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« on: April 30, 2012, 03:48:01 PM »
As with many Nintendo games this generation, Other M was a very enjoyable game with some heavy caveats. The decision by Sakamoto to force a control scheme onto a sole Wii remote without giving an alternate control scheme was absolutely bonkers. I can understand having this more basic input for beginners or for people who simply perfer it. However, This control scheme has two significant downsides for me. Firstly it forced you to control a character in 3D space with the D pad, which does not allow for increments of movement. Secondly, because the game has a first person mode which utilises the pointer, it forces the player to change their grip on the controller any time they want to fire missiles or search areas. Had a control option been available which utilised the nunchuck then not only would this allowed for more refined movement with the analogue stick, it would also have meant that the remote could be held in the pointer position rather than sideways like an NES controller.
It's kind of weird, but one of the reasons I always appreciated Nintendo as a developer was because their control schemes were always so honed and refined. Between Metroid: Other M, Donkey Kong Country Returns (shake to roll? What the hell is wrong with the classic controller?) and Kid Icarus: Uprising, Nintendo has made some serious mistakes in recent years.
Admittedly, during this time they've also given us the Galaxy games, Sin & Punishment 2 and Wii Sports: Resort, all of which had great controls. It's just a shame that they appear to have gone bonkers on a few occasions. It's also worth pointing out that of those games given as examples of not so good control schemes, my issue is not so much that these inputs are inherently 'bad' (although I would certainly say Uprising's are bad), but rather that there were better options which were not offered as alternative controls, be they the Classic Controller, Nunchuck, or Circle Pad Pro.