oblivious. No forgiveness, no sympathy, the game would have been instantly improved without the cutscenes because it wouldn't make you want to cringe all the time and put your foot through the TV.

[EmperorIng]

The end-game, post 'final' boss is actually the best part; namely, when there is no one left alive and you just search the entire ship anyway you please.

Like, if the whole game was like that it would have made the game so much better. It could have been a simple "investigate the distress signal" story, throw in some minor twists and keep the game MOVING instead of bogging it down, and people would have been singing this game's praises for years.

[Strider77]

You guys cry about cutscenes to much.

[BrianC]

My bad, I could have sword there was a primitive off-the-wall jump added to megaman 3.

There's a code to do a high jump, if I remember correctly, but no wall jump. You could do some crazy stuff with the second controller, though. I think it's becuase the beta test tools were still left in the game.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I want to try out Kunoichi / Nightshade now. Stylistically it looks dumb as hell compared to Shinobi, but it seems people screamed even more about its platforming than the first game's, which makes me wonder if it did some neat things with the engine.

What little I played as Hibana felt intimidating (if not REALLY hard). You need to learn the ropes from the start as her.
That said, reportedly a savestate from Shinobi allows you to play as Hotsuma or Joe Musashi (if unlocked). Some speedruns as Hotsuma I saw on YouTube seemed pretty insane (even if you cut down only the robots this time around).

The cutscenes in SnP2 are hilarious; they make next-to-no-sense, things happen without any sort of rhyme and reason, and the characters are so drop-dead stupid that it becomes almost some bizarre parody of Japanese story-telling, because all the tropes are in place but without any sort of coherence to tie it all together.

The problems S&P2 has with its presentation get emphasised in the cutscenes, and I don't like it. The "Treasure can't do real people" thing draggin' on since Light Crusader, the bad animation and the 2D mixed with 3D badly (in the desert cutscene the polygonal characters mapped onto a bitmap DON'T CAST EVEN BLOB SHADOWS; something that rubbed me the wrong way in The Incredible Shirnking Man - the dollhouse scene - and how old is that film?) and just the feeling that, instead of going Hollywood, Treasure should've polished their basics better, all of it left a sour taste in my mouth, as much as I like the game.
I'm still perplexed that, instead of telling the story visual novel way (10,000 Bullets did that and got away with it, as well as Bangai-O), they tried to do things "cinematic" for the people who would've played the game even pirated or imported. Who else bought S&P2 anyways?

[Obiwanshinobi]

I liked this piece of writing very much

http://secondtruth.com/2010/09/samus-is ... shrinking/

so I'm posting the link here.

[Volteccer_Jack]

I want to try out Kunoichi / Nightshade now. Stylistically it looks dumb as hell compared to Shinobi, but it seems people screamed even more about its platforming than the first game's, which makes me wonder if it did some neat things with the engine.

A bit late, but it's rare to get to talk about Nightshade (even many fans of PS2 Shinobi hated and/or never played it) so here's a quick reply.

Lots of small changes to the mechanics, but two big ones. The more important change was the aerial homing kick, which lets you travel much farther between enemies in the air and still refreshes your jump/dash just like normal attacks. As a result, air/wall combat is less strict and more interesting, and the game puts a lot more focus on it. If you liked 5A/6A/8B in Shinobi you will like Nightshade. One of the VR challenge rooms consists of nothing but 2 small platforms and a 100-enemy air tate between them . Downside here is that ground enemies became significantly less interesting, so don't expect anything like Shinobi's exciting 1-against-4 duels.

The other big change involves the sword powerups. Hibana's sword still powers up with tate, but it's not sucking your life out so the bonus is much less impressive. To make up the difference, your combo score now increases a chakra gauge, used to fire Hibana's charged attack, which fires 4 powerful projectiles with max chakra. Getting the full 'one-hit' boss bonus in Nightshade usually requires a well-timed charged shot while powered up by tate.

Hotsuma and Joe Musashi are unlockable characters, and awesomely, they play almost exactly like they did in the previous game. They cannot perform the air kick, but have longer swords and their sword attacks penetrate armor. And they of course have Akujiki and unlimited shurikens, respectively. Unfortunately, because the bosses are all designed for Hibana's projectile attack, which hits 4 times and can target anywhere, S-ranking the game with these two gets...interesting. Even with much higher single hit damage than Hibana, Hotsuma will often need a charged slash to one-shot bosses that Hibana can 'one-shot' with her 4 hit attack, requiring him to find openings where the boss is grounded. One boss in particular is impossible for Hotsuma to S-rank on Hard mode, due to never being on the ground. Joe, on the other hand, simply faces the grueling task of weakening bosses with his unlimited shurikens before going for his one hit. On the bright side, the bosses are generally much better than those in Shinobi in every other respect.

[BIL]

I actually picked up Kunoichi on a hunch a while back, but like anything PS2/onwards I've no means of playing it at the moment. Thanks for the writeup, exactly the stuff that compelled me to look past all the giant lobsters.

[GaijinPunch]

I played Kunoichi before Shinobi. Enjoyed both... these are rare cases of reboots not sucking.

[BryanM]

Kind of ironic how Nintendo censors anything remotely connected to female sexuality (famously even censoring a shadow cast by a pelvic bone), yet they've sexualized Samus up the whazbo to make teh monies.

Also: "M" is short for "masochist". Coincidence?

That comment section

People... defending the magic suit and magic alien blood.

Sigh. No. Just no.

It's fucking awful, and you only need one reason to see why: If you have to be a special snowflake chosen jesus character to mass murder aliens solo, then that means you can't have any non-jesus playable characters.

Wanna have a Metroid game where Samus is on a team with other cool bounty hunter types during a mission, where you can swap between them like in NES TMNT? Fuck you. Here's $800,000 spent on a cutscene of her crying like a baby instead.

I personally always preferred a vision of this world closer to the Alien films. Where people who aren't the main character are allowed to be interesting. And to do things.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I believe sexuality and vulnerability don't have to be mutually inclusive (vulnerability sure can be arousing, but so can be power; there's no "one size fits all" way here), thus I didn't find the Other M Samus so much sexualised as I found her dependent indeed.

You just might listen to some comments by those who had played the game.

[EmperorIng]

I played the game, and absolutely came to loathe it by the second play through. The story is awful. God awful.

I don't mind the "raised by Chozo" angle, though I agree that the "deification" of Samus makes her less interesting (to say nothing of the creepy fetishistic depiction of her by Sakamoto). I prefer space bounties, and a quasi Wild West world with Giger-inspired horrors lurking behind every corner.

[Obiwanshinobi]

By the way, I feel like replaying it on harder difficulty soon (haven't found everything during my first run, but it's been enough time for me to have no regrets). In fact, mostly because of Vanquish (pretty different games, yet both share the "TPP power suit feeling RIGHT to me" kind of service).

[Weak Boson]

I quite liked the raised by aliens backstory because of the tragedy of it and the unique perspective of humanity it would afford her. I always assumed that the Chozo themselves were a dead race which added to it but correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway the "bitten by a radioactive chozo" blood thing is definitely lame - the point at which she becomes a super hero everything falls apart.

I think the best we can do is pretend none of this Other M/dubious manga stuff ever happened and try to live our lives as if the real Samus was with us all along.

[BIL]

I miss the days when videogame alien infestations could be summed up in three lines.

"SWEET JESUS FUCK, IT IS ALIENS"

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

"GOOD JOB GUYS! LETS GO FOR A BURGER"

[Volteccer_Jack]

Well, originally the Chozo backstory was just that they were the 'mysteriously vanished' advanced civilization that is mandatory in every fictional universe. Samus being raised by Chozo and using their technology was just a plot device to explain her uncanny ability to pick things up off the floor and instantly incorporate them into her suit.

It wasn't until Prime that everyone in the universe developed an unhealthy obsession with Samus, having the Chozo worship her as prophesied Space Jesus, and the space pirates fearing her more than most criminals in Gotham City fear Batman, even though at that point in the timeline she's only had one major battle with them. All the newer Metroid games are smothered in this bullshit and Fusion is the only game where it wasn't awful. Mostly because instead of "we have long awaited your return, my Lord", Fusion's approach was "Hey, remember that time you committed genocide? Turns out there were some negative consequences..."